I have been involved in writing *very* complex software, and I still feel that bugs can be stamped out with thought and care, no matter how complex the system is that is being worked on.
I write professional enterprise-level software (or, at least, I *hope* $500,000 software counts as "enterprise").
Admittedly, my development team is small (only three people), so a good possibility why so much of our software is bug-free could be that all three of us are intelligent and creative and work perfectly together, whereas many of the kind of "have keyboard, will travel" hired guns that come in on projects may be hit-or-miss.
Oh, I understand what you are saying, and I know that there are no "perfect world" scenarios. But at the same time I think it's time for a very fundamental paradigm shift in the way we, as programmers, *think* about software bugs. We may never be able to end all software bugs everywhere, but we should definitly not be happy about the fact that they are there.
Part of the reason why I feel this way is that I feel that programming is very similar to an art-form. It takes creativity, it takes hard work, even the words we use seem to suggest it's artistic nature ("beautiful", "elegant" code, for example). What artist do you know who is happy with allowing the public to see a shoddy piece of art? Don't be a Code-Basquait and just hack out only just what you can get away with, be a real artist and, at the very least, *strive* for perfection in your work (even if you can't *reach* it, you can *reach for* it).
Let me give you a quick example of the kind of thing I am talking about. I work at a company now that is stubborly trapped in the realm of buggy software. They may be bright people, but their work doesn't show it... But their only *real* flaw is that they can't expand thier minds enough to beleive that they don't *have* to be here. The problem is that the code has been changing over the last two years since they began working on it. It started out as a solution in one market and now has migrated into a completely different field. Of course, such a huge shift has required some pretty signifigant code changes. This code migration has not been a pretty sight... They bungle these changes not becuase there is some fundamental rule that says that code migration has to be a buggy jumbled mess, but instead because these people have been taught to *believe* that it does. They are taught by watching the trials and tribulations of the industry leaders (now might be a good time to mention we are a Microsoft partner) and assuming that if, in doing something, it seems to be "too easy" or straightforward, then something must be wrong.
No code is too complex to re-write the "right way", no matter how far along you have been doing it the "wrong way". No set of legacy data is too large that it cannot be easily, quickly and successfuly transformed to match the specs fo a new platform. No problem is too big that it cannot be solved with careful thought and intelligent choices.
If you don't want to be a code monkey for the rest of your life, don't allow yourself to be used to write poor quality code.
I know this is a great way to get flamed in the midst of a group of developers and programmers, but here goes: Why does software have to be buggy?
I have been writing software for years, and I can't understand this kind of "oh well, all software has bugs" mentality that exists in most of the places I have worked. When I write software, it *doesn't* have bugs. Sure, even a cautious design phase and well-documented specs won't help when you accidentally type "crsh++" instead of "cash++", but other than typographical errors (which can be easily found and fixed), there should be no *logical* bugs.
Personally, I begin to wonder how much of the bug issues these days are either because of sheer human laziness ("I don't need to check the limits on this array, no one will *ever* type in a 257 character string here") or because of intentionally releasing a flawed product ("Quick, slap an installer on version 0.0001733Alpha so we can sell it to Dell!"). Either way, as a programmer, I think it is a terrible thing...
If you are a programmer, and are reading this right now, take a few minutes after every block of code, go grab a cup of coffee, look out the window, read slashdot, something to take your mind off what you just wrote, and then come back to it, go through it line by line, make sure your code is doing what you think it is. Make sure there are no buffers to be overflowed and no shorts where there should be longs. Take pride in your work! Don't be a dime-paperback hack romance novelist! Be a Hemmingway, a Gibson, an Orwell, or whoever you think is a brilliant writer, be Tolkien! Give your programming work the same respect that you would reserve for those people you respect.
If programmers as a whole stopped thinking along the "bugs are inevitable" line and started taking a fresh approach, one where they think perfect, bug-free code is possible, then the software industry as a whole would become a much cleaner place.
How the hell is this supposed to stop piracy? So these bands will just play thier little tunes while the pirates are our raping and pilliaging on the high seas? How will this help? The ONLY way to stop pirates is to protect every convoy with armed naval ships!
...um, wait a second... Wha? Since when did pirates copy music anyway?
I, for one, think Gene Rodenberry was truly an amazing man. He really understood exactly why the future will and should be different from the past. Since his death, the Star Trek universe has slowly begun shifting away from his inspiring utopian dreams into a much more twisted "day-time-talk-show" inspired realm. Personally, I find the marketing driven erosion to be incredibly depressing, and haven't really felt the desire to keep watching the newer series. How do you feel about the way the franchise has been moving since his death? Do the other cast members have similar feelings, or are they divided (or perhaps, do they not even care)? And finally, do *you* watch Star Trek (the new series, I mean, not just the "uncut" versions of TNG where you get to fondle hot alien babes) in your spare time?
Many people misunderstand the saying "information wants to be free" as "information has some kind of cognative ability that wishes itself to be provided at no cost". This is completely wrong. Information wants to be free (as in speech) in the same way that lightning wants to take the quickest path to the ground, or that water wants to run down-hill. It's not just a saying, but a scientifically provable fact. It's called the second law of themodynamics.
Information, having no physical manifestation, follows essentally the same laws as entropy. It will continue to expand and find ways of copying itself until it is evenly distributed throught the world.
DRM is essentially impossible for the same reason that entropy can not be stopped. Of course, there will be limited successes, but they will be short lived. Encryption will protect a CD at least *once*. But after the key has been used to open the CD, the music is free to be copied away to less restrictive mediums. The same is true for physical attempts at protecting the data. Perhaps a very special CD can be created with a very delicate film that only can withstand being pelted by laser light a few times before it degrades, but all one has to do is copy the data on that CD away during one of those first few times and, again, it can be copied to a less restrictive medium.
There is really only one way of creating any sort of "real" DRM: legally. You would have to create laws that literally control each and every human being on the planet. You would have to create laws that ban and criminalize outright any legacy CD-burners, hard drives, floppy disks, MD's, zip disks, etc and present the market with your own special versions that fail *physically* after the third burn (And it must be a complete and total *physical* failure. The drive must be incapable of continuing. If you create drives that simply set a flag when it's time to stop buring it won't be long until someone creates a patch to unset said flag).
Unfortunatly, even going the legal route will only lead to temporary DRM. Once information is freed from it's cage, ways will be found to copy it. It may not be easy to make ne copies at first, but ways will be found.
The end result of all this, if you are trying to make good guesses about the future, is that one of these days, somone will begin to question what exactly "Digital Rights" really are. Can the "rights" to ideas really be bought and sold? Do people even *have* rights to thier own ideas? It may seem like a given, this day and age, to say that a particular artists song belongs to him (ok, technically, belongs to his master at the RIAA, but that is a whole different rant), but in the future we may not feel the same way, who knows.
Someday, we will have to, as a nation, perhaps as a would, rethink a lot of our business models we use to create our economy. Right now we are dealing with the digital realm of this battle, but it won't be too much longer before the first rudamentary "molecular copiers" will start to emerge, capabel of making nearly perfect copies of anything from Nike shoes to dollar bills. If there isn' some serious thought put into what exactly we plan to do when the revolution comes, we will be in serious trouble.
One thing it looks like many people forget about is technology's role in the new world of Predictive Intelligence, something that only exists in it's infancy now, but has vast potential for this new kind of war.
A few years ago, I was working at a dot-com on some really fascinating "intelligent" software. It would pull out abstract information from unrelated data and form n-dimensional "clouds" where related entities would become grouped toegther. It would then proceede to "find faces" in the clouds. In other words, it would try to extrapolate out new information based on what information it was given, no matter how much or how little.
It was a simply amazing tool for data analysis, for pulling out the relevant information from a sea of data, for making educated guesses that actually give you results... But like all dot-coms, we frittered our money away and now I don't know if more than three people in the world even have copies of this once multi-million dollar software.
My point is, if we as a no-nothing dot-com can come up with a really fantastic data mining/information extrapolation engine (of course, we used it solely for short-sighted evil-marketing purposes, thus our demise), then the government could certianly be able to build a system fifty times as complex, and use it for vastly more important purposes than correlating CDs with clothing purchases.
The next step for military technology isn't going to be the next biggest bomb or the pair of night-vision goggles that will let you do macramé in a cave during a new moon. Instead the next advance will be predictive and learning software that can make "good guesses" as to when and where the enemy will strike next. It will be able to profile everyone in the world based on thier credit-card purchases corelated with thier taste in web-sites, thier shoe size, and how many hours of bowling they watch a year, and be able to spot the "sleeper" terrorists with a 99.982% degree of accuracy. It will be able to analyse battlefield data and predict troop movement, ambushes, and caculate the plan of action that would lead to the biggest victory with the smallest loss of life.
Don't get me wrong, though, high-tech gadgetry will play a role in the war, of course, but to delude ourselves into thinking that all we need is Rambo and night vision will just lead us straight back into Vietnam, or if you're a Russian, Afganistan...
No, his analogy was an excellent one. Planes can be built not explode into fireballs on impact. Additives can be put into the fuel to make it put itself out. Security systems can be created to ensure that planes can simply NOT be hijacked or steered off course without authorization. Safety devices exist that can keep the passengers alive even if the plane loses power, or a wing and plummets to the ground.
These things are not done becuase of thier cost. The leaders at Boeing decided that it was worth the risk of a few lives in order to keep the planes cost-efficient...
If one is to blame anyone oteh rthan the terrorists, ANYONE can make a good analogy...
Good thing they got rid of HAL before he reached his teenage years. You think dealing with him is hard now, well you just wait and see what he's like at 15!
If you have any pictures or video taken at any time today from New York near the WTC, please give a copy to the FBI or the police. They want to see if they can match faces of those in the area with any know terrorists.
I know how we all feel about facial-matching software, but please don't let your priciples get in the way of brining the terrorists to justice. Despite your fears, the *reality* of this kind of terrorism is far worse than the *possible* loss of privacy you fear.
Wow, you are so right! I always knew it wasn't because of tens of millions of dollars a month burn rates, business plans seemingly written by optimistic monkies (and not the bright ones), IPOs lauched literally months after the initital funding rounds, with profitability not projected for a decade... No, I'm sure you are absolutly correct about it being the DoJ's fault...
Well, software innovation may be taking a hit, but don't forget, it's a small price to pay for the wonderful innovation we see in the recording industries today...:)
I like something about this post. Particularly the differences between the software world and the "artistic" one. Why aren't programmer's whining and complaining about thier copywritten works being stolen out from under them? Why aren't they complaining about thier "rights"?
Because, despite the fact that many of them are artists in every since of the word, everyone knows that programmers program for a salary.
Think for a minute how the world would be different if other types of artists worked for a salary...
Bands are poor, bands need as much money as they can get to perpetuate themselves unless they don't mind working a dayjob.
Hey, I am poor. I would love for someone to come along and pay me for my *cough* Creative Talent. But, guess what? Money is not an entitlement. You have no god-given right to profit off of your creative juices just becuase you are you. You have to earn money just like the rest of us.
Think of it this way: I am an artist, I go to work and create beautiful, elegant art all day long, and I don't get to put my name on any of it and I only get a salary for what I do. NO copyright for me! Does that sound wrong to you somehow? I'll tell you why: Becuase I say "artist" where you would say "programmer".
Just becuase your "art" is useless and mine is functional does not make us any different. The difference is that I have to go to work for hours and create art every single working day of the week. You on the other hand are only asked to create art for a few hours every so often. You have ZERO right to make money just because you think you deserve it. You have to earn it just like the rest of us.
The real problem is, organizations like the RIAA have built up the notion in your (and my, and the whole world's) head that being "creative" is some magical ability that few people possess in any quantity. Nevermind that for hundreds of thousands of years humans have been artistic just fine without the need for superstardom. Today you we taught that musicians/actors/artists/etc. are so special and rare that we must pay a hefty percentage of our GDP to thier masters simply because who knows when such talent will ever been seen on this earth again, right? Well, I'm sorry to break it to you, but we are all talented, we are all artists. We can't help it. Making money off of art is like making money of of breathing. Everybody does it, no one has some "right" because they happen to have asthma.
By trying to make a living off of music, you are simply perputrating the notion that music is something that is rare enough or difficult enough to make a living doing. You are contributing to the death of music and humanity's musical soul far more effectivly than any sort of "Open Music License", my friend.
Re:Think of the savings in $$$!
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E-Paper Moves Closer
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Nope, you won't see those (monetary, at least) savings at all. Why not? Because like all "Intellectual Property" these days, your books will be licensed, not bought. How cheap are CD's to make? How much do they cost to buy? The same will be true for books.
Nice point. Now tell me if you can see this difference: Running a "trojan" as a non-root user on a Linux machine vs. running a trojan as any user on a windows 9x machine. Which one is going to cause more damage?
Unless the Linux user has done a chmod -R 777 / recently, the windows user is going to be in serious trouble while the Linux user is fine. Why is that? Because Microsoft has some serious mental problems when it comes to security in thier non-NT environments.
A trojan is not news. Horribly gaping flaws in security models may be, but the trojan itself is one out of a hundred trillion million trojans just like it.
There, I just wrote myself a new "Linux Trojan". The thing is, a "New Trojan" is actually nothing new at all. Basically, all you need is a bit of code that seems userful to the user, a bit of code that the user never gets to see, and a user to run it. I can write a perl script that will happy crank out "New" trojans by the trillions. Disk space is the pure limit to the number of perfectly unique "Linux Trojans" I can make.
I know a lot of people will use FUD like this to point out that Linux has it's flaws too, but that is complete garbage. A trojan is not a threat to a competent user on a machine with even the barest levels of user authentication and security. It is only a threat to the naive or the foolish.
You forgot something. What happens to the famous people? Sure, Madonna could block MY ENUM account after my first few love-sick-stalker emails, but how does she expect to stop hundreds of millions of those?
"Technological and social changes may add complexity to moral issues, but what is right does not change."
I can't believe what a fool I have been! You are absolutly correct! What is "right" never changes. Well, come over here and help me gather some stones, I have to go kill the heathens. What? Do you mean that it is somehow wrong to kill those unmarried women with children or those men who say God's holy name as a curse, or those boys over there with lewd thoughts? Come on now, be consistant.
If morality never changes, then no two cultures would ever differ in thier beliefs. Is it moral to cut off the hands of a thief? It must be, since morality is a constant throught time and space. Have you ever stolen something? Or your sister, or best friend? Go ahead, cut off thier hands, society will thank you.
The point is, morality DOES change. There is no platinium-iridium moral kilogram that can be used to measure everyone's sins against. Nobody wants to believe it, but it is true.
"Be fairly easy to filter these out of the economy."
How exactly? If the copy is perfect, I mean down to the exact placement of every molecule, who has the "real" dollar? For that matter, who has the "real" Picasso? Who has the "real" Ford Taurus, the "real" can of Hormel chili, or the "real" first-edition signed copy of Spiderman? Sit and think for a minute of all the physical things in your life that have some monetary value. How many of those things would suddenly become worth purely the cost of raw materials if the "Matter Replicator" becomes a reality.
I admit that this technology is a ways off, but it is feasible. It isn't just a pipe dream for the SF writers to ponder over for the next 1,000 years, it is something that may exist in the next 100.
How will we deal with it? There will be a huge paradigm shift in the world of economics when such a device exists, and we aren't going to be prepared for it...
How far is 2-D from 3-D (or at least multiple layers of 2-D) nanostructures? And then how far from those 3-D nano-structures to 3-D human-touchable sized structures? Primitive matter replication may not be that far away folks, and if you think there are problems now with digital copy protection laws, you ain't seen nuthin yet!
Imagine the chaos to come when a dollar bill, or a stock certificate, or a strand of DNA can be copied perfectly, a molecular twin of the original...
I don't know if we are headed for utopia or armageddon, but at least it's going to be an interesting trip!:)
Bush (not my favorite president to say the least) was struggling with some legitimate moral issues regarding stem cells from aborted fetus.
I'm sure he was. In the same way that the pope must have felt about birth control pills or condoms and the witch hunters felt in the early 1400's...
One thing I'm trying to say is that, despite the definitions that you grow up believeing, "morality" is not a static force. It is mutable just like everything else. Someday we will use genetic engineering on a daily basis and not even think twice about it. It will be as moral as apple pie and baseball. In that future era we will think our current debates are silly in the same way that you and I think the debates on the morality of dancing and the reports of witchcraft are silly. By then we will be having new and intersting debates of "morality", still thinking that it is an unchanging imperative.
Half of our planet will think that using faster than light travel to seed the galaxy is a wonderful thing while the rest think that it goes against God's plan (A popular quote from that future time, "If God had meant humans to travel faster than the speed of light, he would have given us phaseo-transducers.") of humans living only on Earth.
And in some future weblog this exact same argument will be made again...:)
Pure science is the ultimate morality. Give it freedom.
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Please note, there was no mention of drinking coffee, only grabbing.
I have been involved in writing *very* complex software, and I still feel that bugs can be stamped out with thought and care, no matter how complex the system is that is being worked on.
I write professional enterprise-level software (or, at least, I *hope* $500,000 software counts as "enterprise").
Admittedly, my development team is small (only three people), so a good possibility why so much of our software is bug-free could be that all three of us are intelligent and creative and work perfectly together, whereas many of the kind of "have keyboard, will travel" hired guns that come in on projects may be hit-or-miss.
Oh, I understand what you are saying, and I know that there are no "perfect world" scenarios. But at the same time I think it's time for a very fundamental paradigm shift in the way we, as programmers, *think* about software bugs. We may never be able to end all software bugs everywhere, but we should definitly not be happy about the fact that they are there.
Part of the reason why I feel this way is that I feel that programming is very similar to an art-form. It takes creativity, it takes hard work, even the words we use seem to suggest it's artistic nature ("beautiful", "elegant" code, for example). What artist do you know who is happy with allowing the public to see a shoddy piece of art? Don't be a Code-Basquait and just hack out only just what you can get away with, be a real artist and, at the very least, *strive* for perfection in your work (even if you can't *reach* it, you can *reach for* it).
Let me give you a quick example of the kind of thing I am talking about. I work at a company now that is stubborly trapped in the realm of buggy software. They may be bright people, but their work doesn't show it... But their only *real* flaw is that they can't expand thier minds enough to beleive that they don't *have* to be here. The problem is that the code has been changing over the last two years since they began working on it. It started out as a solution in one market and now has migrated into a completely different field. Of course, such a huge shift has required some pretty signifigant code changes. This code migration has not been a pretty sight... They bungle these changes not becuase there is some fundamental rule that says that code migration has to be a buggy jumbled mess, but instead because these people have been taught to *believe* that it does. They are taught by watching the trials and tribulations of the industry leaders (now might be a good time to mention we are a Microsoft partner) and assuming that if, in doing something, it seems to be "too easy" or straightforward, then something must be wrong.
No code is too complex to re-write the "right way", no matter how far along you have been doing it the "wrong way". No set of legacy data is too large that it cannot be easily, quickly and successfuly transformed to match the specs fo a new platform. No problem is too big that it cannot be solved with careful thought and intelligent choices.
If you don't want to be a code monkey for the rest of your life, don't allow yourself to be used to write poor quality code.
I know this is a great way to get flamed in the midst of a group of developers and programmers, but here goes: Why does software have to be buggy?
I have been writing software for years, and I can't understand this kind of "oh well, all software has bugs" mentality that exists in most of the places I have worked. When I write software, it *doesn't* have bugs. Sure, even a cautious design phase and well-documented specs won't help when you accidentally type "crsh++" instead of "cash++", but other than typographical errors (which can be easily found and fixed), there should be no *logical* bugs.
Personally, I begin to wonder how much of the bug issues these days are either because of sheer human laziness ("I don't need to check the limits on this array, no one will *ever* type in a 257 character string here") or because of intentionally releasing a flawed product ("Quick, slap an installer on version 0.0001733Alpha so we can sell it to Dell!"). Either way, as a programmer, I think it is a terrible thing...
If you are a programmer, and are reading this right now, take a few minutes after every block of code, go grab a cup of coffee, look out the window, read slashdot, something to take your mind off what you just wrote, and then come back to it, go through it line by line, make sure your code is doing what you think it is. Make sure there are no buffers to be overflowed and no shorts where there should be longs. Take pride in your work! Don't be a dime-paperback hack romance novelist! Be a Hemmingway, a Gibson, an Orwell, or whoever you think is a brilliant writer, be Tolkien! Give your programming work the same respect that you would reserve for those people you respect.
If programmers as a whole stopped thinking along the "bugs are inevitable" line and started taking a fresh approach, one where they think perfect, bug-free code is possible, then the software industry as a whole would become a much cleaner place.
No More Code Monkies!
How the hell is this supposed to stop piracy? So these bands will just play thier little tunes while the pirates are our raping and pilliaging on the high seas? How will this help? The ONLY way to stop pirates is to protect every convoy with armed naval ships!
...um, wait a second... Wha? Since when did pirates copy music anyway?
:)
I, for one, think Gene Rodenberry was truly an amazing man. He really understood exactly why the future will and should be different from the past. Since his death, the Star Trek universe has slowly begun shifting away from his inspiring utopian dreams into a much more twisted "day-time-talk-show" inspired realm. Personally, I find the marketing driven erosion to be incredibly depressing, and haven't really felt the desire to keep watching the newer series. How do you feel about the way the franchise has been moving since his death? Do the other cast members have similar feelings, or are they divided (or perhaps, do they not even care)? And finally, do *you* watch Star Trek (the new series, I mean, not just the "uncut" versions of TNG where you get to fondle hot alien babes) in your spare time?
Many people misunderstand the saying "information wants to be free" as "information has some kind of cognative ability that wishes itself to be provided at no cost". This is completely wrong. Information wants to be free (as in speech) in the same way that lightning wants to take the quickest path to the ground, or that water wants to run down-hill. It's not just a saying, but a scientifically provable fact. It's called the second law of themodynamics.
Information, having no physical manifestation, follows essentally the same laws as entropy. It will continue to expand and find ways of copying itself until it is evenly distributed throught the world.
DRM is essentially impossible for the same reason that entropy can not be stopped. Of course, there will be limited successes, but they will be short lived. Encryption will protect a CD at least *once*. But after the key has been used to open the CD, the music is free to be copied away to less restrictive mediums. The same is true for physical attempts at protecting the data. Perhaps a very special CD can be created with a very delicate film that only can withstand being pelted by laser light a few times before it degrades, but all one has to do is copy the data on that CD away during one of those first few times and, again, it can be copied to a less restrictive medium.
There is really only one way of creating any sort of "real" DRM: legally. You would have to create laws that literally control each and every human being on the planet. You would have to create laws that ban and criminalize outright any legacy CD-burners, hard drives, floppy disks, MD's, zip disks, etc and present the market with your own special versions that fail *physically* after the third burn (And it must be a complete and total *physical* failure. The drive must be incapable of continuing. If you create drives that simply set a flag when it's time to stop buring it won't be long until someone creates a patch to unset said flag).
Unfortunatly, even going the legal route will only lead to temporary DRM. Once information is freed from it's cage, ways will be found to copy it. It may not be easy to make ne copies at first, but ways will be found.
The end result of all this, if you are trying to make good guesses about the future, is that one of these days, somone will begin to question what exactly "Digital Rights" really are. Can the "rights" to ideas really be bought and sold? Do people even *have* rights to thier own ideas? It may seem like a given, this day and age, to say that a particular artists song belongs to him (ok, technically, belongs to his master at the RIAA, but that is a whole different rant), but in the future we may not feel the same way, who knows.
Someday, we will have to, as a nation, perhaps as a would, rethink a lot of our business models we use to create our economy. Right now we are dealing with the digital realm of this battle, but it won't be too much longer before the first rudamentary "molecular copiers" will start to emerge, capabel of making nearly perfect copies of anything from Nike shoes to dollar bills. If there isn' some serious thought put into what exactly we plan to do when the revolution comes, we will be in serious trouble.
One thing it looks like many people forget about is technology's role in the new world of Predictive Intelligence, something that only exists in it's infancy now, but has vast potential for this new kind of war.
A few years ago, I was working at a dot-com on some really fascinating "intelligent" software. It would pull out abstract information from unrelated data and form n-dimensional "clouds" where related entities would become grouped toegther. It would then proceede to "find faces" in the clouds. In other words, it would try to extrapolate out new information based on what information it was given, no matter how much or how little.
It was a simply amazing tool for data analysis, for pulling out the relevant information from a sea of data, for making educated guesses that actually give you results... But like all dot-coms, we frittered our money away and now I don't know if more than three people in the world even have copies of this once multi-million dollar software.
My point is, if we as a no-nothing dot-com can come up with a really fantastic data mining/information extrapolation engine (of course, we used it solely for short-sighted evil-marketing purposes, thus our demise), then the government could certianly be able to build a system fifty times as complex, and use it for vastly more important purposes than correlating CDs with clothing purchases.
The next step for military technology isn't going to be the next biggest bomb or the pair of night-vision goggles that will let you do macramé in a cave during a new moon. Instead the next advance will be predictive and learning software that can make "good guesses" as to when and where the enemy will strike next. It will be able to profile everyone in the world based on thier credit-card purchases corelated with thier taste in web-sites, thier shoe size, and how many hours of bowling they watch a year, and be able to spot the "sleeper" terrorists with a 99.982% degree of accuracy. It will be able to analyse battlefield data and predict troop movement, ambushes, and caculate the plan of action that would lead to the biggest victory with the smallest loss of life.
Don't get me wrong, though, high-tech gadgetry will play a role in the war, of course, but to delude ourselves into thinking that all we need is Rambo and night vision will just lead us straight back into Vietnam, or if you're a Russian, Afganistan...
No, his analogy was an excellent one. Planes can be built not explode into fireballs on impact. Additives can be put into the fuel to make it put itself out. Security systems can be created to ensure that planes can simply NOT be hijacked or steered off course without authorization. Safety devices exist that can keep the passengers alive even if the plane loses power, or a wing and plummets to the ground.
These things are not done becuase of thier cost. The leaders at Boeing decided that it was worth the risk of a few lives in order to keep the planes cost-efficient...
If one is to blame anyone oteh rthan the terrorists, ANYONE can make a good analogy...
Good thing they got rid of HAL before he reached his teenage years. You think dealing with him is hard now, well you just wait and see what he's like at 15!
Perhaps they want to see if there are any gloating faces in the crowd. It may amount to nothing, but maybe they will find something, you never know.
If you have any pictures or video taken at any time today from New York near the WTC, please give a copy to the FBI or the police. They want to see if they can match faces of those in the area with any know terrorists.
I know how we all feel about facial-matching software, but please don't let your priciples get in the way of brining the terrorists to justice. Despite your fears, the *reality* of this kind of terrorism is far worse than the *possible* loss of privacy you fear.
PLEASE turn a copy in to the FBI or Police!
Wow, you are so right! I always knew it wasn't because of tens of millions of dollars a month burn rates, business plans seemingly written by optimistic monkies (and not the bright ones), IPOs lauched literally months after the initital funding rounds, with profitability not projected for a decade... No, I'm sure you are absolutly correct about it being the DoJ's fault...
:)
Well, software innovation may be taking a hit, but don't forget, it's a small price to pay for the wonderful innovation we see in the recording industries today... :)
...Oh wait a second...
I like something about this post. Particularly the differences between the software world and the "artistic" one. Why aren't programmer's whining and complaining about thier copywritten works being stolen out from under them? Why aren't they complaining about thier "rights"?
Because, despite the fact that many of them are artists in every since of the word, everyone knows that programmers program for a salary.
Think for a minute how the world would be different if other types of artists worked for a salary...
Bands are poor, bands need as much money as they can get to perpetuate themselves unless they don't mind working a dayjob.
Hey, I am poor. I would love for someone to come along and pay me for my *cough* Creative Talent. But, guess what? Money is not an entitlement. You have no god-given right to profit off of your creative juices just becuase you are you. You have to earn money just like the rest of us.
Think of it this way: I am an artist, I go to work and create beautiful, elegant art all day long, and I don't get to put my name on any of it and I only get a salary for what I do. NO copyright for me! Does that sound wrong to you somehow? I'll tell you why: Becuase I say "artist" where you would say "programmer".
Just becuase your "art" is useless and mine is functional does not make us any different. The difference is that I have to go to work for hours and create art every single working day of the week. You on the other hand are only asked to create art for a few hours every so often. You have ZERO right to make money just because you think you deserve it. You have to earn it just like the rest of us.
The real problem is, organizations like the RIAA have built up the notion in your (and my, and the whole world's) head that being "creative" is some magical ability that few people possess in any quantity. Nevermind that for hundreds of thousands of years humans have been artistic just fine without the need for superstardom. Today you we taught that musicians/actors/artists/etc. are so special and rare that we must pay a hefty percentage of our GDP to thier masters simply because who knows when such talent will ever been seen on this earth again, right? Well, I'm sorry to break it to you, but we are all talented, we are all artists. We can't help it. Making money off of art is like making money of of breathing. Everybody does it, no one has some "right" because they happen to have asthma.
By trying to make a living off of music, you are simply perputrating the notion that music is something that is rare enough or difficult enough to make a living doing. You are contributing to the death of music and humanity's musical soul far more effectivly than any sort of "Open Music License", my friend.
Nope, you won't see those (monetary, at least) savings at all. Why not? Because like all "Intellectual Property" these days, your books will be licensed, not bought. How cheap are CD's to make? How much do they cost to buy? The same will be true for books.
Nice point. Now tell me if you can see this difference: Running a "trojan" as a non-root user on a Linux machine vs. running a trojan as any user on a windows 9x machine. Which one is going to cause more damage?
Unless the Linux user has done a chmod -R 777 / recently, the windows user is going to be in serious trouble while the Linux user is fine. Why is that? Because Microsoft has some serious mental problems when it comes to security in thier non-NT environments.
A trojan is not news. Horribly gaping flaws in security models may be, but the trojan itself is one out of a hundred trillion million trojans just like it.
void main() {
doTrojan();
doMainApp();
}
There, I just wrote myself a new "Linux Trojan". The thing is, a "New Trojan" is actually nothing new at all. Basically, all you need is a bit of code that seems userful to the user, a bit of code that the user never gets to see, and a user to run it. I can write a perl script that will happy crank out "New" trojans by the trillions. Disk space is the pure limit to the number of perfectly unique "Linux Trojans" I can make.
I know a lot of people will use FUD like this to point out that Linux has it's flaws too, but that is complete garbage. A trojan is not a threat to a competent user on a machine with even the barest levels of user authentication and security. It is only a threat to the naive or the foolish.
You forgot something. What happens to the famous people? Sure, Madonna could block MY ENUM account after my first few love-sick-stalker emails, but how does she expect to stop hundreds of millions of those?
"Technological and social changes may add complexity to moral issues, but what is right does not change."
I can't believe what a fool I have been! You are absolutly correct! What is "right" never changes. Well, come over here and help me gather some stones, I have to go kill the heathens. What? Do you mean that it is somehow wrong to kill those unmarried women with children or those men who say God's holy name as a curse, or those boys over there with lewd thoughts? Come on now, be consistant.
If morality never changes, then no two cultures would ever differ in thier beliefs. Is it moral to cut off the hands of a thief? It must be, since morality is a constant throught time and space. Have you ever stolen something? Or your sister, or best friend? Go ahead, cut off thier hands, society will thank you.
The point is, morality DOES change. There is no platinium-iridium moral kilogram that can be used to measure everyone's sins against. Nobody wants to believe it, but it is true.
"Be fairly easy to filter these out of the economy."
How exactly? If the copy is perfect, I mean down to the exact placement of every molecule, who has the "real" dollar? For that matter, who has the "real" Picasso? Who has the "real" Ford Taurus, the "real" can of Hormel chili, or the "real" first-edition signed copy of Spiderman? Sit and think for a minute of all the physical things in your life that have some monetary value. How many of those things would suddenly become worth purely the cost of raw materials if the "Matter Replicator" becomes a reality.
I admit that this technology is a ways off, but it is feasible. It isn't just a pipe dream for the SF writers to ponder over for the next 1,000 years, it is something that may exist in the next 100.
How will we deal with it? There will be a huge paradigm shift in the world of economics when such a device exists, and we aren't going to be prepared for it...
How far is 2-D from 3-D (or at least multiple layers of 2-D) nanostructures? And then how far from those 3-D nano-structures to 3-D human-touchable sized structures? Primitive matter replication may not be that far away folks, and if you think there are problems now with digital copy protection laws, you ain't seen nuthin yet!
:)
Imagine the chaos to come when a dollar bill, or a stock certificate, or a strand of DNA can be copied perfectly, a molecular twin of the original...
I don't know if we are headed for utopia or armageddon, but at least it's going to be an interesting trip!
Bush (not my favorite president to say the least) was struggling with some legitimate moral issues regarding stem cells from aborted fetus.
:)
I'm sure he was. In the same way that the pope must have felt about birth control pills or condoms and the witch hunters felt in the early 1400's...
One thing I'm trying to say is that, despite the definitions that you grow up believeing, "morality" is not a static force. It is mutable just like everything else. Someday we will use genetic engineering on a daily basis and not even think twice about it. It will be as moral as apple pie and baseball. In that future era we will think our current debates are silly in the same way that you and I think the debates on the morality of dancing and the reports of witchcraft are silly. By then we will be having new and intersting debates of "morality", still thinking that it is an unchanging imperative.
Half of our planet will think that using faster than light travel to seed the galaxy is a wonderful thing while the rest think that it goes against God's plan (A popular quote from that future time, "If God had meant humans to travel faster than the speed of light, he would have given us phaseo-transducers.") of humans living only on Earth.
And in some future weblog this exact same argument will be made again...
Pure science is the ultimate morality. Give it freedom.