I care. Pro sports invokes a number of base emotions, and hence its popularity.
Sports ~= wargames for the sheeple.
Since we're too 'civilized' these days for gladiators in a coliseum, we settle for steroids-pumped 'role models' in stadiums. "Hey, concession guy, how much for some bread at this cirus?! $8.00?!... Okay."
When the pernicious broadcast flag becomes endemic, people are once again going to look for older tech to overcome it.
Subsisting on old open tech won't be enough to remain free.
If the fascist "Trusted Computing" plan actually becomes reality, then there'll no doubt emerge the demand for large black market for non-DRM'd (or "untrusted" in newspeak) hardware. I, for one, would asume the risk of a "drug dealer" in importing it (from freer countries) and selling it.
...Jack Welch -- (former) CEO of GE which owns a large part of MSNBC -- has reportedly stormed into Microsoft building #17, where NewsBot is being developed, and decreed that, "MSNBC must win! Declare MSNBC the winner - or else!":)
I firmly believe we'll end up with computer-controlled ground cars in the not too distant future, but it won't be a cakewalk.
Nope, it won't be a cakewalk, but robotics is improving at a quickening pace. Got the new DARPA challenge in a few months... I and I expect one of the teams to at least cross the finish line this time.:)
No, I haven't seen Gigli- I just used it as an extreme crap-xample.
And I don't bother watching movies with very low scores either, but I prefer to use rottentomatoes over imdb as the ratings meter; more accurate in my experience. Anything less than 50% gets ignored.
I have a handy URL search too. I just type "rot moviename" to search rottentomatoes...
There's some bits I WOULD have bought if I HADN'T been able to download a 'preview' first - where being a cheapass usually wasn't the main reason, but the low quality was. ("objective" 3rd party reviews aren't everything).
New questionaire:
What didn't you BUY because you downloaded it first? __________________________
Reason? (*) It sucked. (I *was* planning on buying the Gigli DVD! Honest!) ( ) I'm a rich, cheap-ass freeloader. ( ) I'm a poor, cheap-ass freeloader. ( ) I'm a Freedom Fighter for the Sensible Copyright Revolution! ( ) other: __________________ ( ) All of the above.
The main reasons why the flying car was a bad prediction:
Costs too much in comparison to a car that moves in 2-dimensions (in terms of $ and energy).
Not as safe - there STILL isn't enough AI computing power to control the traffic and fly the masses safely through the 3D "skyways". Maybe the idiots in the 50s really did think that anyone who could drive could surely be a pilot too?
Noise.
Parking space.
(Why move your body physically, when in many cases it's more efficient to do it virtually?)
What gets me mad, though, is how people like to trot this wheres-my-flying-car(!) example out every time they're waxing pessimistic about present day futurism.
I guess I might as well give up on that Moon vacation. Not going to happen in my lifetime at this rate.:(
Cheer up. As long as you've got at least another decade of life left in you, you'll make it to the crossover point where it can be extended indefinitely, because the rate of technological progress is actually exponential.
If you fail to see the point of orbital flight and beyond in the long term, then feel free to mine your back yard for every element needed to support your lifestyle.
Since you mentioned it, pretty soon it'll be quite easy to live self-sufficiently off your own property (if you've bought the additional mineral rights below it) given the molecular nanotech necessary to recycle everything (using FREE solar energy) on the molecular level. There's very little need for an influx of 'space resources' that aren't scarce & useful to begin with (excepting helium, helium3, and a few others). It's not like everyone on Earth is going to be self-assembling a skyscraper-castle on their property made out of solid gold that they leeched from the ocean.
So... there's better arguments for being pro-offplanet than some old-tech need to stripmine the solar system for elements we don't need. #1 being getting some of our eggs out of the cradle so we survive as a species, and #2 being able absorb a much larger slice of the solar energy pie so we can do more, faster.
An all-in-one Nintendo cabinet sounds great. The only thing missing is support for a few other classic consoles and a cheap and legal subscription to a server containing every game ROM ever made for those platforms (couple gig). Do that and then you've got yourself something!
Too bad it'll never happen, so the technically 'illegal' abandon-ware ROMS will have to do (but it's actual work collecting them).
I read the/. headline and immediately thought to myself, "I'm going to be the first to post a funny conspiracy theory about Microsoft punishing Slate for not towing the corporate line when they published that Pro-FireFox article a little while back." Then I read the/. summary blurb and see that the conspiracy theory's already there!:-)
Because a free market means I'm free to form price-fixing cartels, you insensitive clod. And it means I'm free to lobby a fascist government for business-model protection. duh.
No amount of law making saved the canal boats from the invention of the automobile.
And the advent of the computer & internet didn't exactly help the library system either. As the digital divide slowly closes, libraries will become little more than free (as in speech and beer) cybercafes, and museums for deadtree books and other old media.
Thanks to its incredibly generous benefactors - the Wong Dynasty - Mars University owns the largest collection of literature in the universe. The collection is kept at the Wong library on two discs: Fiction and Non-Fiction.
Green "Cradle to Cradle" manufacturing will only really become viable with the kind of molecular manufacturing methods that mimick nature's bottom-up life-cycle. Once an object is no longer useful (and nobody wants to reuse it) we can spend some stored solar energy to disassemble it (if not exothermic) on a molecular scale for 100% recyclability (since atoms don't get "used up").
Despite all the eco-crying, we'll be stuck with nasty top-down bulk-tech for a couple more years simply because it's cheaper for corps to externalize the environmental costs (esp. in 3rd world countries). With molecular nanotech, it's cheaper to be clean.
Why is it people put personal data in obvious places, and then get mad when someone shows how easy it is to discover that data.
"Like, we're dumb Mac users. Like, hello? Computers are totally for art and stuff and not for hacking my private info off the intarweb! like OMG!" --ellen feiss
At a certain point, we'll probably just exist, generation after generation, certainly genetically modified, but probably not beyond what makes us human. Smarter, prettier, more athletic, but still human.
Wow - you actually assume that humans will NEVER EVER improve upon their own evolved design? That we'll NEVER unlock the mystery of the brain and TRANSCEND to better post-human forms?
That's a mighty big assumption on your part; our exponential technological progress is plenty justification that we'll get there sooner rather than later.
So why are you such the bio-chauvinist? Religious reasons? Or are you just not psychologically willing to accept the possibility of something other than the age-old bio-human life?
What happens when we take over this galaxy? Will we let all that energy go flying out into space? How long before we start encasing stars in solar panels?
You might be interested to read about the Matrioshka Brain idea, which is a variation of the Dyson Shell in that the shell itself is the new thinking and living substrate ("matrix") for a post-biological civilization.
Maybe the SETI people should start looking for the disappearance of stars and/or galaxies.
Matrioshka Brains would be dark, and amazingly efficient (emitting some infrared), so the best way to detect them would be to observe that the rotational rate of a galaxy doesn't match the observed solar mass... hey... wait... that's supposed to be exotic Dark Matter, not hidden stars!:-)
Slashdot Mirror
And within 10 years, robotic driving systems will be even cheaper than human truckers. Nothing any union of striking teamsters can do about that either.
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Sports ~= wargames for the sheeple.
Since we're too 'civilized' these days for gladiators in a coliseum, we settle for steroids-pumped 'role models' in stadiums. "Hey, concession guy, how much for some bread at this cirus?! $8.00?! ... Okay."
Not interested.
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Subsisting on old open tech won't be enough to remain free.
If the fascist "Trusted Computing" plan actually becomes reality, then there'll no doubt emerge the demand for large black market for non-DRM'd (or "untrusted" in newspeak) hardware. I, for one, would asume the risk of a "drug dealer" in importing it (from freer countries) and selling it.
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Nope, it won't be a cakewalk, but robotics is improving at a quickening pace. Got the new DARPA challenge in a few months... I and I expect one of the teams to at least cross the finish line this time. :)
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And I don't bother watching movies with very low scores either, but I prefer to use rottentomatoes over imdb as the ratings meter; more accurate in my experience. Anything less than 50% gets ignored.
I have a handy URL search too. I just type "rot moviename" to search rottentomatoes...
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New questionaire:
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What gets me mad, though, is how people like to trot this wheres-my-flying-car(!) example out every time they're waxing pessimistic about present day futurism.
Cheer up. As long as you've got at least another decade of life left in you, you'll make it to the crossover point where it can be extended indefinitely, because the rate of technological progress is actually exponential.
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"We oughta pass a law against that! Just think of all the tax revenue we're missing out on because of those anti-consumerist thieves!"
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Since you mentioned it, pretty soon it'll be quite easy to live self-sufficiently off your own property (if you've bought the additional mineral rights below it) given the molecular nanotech necessary to recycle everything (using FREE solar energy) on the molecular level. There's very little need for an influx of 'space resources' that aren't scarce & useful to begin with (excepting helium, helium3, and a few others). It's not like everyone on Earth is going to be self-assembling a skyscraper-castle on their property made out of solid gold that they leeched from the ocean.
So... there's better arguments for being pro-offplanet than some old-tech need to stripmine the solar system for elements we don't need. #1 being getting some of our eggs out of the cradle so we survive as a species, and #2 being able absorb a much larger slice of the solar energy pie so we can do more, faster.
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Too bad it'll never happen, so the technically 'illegal' abandon-ware ROMS will have to do (but it's actual work collecting them).
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There was some good 'anti-corporate' writing on slate, though. Like this piece from last week: Wal-Mart vs. Neiman Marcus - In the war between the "Two Americas," the rich folks are winning
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And the advent of the computer & internet didn't exactly help the library system either. As the digital divide slowly closes, libraries will become little more than free (as in speech and beer) cybercafes, and museums for deadtree books and other old media.
Ahh... I can't resist a Futurama reference :)
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Despite all the eco-crying, we'll be stuck with nasty top-down bulk-tech for a couple more years simply because it's cheaper for corps to externalize the environmental costs (esp. in 3rd world countries). With molecular nanotech, it's cheaper to be clean.
--
"Like, we're dumb Mac users. Like, hello? Computers are totally for art and stuff and not for hacking my private info off the intarweb! like OMG!" --ellen feiss
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Wow - you actually assume that humans will NEVER EVER improve upon their own evolved design? That we'll NEVER unlock the mystery of the brain and TRANSCEND to better post-human forms?
That's a mighty big assumption on your part; our exponential technological progress is plenty justification that we'll get there sooner rather than later.
So why are you such the bio-chauvinist? Religious reasons? Or are you just not psychologically willing to accept the possibility of something other than the age-old bio-human life?
Biology is not destiny.
--
You might be interested to read about the Matrioshka Brain idea, which is a variation of the Dyson Shell in that the shell itself is the new thinking and living substrate ("matrix") for a post-biological civilization.
Matrioshka Brains would be dark, and amazingly efficient (emitting some infrared), so the best way to detect them would be to observe that the rotational rate of a galaxy doesn't match the observed solar mass... hey... wait... that's supposed to be exotic Dark Matter, not hidden stars! :-)
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