I think greed is more like compulsive gambling. A desire that goes on, without end.
Yes, it is. People have the strange idea that rich people (not wealthy people, that's a different story) are happier. They're not, basically.
It is possible that greed is a major motivator for many people, especially in terms of allocating resources (which is what economics is). But just because you have more, it doesn't necessarily follow that you'll be any happier than you are now.
Nowadays, a lot of millionaires feel dissatisfied, as they know there are all those billionaires and centimillionaires who have more than they do. In earlier times, they would be happier, because they would think they were on top of it all.
All in all, the society presented seems, as author contends, very dull.
Well, of course. They're in a recession/depression, burned out on change, and most people are much poorer than they were for many years. Think back to other periods in a long recession in this country, that were preceded by long periods of prosperity, and you'd be pretty battered down as well.
Oh ya, agreed, but I was commenting on BS's original predication that space would turn out to be not commercially viable.
Actually, he predicted that colonizing Mars was not commercially viable, not that there was no space travel for mining purposes. Especially by robotic factory plants.
A subtle difference, but in his descriptions of using the research to colonize Terran deserts, that would be for people.
That jaded, po-mo chatter is sooo yesterday. In two years this article will look as dated as a 1-gig Athlon.
Yeah. Human societies seem to go from a cynical phase, especially at ends of centuries, to a bright and bubbly exuberance. And it's about bleedin' time!
they used Linux for their vending robots. Coke used Win2K-R2D2, which while portable and scalable, still had enough bugs in the code that the bottles blew up inside the vending robots before they could be launched.
In the words of the Great Robot Philosopher: Pop, Pop! Fizz, Fizz! Oh, What a Relief It Is!
Human nature is just that way, when something goes wrong we want the ability to blame someone, anyone, other then ourselves and the legal system with the lawyers allows that to happen.
But, you're looking at this from the perspective of Fin 20th Century America, where we have 70 lawyers more per capita than any other nation. This is just a fad. Conflict resolution and economic agreements can become computerized, possibly with Legal AIs or some other solution. Why have one lawyer handle four contracts, when you can have one lawyer handle four thousand contracts, for example?
Deserts - actually, this is kind of predicatable, and we've been predicting it for almost a hundred years now. And that applies to Antartica and other deserts as well.
Space - but why do people have to do ore mining from asteroids? It's cheaper to use self-repairing robot factories to do this, which mine the asteroids in place, package it up, pop an engine on (using H20 asteroids for fuel), and put it back into earth orbit, where the space elevator can bring it to the surface.
And reading his writing is a much richer multi-media experience if you've heard him giving readings enough to know his voice, with that California valley accent, so out of place in Texas, fondling every word like stream water rolling over pebbles. Oooooh...
I prefer Bill Gibson's myself. Although Stan (of Mars fame) has a pretty cool reading voice, based on my memories of him at Boreal 87.
Optimist that I am, I find it incredibly naive to believe we'll have workable full-scale nanotech by 2035. Not because we can't do it. But because we won't.
Basically, it's economics. As Bruce's story depicts, in his future they don't go to Mars because it's a bad investment. Which it is, on anything other than a very very long term timeframe. The same goes for nanotech - if people don't care enough to invest in it, it just won't happen. If basic science finds it more rewarding to work on something else, nanotech probably won't occur in anything other than some very basic forms.
Van Gough's Sunflowers looks very beautiful but it sucks as a User Interface.
How do you know? Perhaps, for those of us oriented more towards art, one might be able to craft a better GUI from that. Using the Brushstroke motif and a Palette. Maybe we should use Sunflowers as the next GNOME overlay...
I'm not sure which of the trade rags I got this out of, maybe even one of the Windows-centric PC ones, but you can opt out of Double-click tracking you by going to this page at Doubleclick.
Excuse me? Why not crash it into Europa? Cataclysmic events have been responsible for most evolutionary jumps on Earth - why not give Europa a chance to develop life more progressed than simple lifeforms, so that at least one body in this solar system develops an intelligence that can become star-faring?
After all, with the NASA budget shrinking every year, this rock will die when the moon crashes into the surface anyway.
Kleupfel was one of the defendants in the SJG suit. SAIC is a privately held defense contractor. SAIC is also heavily involved in a lot of content protection technology, snooping technology, etc. SAIC has a very carefully groomed public image, and they might not care to take the heat for employing someone involved in a civil rights violation.
But, as I'm sure they'd tell you, they're not employing him, he's a consultant.
Either way, he's making bucks off his escapades against Those Nasty Hackers TM.
Maybe we should take a leaf from the page of the NRA and form the National Hackers Association (NHA) or even the National Security testers Association (NSA)?
They'll pry my debugger out of my cold dead boxen!
The right to arm bears with L0Pht is indivisible from our other rights - they can take our boxen, they can crack our codes, but they will never take our freedom!
Actually, this was extremely bad for SJG. It crippled his production, he lost a lot of his critical data and customer info, and took away his focus (Steve's) and the momentum that he had. If you could have seen him at the WorldCon in New Orleans, where he saved the day by loaning us two of his (at the time) souped-up PCs so I could recode the dBase programs for Guest Registration and Events (basically, the panel lists for the Authors and suchlike).
Seriously, Steve was a gaming friend of mine back in the days - I even had him as Gaming Guest of Honor for Westercon in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
It was a real shame, because of all of us SMOGs, he had the heaviest investment in tech - and they took his computers and literally broke them in pieces, returning the broken chips and motherboards in plastic bags (at least, that's what he told me).
Yes, they can do that. And they still can. Those laws haven't changed, and aren't likely too in the near future, except to get more drastic as we change our Nation's Enemy List from drug kingpins to hackers and crackers.
In honor of Steve, I ask that everyone go out and have some sushi for lunch today (his favorite).
Out here in Seattle, AT&T@Home offers four static IP through it's cable modem. But the upload speeds are limited to 128MB and bandwidth hogs are terminated (the contract specifies no servers).
As a shareholder in AOL, I'd tend to agree with the corporate analysis (did I really say that?) that opening the pipelines to non-AOL will still result in AOL gaining market share.
The fact is, most consumers are: A. lazy B. confused by all this computer stuff C. lazy D. don't like techy things E. lazy
Additionally, opening the pipelines reduces legal costs for the FEC and SEC oversights of the merger, which is probably more of a big deal in terms of expense and effort. AOL wants to keep its dominant market share, and as MSFT reminds us, being distracted by fighting with the government makes for bad business and reduces the profit stream.
Plus, it's cool to be Open Source or Open Pipeline, anyway. You get to hang out with the Linux geeks and maybe get some of those IPO shares along the way...
Much as I like Bill's work (hey, it was my idea to have him as GoH for Westercon, after all), I thought this was too juvenile. I much preferred the 10th Kingdom first episode - episodes like this one were why I only sporadically watch the X-Files.
And, yes, I thought Scully said it best (and wore it best)...
Just because we don't burn people at the stake after torturing them, it doesn't mean that he wouldn't be found guilty of hacking and locked up for 20 years in a federal penitentiary. Or, even worse, executed for some crime he didn't commit in Texas.
If they get it working by year end, it will be a new GUI/OS shell for the next century. It's still the 20th Century, after all, no matter that we had a minor technical glitch a year early.
And, to be frank, my Mom could use this. She's so non-techno, and she's not alone.
Do they have the apps/games I want? Do the apps work? Are there enough cool things that I can go to a party and not get dissed for using this OS?
Shallow? Nope, it's just perspective.
Killer apps? Yes. I know all the gcc gurus are totally worked up over Corel/Borland/Inprise doing a Borland C++ Builder: Why do you need an IDE? Why do you need to make apps with a GUI when you can hand-code the C++ yourself?
But: that's where the bucks and the apps are.
So stop flaming people who point out the obvious - figure those are weak spots and rebuild them. We have the technology, we can make it better.
And, no I don't contrib code for Linux - I'm way too busy doing database stuff and making apps. I don't complain about what you do. If I do contrib, it will be docs, which are a sore spot for me.
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I think greed is more like compulsive gambling. A desire that goes on, without end.
Yes, it is. People have the strange idea that rich people (not wealthy people, that's a different story) are happier. They're not, basically.
It is possible that greed is a major motivator for many people, especially in terms of allocating resources (which is what economics is). But just because you have more, it doesn't necessarily follow that you'll be any happier than you are now.
Nowadays, a lot of millionaires feel dissatisfied, as they know there are all those billionaires and centimillionaires who have more than they do. In earlier times, they would be happier, because they would think they were on top of it all.
All in all, the society presented seems, as author contends, very dull.
Well, of course. They're in a recession/depression, burned out on change, and most people are much poorer than they were for many years. Think back to other periods in a long recession in this country, that were preceded by long periods of prosperity, and you'd be pretty battered down as well.
Oh ya, agreed, but I was commenting on BS's original predication that space would turn out to be not commercially viable.
Actually, he predicted that colonizing Mars was not commercially viable, not that there was no space travel for mining purposes. Especially by robotic factory plants.
A subtle difference, but in his descriptions of using the research to colonize Terran deserts, that would be for people.
That jaded, po-mo chatter is sooo yesterday. In two years this article will look as dated as a 1-gig Athlon.
Yeah. Human societies seem to go from a cynical phase, especially at ends of centuries, to a bright and bubbly exuberance. And it's about bleedin' time!
I think you mean the Patent Wars, or the War to End All Intellectual Domain Disputes.
That was the one where they tried Emperor Bill Gates for crimes against technology.
they used Linux for their vending robots. Coke used Win2K-R2D2, which while portable and scalable, still had enough bugs in the code that the bottles blew up inside the vending robots before they could be launched.
In the words of the Great Robot Philosopher:
Pop, Pop!
Fizz, Fizz!
Oh, What a Relief It Is!
Human nature is just that way, when something goes wrong we want the ability to blame someone, anyone, other then ourselves and the legal system with the lawyers allows that to happen.
But, you're looking at this from the perspective of Fin 20th Century America, where we have 70 lawyers more per capita than any other nation. This is just a fad. Conflict resolution and economic agreements can become computerized, possibly with Legal AIs or some other solution. Why have one lawyer handle four contracts, when you can have one lawyer handle four thousand contracts, for example?
Deserts - actually, this is kind of predicatable, and we've been predicting it for almost a hundred years now. And that applies to Antartica and other deserts as well.
Space - but why do people have to do ore mining from asteroids? It's cheaper to use self-repairing robot factories to do this, which mine the asteroids in place, package it up, pop an engine on (using H20 asteroids for fuel), and put it back into earth orbit, where the space elevator can bring it to the surface.
And reading his writing is a much richer multi-media experience if you've heard him giving readings enough to know his voice, with that California valley accent, so out of place in Texas, fondling every word like stream water rolling over pebbles. Oooooh...
I prefer Bill Gibson's myself. Although Stan (of Mars fame) has a pretty cool reading voice, based on my memories of him at Boreal 87.
Optimist that I am, I find it incredibly naive to believe we'll have workable full-scale nanotech by 2035. Not because we can't do it. But because we won't.
Basically, it's economics. As Bruce's story depicts, in his future they don't go to Mars because it's a bad investment. Which it is, on anything other than a very very long term timeframe. The same goes for nanotech - if people don't care enough to invest in it, it just won't happen. If basic science finds it more rewarding to work on something else, nanotech probably won't occur in anything other than some very basic forms.
It just costs way too much.
Van Gough's Sunflowers looks very beautiful but it sucks as a User Interface.
...
How do you know? Perhaps, for those of us oriented more towards art, one might be able to craft a better GUI from that. Using the Brushstroke motif and a Palette. Maybe we should use Sunflowers as the next GNOME overlay
I'm not sure which of the trade rags I got this out of, maybe even one of the Windows-centric PC ones, but you can opt out of Double-click tracking you by going to this page at Doubleclick.
...
Assuming they actually do what they say
Excuse me? Why not crash it into Europa? Cataclysmic events have been responsible for most evolutionary jumps on Earth - why not give Europa a chance to develop life more progressed than simple lifeforms, so that at least one body in this solar system develops an intelligence that can become star-faring?
After all, with the NASA budget shrinking every year, this rock will die when the moon crashes into the surface anyway.
Kleupfel was one of the defendants in the SJG suit. SAIC is a privately held defense contractor. SAIC is also heavily involved in a lot of content protection technology, snooping technology, etc. SAIC has a very carefully groomed public image, and they might not care to take the heat for employing someone involved in a civil rights violation.
But, as I'm sure they'd tell you, they're not employing him, he's a consultant.
Either way, he's making bucks off his escapades against Those Nasty Hackers TM.
Maybe we should take a leaf from the page of the NRA and form the National Hackers Association (NHA) or even the National Security testers Association (NSA)?
They'll pry my debugger out of my cold dead boxen!
The right to arm bears with L0Pht is indivisible from our other rights - they can take our boxen, they can crack our codes, but they will never take our freedom!
Where are the Secret Service agents, the prosecutors in the case, and the Bell South people who sicced the Secret Service on SJG?
They're probably anti-hacker experts now, pulling down more than $150K. Probably promoted to the upper echelons of the SS, too.
Actually, this was extremely bad for SJG. It crippled his production, he lost a lot of his critical data and customer info, and took away his focus (Steve's) and the momentum that he had. If you could have seen him at the WorldCon in New Orleans, where he saved the day by loaning us two of his (at the time) souped-up PCs so I could recode the dBase programs for Guest Registration and Events (basically, the panel lists for the Authors and suchlike).
Man, what a shame!
Seriously, Steve was a gaming friend of mine back in the days - I even had him as Gaming Guest of Honor for Westercon in Vancouver, BC, Canada.
It was a real shame, because of all of us SMOGs, he had the heaviest investment in tech - and they took his computers and literally broke them in pieces, returning the broken chips and motherboards in plastic bags (at least, that's what he told me).
Yes, they can do that. And they still can. Those laws haven't changed, and aren't likely too in the near future, except to get more drastic as we change our Nation's Enemy List from drug kingpins to hackers and crackers.
In honor of Steve, I ask that everyone go out and have some sushi for lunch today (his favorite).
Out here in Seattle, AT&T@Home offers four static IP through it's cable modem. But the upload speeds are limited to 128MB and bandwidth hogs are terminated (the contract specifies no servers).
Yeah, methinks everyone's preoccupied or something. I'd like to believe they're writing code, but it's more likely to be related to someone going IPO.
As a shareholder in AOL, I'd tend to agree with the corporate analysis (did I really say that?) that opening the pipelines to non-AOL will still result in AOL gaining market share.
...
The fact is, most consumers are:
A. lazy
B. confused by all this computer stuff
C. lazy
D. don't like techy things
E. lazy
Additionally, opening the pipelines reduces legal costs for the FEC and SEC oversights of the merger, which is probably more of a big deal in terms of expense and effort. AOL wants to keep its dominant market share, and as MSFT reminds us, being distracted by fighting with the government makes for bad business and reduces the profit stream.
Plus, it's cool to be Open Source or Open Pipeline, anyway. You get to hang out with the Linux geeks and maybe get some of those IPO shares along the way
Much as I like Bill's work (hey, it was my idea to have him as GoH for Westercon, after all), I thought this was too juvenile. I much preferred the 10th Kingdom first episode - episodes like this one were why I only sporadically watch the X-Files.
...
And, yes, I thought Scully said it best (and wore it best)
Just because we don't burn people at the stake after torturing them, it doesn't mean that he wouldn't be found guilty of hacking and locked up for 20 years in a federal penitentiary. Or, even worse, executed for some crime he didn't commit in Texas.
If they get it working by year end, it will be a new GUI/OS shell for the next century. It's still the 20th Century, after all, no matter that we had a minor technical glitch a year early.
And, to be frank, my Mom could use this. She's so non-techno, and she's not alone.
Bang on. For most people it's:
Do they have the apps/games I want?
Do the apps work?
Are there enough cool things that I can go to a party and not get dissed for using this OS?
Shallow? Nope, it's just perspective.
Killer apps? Yes. I know all the gcc gurus are totally worked up over Corel/Borland/Inprise doing a Borland C++ Builder: Why do you need an IDE? Why do you need to make apps with a GUI when you can hand-code the C++ yourself?
But: that's where the bucks and the apps are.
So stop flaming people who point out the obvious - figure those are weak spots and rebuild them. We have the technology, we can make it better.
And, no I don't contrib code for Linux - I'm way too busy doing database stuff and making apps. I don't complain about what you do. If I do contrib, it will be docs, which are a sore spot for me.
Yes, a very good post from which to discuss things.
.com realm or one of the others?
But why nine? And wherein should we place Salon.com, for example? Should it be in the