1 - baraka 2 - wings of desire 3 - faraway so close 4 - the navigator a medieval odyssey 5 - adventures of the baron munchausen 6 - picnic at hanging rock (wim wenders) 7 - la double vie de veronique 8 - the yellow submarine 9 - prospero's books 10 - howard's end 11 - the field 12 - betty blue
usually novels that describe the Future, are really about the PRESENT.
but the sci-fi setting allows you to look at the IDEA in a situation without all the culturally biased baggage that would inhabit a novel with the same ideas set in a present that too much resembled our own.
| I think the reality will be more along the lines of lying | on your bunk in your quarters and hooking your nervous | system up to a computer. The computer would simulate | any reality you wanted, and you could be joined by your | fellow crew members just like participating in a big | online game of Quake. For that matter, that's probably | what being on duty would be as well...
thank you -- for giving the required thought and persistence to discover and implement a practical working example of the open-source idea. your actions and ideals are an inspiration for many!
to presume the free sharing and replication of ideas in code, and codifying that into the GNU license, you have done a great portion of humanity a great service, and i just wanted to thank you personally for that.
when apple put 'classic' compatibility in a box -- the os9 'classic' compatibility ran better than most windows 'upgrades' that were supposed to be compatible.
i can still run software from macOS 6.0.4 in the OS-X 'classic' mode -- macwrite II v1.5, photoshop 3.0 (from 1994 - mac OS 7.6 era), and macpaint 2.0 (from 1988) still runs fine -- mac compatibility is really quite good.
microsoft will never do it -- they'll never let go of control of the lowest common denominator (the OS is the last layer between software and the hardware) - they don't want to lose that control, and never will.
because they kept that hood so tightly welded shut -- open source had to arise, because people like to be able to tinker. so -- thank you microsoft!:)
written by Steve Capps - a nice 3D figure of alice moves around on a chessboard being chased by chess pieces. make a wrong move, and she falls through a hole in the board. the 'menubar' is a 'cheshire cat'.
came out in 1983 for the original macintosh, in a nice little 'book volume' which contained the floppy disk.
The physicist announces that he explains all phenomena by means of purely mechanical facts. This causes people to say, "Well, there are only mechanical facts in space. Life must be a mechanical thing, soul phenomena must be mechanical and spiritual things must be mechanical." 'Exact sciences' will not admit the possibility of a spiritual foundation for the world. And 'exact science' works as an especially powerful authority because they are not familiar with it. What people know, they pass their own judgment on and do not permit it to exercise such an authority. What they do not know they accept on authority. If more were done to popularize the so-called 'rigidly exact science,' the authority of some of those who sit entrenched in possession of this exact science would practically disappear.
(Rudolf Steiner, Warmth Course, Lecture IV,
Stuttgart, March 4th, 1920)
the article mentions IBM's digital computer in america, but doesn't mention that the first digital computer (the 'ZI') was designed in germany by: KONRAD ZUSE:
the question of whether computers use intelligence the same way as humans use intelligence has long been determined through the 'chineese room'.
the point of John Searle's Chinese Room being is to see if 'understanding' is involved in the process of computation. if you can 'process' the symbols of the cards without understanding them (since you're using a wordbook and a programme to do it) - by putting yourself in the place of the computer, you yourself can ask yourself if you required understanding to do it:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.
2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.
3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.
4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you think that I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.
6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.
7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.
8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". The brain, as far as its intrinsic operations are concerned, does no information processing. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.
i) human memory is not a fixed capacity. it varies with how much you make use of it.
ii) also, there is a QUALITATIVE difference between events AS WE HAVE EXPERIENCED THEM, and as they are recorded on a videostream. the *experience* you recall when someone snapped a photo of you (it was hot, and uncomfortable), is not the thing that is recorded in the photograph. the external image and the inner experience are qualitatively different - one is full of MEANING, and one is a DIGITIZATION - so no database of this type could really be a replacement for the type of experiential memories that we inherently contain.
iii) memory is like a muscle - the more you force yourself to remember all the stuff, the better your memory gets - and the more you rely on exeternal gadgets to 'remember' stuff for you - the more your inherent memory power Atrophies.
so if you want to have a bad memory - rely on external devices to remember things FOR YOU - you'll end up dependent on them, because you will have given-up your inherent abilities to do so. than you will be royally screwed if your external device gets the screen of death - you won't even know what you lost!
The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack;
and the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf.
(Rudyard Kipling)
- copyright exists to ensure musicians get paid.
- the other side is that once an artist produces something,
it goes beyond them and many benefit.
- between consumers and producers now stands record companies
- but paying artists is only a step on the way to gaining profit.
in practice, many musicians (who play instruments) starve, while
marketing bimbos (spice girls) thrive - this is wrong.
- a fundemental qualitative difference between physical and
electronic goods is - if i have an apple and give you an apple,
i no longer have an apple; but if i have an idea and give you an idea,
we BOTH have an idea. therefore you cannot treat electronic things as
if they were actually physical goods, because they aren't!
- still, you must compensate producers of the original bits.
so what to do?
> MUSICIANS ASSOCIATIONS:
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the musician's
pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
- the musicians pool distributes it equitably among its active producers.
- from the pool comes more new music. which is given away for free.
unlimited digital copies for everyone, never again a dime paid for
anything that's just DATA.
- distributors get fresh music, and sell and package more STUFF.
- distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back and feeds itelf (the most important part).
> RESULTS:
- so all software is free - you get mindshare from it.
- but if you make a physical whose value lies on the free music on it,
then a percentage goes back.
- but the artist is not paid direct - it goes to the musician's pool,
which doles out shares each month by percentage of overall downloads
from a service such as Napster.
> SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED:
Q: won't physical distribution go away when we move to total digital distribution?
A: i do not believe the vision that sales of physical goods will diminish
towards zero and be replaced entirely by digital distribution.
as digital distribution goes up, the value-added of merchandising
of 'physical' stuff based around the content will go up. SOMETHING
THAT IS PHYSICAL IS SCARCE, and its value (unlike digital) lies in
that not everyone can have it. thus, collectors will pay a premium
to have something TANGIBLE and official from the band over just a
download of the song.
when anyone can get a copy of a song downloaded for free,
then the merchandisers will 'add value' to the product through
unique packaging, and by inventing desirable things to provide
in addition to 'just the data'. for example:
- you get a printed booklet and poster with your CD - looks nicer
than if you burn it yourself.
- you have all sorts of merchandise: books, fanzines, t-shirts,
it is up to the ingenuity of the merchandisers to make money
off of this stuff - and when they do - a percentage (like a sales tax)
goes back to the musician's pool, and gets divided up by percentage of
P2P (or insert your service here) downloads that month.
- i can download a copy of any of shakespeare's works TODAY FOR FREE
from PROJECT GUTENBURG - but i still go out to amazon to order a
copy. why? i COULD download it and print it myself on my inkjet
printer, but it would cost me more to download and print then to buy
a copy that's already nicely packaged by a bookseller. in essence:
the 'data' of the book is free, but i'm paying for more than just
the content, i'm also paying for the convenience (over printing on
my own inkjet), and the PRESENTATION.
btw - Houdini's renderer app ('mantra') was used for rendering the 'senator kelly' scene in x-men (where he turns to water) -- to give you some idea of the renderer that comes with the package. apparently, writing your own shaders (like RenderMan), and it supports a hybrid of scanline rendering and raytracing.
mantra is a bit better than mental ray (features/quality/speed), and on par with renderman - industrial strength.
the first major high-end 3D package to be comercially ported to LINUX was HOUDINI from sidefx. alias' maya and sidefx Houdini are like the pepsi-coke of high-end 3D.
they've also got a free 'Houdini Apprentice' programme, so you can try it - works on Linux!
they used Houdini to animate gandalf's fireworks, and animate the rushing river horses in lord of the rings. they've used it in the star trek movies, Terminator 3D, and just about every sci-fi effects flick out there - check it out:
a lot of the most interesting highend 3D technologies started with HOUDINI - Procedural Motion and Graphics OP networks were invented by the Programmers at Side Effects.
some of the things you can do with their 3D animation software (Houdini 5.5) are:
- In-Viewport editing generates procedural 'memory' of construction history. - Support of multiple geometry types: 3D NURBS, Bezier, Mesh, Poly, L-systems (itterative geometry), and Metaballs. - Procedural 3D Surface Modelling (SOPs > "Noun"). - Procedural Waveform/Motion, Audio, and Channel Editing (CHOPs > "Verb"). - Procedural Particle Systems (POPs) for simulating Smoke, Fire, and Gases. - Procedural Shader generation (SHOPs). - Procedural 2D Compositing (COPs). - Softbody Inverse Kinematics & Character / Facial Animation capabilities. - Organic modelling of plant growth over time via L-systems algorithms. - Integrated Metabolic, NURBS, and Polygonal Sub-Division Surface modelling. - Integrated VEX RenderMan-like shading language for mantra Renderer. - Integrated Scripting and Expression Languages. - Integrated RenderFarm capabilities. - Extensive Scripting support in: hscript, tcl, etc.
they've also got an offshoot for doing cool realtime 3D graphics ('TOUCH' - used on the RUSH tour this summer) at:
why is there this stereotype that a 'geek room' has to be messy and fully of crap?
what about the 'neat geek' ?
i spend endless time at this desk tinkering and working on the computer. i use a soldering-iron, i've etched my own circuit boards, disassembled computers and CRTs (replacing analogue boards on a Mac+), and soldered together with resin-core solder and built a theramin, written code, built web-sites, ripped tunes, made mixes, read slashdot faithfully, spent endless hours downloading, archiving, and organising data; and in every manner possible, have tried to fully integrate technology in a fully artistic way into my living - there is not a single component that hasn't had thought put into it -- all here:
the apparent simplicity and cleanliness of this space belies the inordinate amount of work that goes into making a well-used geek-room so spare and uncluttered. there's several hundred CD's, a firewire hard drive, burner, audio-amplifiers, with USB hubs and surge-protected powerbar hidden behind the desk (with cables bound together with elastics). there's a high-power HeNe Laser power supply, coils of wire, soldering iron, toolkit, VOM and DMM, a scanner, boxes of data CDs and ZIP disks. the hard drive and burner are neatly stacked in the left and right flanking drawers under the desk. and to either side are a pair of loudspeakers for audio work and listening to MP3s. when i undertake to dissassemble a machine, and get the parts all spread over the desk - the whole METHOD of doing so is well thought-out, and done with care, so that even in the procedure, everything is done neatly.
so once again, just because its messy, doesn't make it geek.
there are neat geeks too, which are just as devoted to technology, and do just as much tinkering as any of you.
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world. For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of thoughts about the phenomena of the world.
Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it.
The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with the capacity to think.
He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter instead of to himself.
And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with itself and content just to exist?
The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift it from one place to another.
there is a nail stuck in a piece of stone for 200 years. the nail has fused itself into the stone.
there is a glass window pane, it has slowly melted into a warbled surface, so the light passing through it and coming into my room is no longer uniform.
the smaller you make it, the less long it will last.
the 0.20 micron chips will last longer than the nano-chips made 10 years later.
Let us begin our investigation of this claim by distinquishing three questions:
1. Is the brain a digital computer? 2. Is the mind a computer program? 3. Can the operations of the brain be simulated on a digital computer?
His Conclusion?
VI. Summary of the Argument.
This brief argument has a simple logical structure and I will lay it out:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation. 2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics. 3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative. 4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you thinkthat I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms. 6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus. 7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question. 8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". The brain, as far as its intrinsic operations are concerned, does no information processing. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.\**
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104/ se arle.comp.html
Slashdot Mirror
baraka is like watching a cinematic postcard of the history of the planet earth. it is the most visually stunning film ever made.
top 12 best movies:
1 - baraka
2 - wings of desire
3 - faraway so close
4 - the navigator a medieval odyssey
5 - adventures of the baron munchausen
6 - picnic at hanging rock (wim wenders)
7 - la double vie de veronique
8 - the yellow submarine
9 - prospero's books
10 - howard's end
11 - the field
12 - betty blue
cheers!
john
usually novels that describe the Future,
are really about the PRESENT.
but the sci-fi setting allows you to look at
the IDEA in a situation without all the culturally
biased baggage that would inhabit a novel
with the same ideas set in a present that
too much resembled our own.
cheers,
john.
| I think the reality will be more along the lines of lying
| on your bunk in your quarters and hooking your nervous
| system up to a computer. The computer would simulate
| any reality you wanted, and you could be joined by your
| fellow crew members just like participating in a big
| online game of Quake. For that matter, that's probably
| what being on duty would be as well...
yes -- you'll be a BORG.
dear mr. stallman,
thank you -- for giving the required thought and persistence to discover and implement a practical working example of the open-source idea. your actions and ideals are an inspiration for many!
to presume the free sharing and replication of ideas in code,
and codifying that into the GNU license, you have done a great
portion of humanity a great service, and i just wanted to thank you
personally for that.
best regards, and many more,
john penner (toronto).
social threefolding
How long will Humans keep Thinking
they came from Monkeys...?
Maybe the Monkeys came from Us?
john
when apple put 'classic' compatibility in a box -- the os9 'classic' compatibility ran better than most windows 'upgrades' that were supposed to be compatible.
i can still run software from macOS 6.0.4 in the OS-X 'classic' mode -- macwrite II v1.5, photoshop 3.0 (from 1994 - mac OS 7.6 era), and macpaint 2.0 (from 1988) still runs fine -- mac compatibility is really quite good.
john
microsoft will never do it -- they'll never let go of control of the lowest common denominator (the OS is the last layer between software and the hardware) - they don't want to lose that control, and never will.
because they kept that hood so tightly welded shut -- open source had to arise, because people like to be able to tinker. so -- thank you microsoft!
cheers,
john
written by Steve Capps - a nice 3D figure of alice moves around on a chessboard being chased by chess pieces. make a wrong move, and she falls through a hole in the board. the 'menubar' is a 'cheshire cat'.
came out in 1983 for the original macintosh, in a nice little 'book volume' which contained the floppy disk.
cheers
john
What people know, they pass their own judgment on
and do not permit it to exercise such an authority.
What they do not know they accept on authority.
(Rudolf Steiner, Warmth Course - Lecture IV)
--
The physicist announces that he explains all phenomena by means
of purely mechanical facts. This causes people to say, "Well,
there are only mechanical facts in space. Life must be a mechanical
thing, soul phenomena must be mechanical and spiritual things must
be mechanical." 'Exact sciences' will not admit the possibility of
a spiritual foundation for the world. And 'exact science' works as
an especially powerful authority because they are not familiar with
it. What people know, they pass their own judgment on and do not
permit it to exercise such an authority. What they do not know they
accept on authority. If more were done to popularize the so-called
'rigidly exact science,' the authority of some of those who sit
entrenched in possession of this exact science would practically
disappear.
(Rudolf Steiner, Warmth Course, Lecture IV,
Stuttgart, March 4th, 1920)
so long as people demand 'the lowest price is the law', Quality will tend in a worse direction.
john
the article mentions IBM's digital computer in america,
but doesn't mention that the first digital computer (the 'ZI') was designed in germany by: KONRAD ZUSE:
Konrad Zuse - Mark I
the question of whether computers use intelligence the same way as humans use intelligence has long been determined through the 'chineese room'.
the point of John Searle's Chinese Room being is to see if 'understanding' is involved in the process of computation. if you can 'process' the symbols of the cards without understanding them (since you're using a wordbook and a programme to do it) - by putting yourself in the place of the computer, you yourself can ask yourself if you required understanding to do it:
Minds Brains and Programmes (The Original Chineese Room):
http://www.bbsonline.org/documents/a/00/00/04/8
the complementary question - 'is the human brain
a digital computer' is answered by the same author:
Is the Human Brain a Digital Computer (John Searle):
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104
Summary of the Argument:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.
2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.
3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.
4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you think that I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.
6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.
7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.
8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". The brain, as far as its intrinsic operations are concerned, does no information processing. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.
--
best regards,
john
> Whatever my failings are, they are human
> and I try to perfect it each day.
and that's why You Are Cool!
that's why i love apple products - in everything that's presented to the user - thought has been put into it.
'design is practical art'
john
watching it change is like watching evolution in motion
it doesn't change - people change it.
and the people have changed it well - way to go pine!
j.
i) human memory is not a fixed capacity. it varies with how much you make use of it.
ii) also, there is a QUALITATIVE difference between events AS WE HAVE EXPERIENCED THEM, and as they are recorded on a videostream. the *experience* you recall when someone snapped a photo of you (it was hot, and uncomfortable), is not the thing that is recorded in the photograph. the external image and the inner experience are qualitatively different - one is full of MEANING, and one is a DIGITIZATION - so no database of this type could really be a replacement for the type of experiential memories that we inherently contain.
iii) memory is like a muscle - the more you force yourself to remember all the stuff, the better your memory gets - and the more you rely on exeternal gadgets to 'remember' stuff for you - the more your inherent memory power Atrophies.
so if you want to have a bad memory - rely on external devices to remember things FOR YOU - you'll end up dependent on them, because you will have given-up your inherent abilities to do so. than you will be royally screwed if your external device gets the screen of death - you won't even know what you lost!
cheers!!
john
--| piracy or copyright? the third solution |---
t einer-Social.html
The Strength of the Wolf is the Pack;
and the Strength of the Pack is the Wolf.
(Rudyard Kipling)
- copyright exists to ensure musicians get paid.
- the other side is that once an artist produces something,
it goes beyond them and many benefit.
- between consumers and producers now stands record companies
- but paying artists is only a step on the way to gaining profit.
in practice, many musicians (who play instruments) starve, while
marketing bimbos (spice girls) thrive - this is wrong.
- a fundemental qualitative difference between physical and
electronic goods is - if i have an apple and give you an apple,
i no longer have an apple; but if i have an idea and give you an idea,
we BOTH have an idea. therefore you cannot treat electronic things as
if they were actually physical goods, because they aren't!
- still, you must compensate producers of the original bits.
so what to do?
> MUSICIANS ASSOCIATIONS:
- the physical distributors and merchandisers pay into the musician's
pool that pays and feeds the musicians.
- the musicians pool distributes it equitably among its active producers.
- from the pool comes more new music. which is given away for free.
unlimited digital copies for everyone, never again a dime paid for
anything that's just DATA.
- distributors get fresh music, and sell and package more STUFF.
- distributors pay back a percentage of sales back into the pool.
- so it comes back and feeds itelf (the most important part).
> RESULTS:
- so all software is free - you get mindshare from it.
- but if you make a physical whose value lies on the free music on it,
then a percentage goes back.
- but the artist is not paid direct - it goes to the musician's pool,
which doles out shares each month by percentage of overall downloads
from a service such as Napster.
> SOME QUESTIONS ANSWERED:
Q: won't physical distribution go away
when we move to total digital distribution?
A: i do not believe the vision that sales of physical goods will diminish
towards zero and be replaced entirely by digital distribution.
as digital distribution goes up, the value-added of merchandising
of 'physical' stuff based around the content will go up. SOMETHING
THAT IS PHYSICAL IS SCARCE, and its value (unlike digital) lies in
that not everyone can have it. thus, collectors will pay a premium
to have something TANGIBLE and official from the band over just a
download of the song.
when anyone can get a copy of a song downloaded for free,
then the merchandisers will 'add value' to the product through
unique packaging, and by inventing desirable things to provide
in addition to 'just the data'. for example:
- you get a printed booklet and poster with your CD - looks nicer
than if you burn it yourself.
- you have all sorts of merchandise: books, fanzines, t-shirts,
it is up to the ingenuity of the merchandisers to make money
off of this stuff - and when they do - a percentage (like a sales tax)
goes back to the musician's pool, and gets divided up by percentage of
P2P (or insert your service here) downloads that month.
- i can download a copy of any of shakespeare's works TODAY FOR FREE
from PROJECT GUTENBURG - but i still go out to amazon to order a
copy. why? i COULD download it and print it myself on my inkjet
printer, but it would cost me more to download and print then to buy
a copy that's already nicely packaged by a bookseller. in essence:
the 'data' of the book is free, but i'm paying for more than just
the content, i'm also paying for the convenience (over printing on
my own inkjet), and the PRESENTATION.
> Economic Basis for Musician's Associations:
see: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/S
--
btw - Houdini's renderer app ('mantra') was used for rendering the 'senator kelly' scene in x-men (where he turns to water) -- to give you some idea of the renderer that comes with the package. apparently, writing your own shaders (like RenderMan), and it supports a hybrid of scanline rendering and raytracing.
mantra is a bit better than mental ray (features/quality/speed), and on par with renderman - industrial strength.
the first major high-end 3D package to be comercially ported to LINUX was HOUDINI from sidefx. alias' maya and sidefx Houdini are like the pepsi-coke of high-end 3D.
they've also got a free 'Houdini Apprentice' programme, so you can try it - works on Linux!
they used Houdini to animate gandalf's fireworks, and animate the rushing river horses in lord of the rings. they've used it in the star trek movies, Terminator 3D, and just about every sci-fi effects flick out there - check it out:
www.sidefx.com
a lot of the most interesting highend 3D technologies started with HOUDINI - Procedural Motion and Graphics OP networks were invented by
the Programmers at Side Effects.
some of the things you can do with their 3D animation
software (Houdini 5.5) are:
- In-Viewport editing generates procedural 'memory' of construction history.
- Support of multiple geometry types: 3D NURBS, Bezier, Mesh, Poly, L-systems (itterative geometry), and Metaballs.
- Procedural 3D Surface Modelling (SOPs > "Noun").
- Procedural Waveform/Motion, Audio, and Channel Editing (CHOPs > "Verb").
- Procedural Particle Systems (POPs) for simulating Smoke, Fire, and Gases.
- Procedural Shader generation (SHOPs).
- Procedural 2D Compositing (COPs).
- Softbody Inverse Kinematics & Character / Facial Animation capabilities.
- Organic modelling of plant growth over time via L-systems algorithms.
- Integrated Metabolic, NURBS, and Polygonal Sub-Division Surface modelling.
- Integrated VEX RenderMan-like shading language for mantra Renderer.
- Integrated Scripting and Expression Languages.
- Integrated RenderFarm capabilities.
- Extensive Scripting support in: hscript, tcl, etc.
they've also got an offshoot for doing cool realtime 3D graphics ('TOUCH' - used on the RUSH tour this summer) at:
www.derivativeinc.com
cheers!
john.
why is there this stereotype that a 'geek room' has to
be messy and fully of crap?
what about the 'neat geek' ?
i spend endless time at this desk tinkering and working on the computer.
i use a soldering-iron, i've etched my own circuit boards, disassembled
computers and CRTs (replacing analogue boards on a Mac+), and soldered
together with resin-core solder and built a theramin, written code,
built web-sites, ripped tunes, made mixes, read slashdot faithfully,
spent endless hours downloading, archiving, and organising data;
and in every manner possible, have tried to fully integrate technology
in a fully artistic way into my living - there is not a single component that
hasn't had thought put into it -- all here:
GeekRoom-Front.jpg
GeekRoom-Side.jpg
the apparent simplicity and cleanliness of this space belies the
inordinate amount of work that goes into making a well-used geek-room
so spare and uncluttered. there's several hundred CD's, a firewire hard
drive, burner, audio-amplifiers, with USB hubs and surge-protected
powerbar hidden behind the desk (with cables bound together with elastics).
there's a high-power HeNe Laser power supply, coils of wire, soldering iron,
toolkit, VOM and DMM, a scanner, boxes of data CDs and ZIP disks. the
hard drive and burner are neatly stacked in the left and right flanking
drawers under the desk. and to either side are a pair of loudspeakers
for audio work and listening to MP3s. when i undertake to dissassemble a
machine, and get the parts all spread over the desk - the whole METHOD of
doing so is well thought-out, and done with care, so that even in the
procedure, everything is done neatly.
so once again, just because its messy, doesn't make it geek.
there are neat geeks too, which are just as devoted to technology,
and do just as much tinkering as any of you.
best regards,
john
Machines aren't getting Smarter - they're getting Faster.
Quantitative change does not imply Qualitative change.
Materialism can never offer a satisfactory explanation of the world.
For every attempt at an explanation must begin with the formation of
thoughts about the phenomena of the world.
Materialism thus begins with the thought of matter or material
processes. But, in doing so, it is already confronted by two different
sets of facts: the material world, and the thoughts about it.
The materialist seeks to make these latter intelligible by regarding
them as purely material processes. He believes that thinking takes
place in the brain, much in the same way that digestion takes place in
the animal organs. Just as he attributes mechanical and organic
effects to matter, so he credits matter in certain circumstances with
the capacity to think.
He overlooks that, in doing so, he is merely shifting the problem from
one place to another. He ascribes the power of thinking to matter
instead of to himself.
And thus he is back again at his starting point. How does matter come
to think about its own nature? Why is it not simply satisfied with
itself and content just to exist?
The materialist has turned his attention away from the definite
subject, his own I, and has arrived at an image of something quite
vague and indefinite. Here the old riddle meets him again. The
materialistic conception cannot solve the problem; it can only shift
it from one place to another.
(Philosophy of Freedom, Chapter 2)
there is a nail stuck in a piece of stone for 200 years.
the nail has fused itself into the stone.
there is a glass window pane, it has slowly melted
into a warbled surface, so the light passing through
it and coming into my room is no longer uniform.
the smaller you make it,
the less long it will last.
the 0.20 micron chips will last longer
than the nano-chips made 10 years later.
cheers!
john
Cognitive Scietist John Searle takes up the question:
Is the Brain a Digital Computer
in Earnest:
Let us begin our investigation of this claim by distinquishing three questions:
1. Is the brain a digital computer?
2. Is the mind a computer program?
3. Can the operations of the brain be simulated on a digital computer?
His Conclusion?
VI. Summary of the Argument.
This brief argument has a simple logical structure and I will lay it out:
1. On the standard textbook definition, computation is defined syntactically in terms of symbol manipulation.
2. But syntax and symbols are not defined in terms of physics. Though symbol tokens are always physical tokens, "symbol" and "same symbol" are not defined in terms of physical features. Syntax, in short, is not intrinsic to physics.
3. This has the consequence that computation is not discovered in the physics, it is assigned to it. Certain physical phenomena are assigned or used or programmed or interpreted syntactically. Syntax and symbols are observer relative.
4. It follows that you could not discover that the brain or anything else was intrinsically a digital computer, although you could assign a computational interpretation to it as you could to anything else. The point is not that the claim "The brain is a digital computer" is false. Rather it does not get up to the level of falsehood. It does not have a clear sense. You will have misunderstood my account if you thinkthat I am arguing that it is simply false that the brain is a digital computer. The question "Is the brain a digital computer?" is as ill defined as the questions "Is it an abacus?", "Is it a book?", or "Is it a set of symbols?", "Is it a set of mathematical formulae?"
5. Some physical systems facilitate the computational use much better than others. That is why we build, program, and use them. In such cases we are the homunculus in the system interpreting the physics in both syntactical and semantic terms.
6. But the causal explanations we then give do not cite causal properties different from the physics of the implementation and the intentionality of the homunculus.
7. The standard, though tacit, way out of this is to commit the homunculus fallacy. The humunculus fallacy is endemic to computational models of cognition and cannot be removed by the standard recursive decomposition arguments. They are addressed to a different question.
8. We cannot avoid the foregoing results by supposing that the brain is doing "information processing". The brain, as far as its intrinsic operations are concerned, does no information processing. It is a specific biological organ and its specific neurobiological processes cause specific forms of intentionality. In the brain, intrinsically, there are neurobiological processes and sometimes they cause consciousness. But that is the end of the story.\**
http://www.ecs.soton.ac.uk/~harnad/Papers/Py104