Do you realize the utter foolishness of your actions? Even if you succeed in putting Napster out of business, you cannot fight technologies like gnutella and.mp3. The 'best' you could hope for is to remove your music from the online explosion-to remove your 'art' from the most exciting and alive of all current media. I also hope you realize the monetary foolishness of your actions-the recording industry acts as if.mp3 users are stealing money from them, when in fact very few people would ever pay for music they download as.mp3. Napster as a corporation stands to gain very little financially from.mp3. In fact, there is almost no monetary aspect of the technology:.mp3 is music for the sake of music-not a 'commodity.' I find it surprising that Metallica, of all groups, would come forward to attack.mp3. It is the least cool thing that a band could possibly do. It shows, in fact, what the real commodity is. Metallica itself is what has been commoditized-the art of your original recordings has been whittled down again and again over time, with every make-over and spin for a new record, and a new payoff. You have been banking on your image for a long time, and I'm afraid that your image is a commodity which is losing value. How much have you been paid over the years? You realize that you've had your payoff for selling out, don't you? There's no more to be ripped from the hands of 13-year-old naptser users. Are you simply bitter that those 13-year-olds would rather pay for Britney Spears and Nsync than Metallica's rehashed, commoditized material? You have taken up the fight for music as commodity, with a lame excuse about art. Anyone who mentions 'our intellectual property' betrays the fact that they have already been commoditized. It still makes me sad, however. I find it hard to believe that you have taken the initiative to do this. Have representatives from the recording industry put you up to this, expecting your image to help their cause? It seems the most believable explanation, and I would be relieved if that were the situation...the death of a once-great rock group's image is always a sad moment for me. Have you gotten what you expected? Did you expect accolades and rewards instead of mass public indignance? I hope that you have, so you can stop this farce, and get out of the way of progress. Can you even imagine a world where escaped the enforced mediocrity of the music industry? Napster users can, and that's why this is so sad.
A translation note: 'the root of all evil' is a much more common translation. It's in the RSV, and the KJV. The Greek has 'panton ton kakon'(I've used roman letters, I'm afraid) which clearly means 'of all evil,' definitely not 'all kinds.' The simplest literary translation from the Greek is, 'For the love of money is the root of all evils.'
My idea is this: no common internet language. At least not one that anybody sees. Instead, machine translation into a common meta-language from which the translation program can quickly translate into any language. And good old latin as meta-language. Why? Latin has no accents or inflections. Latin is even faster/shorter than english, and by quite a large amount. But most importantly, latin contains extended information about syntax in its word endings-there's more explicit information in the language itself and less implicit, order-sensitive information. For words that don't exist in latin, we'll do what the Romans did with greek words: put the root word into roman letters and add latin endings. Hackare: to hack. icqabat: he was icqing. I simply don't see anyone wanting to learn a new language for the net. Language is evolutionary: esperanto and other artificial language show the difficulties of artificial evolution. Why not re-invent the lingua franca, but this time in an invisible, seamless fashion?
I agree. Then we'll just let the capitalist pigs try to steal the music from us! Comrades, we will all be safe in that impenetrable vanguard of pure socialism.
My friend had his quake servers shut down. I guess that's understandable, but I still think it's lame. They have a 'no gaming' policy...luckily, it isn't enforced, and my friend has run public servers for the last several years, until he pissed someone off and they turned him in. I just worry about a time when people won't be able to play games, or do anything, and won't have any recourse, since, at my school, Columbia University, outside isp service is difficult because of the phone system. You have to pay an extra $15 a month to get an analog phone line. Anyway...having free access to the internet has been a defining experience of college...I'm sure it'll disappear with the rest of the digital frontier, and turned into a homogenized shopping mall with no sharp edges, inappropriate content, or harmful ideas. It's unfortunate though...american censorship authorities do a good job of enforcing the status quo while allowing material that is truly objectionable to be seen.
here's my quick take: I think it's worthwhile to create a canon of sci-fi literature...I think it should be arranged in the basic setup of the origins, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, with classics like The invisible man, the time machine, journey to the center of the earth, war of the worlds, and 20,000 leagues under the sea...the next group are pulp/50's writers...asimov's foundation series, heinlein's moon is a harsh mistress, stranger in a strange land, etc...alfred bester, invisible man, stars my destination, and his short stories...ray bradbury...and then the cyberpunk/80's writers...william gibson's neuromancer and burning chrome are both incredible...neal stephenson of course...orson scott card's ender's game... There are many more, of course. Also, I think everyone should check out vonnegut...his short stories, welcome to the monkey house, as well as cat's cradle and slaughterhouse-5 are all incredible literary works. ....oh my gosh...this is the toughest question ever. I could suggest so many things, and sci-fi has so many connections and subtleties. Sci-fi literature has been intensely alive for the last hundred years or so, and it's only going to be more important in the future. I think that the canon will be developed at some point, when these works are recognized as the vastly important works of literature they are...the importance of their insight into our society will only be realized when people see exactly how good their insight is, and has been...the writers that we hold up as the best examples of literary science fiction have incredible readings of the future of media and its implications throughout our society...their insight has and continues to be SO valuable. Our media is slowly dealing with the questions cyberpunk posed in the early 80's...only now has a good cyberpunk movie come out, and a lot of tv and movies are based on '50's sci-fi. This stuff is great...it's intelligent literature, and it's conversant with the canon of western literature going back to the origins of greek and latin thought, while at once defining the modern novel. Sci-fi is where our culture is alive.
I'm sorry to say that the world did end for me. My computer crashed horribly, which released the safeties on the small nuclear arsenal I keep in my dorm room...the arms race between myself and a suitemate escalated, and both of us were obliterated by retaliatory fire. Our rooms are heaps of glowing ash, and we can only assume that our tragedy was repeated on a large scale with the nuclear destruction of most of the inhabited cities of the world.
I'm a little confused about the money aspect... if they want to save money, RDRAM isn't the way to go. If I were they, I'd wait for multi k7/DDR sdram, if they want to stay low-end. As for the TNT2 ultra...have fun playing quake. It's a gamer's card...I'd choose something that has better 2d or openGL-design oriented 3d. Maybe a geforce or quadro. Of course, maybe the military doesn't want to wait for Nvidia's new drivers to play quake 3... I think I might go in different directions, if I were they. Quad xeons, if I wanted pure processing power...these machines sound just a bit too much like a rich kid's game machine. Are they going to start training foot soldiers to get lots of frags in quake? Hmmm...
Ok, a couple of things: 1) People have had the ability to cheat long before the code was opened. It seems that a bunch of people just renewed their interest in cheating because they had access to the code...some coders had a field day. That's not such a bad thing. The knowledge of how to make code that cheats in quake is actually a good thing: people will see it, and people will learn how to fight it. It's an evolution. And another thing: even though people COULD cheat, a surprisingly low number fo people do. It's actually not as fun. I know...I have rcon passwords on some servers, and I can do what I want. I can kick people so I can win the map, or whatever...sometimes I do. But it just isn't as good as when I actually DO kick everyone's ass. Cheating leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Quake isn't about winning: it's about being in real competition with people who love the game as much as you do. I just don't see the cheaters being a long-term problem. When I play quake1, I'm going to be playing with people who don't cheat. 2)I think this problem is endemic AND important. Even if performance isn't critical for many applications now, it will be. Things will be 3d, and at some point, milliseconds will matter for almost every application. It's going to be very important that applications can communicate securely and quickly...clients are going to have to do as much work as possible, without creating security problems. Perhaps the situation isn't as simple as a 'lump of coal,' or a gift...perhaps this has showed the community a complex situation which was inevitable. I think that this problem is part of Open Source's growing up...if gaming will ever go OS, this problem must be solved. The community has to prove that it can own+maintain valuable software, like Quake's source code. It's going to become a situation which occurs more and more frequently...and people are going to want to know that they can open their code and have a reasonable solution to keep everything secure. This is an important evolutionary step. I think that the ID model is a great example: they release the code of their games, because others can maintain code better than they might while working on new projects. This might be a very good default model for other types of software as well...but only if the community can come up with reasonable and effective solutions. And I suggest that a big part of this will not be in the code...it will be in the way people treat it. Cheating is a kind of electronic crime...and it may come to be that it's as easy as it it to commit a crime in the real world. People are going to have to learn to act responsibly online as well. It's an important part of the growing-up process. The integration of online realities into mainstream culture will not be completely painless...there will be lawlessness, and many problems. But it will be worthwhile. We should just appreciate that we live in the wild west era of the internet...Quake is the game that lets us be Billy the Kid. It's all about being faster and better than your opponent...people will do a lot for this. Including cheat...but cheaters don't get respect. There may be some ways to cheat, almost undetectably, and have just enough of an edge to win, without having people notice. But that's a skill just like any other. I would imagine there will be some people who do that, and do it well, the real Billy the Kid's out there...it's all part of a universe that's expanding and becoming more complex. And we're just going to have to deal with it, one day, frag, and line of code at at time.
Ok, this might be a stupid question...why does the authentication program have to be closed-source? Wouldn't it be possible to keep all the code for authentication on the server side, and merely create a protocol which any client must implement? It seems to me that since we've gone open-source, any solution that's closed-source ultimately won't be feasible...we have to create code that's open source AND unhackable...perhaps it's impossible, but it's the ultimate goal. Of course, nothing can be totally unhackable... But what if an 'authentication client' was created...a client that connects and watches the logs and other players to make sure that everything tallies up as it should. It'd be separate code from the server, and could be applied when security is needed... Ultimately, however, it's up to the people who play and run servers. Server ops should watch their servers and kick+ban cheaters. And, ultimately...cheating has no point. It's not that fun to win if you do it every time. Cheating isn't a big issue if you play games with people you know and trust no to cheat. And for any kind of serious competition, people's clients can be examined...anyway, I've rambled on enough. I just hope someone will maintain the quake code and create some enhanced clients+servers that deal with this.
How do you think Linux windowmanagers will be affected by the MS breakup in the long term? If win32 api's were opened, do you think that support for some level of win32 emulation could be integrated into KDE? What would this mean for K-specific applications development?
I think there's an even bigger danger from elsewhere. Imagine how much they'll be able to figure out from your harddrives when you store what you want for breakfast, and to wear, and everything else in addition to all the media you take in. Unless the tide of commercialism changes, it isn't going to be pretty. Imagine the amount of advertising that we'll have to filter out! It's not going to be a good thing, especially if the government takes over MS and becomes the first superpower with an OS...
Wow...I think I need one of those to complement my Gibson semi-hollow and my Larrivee steel-string... But seriously, there isn't even any question of why? That's some serious uber-geekdom. We should all be proud. I am proud. I want them to make an entire nano-rock band and then have an elctron-microscope webcam set up so we can watch them play. That would be a really cool video anyway...
If it's a separate emulation processor, couldn't it be used to run code, really quickly, on any processor or processors(in the realm of total theory) run macos on a fleet of 386's? Or x86 linux on a dozen g4's? Anyway, I think it'll be equally cool and out of normal, human price ranges.
This stuff just reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. He has a real mind for currents in our culture, and I think that the world is going to be eerily close to his vision of it. Marshall McLuhan, in his book, Understanding Media, says that artists are able to see changes in media...this article, in light of Mr. Stephenson's work, proves that. I think the people who have the best idea of what is going to happen are sci-fi novelists and the geeks who pay attention to them, and keep their nose to the net, as it were.
Personally, I've been thinking about this and a few other things as well. The idea of a simple, secure, 'lite' distro is an alluring one, but as we've seen, there's no need for it to be an entire distro. What we need is for the installation options to be improved even further. One of the beauties about a linux distro is that every copy can be either a workstation or a server. What needs to happen is to continue to improve the installation programs. Linux installation programs could explain everything in a depth greater than we've seen in any previous setup util for any os, simply because of the massive amount of information available. An installation that could tailor exactly what is needed, based on computing need and experience, with a level of realtime help previously unheard of, is exactly what the os needs. With a tool like that, at the time of install, users would have a complete, powerful system, at startup. And there's no reason to have it stop there. Looking at SuSE's yast, I think we see the beginning of this process. But imagine a setup tool even more powerful and flexible, which could perform various types of automated updates, and search for information and help. It's a kind of killer meta-app, something that enables a user to take complete advantage of his system. I think the linux community has the basic elements already, and it's the only community that could provide anything like this in the near future.
OOh...hook into the campus network and be a Dreamcast lpb. I sure hope they do that...I mean, I can't compete without a huge ping advantage, and the hottest hardware around.
I agree, it is a sad thing whenever a technology dies. I think of my 386, with its 2x scsi cdrom on the soundcard, and I think of microchannel pc's...there's something beautiful about oddball computers. My first machine was a pc jr, a weird, proprietary IBM that was way different from the pc. It was a great computer in its own way...it had a wireless keyboard, and I got an optical mouse for it! And a whopping 256 k of ram. Firewire is in an unfortunate situation in the pc world, and it just can't win. It's a shame that intel now dominates the chipset market as well, because it gives them an unfair advantage, as this shows us. But firewire will become one of those strange technologies passed over by time, like the strange flying machines in William Gibson's 'The Gernsback Continuum.' It's a sad but beautiful thing, this passing on.
I agree and disagree with your sentiments. I agree that there is a lot of noise within the/. system. But I also find the comment uniquely useful when they are related to topics I'm willing to investigate. It seems to me that a lot of reader/repliers do have a fairly high level of in-depth knowledge of the issues. They are geeks of various sorts, and by definition, they are as well-trained as anyone in the topics that/. tends to report. I would not characterize/. as a protest: on the contrary, I think it's something very different: a protest is an action which usually has more symbolic meaning than actual meaning. It is usually a criticism of some negative part of the social system at large. But/. is an attempt in good faith to create, and be involved in the evolution, of a new media. It is not fundamentally a criticism, although it has the capability to criticize. I see/. as a young phenomenon which will undergo significant revision, but has a bright and positive future. I also agree with the importance of editorial responsibility: but what is important here is the relationship of the editorial structure to user comments. I think that this is the part of the medium which requires the most development. There is undoubtedly much of value within the comments: what we need is to find the most valuable information and make that the most readily available. This is difficult. But I think in ten years, most media will be two-direction communication which is very efficient in both directions. And I see/. as an important innovator, which is laying the groundwork for a radical future.
I think it's important to realize that the natures of 'truth' in these media are somewhat different. In traditional media, it's simple: one opinion is expressed, and it has some accountability to empirical fact. The opinion can be verifiably 'wrong,' and if it is, the journalism is pretty much worthless. The/. model is a bit different, however. An opinion that is 'wrong' is examined by the community. For example, there was recently a story on 'solid-state hard drives' by American Computing, I believe, which was denounced as a hoax almost immediately. Even though the reporting was suspect, the discourse was of some interest to the community. The slashdot model has a method for dealing with '80%' accuracy, which is one of the most important differences. What is happening is that the public is developing a defense system against bad reporting and bad opinion. Perhaps that 80% accuracy may sound low, but is traditional media really more than 80% 'true,' when it's obviously biased by the support of mega-corporations who manipulate the news? I would argue no. What is going on in this evolution is that we who have been forced to accept the meager helpings of truth we've had to settle with are now finding ways to defend ourselves against misinformation in the public media. This is not only a positive step; it is essential for our development as an information-dependent species.
I think that this is a compelling parallel, but it doesn't recognize an important fact: linux/open source is a fundamentally new economic/political phenomenon. It is compatible with marxist/leninist theory in some important ways, but it is also very different, and I would say, better. Russian Communism featured secret police and restricted flow of information: open source ensures against this. Linux does have a central leader, but it is also decentralized in many ways. And most importantly, access to code ensures that the actions of those who have great responsibility for code will be clear for anyone with interest to see. It also ensures that anyone can give pertinent suggestions. In short, linux has several key advantages over traditional Marxism, based around the flow of information inherent in computing technologies. If the Russian revolution had been 'open source' in some metaphorical way, we might all be reds now. Comrade.
The 2nd amendment is perhaps the MOST unclear amendment to the constitution, at this time in history. The NRA has certainly propagated a popular reinterpretation, but this is only one possible spin. A recent NPR piece claimed that far less than 10% of the population of the 18th century owned working firearms, and that militias were, even in their heyday, a small and ineffectual group of organizations. If this is true, why was the 2nd amendment adopted? If it was to combat a strong government, and to decentralize power, then we DO need ICBMs, and a lot of other things, tanks, well-organized infantry, and atomic weapons. Just guns aren't going to cut it against the Feds. If it's community or personal 'safety,' like the mainstream NRA seem to push, then its not clear that guns do help at all, from the data I've seen. The 2nd amendment, in its current reinterpretation, pretty much allows hunters to have guns, and people to carry handguns and have accidents. But what if the 2nd amendment's 'arms' is general enough to include crypto? If the point of the amendment is to provide protection against strong government, overreaching its bounds, then crypto is THE weapon. Repeat, crypto is THE weapon. Against the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. And, (not that I necessarily approve,) against the IRS. Strong encryption is the power not to pay taxes. It's the power to not to use US currency, even. And if it's that, it's the the power to end the current phase of the nation-state. Crypto makes information sovereign. That's why the US is going to fight this one to the end. Think about the importance of taxation in the American Revolution. Think about the importance of government decentralization in the Civil War. Think about what will happen if ONE bank encrypts their data, and doesn't play ball with the IRS. If all their clients know, and also don't play ball. A tea party? I don't think that the government really has any jurisdiction over the world of information. It's not a national entity. The US wants it to be. And it's understandable, since they see it as a threat to their sovereignty, which in a way it is. But other places, cough*Europe*cough are getting over the nation-state thing. There may be an American war, crypto vs. guns, information vs. the industrial revolution economic system. I hope not, because if it's fought, the US is just going to find that its attacked its future. If they win this war, they'll find that they've kept themselves in an archaic era. But of course, it still won't matter for anyone who can log on.
Neal Stephenson understands media. This is a book for a certain audience: it is an audience seeped in new forms of media, and it is, without too much powerful argument, all about the power of different media in different situations. Encryption's effects on media is an obvious theme, and his views on money as a medium are obviously crucial as well. For more on this, check out Marshall McLuhan's 'Understanding Media.' It's a brilliant book that's outdated now, but its ideas are only growing in importance. The 'digital revolution' or 'information superhighway' or whatever is going on now is basically just the fact that our culture is waking up and throwing all of their energy into media development. 'The Medium is the Message,' might or might not be a true statement, but the implicit assumptions of digital media are growing in importance geometrically. Stephenson understands this extremely well, and he has an organized worldview that will make only make more sense. If there's one criticism of the book, it has to be the scale. But the scale of the book is one of its most important aspects. This book presents a remarkably unbiased picture of the information of real life: he spends nearly equal time on Randy's pc and his cereal-eating habits. The book's scale will turn off a lot of readers, but the scale is one of the work's most fundamental aspects. Stephenson digs pretty hard into academia and college life. Is his polemic deserved? Dunno. But his worldview obviously includes the idea of the breakdown of the academic system. And I think that he makes a pretty good case, even if it's a subtext. 'In the beginning' has a lot of this too. I agree with some of his ideas, and I'm not without perspective on this, since I have a certain amount of familiarity with a few college departments. He's stuck on the idea that the educational system has to change, or so it would appear. That's fine, but I'd like to see a constructive idea as well-developed as his take on money with the Crypt. (I've only read this, and I'm halfway through Snow Crash, so if he addresses this in another work, somebody please steer me that way.) My verdict is that this book rocks: it's alive, and the issues in it are the big ones. The right ones, if you ask me. Neal knows what's up, for sure, and that's his biggest asset as a writer.
Slashdot Mirror
Do you realize the utter foolishness of your actions? Even if you succeed in putting Napster out of business, you cannot fight technologies like gnutella and .mp3. The 'best' you could hope for is to remove your music from the online explosion-to remove your 'art' from the most exciting and alive of all current media. .mp3 users are stealing money from them, when in fact very few people would ever pay for music they download as .mp3. Napster as a corporation stands to gain very little financially from .mp3. In fact, there is almost no monetary aspect of the technology: .mp3 is music for the sake of music-not a 'commodity.' .mp3. It is the least cool thing that a band could possibly do. It shows, in fact, what the real commodity is. Metallica itself is what has been commoditized-the art of your original recordings has been whittled down again and again over time, with every make-over and spin for a new record, and a new payoff. You have been banking on your image for a long time, and I'm afraid that your image is a commodity which is losing value. How much have you been paid over the years? You realize that you've had your payoff for selling out, don't you? There's no more to be ripped from the hands of 13-year-old naptser users. Are you simply bitter that those 13-year-olds would rather pay for Britney Spears and Nsync than Metallica's rehashed, commoditized material?
I also hope you realize the monetary foolishness of your actions-the recording industry acts as if
I find it surprising that Metallica, of all groups, would come forward to attack
You have taken up the fight for music as commodity, with a lame excuse about art. Anyone who mentions 'our intellectual property' betrays the fact that they have already been commoditized.
It still makes me sad, however. I find it hard to believe that you have taken the initiative to do this. Have representatives from the recording industry put you up to this, expecting your image to help their cause? It seems the most believable explanation, and I would be relieved if that were the situation...the death of a once-great rock group's image is always a sad moment for me.
Have you gotten what you expected? Did you expect accolades and rewards instead of mass public indignance? I hope that you have, so you can stop this farce, and get out of the way of progress. Can you even imagine a world where escaped the enforced mediocrity of the music industry? Napster users can, and that's why this is so sad.
A translation note: 'the root of all evil' is a much more common translation. It's in the RSV, and the KJV.
The Greek has 'panton ton kakon'(I've used roman letters, I'm afraid) which clearly means 'of all evil,' definitely not 'all kinds.' The simplest literary translation from the Greek is, 'For the love of money is the root of all evils.'
My idea is this: no common internet language. At least not one that anybody sees. Instead, machine translation into a common meta-language from which the translation program can quickly translate into any language. And good old latin as meta-language. Why? Latin has no accents or inflections. Latin is even faster/shorter than english, and by quite a large amount. But most importantly, latin contains extended information about syntax in its word endings-there's more explicit information in the language itself and less implicit, order-sensitive information. For words that don't exist in latin, we'll do what the Romans did with greek words: put the root word into roman letters and add latin endings. Hackare: to hack. icqabat: he was icqing.
I simply don't see anyone wanting to learn a new language for the net. Language is evolutionary: esperanto and other artificial language show the difficulties of artificial evolution. Why not re-invent the lingua franca, but this time in an invisible, seamless fashion?
I agree. Then we'll just let the capitalist pigs try to steal the music from us! Comrades, we will all be safe in that impenetrable vanguard of pure socialism.
My friend had his quake servers shut down. I guess that's understandable, but I still think it's lame. They have a 'no gaming' policy...luckily, it isn't enforced, and my friend has run public servers for the last several years, until he pissed someone off and they turned him in. I just worry about a time when people won't be able to play games, or do anything, and won't have any recourse, since, at my school, Columbia University, outside isp service is difficult because of the phone system. You have to pay an extra $15 a month to get an analog phone line. Anyway...having free access to the internet has been a defining experience of college...I'm sure it'll disappear with the rest of the digital frontier, and turned into a homogenized shopping mall with no sharp edges, inappropriate content, or harmful ideas. It's unfortunate though...american censorship authorities do a good job of enforcing the status quo while allowing material that is truly objectionable to be seen.
here's my quick take:
I think it's worthwhile to create a canon of sci-fi literature...I think it should be arranged in the basic setup of the origins, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne, with classics like The invisible man, the time machine, journey to the center of the earth, war of the worlds, and 20,000 leagues under the sea...the next group are pulp/50's writers...asimov's foundation series, heinlein's moon is a harsh mistress, stranger in a strange land, etc...alfred bester, invisible man, stars my destination, and his short stories...ray bradbury...and then the cyberpunk/80's writers...william gibson's neuromancer and burning chrome are both incredible...neal stephenson of course...orson scott card's ender's game...
There are many more, of course. Also, I think everyone should check out vonnegut...his short stories, welcome to the monkey house, as well as cat's cradle and slaughterhouse-5 are all incredible literary works.
....oh my gosh...this is the toughest question ever. I could suggest so many things, and sci-fi has so many connections and subtleties. Sci-fi literature has been intensely alive for the last hundred years or so, and it's only going to be more important in the future. I think that the canon will be developed at some point, when these works are recognized as the vastly important works of literature they are...the importance of their insight into our society will only be realized when people see exactly how good their insight is, and has been...the writers that we hold up as the best examples of literary science fiction have incredible readings of the future of media and its implications throughout our society...their insight has and continues to be SO valuable. Our media is slowly dealing with the questions cyberpunk posed in the early 80's...only now has a good cyberpunk movie come out, and a lot of tv and movies are based on '50's sci-fi. This stuff is great...it's intelligent literature, and it's conversant with the canon of western literature going back to the origins of greek and latin thought, while at once defining the modern novel. Sci-fi is where our culture is alive.
I'm sorry to say that the world did end for me. My computer crashed horribly, which released the safeties on the small nuclear arsenal I keep in my dorm room...the arms race between myself and a suitemate escalated, and both of us were obliterated by retaliatory fire. Our rooms are heaps of glowing ash, and we can only assume that our tragedy was repeated on a large scale with the nuclear destruction of most of the inhabited cities of the world.
I'm a little confused about the money aspect... if they want to save money, RDRAM isn't the way to go. If I were they, I'd wait for multi k7/DDR sdram, if they want to stay low-end. As for the TNT2 ultra...have fun playing quake. It's a gamer's card...I'd choose something that has better 2d or openGL-design oriented 3d. Maybe a geforce or quadro. Of course, maybe the military doesn't want to wait for Nvidia's new drivers to play quake 3... I think I might go in different directions, if I were they. Quad xeons, if I wanted pure processing power...these machines sound just a bit too much like a rich kid's game machine. Are they going to start training foot soldiers to get lots of frags in quake? Hmmm...
Ok, a couple of things:
1) People have had the ability to cheat long before the code was opened. It seems that a bunch of people just renewed their interest in cheating because they had access to the code...some coders had a field day. That's not such a bad thing. The knowledge of how to make code that cheats in quake is actually a good thing: people will see it, and people will learn how to fight it. It's an evolution. And another thing: even though people COULD cheat, a surprisingly low number fo people do. It's actually not as fun. I know...I have rcon passwords on some servers, and I can do what I want. I can kick people so I can win the map, or whatever...sometimes I do. But it just isn't as good as when I actually DO kick everyone's ass. Cheating leaves me with a bad taste in my mouth. Quake isn't about winning: it's about being in real competition with people who love the game as much as you do. I just don't see the cheaters being a long-term problem. When I play quake1, I'm going to be playing with people who don't cheat.
2)I think this problem is endemic AND important. Even if performance isn't critical for many applications now, it will be. Things will be 3d, and at some point, milliseconds will matter for almost every application. It's going to be very important that applications can communicate securely and quickly...clients are going to have to do as much work as possible, without creating security problems. Perhaps the situation isn't as simple as a 'lump of coal,' or a gift...perhaps this has showed the community a complex situation which was inevitable. I think that this problem is part of Open Source's growing up...if gaming will ever go OS, this problem must be solved. The community has to prove that it can own+maintain valuable software, like Quake's source code. It's going to become a situation which occurs more and more frequently...and people are going to want to know that they can open their code and have a reasonable solution to keep everything secure. This is an important evolutionary step. I think that the ID model is a great example: they release the code of their games, because others can maintain code better than they might while working on new projects. This might be a very good default model for other types of software as well...but only if the community can come up with reasonable and effective solutions. And I suggest that a big part of this will not be in the code...it will be in the way people treat it. Cheating is a kind of electronic crime...and it may come to be that it's as easy as it it to commit a crime in the real world. People are going to have to learn to act responsibly online as well. It's an important part of the growing-up process. The integration of online realities into mainstream culture will not be completely painless...there will be lawlessness, and many problems. But it will be worthwhile. We should just appreciate that we live in the wild west era of the internet...Quake is the game that lets us be Billy the Kid. It's all about being faster and better than your opponent...people will do a lot for this. Including cheat...but cheaters don't get respect. There may be some ways to cheat, almost undetectably, and have just enough of an edge to win, without having people notice. But that's a skill just like any other. I would imagine there will be some people who do that, and do it well, the real Billy the Kid's out there...it's all part of a universe that's expanding and becoming more complex. And we're just going to have to deal with it, one day, frag, and line of code at at time.
Ok, this might be a stupid question...why does the authentication program have to be closed-source? Wouldn't it be possible to keep all the code for authentication on the server side, and merely create a protocol which any client must implement? It seems to me that since we've gone open-source, any solution that's closed-source ultimately won't be feasible...we have to create code that's open source AND unhackable...perhaps it's impossible, but it's the ultimate goal. Of course, nothing can be totally unhackable... But what if an 'authentication client' was created...a client that connects and watches the logs and other players to make sure that everything tallies up as it should. It'd be separate code from the server, and could be applied when security is needed... Ultimately, however, it's up to the people who play and run servers. Server ops should watch their servers and kick+ban cheaters. And, ultimately...cheating has no point. It's not that fun to win if you do it every time. Cheating isn't a big issue if you play games with people you know and trust no to cheat. And for any kind of serious competition, people's clients can be examined...anyway, I've rambled on enough. I just hope someone will maintain the quake code and create some enhanced clients+servers that deal with this.
How do you think Linux windowmanagers will be affected by the MS breakup in the long term? If win32 api's were opened, do you think that support for some level of win32 emulation could be integrated into KDE? What would this mean for K-specific applications development?
I think there's an even bigger danger from elsewhere. Imagine how much they'll be able to figure out from your harddrives when you store what you want for breakfast, and to wear, and everything else in addition to all the media you take in. Unless the tide of commercialism changes, it isn't going to be pretty. Imagine the amount of advertising that we'll have to filter out! It's not going to be a good thing, especially if the government takes over MS and becomes the first superpower with an OS...
Do you see game programming/creating as an art, and do you consider yourself an artist, or a technician(or something else, of course)?
Wow...I think I need one of those to complement my Gibson semi-hollow and my Larrivee steel-string...
But seriously, there isn't even any question of why? That's some serious uber-geekdom. We should all be proud. I am proud. I want them to make an entire nano-rock band and then have an elctron-microscope webcam set up so we can watch them play.
That would be a really cool video anyway...
If it's a separate emulation processor, couldn't it be used to run code, really quickly, on any processor or processors(in the realm of total theory) run macos on a fleet of 386's? Or x86 linux on a dozen g4's?
Anyway, I think it'll be equally cool and out of normal, human price ranges.
This stuff just reminds me of Neal Stephenson's Diamond Age. He has a real mind for currents in our culture, and I think that the world is going to be eerily close to his vision of it. Marshall McLuhan, in his book, Understanding Media, says that artists are able to see changes in media...this article, in light of Mr. Stephenson's work, proves that. I think the people who have the best idea of what is going to happen are sci-fi novelists and the geeks who pay attention to them, and keep their nose to the net, as it were.
Personally, I've been thinking about this and a few other things as well. The idea of a simple, secure, 'lite' distro is an alluring one, but as we've seen, there's no need for it to be an entire distro. What we need is for the installation options to be improved even further. One of the beauties about a linux distro is that every copy can be either a workstation or a server. What needs to happen is to continue to improve the installation programs. Linux installation programs could explain everything in a depth greater than we've seen in any previous setup util for any os, simply because of the massive amount of information available. An installation that could tailor exactly what is needed, based on computing need and experience, with a level of realtime help previously unheard of, is exactly what the os needs. With a tool like that, at the time of install, users would have a complete, powerful system, at startup. And there's no reason to have it stop there. Looking at SuSE's yast, I think we see the beginning of this process. But imagine a setup tool even more powerful and flexible, which could perform various types of automated updates, and search for information and help. It's a kind of killer meta-app, something that enables a user to take complete advantage of his system. I think the linux community has the basic elements already, and it's the only community that could provide anything like this in the near future.
OOh...hook into the campus network and be a Dreamcast lpb. I sure hope they do that...I mean, I can't compete without a huge ping advantage, and the hottest hardware around.
I agree, it is a sad thing whenever a technology dies. I think of my 386, with its 2x scsi cdrom on the soundcard, and I think of microchannel pc's...there's something beautiful about oddball computers. My first machine was a pc jr, a weird, proprietary IBM that was way different from the pc. It was a great computer in its own way...it had a wireless keyboard, and I got an optical mouse for it! And a whopping 256 k of ram. Firewire is in an unfortunate situation in the pc world, and it just can't win. It's a shame that intel now dominates the chipset market as well, because it gives them an unfair advantage, as this shows us. But firewire will become one of those strange technologies passed over by time, like the strange flying machines in William Gibson's 'The Gernsback Continuum.' It's a sad but beautiful thing, this passing on.
I agree and disagree with your sentiments. I agree that there is a lot of noise within the /. system. But I also find the comment uniquely useful when they are related to topics I'm willing to investigate. It seems to me that a lot of reader/repliers do have a fairly high level of in-depth knowledge of the issues. They are geeks of various sorts, and by definition, they are as well-trained as anyone in the topics that /. tends to report. I would not characterize /. as a protest: on the contrary, I think it's something very different: a protest is an action which usually has more symbolic meaning than actual meaning. It is usually a criticism of some negative part of the social system at large. But /. is an attempt in good faith to create, and be involved in the evolution, of a new media. It is not fundamentally a criticism, although it has the capability to criticize. I see /. as a young phenomenon which will undergo significant revision, but has a bright and positive future. /. as an important innovator, which is laying the groundwork for a radical future.
I also agree with the importance of editorial responsibility: but what is important here is the relationship of the editorial structure to user comments. I think that this is the part of the medium which requires the most development. There is undoubtedly much of value within the comments: what we need is to find the most valuable information and make that the most readily available. This is difficult. But I think in ten years, most media will be two-direction communication which is very efficient in both directions. And I see
I think it's important to realize that the natures of 'truth' in these media are somewhat different. In traditional media, it's simple: one opinion is expressed, and it has some accountability to empirical fact. The opinion can be verifiably 'wrong,' and if it is, the journalism is pretty much worthless. /. model is a bit different, however. An opinion that is 'wrong' is examined by the community. For example, there was recently a story on 'solid-state hard drives' by American Computing, I believe, which was denounced as a hoax almost immediately. Even though the reporting was suspect, the discourse was of some interest to the community. The slashdot model has a method for dealing with '80%' accuracy, which is one of the most important differences.
The
What is happening is that the public is developing a defense system against bad reporting and bad opinion. Perhaps that 80% accuracy may sound low, but is traditional media really more than 80% 'true,' when it's obviously biased by the support of mega-corporations who manipulate the news? I would argue no. What is going on in this evolution is that we who have been forced to accept the meager helpings of truth we've had to settle with are now finding ways to defend ourselves against misinformation in the public media. This is not only a positive step; it is essential for our development as an information-dependent species.
I think that this is a compelling parallel, but it doesn't recognize an important fact: linux/open source is a fundamentally new economic/political phenomenon. It is compatible with marxist/leninist theory in some important ways, but it is also very different, and I would say, better. Russian Communism featured secret police and restricted flow of information: open source ensures against this. Linux does have a central leader, but it is also decentralized in many ways. And most importantly, access to code ensures that the actions of those who have great responsibility for code will be clear for anyone with interest to see. It also ensures that anyone can give pertinent suggestions. In short, linux has several key advantages over traditional Marxism, based around the flow of information inherent in computing technologies. If the Russian revolution had been 'open source' in some metaphorical way, we might all be reds now. Comrade.
-'The cold war's over, Austin!'
The 2nd amendment is perhaps the MOST unclear amendment to the constitution, at this time in history. The NRA has certainly propagated a popular reinterpretation, but this is only one possible spin.
A recent NPR piece claimed that far less than 10% of the population of the 18th century owned working firearms, and that militias were, even in their heyday, a small and ineffectual group of organizations. If this is true, why was the 2nd amendment adopted?
If it was to combat a strong government, and to decentralize power, then we DO need ICBMs, and a lot of other things, tanks, well-organized infantry, and atomic weapons. Just guns aren't going to cut it against the Feds.
If it's community or personal 'safety,' like the mainstream NRA seem to push, then its not clear that guns do help at all, from the data I've seen.
The 2nd amendment, in its current reinterpretation, pretty much allows hunters to have guns, and people to carry handguns and have accidents.
But what if the 2nd amendment's 'arms' is general enough to include crypto? If the point of the amendment is to provide protection against strong government, overreaching its bounds, then crypto is THE weapon.
Repeat, crypto is THE weapon.
Against the CIA, FBI, NSA, etc. And, (not that I necessarily approve,) against the IRS. Strong encryption is the power not to pay taxes. It's the power to not to use US currency, even. And if it's that, it's the the power to end the current phase of the nation-state. Crypto makes information sovereign. That's why the US is going to fight this one to the end. Think about the importance of taxation in the American Revolution. Think about the importance of government decentralization in the Civil War. Think about what will happen if ONE bank encrypts their data, and doesn't play ball with the IRS. If all their clients know, and also don't play ball. A tea party?
I don't think that the government really has any jurisdiction over the world of information. It's not a national entity. The US wants it to be. And it's understandable, since they see it as a threat to their sovereignty, which in a way it is. But other places, cough*Europe*cough are getting over the nation-state thing. There may be an American war, crypto vs. guns, information vs. the industrial revolution economic system. I hope not, because if it's fought, the US is just going to find that its attacked its future. If they win this war, they'll find that they've kept themselves in an archaic era. But of course, it still won't matter for anyone who can log on.
Neal Stephenson understands media. This is a book for a certain audience: it is an audience seeped in new forms of media, and it is, without too much powerful argument, all about the power of different media in different situations. Encryption's effects on media is an obvious theme, and his views on money as a medium are obviously crucial as well. For more on this, check out Marshall McLuhan's 'Understanding Media.' It's a brilliant book that's outdated now, but its ideas are only growing in importance. The 'digital revolution' or 'information superhighway' or whatever is going on now is basically just the fact that our culture is waking up and throwing all of their energy into media development. 'The Medium is the Message,' might or might not be a true statement, but the implicit assumptions of digital media are growing in importance geometrically. Stephenson understands this extremely well, and he has an organized worldview that will make only make more sense.
If there's one criticism of the book, it has to be the scale. But the scale of the book is one of its most important aspects. This book presents a remarkably unbiased picture of the information of real life: he spends nearly equal time on Randy's pc and his cereal-eating habits. The book's scale will turn off a lot of readers, but the scale is one of the work's most fundamental aspects.
Stephenson digs pretty hard into academia and college life. Is his polemic deserved? Dunno. But his worldview obviously includes the idea of the breakdown of the academic system. And I think that he makes a pretty good case, even if it's a subtext. 'In the beginning' has a lot of this too. I agree with some of his ideas, and I'm not without perspective on this, since I have a certain amount of familiarity with a few college departments. He's stuck on the idea that the educational system has to change, or so it would appear. That's fine, but I'd like to see a constructive idea as well-developed as his take on money with the Crypt. (I've only read this, and I'm halfway through Snow Crash, so if he addresses this in another work, somebody please steer me that way.)
My verdict is that this book rocks: it's alive, and the issues in it are the big ones. The right ones, if you ask me. Neal knows what's up, for sure, and that's his biggest asset as a writer.
DAMN! That is pretty evil...