I was glancing down your list of features until I hit this one:
* Best of class sound quality
...and instantly my BullShit Detector went off because of the overused "best of breed/class" marketing phrase. The rest of your list is mostly on the human-voice cluetrain though.:)
I've had the uncomfortable experence of someone trying to convert me to their religion.
No reason for that to be uncomfortable.
I just explain that the only aspect of religion I need is the Golden Rule which is at the core of just about every religion on Earth; that I have no want or need for all the other specific dogma and "social-club-benefits" that comes with their religious package.
The best way to increase the value of the over-priced IT worker is to put some salt on him... because he's done.
Outsourcing + productivity gains going to the top + increasing robotics/AI means we're only seeing the leading edge of the unemployment to come (and not just in IT_.
1) Dean Kamen's the Segway guy; not Ray Kurzweil. Kurzweil's more known for bringing speech recognition to the market.
2) Kurzweil isn't alone in predicting the nearness of Singularity. Vernor Vinge, Hans Moravec, Marvin Minksy, Michio Kaku, Yudkowsky, and a host of other "credible" thinkers all see the same exponential acceleration, and put the Singularity anywhere between NOW() and ~2080 at the far end.
3) I'm sorry you had to read that "POS" article. I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance you must be going through... (I joke).
It's time to update your overly conservative view of the future... (if you can bear to throw out your but-wheres-my-flying-car-cynicism).
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true nanotech == molecular manufacturing
on
Nanotech or Nano-Not?
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Indeed.
It's gotten so bad that true nanotech had to rename itself "molecular manufacturing" in order to avoid confusion with the nifty materials science stuff.
As progress has produced increased control of the structure of matter at the nanometer scale, scientists working in these areas, wanting their work to appear "sexy," labeled any technology involving devices less than 100 nm in size as "nanotechnology." Some of this work was relevant to Drexler's original goal; some was not, prompting Drexler to rename the original goal "molecular manufacturing". -
Foresight Update 52 Page 4
I agree that a short attention span isn't necessarily a bad thing... as long as you can focus your attention in your area of specialization. If you can't even focus on riding bikes (professionally) for than 10mins at a time then you're screwed.
We're experiencing exponentially accelerating change and it only makes sense that the people who haven't tuned out (older farts) will be task switching far more often in an attempt to keep up. Brevity is a sign of the times. Gimme my sound-bites. Is this post too long? Yeah. Skip it. More valuable info out there.
Just like you can't sell the idea that it's OK to be bald, or to eat less & excercize more, or that it's a good idea to have some germs around to build up your immune system...
I said it was a smart swarm, though.:) The mesh-networked colony of little buggers on my pinky's fingernail should know enough not eat the whole thing when I told it to leave a 0.25mm overhang.
And I think I'll stick with the El Cheapo double- and triple-blades until a decade or so when I can just turn the facial hair gene off and/or direct my little swarm of smart nanobots to eat the unwanted keratin 24/7.
I thought it was hilarious when Gillette (I think it was them) came out with some gimicky QUAD-blade razor just a little while ago, and they had to get people to stop laughing by having a commercial that went something like "yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking: 'Four blades? Come on!' But trust me... it's GREAT. No, really! Stop laughing"
Probably bogus patents up the wazoo on that too.
(Patents aren't going to mean much anyway once anyone can do desktop manufacturing for next to nothing.)
No derivative works allowed, eh? Why'd you bother with such a lame restriction on only three words? Even requiring attribution is lame, seeing as that tiny phrase was almost certaintly uttered many times before you.
Yeah, but only because hot asian women are physically scarce, and would rather be doing something else.:)
If you want it for freeFreeFREE then I'm afraid you'll have to wait a few years for a real-world nano-assembled sexbot copy with bimbo-brain_v1.0, or a simulated "Matrix chick".
Only the first assemblers developed will be expensive. Subsequent assemblers can be assembled by other assemblers, in a bootstrap process, such that a "3D Printer" would be as cheap to manufacture as a potato.
Not to mention how one affords the collection of molecules used in creating that food.
Food is mostly composed of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen which is naturally abundant. (Also, atoms don't wear out, so this isn't a 'consumable')
I'm just not as convinced -- as a practical, job-finding matter
Oh, I guess I should have been more clear: It's my opinion that the vast majority of the population will be unemployed in the not too distant future as technology makes their brains & labor increasingly useless when compared to more productive technology. Unemployment doesn't have to be a bad thing - but we'll have to wait for an economy of abundance before that will change.
So what exactly does one retrain in? Let's look at the options:
Choose Option #2 - Nanotech. The faster we get there the less we'll have to suffer in the meantime.
In all seriousness, if I was to go back to college again, I would not waste my money or time learning any field other than nanotech or cognitive science.
Why? Simple: When nanotech matures, it means that "Putting FOOD On The Table(TM)" is no longer an issue because we'll finally have the god-like power to cheaply and easily reconfigure the molecules in a pound of random garbage into anything else we need or want (composed of the same component molecules as said garbage).
Nanotech's about the only thing on the horizon that has the chance to reverse the obscene concentration of wealth we're seeing today.
You want a copy of the body? Fine. Do you want a perfect scan (with scars and everything), or do you want some DNA so you can grow her in simulation to any age you want then instantiate IRL? Same price for both: $0. It's only a body.
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Re:$33 cd? It is going to decrease profit
on
RIAA's Nasty Easter Egg
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· Score: 4, Insightful
If I were a professional musician, and my alleged "fans" would only pay fifty cents for their favourite track, I would pack up and quit because it would be so insulting.
Good riddance. And you wouldn't be called a "professional musician" in that case, you'd be called a "recording artist" who depends on artificial-scarcity enforcement to make money as your first priority.
A real musician would be playing for the love of it and building human relationships with actual fans who would have no problem paying for fresh and scarce concerts, scarce physical merchandise, and CDs-as-a-patronage-thankyou.
You can't even buy a soda pop from a vending machine for that little anymore.
And if you could make an exact molecular copy of a can of Coke for next to nothing (and you soon will), would you feel bad that CocaCola (and WalMart, and the rest) are now being "ripped off"? CocaCola would have to reinvent themselves by having to work again... by continually coming up with new recipes. Of course, they'd never be a giant sugar-water-advertising-&-distribution company again (just like the RIAA is going to have to downsize).
I agree that paying for mp3s is kind of strange, but I think most of these people are paying more for the convenience and the legal-sigh-of-relief, than for a copy of the bits themselves.
I stream most of my music like radio now - couldn't be bothered to actually download mp3s (free or not) - and I can't wait to see something like peercast p2p radio combined with a "people-who-like-this-also-like-this" collaborative filter.
Slashdot Mirror
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No reason for that to be uncomfortable.
I just explain that the only aspect of religion I need is the Golden Rule which is at the core of just about every religion on Earth; that I have no want or need for all the other specific dogma and "social-club-benefits" that comes with their religious package.
--
Outsourcing + productivity gains going to the top + increasing robotics/AI means we're only seeing the leading edge of the unemployment to come (and not just in IT_.
--
2) Kurzweil isn't alone in predicting the nearness of Singularity. Vernor Vinge, Hans Moravec, Marvin Minksy, Michio Kaku, Yudkowsky, and a host of other "credible" thinkers all see the same exponential acceleration, and put the Singularity anywhere between NOW() and ~2080 at the far end.
3) I'm sorry you had to read that "POS" article. I can only imagine the cognitive dissonance you must be going through... (I joke).
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That might be comforting for you to think, but the truth is that the new "long-term" future isn't really that far away thanks to the exponentially accelerating rate of technological progress.
It's time to update your overly conservative view of the future... (if you can bear to throw out your but-wheres-my-flying-car-cynicism).
--
It's gotten so bad that true nanotech had to rename itself "molecular manufacturing" in order to avoid confusion with the nifty materials science stuff.
--
--
We're experiencing exponentially accelerating change and it only makes sense that the people who haven't tuned out (older farts) will be task switching far more often in an attempt to keep up. Brevity is a sign of the times. Gimme my sound-bites. Is this post too long? Yeah. Skip it. More valuable info out there.
--
Just like you can't sell the idea that it's OK to be bald, or to eat less & excercize more, or that it's a good idea to have some germs around to build up your immune system...
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Probably bogus patents up the wazoo on that too.
(Patents aren't going to mean much anyway once anyone can do desktop manufacturing for next to nothing.)
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Oh, you were only joking. :)
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If you want it for freeFreeFREE then I'm afraid you'll have to wait a few years for a real-world nano-assembled sexbot copy with bimbo-brain_v1.0, or a simulated "Matrix chick".
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Here's the whuffie link
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Only when material wealth is made mostly irrelevant by technology will the idea of "whuffie" really take off.
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Only the first assemblers developed will be expensive. Subsequent assemblers can be assembled by other assemblers, in a bootstrap process, such that a "3D Printer" would be as cheap to manufacture as a potato.
Not to mention how one affords the collection of molecules used in creating that food.
Food is mostly composed of carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and hydrogen which is naturally abundant. (Also, atoms don't wear out, so this isn't a 'consumable')
I'm just not as convinced -- as a practical, job-finding matter
Oh, I guess I should have been more clear: It's my opinion that the vast majority of the population will be unemployed in the not too distant future as technology makes their brains & labor increasingly useless when compared to more productive technology. Unemployment doesn't have to be a bad thing - but we'll have to wait for an economy of abundance before that will change.
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Software patents don't seem ridiculous to those born with the Excessive-Greed gene! (patented, too, btw :)
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Choose Option #2 - Nanotech. The faster we get there the less we'll have to suffer in the meantime.
In all seriousness, if I was to go back to college again, I would not waste my money or time learning any field other than nanotech or cognitive science.
Why? Simple: When nanotech matures, it means that "Putting FOOD On The Table(TM)" is no longer an issue because we'll finally have the god-like power to cheaply and easily reconfigure the molecules in a pound of random garbage into anything else we need or want (composed of the same component molecules as said garbage).
Nanotech's about the only thing on the horizon that has the chance to reverse the obscene concentration of wealth we're seeing today.
--
--
Good riddance. And you wouldn't be called a "professional musician" in that case, you'd be called a "recording artist" who depends on artificial-scarcity enforcement to make money as your first priority.
A real musician would be playing for the love of it and building human relationships with actual fans who would have no problem paying for fresh and scarce concerts, scarce physical merchandise, and CDs-as-a-patronage-thankyou.
You can't even buy a soda pop from a vending machine for that little anymore.
And if you could make an exact molecular copy of a can of Coke for next to nothing (and you soon will), would you feel bad that CocaCola (and WalMart, and the rest) are now being "ripped off"? CocaCola would have to reinvent themselves by having to work again ... by continually coming up with new recipes. Of course, they'd never be a giant sugar-water-advertising-&-distribution company again (just like the RIAA is going to have to downsize).
--
I stream most of my music like radio now - couldn't be bothered to actually download mp3s (free or not) - and I can't wait to see something like peercast p2p radio combined with a "people-who-like-this-also-like-this" collaborative filter.
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