I thought the article in Wired was very clear, and however depressing for spec writers, the harnessing of insider consensus makes a lot of sense....
It is a lot like wagering on political outcomes http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/ except here you have the added value of having a select group of insiders help you predict.
Sure it can be gamed, but probably not consistently...
Bottom line... if your job and career was on the line and a huge investment in a film was at issue, you'd play it cautious too.
Fascinating inside look.
PR focussed on real problem from MS perspective
on
Palladium Changes Name
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
"Notice the PR diversionary tactic: it's being criticized because it does what they claim, not because it doesn't.:)"
It is being criticized by people who care about freedom... but the people who pose a more serious barrier are European and other governments.
The PR is focussed at the SERIOUS objections... not what you or I might find uncomfortable or politically objectionable.
Putting some representation of your whole life online,or just storing it electronically, seems like a cool idea to me, if it gives meaning to your life. That's the critical issue: Does having your old credit card transactions, emails, love letters and photos give you a life enhancing perspective on your self or your life? I think it could.
Privacy is greatly over-rated as a virtue. It is, really, a very olde fashioned sort of notion.
In my experience, people value privacy because they feel threatened... by the government, by individuals. But why treat the threats as immutable, and conform our attitudes toward information to THEM? Why not reverse that, and address the existing dangers to the individual that occur when we have less privacy, as we inevitably will.
The era in which privacy was possible is over. We need to focus on reducing the harms that come from living in a world in which information about everyone is freely available. Denying oneself information about one's own past (or denying that information to others) is still ultimately about impoverishing the information stock and knowledge of the world. Information destruction can't be a good thing.
We should be working to enhance the available information about everything and everyone. This is a path to greater social justice, to the advancement of scientific knowledge, and so on.
As you can see, I live what I speak: http://www.documentedlife.com
1) I haven't yet understood how you can transmit a signal faster than light without transmitting information faster than light... That apparently is the claim of the scientists. Others have made this claim too, earlier this year, and I didn't understand it then either. Somehow you can measure the emerging wavefront but not the information it contains, before the electron actually "gets there".... Fascinating if possible, but why that wavefront (or whatever it is that travels faster than light in a vaccuum) doesn't contain information is something I'd like to understand.
2) There is a claim that electrons (in a non-vacuum) can be pushed closer to the speed of light (in a vacuum). Well maybe they can, and then, of course they would contain information, and could in theory be used for computing. That seems within the range of possibility.
But the first claim still makes not sense to this nonphysicist. I hope someone can explain.
Of course if you were Peru (can a person be a state?), and you wanted to get a big donation of MS software, the first thing you would want to do is to take seriously non-MS software and make noises about open source.....
I doubt the Peruvian legislator who wrote the original memo was being THAT clever, but who can say?
365 and one quarter days is the key to time, and why "metric time" will not fly....
I presume that the compass is divided into 360 units because it aproximates the 365.25 days of the year...
And of course the base 12-ness of the clock must ultimately be related to the almost base 12 ness of the year too...
The most basic unit of time really is the year, and why should we prefer a system based on the arbitrary biological fact of having 10 digits, over the arbitrary cosmological fact that the periodicity of the earth's rotation about the sun most closely points to a base 12 system?
Ten really can be understand as a reflection of "the world in the image of man" (creature with 10 digits).
12 really can be understood as a reflection of the "natural" frequency of the universe as first experienced by human beings.... 360 days (plus 5.25 that they didn't quite know what to do with... so they threw a midwinter party.)
I say let's add two digits and move the whole planetary culture to base 12... its more ecological, more logical, and less anthropocentric.
Perhaps it is the only hope for human survival.
Peace.
Re:not protectable if available to ear and eye
on
Coursey on Palladium
·
· Score: 1
....(to continue previous)
is not protectable if it is available to the ear and the eye.
This much is nonsense: "So I won't be able to play MP3s on my PC any more?
With existing MP3s, you may be all right for some time. But in future, TCPA / Palladium will make it easier to sell music, movies, books and other content packaged so that people can play them on their PCs but not copy them. You might be allowed to lend your copy of some digital music to a friend, but then your own backup copy won't be playable until your friend gives you the main copy back. Quite possibly you will not be able to lend music at all. (It looks likely that the music publisher will be able to make the rules - and to change them at will by remote control.) "
Digital rights management can NEVER work for products that are experienced by analog human beings because ultimately the must emerge in analog form... as images and soundwaves, and once they do that, they can be copied, redigitized, and the DRM scheme is defeated.... sure the people who copy will require some new equipment and new approaches but simple linear content... music and movies.... is
Assuming one is doing this to create a silent PC you could spend hours to run water safely through your PC, or
...you could just move it out of the room or into a big closet... all you need is a long keyboard/mouse/etc. cord and a long video cord.
...you could throw the whole thing in a silencer box.
Now, true that makes media access a little more difficult, and is far too simple to be technologically interesting.... but surely figuring out a long (5 meteres? 10?) video out solution is inherently simpler.
And while we're on the subject of absurdly simple approaches to cooling, for 300 bucks you could also buy a room air conditioner and pipe cold air directly into a case and have just the most simple of heatsink fan setups.... a good window unit is a lot quieter than a fully blown overclocked case... Anyone ever tried that?
...and what great principle are you upholding by not registering? You can sign up annonymously... you get high value content in exchange for nothing more than giving them annonymous information about reading patterns...
What does your purity get you anyway?
Re:science.slashdot.org
on
Wolframania
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Yes, that's just it. I've read here and there in ANKOS and its absolutely fascinating, but is it science, or mathematics?
If we define science in terms of observation and experiment, leading to theory, and then back to observation, does the "behavior" of a machine deserve to be included?
If the book were titled "A new kind of mathematics (with scientific implications)" perhaps that would be more accurate?
Where exactly is the science in ANKOS?
Of course if it is really a NEW kind of science, perhaps we don't need observation of "real world" phenomena. But I'm troubled by that meaning of science.
The Nader letter is refreshing... but it ain't gonna happen here. Germany and European governments are far more likely to adopt a Linux standard: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_2 023000/2023127.stm
What we are more likely to see is that MS will remain firmly ensconced in the US, while French and German governments move toward an antiMS and antiUS position by buying Linux and supporting it.
MS employs a lot of people, MS gives away a lot of money... the US government will buy its products...they are entrenched.... they are big business... they are the reason the Bush administration exists, and the Bushies know which side their bread is buttered on.
Just to clarify, I'm not advocating stealing people's content, stuff they support their famillies by making.
I'm commenting on the inherently analog nature of content delivery to the human eye and human ear, particularly if we are talking about linear media, ie. music recordings and videos.... continuous streams of analog data. This analog reality means that to "sell" is more or less indistinguishable from "to reveal".... and once you have revealed... of course you can't prevent copying, no matter how many laws you put in place, unless you are willing to go with a truly draconian IP regime.
Granted, with software or DVDs with branch points there are other issues.
If all of the digital content maniac corporations get EVERYTHING they want, and can extract a price for each "read" of each digit in their digital content, will the world really be so much worse off?
Fact is that the digital content is only valuable when it becomes an analog signal, and a damn high quality analog signal at that. Since THAT output is always available for being redigitized (they can't outlaw digital recording, we presume!) the worst case scenario for media content is that stuff isn't available at the same high quality level once you rip it... but it can be available by definition at the highest quality level that you are able to experience it with your ears and eyes....
So the point is.... well you see the point? No matter what they do, you just need one person to pay the digital fee, and then you've got an almost as good digital copy for the world... since "good" is ultimately an analog/experiential construct.... that can be recorded, digitized and transferred for additinal experiencing by the world.
I hate to say that about your months labor, and I'm probably not typical of anyone, but when I work I want to read my information.
I'm just responding to this as a consumer, and that site is all flash and no information, which is exactly the opposite of what I'm looking for if I'm considering a product or service.
I ignore sites written in flash and ones that play music at me, almost as a matter of principle, if possible. Of course how many people have "principles"? So your labor is probably not in vain.
So why not establish interface parameters group?
on
BeOS For Linux
·
· Score: 1
This could be an entirely voluntary "standard" that the group worked on and published for all to see.
Compliance would be completely voluntary, but developers would then have a target to aim for if that sort of thing matters to them... as it should.
Creates real inequity. Poor priced out of rushhour
on
Every Road a Toll Road
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
This seems at first to be a great idea, and the Guardian newspaper totally misses the point when it says that petrol taxes do the same thing.
"The CFIT report argues for congestion to be the measure for charging, not miles or time travelled or city limits. Prices would be based on historical traffic patterns, regularly updated, and aimed at smoothing out notorious bottlenecks, rush-hour gridlock, school-run snarl-ups and motorway tailbacks. "
The GPS system enables location and time to be priced in addition to miles travelled. That is fair... but..but..but it also creates inequities.
Basically it means that the poor are less able than the rich to be in some locations at some times. Roads currently are a democratic system of equal suffering. The limosine is stuck in traffic with the Escort during rush hour.
Is it a better world if the limosine can travel fast because the Escorts can't afford to be in that part of town at that time of day?
The inefficiency of petrol based taxes, or our inability to price time and location of travel, creates a more equal distribution of suffering.
Does the reduction in suffering from traffic jams for the well to do represent such a public good that we can ignore the fact that the poor can no longer afford to commute to jobs at certain hours and days?
Slashdot Mirror
I thought the article in Wired was very clear, and however depressing for spec writers, the harnessing of insider consensus makes a lot of sense....
It is a lot like wagering on political outcomes http://www.biz.uiowa.edu/iem/ except here you have the added value of having a select group of insiders help you predict.
Sure it can be gamed, but probably not consistently...
Bottom line... if your job and career was on the line and a huge investment in a film was at issue, you'd play it cautious too.
Fascinating inside look.
"Notice the PR diversionary tactic: it's being criticized because it does what they claim, not because it doesn't. :)"
It is being criticized by people who care about freedom... but the people who pose a more serious barrier are European and other governments.
The PR is focussed at the SERIOUS objections... not what you or I might find uncomfortable or politically objectionable.
Putting some representation of your whole life online,or just storing it electronically, seems like a cool idea to me, if it gives meaning to your life. That's the critical issue: Does having your old credit card transactions, emails, love letters and photos give you a life enhancing perspective on your self or your life? I think it could.
Privacy is greatly over-rated as a virtue. It is, really, a very olde fashioned sort of notion.
In my experience, people value privacy because they feel threatened... by the government, by individuals. But why treat the threats as immutable, and conform our attitudes toward information to THEM? Why not reverse that, and address the existing dangers to the individual that occur when we have less privacy, as we inevitably will.
The era in which privacy was possible is over. We need to focus on reducing the harms that come from living in a world in which information about everyone is freely available. Denying oneself information about one's own past (or denying that information to others) is still ultimately about impoverishing the information stock and knowledge of the world. Information destruction can't be a good thing.
We should be working to enhance the available information about everything and everyone. This is a path to greater social justice, to the advancement of scientific knowledge, and so on.
As you can see, I live what I speak: http://www.documentedlife.com
...apparently I missed most of the above discussion where multiple people try to explain... never mind.
There are two different issues here.
1) I haven't yet understood how you can transmit a signal faster than light without transmitting information faster than light... That apparently is the claim of the scientists. Others have made this claim too, earlier this year, and I didn't understand it then either. Somehow you can measure the emerging wavefront but not the information it contains, before the electron actually "gets there".... Fascinating if possible, but why that wavefront (or whatever it is that travels faster than light in a vaccuum) doesn't contain information is something I'd like to understand.
2) There is a claim that electrons (in a non-vacuum) can be pushed closer to the speed of light (in a vacuum). Well maybe they can, and then, of course they would contain information, and could in theory be used for computing. That seems within the range of possibility.
But the first claim still makes not sense to this nonphysicist. I hope someone can explain.
oh... I don't own a cell phone, but I'm planning to get one. :)
The corelation is valid, but the direction of causality is backwards.... cell phone uses doesn't cause stupidity... stupidity causes cell phone use!
This is much more plausible, although I'm open to the possibility that cell phone use by the stupid, leads to deeper levels of stupdity over time...
...why?
I'm genuinely curious why you need to be hidden.
I hope nobody finds out about me.
www.documentedlife.com
Of course if you were Peru (can a person be a state?), and you wanted to get a big donation of MS software, the first thing you would want to do is to take seriously non-MS software and make noises about open source.....
I doubt the Peruvian legislator who wrote the original memo was being THAT clever, but who can say?
365 and one quarter days is the key to time, and why "metric time" will not fly....
I presume that the compass is divided into 360 units because it aproximates the 365.25 days of the year...
And of course the base 12-ness of the clock must ultimately be related to the almost base 12 ness of the year too...
The most basic unit of time really is the year, and why should we prefer a system based on the arbitrary biological fact of having 10 digits, over the arbitrary cosmological fact that the periodicity of the earth's rotation about the sun most closely points to a base 12 system?
Ten really can be understand as a reflection of "the world in the image of man" (creature with 10 digits).
12 really can be understood as a reflection of the "natural" frequency of the universe as first experienced by human beings.... 360 days (plus 5.25 that they didn't quite know what to do with... so they threw a midwinter party.)
I say let's add two digits and move the whole planetary culture to base 12... its more ecological, more logical, and less anthropocentric.
Perhaps it is the only hope for human survival.
Peace.
....(to continue previous)
is not protectable if it is available to the ear and the eye.
This much is nonsense:
"So I won't be able to play MP3s on my PC any more?
With existing MP3s, you may be all right for some time. But in future, TCPA / Palladium will make it easier to sell music, movies, books and other content packaged so that people can play them on their PCs but not copy them. You might be allowed to lend your copy of some digital music to a friend, but then your own backup copy won't be playable until your friend gives you the main copy back. Quite possibly you will not be able to lend music at all. (It looks likely that the music publisher will be able to make the rules - and to change them at will by remote control.) "
Digital rights management can NEVER work for products that are experienced by analog human beings because ultimately the must emerge in analog form... as images and soundwaves, and once they do that, they can be copied, redigitized, and the DRM scheme is defeated.... sure the people who copy will require some new equipment and new approaches but simple linear content... music and movies.... is
Assuming one is doing this to create a silent PC you could spend hours to run water safely through your PC, or
... all you need is a long keyboard/mouse/etc. cord and a long video cord.
...you could just move it out of the room or into a big closet
...you could throw the whole thing in a silencer box.
Now, true that makes media access a little more difficult, and is far too simple to be technologically interesting.... but surely figuring out a long (5 meteres? 10?) video out solution is inherently simpler.
And while we're on the subject of absurdly simple approaches to cooling, for 300 bucks you could also buy a room air conditioner and pipe cold air directly into a case and have just the most simple of heatsink fan setups.... a good window unit is a lot quieter than a fully blown overclocked case... Anyone ever tried that?
Condensation?
...and what great principle are you upholding by not registering? You can sign up annonymously... you get high value content in exchange for nothing more than giving them annonymous information about reading patterns...
What does your purity get you anyway?
Yes, that's just it. I've read here and there in ANKOS and its absolutely fascinating, but is it science, or mathematics?
If we define science in terms of observation and experiment, leading to theory, and then back to observation, does the "behavior" of a machine deserve to be included?
If the book were titled "A new kind of mathematics (with scientific implications)" perhaps that would be more accurate?
Where exactly is the science in ANKOS?
Of course if it is really a NEW kind of science, perhaps we don't need observation of "real world" phenomena. But I'm troubled by that meaning of science.
The Nader letter is refreshing... but it ain't gonna happen here. Germany and European governments are far more likely to adopt a Linux standard: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_2 023000/2023127.stm
What we are more likely to see is that MS will remain firmly ensconced in the US, while French and German governments move toward an antiMS and antiUS position by buying Linux and supporting it.
MS employs a lot of people, MS gives away a lot of money... the US government will buy its products...they are entrenched.... they are big business... they are the reason the Bush administration exists, and the Bushies know which side their bread is buttered on.
Europe is probably the only hope for sanity.
The letter asks for an evaluation of this claim... since you believe its true, you should have no objections.
Would it be so hard to develop a competing system for page ranking based on number/relevance of links and a few other characteristics?
Are Google patents so broad that only they can have a decent search engine?
As for the DMCA... the idea that URL listings should be legally prohibitted is just obscene....
Just to clarify, I'm not advocating stealing people's content, stuff they support their famillies by making.
I'm commenting on the inherently analog nature of content delivery to the human eye and human ear, particularly if we are talking about linear media, ie. music recordings and videos.... continuous streams of analog data. This analog reality means that to "sell" is more or less indistinguishable from "to reveal".... and once you have revealed... of course you can't prevent copying, no matter how many laws you put in place, unless you are willing to go with a truly draconian IP regime.
Granted, with software or DVDs with branch points there are other issues.
If all of the digital content maniac corporations get EVERYTHING they want, and can extract a price for each "read" of each digit in their digital content, will the world really be so much worse off?
Fact is that the digital content is only valuable when it becomes an analog signal, and a damn high quality analog signal at that. Since THAT output is always available for being redigitized (they can't outlaw digital recording, we presume!) the worst case scenario for media content is that stuff isn't available at the same high quality level once you rip it... but it can be available by definition at the highest quality level that you are able to experience it with your ears and eyes....
So the point is.... well you see the point? No matter what they do, you just need one person to pay the digital fee, and then you've got an almost as good digital copy for the world... since "good" is ultimately an analog/experiential construct.... that can be recorded, digitized and transferred for additinal experiencing by the world.
Wow is that an annoying site!
I hate to say that about your months labor, and I'm probably not typical of anyone, but when I work I want to read my information.
I'm just responding to this as a consumer, and that site is all flash and no information, which is exactly the opposite of what I'm looking for if I'm considering a product or service.
I ignore sites written in flash and ones that play music at me, almost as a matter of principle, if possible. Of course how many people have "principles"? So your labor is probably not in vain.
This could be an entirely voluntary "standard" that the group worked on and published for all to see.
Compliance would be completely voluntary, but developers would then have a target to aim for if that sort of thing matters to them... as it should.
This seems at first to be a great idea, and the Guardian newspaper totally misses the point when it says that petrol taxes do the same thing.
"The CFIT report argues for congestion to be the measure for charging, not miles or time travelled or city limits. Prices would be based on historical traffic patterns, regularly updated, and aimed at smoothing out notorious bottlenecks, rush-hour gridlock, school-run snarl-ups and motorway tailbacks. "
The GPS system enables location and time to be priced in addition to miles travelled. That is fair... but..but..but it also creates inequities.
Basically it means that the poor are less able than the rich to be in some locations at some times. Roads currently are a democratic system of equal suffering. The limosine is stuck in traffic with the Escort during rush hour.
Is it a better world if the limosine can travel fast because the Escorts can't afford to be in that part of town at that time of day?
The inefficiency of petrol based taxes, or our inability to price time and location of travel, creates a more equal distribution of suffering.
Does the reduction in suffering from traffic jams for the well to do represent such a public good that we can ignore the fact that the poor can no longer afford to commute to jobs at certain hours and days?
The more I think about it the less I like it.
"WHO" doesn't have facial hair... not "that". :)