LOL (
I may be late in hearing about that gagsite, but it made my month.:) Pretty much sums up my feelings about those chatty bitches and their new fad (slashdot FOAF notwithstanding).
SimCity still doesn't let you play with the implications of near-future nanotechnology, though. The game still assumes the future will be ruled by depressingly conventional top-down bulk-tech.
I want to be able to run a simcity where the Agricultural, Industrial, and Retail/Commercial sectors have almost entirely been replaced by decentralized molecular manufacturing, robotics and better AI. In addition to the water/sewage/electical grid, you'd have a molecular feekstock grid to recycle the molecules of old material objects into. The focus of the game would be in maximizing the happiness of the new leisure society.
Microsoft used to be top dog with their closed-source crap, but since anybody can own the means of digital production, open source is increasingly gaining ground and will eventually come out on top. "Trusted Computing" is an attempt to put that control back into the hands of the few, and it will fail.
The same will happen with physical products in the near future. Molecular manufacturing (nanotechnology) will make megacorps irrelevant when the means of physical production & distribution is moved from their top-down control into everyones hands. You won't need to go to WalMart to buy a $12.99 Gilette Quad-Edge SuperShaver Deluxe - you'll download the "molecular blueprint" for the GNU/shaver1.2, or whatever, and recycle local molecules into the forms you need.
(Oh, yeah, I an optimistic quack, so write me off.)
Prison sentences for non-violent crimes seem like a bad idea from every angle I look at them.
What about the angle of artificial job-creation in an economy that needs fewer workers because of outsourcing and productivity gains? Much better to put the rabble in jail with selective enforcement of bogus law, instead of letting their idle hands get to thinking about revolt.
The media cartels are obviously getting desperate if the best they can come up with is attempting to buy more draconian business-model-preservation law. First the DMCA and the NetAct, and now this.
I mean, 10 years for "expropriating" the potential sale of proprietary data that a judge deems "worth" more than $10,000? Give me a break. Actually, they probably will give me a break; 10 years is more than they want, and they'll compromise downward a bit for what they really wanted in the first place.
Still, the chilling effect of a law like this would only hasten the inevitable development of more secure P2P, and the spread of open source and open content.
Enforcing perpetual copyright is next to impossible without a global police state, and I'm much more likely to fund the Bruce Perens and Corey Doctorows of the world because they've earned my respect by choosing open licenses over the default "AllmineMineMINE!(C)(R)!".
Geo-targetting by IP address is actually pretty damn accurate much of the time.
So, hypothetically, if you wanted to be a bean-counting schmuck, you could block the poor countries, but I don't think anybody's that Scrooge-ish. Actually, I take that back: there's got to be some cheap-labor-republican sites that do block un-christian locations.
Still waiting for the next Bram Cohen to come along and finally get distributed http caching working for the masses... (GoogleCache/FreeCache/Akamai/FreeNet/etc doesn't cut it).
Seriously, if the ETs haven't already eliminated the need for work with automation (robotics + nanotech + AI), then the retards deserve to be nuked.:)
And if it happens that they DO have an economy of abundance, but are being assholes by enforcing artificial scarcity because of their old evolutionary psychology, then they need to be nuked ten times over.
Haven't you heard of collaborative filtering? It can do the job better than a million middlemen picking and choosing who's going to be the HOT item today.
An updated version of the Dyson Sphere is known as a Matrioshka Brain - named after those russian matrioshka dolls because instead of being a single sphere, it's shells are nested.
Rather than linearly extrapolating a boring anthropomorphic future where biological creatures are physically living on the surface(s) of such a sphere (StarTrek-style), it's much more likely that the sphere would actually be the processing substrate of a post-biological existence (i.e. a big, optimal "Matrix").
Some have gone so far as to attribute the "missing mass" problem to the idea that there might in fact already be millions of advanced civilizations' stars which are visibly hidden by these shells.
In the long-term (< 30 years), there won't even be such a thing as a third-world nation because technology will have finally ushered in an economy of abundance. i.e. WalMart, Gilette, DeBeers, Agribiz, and host of other giant corps will be put out of business by cheap molecular manufacturing (a "3D printer" in every home/village), and not having a job won't mean starving, which is a good thing because very soon not everyone who WANTS a job will be able to have one since they're not necessary (so it will be the rabbles job to feel guilty as sin living a life of leisure, unless a Puritanical Global Police force has something to say about that:)
IMO, what's happening in America is only temporary, and things'll get worse before they get better.
The odds of our civilization being destroyed by asteroid impact in the next few decades is really insignificant when compared to the odds that our advancing technology -- in the hands of still primitive minds -- kills us off first.
It would be a cosmic joke for us to have made it these past hundreds of thousands of slow years, only to be wiped out by a dumb rock in the next ~30 years or so that matter most in our evolution to post-humanity.
Please send me your super-amazing deluxe email CD with 500 million opt-in email leads, windows zombie-maker software, and HOWTO-live-without-a-conscience-if-youre-not-alrea dy-a-sociopath.DOC.
Thanks for this super bizniss opurtunity! My check is in mail... but it might take a while to get to Checkloslavakia.
You got that right. The cluetrain was ahead of its time.
I can't understand why people still think that "professional" must mean putting on a boring, impersonal face and communicating in corporate monotone; Google is proof otherwise. It's so sad to see small businesses -- who still have a soul -- attempting to emulate their souless idols.
Of course Google won't still be #1 5 years from now.
The future of SE's is in distributed search & trust systems, which doesn't require a centralized Google to crawl the web to determine relevance based on link popularity. Much harder to game webs-of-trust than Pagerank.
I think they should all just get together under an umbrella group called "Old Farts for Ye Olde $tatus Quo".
A quote I have hanging on my wall:
"Innovation makes enemies of all those who prospered under the old regime, and only lukewarm support is forthcoming from those who would prosper under the new."
-- Niccolo Machiavelli
That will only become more true as the pace of change quickens. Artificial scarcity be damned.
(Right beside that quote I've also got a few Singularity quotes, about the exponential nature of progress, and the likelihood of mankind surving these next few critical decades.)
Accept the fact that you can't possibly do everything you want
No.
Before mid-century we'll have the option to become immortal (if it doesn't conflict with your religious beliefs), and have begun the process of human IA (Intelligence Amplification) on our way to Singularity. More than enough time to live out many fantasies.
The current generation of vehicles is probably the last to be piloted by humans anyway. From attack craft, to humvees, to choppers, we're almost at the point where we don't need humans in the cockpit to do a smart robot's job.
Friend of mine is an airline pilot, and even he will admit that it's likely his career will be cut short by advancing tech.
(OT: and since tech is advancing exponentially, it'll replace many more jobs than it creates, which is too bad if you live a country where welfare is still a dirty word.)
The lesson I learned: Fly cheap ARFs, but leave your balsa masterpieces on the ground for show. You can't have much fun if you're always stressing out over crashes.
I gave up the smelly/expensive RC hobby a while ago though, and the last time I flew a plane it wasn't even real.
You worry about it? Really? Gave yourself away as a wine snob.:)
I despise just about ALL overpriced celebrity branded crap, except Paul Newman's Newman's Own, because he gives most of the money to charity, instead of hoarding more blingbling. (And I just gave myself away as an "Anti-consumerist Playah Hater")
Slashdot Mirror
--
I want to be able to run a simcity where the Agricultural, Industrial, and Retail/Commercial sectors have almost entirely been replaced by decentralized molecular manufacturing, robotics and better AI. In addition to the water/sewage/electical grid, you'd have a molecular feekstock grid to recycle the molecules of old material objects into. The focus of the game would be in maximizing the happiness of the new leisure society.
--
Microsoft used to be top dog with their closed-source crap, but since anybody can own the means of digital production, open source is increasingly gaining ground and will eventually come out on top. "Trusted Computing" is an attempt to put that control back into the hands of the few, and it will fail.
The same will happen with physical products in the near future. Molecular manufacturing (nanotechnology) will make megacorps irrelevant when the means of physical production & distribution is moved from their top-down control into everyones hands. You won't need to go to WalMart to buy a $12.99 Gilette Quad-Edge SuperShaver Deluxe - you'll download the "molecular blueprint" for the GNU/shaver1.2, or whatever, and recycle local molecules into the forms you need.
(Oh, yeah, I an optimistic quack, so write me off.)
--
What about the angle of artificial job-creation in an economy that needs fewer workers because of outsourcing and productivity gains? Much better to put the rabble in jail with selective enforcement of bogus law, instead of letting their idle hands get to thinking about revolt.
--
I mean, 10 years for "expropriating" the potential sale of proprietary data that a judge deems "worth" more than $10,000? Give me a break. Actually, they probably will give me a break; 10 years is more than they want, and they'll compromise downward a bit for what they really wanted in the first place.
Still, the chilling effect of a law like this would only hasten the inevitable development of more secure P2P, and the spread of open source and open content.
Enforcing perpetual copyright is next to impossible without a global police state, and I'm much more likely to fund the Bruce Perens and Corey Doctorows of the world because they've earned my respect by choosing open licenses over the default "AllmineMineMINE!(C)(R)!".
--
So, hypothetically, if you wanted to be a bean-counting schmuck, you could block the poor countries, but I don't think anybody's that Scrooge-ish. Actually, I take that back: there's got to be some cheap-labor-republican sites that do block un-christian locations.
--
Opera does.
Hit F12 and you get a quick menu with a bunch of handy toggles.
--
Still waiting for the next Bram Cohen to come along and finally get distributed http caching working for the masses... (GoogleCache/FreeCache/Akamai/FreeNet/etc doesn't cut it).
--
And if it happens that they DO have an economy of abundance, but are being assholes by enforcing artificial scarcity because of their old evolutionary psychology, then they need to be nuked ten times over.
--
Check out iRATE for example.
--
--
Rather than linearly extrapolating a boring anthropomorphic future where biological creatures are physically living on the surface(s) of such a sphere (StarTrek-style), it's much more likely that the sphere would actually be the processing substrate of a post-biological existence (i.e. a big, optimal "Matrix").
Some have gone so far as to attribute the "missing mass" problem to the idea that there might in fact already be millions of advanced civilizations' stars which are visibly hidden by these shells.
--
In the long-term (< 30 years), there won't even be such a thing as a third-world nation because technology will have finally ushered in an economy of abundance. i.e. WalMart, Gilette, DeBeers, Agribiz, and host of other giant corps will be put out of business by cheap molecular manufacturing (a "3D printer" in every home/village), and not having a job won't mean starving, which is a good thing because very soon not everyone who WANTS a job will be able to have one since they're not necessary (so it will be the rabbles job to feel guilty as sin living a life of leisure, unless a Puritanical Global Police force has something to say about that :)
IMO, what's happening in America is only temporary, and things'll get worse before they get better.
--
The fix for war mongering would require genetic fixes, but in order to get a handle on the unintended consequences we'd need more intelligence first.
The fix for famine & disease is much simpler, and much closer: decentralized molecular manufacturing, and artificial immune systems / cell-repair.
--
It would be a cosmic joke for us to have made it these past hundreds of thousands of slow years, only to be wiped out by a dumb rock in the next ~30 years or so that matter most in our evolution to post-humanity.
--
Please send me your super-amazing deluxe email CD with 500 million opt-in email leads, windows zombie-maker software, and HOWTO-live-without-a-conscience-if-youre-not-alrea dy-a-sociopath.DOC.
Thanks for this super bizniss opurtunity! My check is in mail... but it might take a while to get to Checkloslavakia.
--
You got that right. The cluetrain was ahead of its time.
I can't understand why people still think that "professional" must mean putting on a boring, impersonal face and communicating in corporate monotone; Google is proof otherwise. It's so sad to see small businesses -- who still have a soul -- attempting to emulate their souless idols.
--
The future of SE's is in distributed search & trust systems, which doesn't require a centralized Google to crawl the web to determine relevance based on link popularity. Much harder to game webs-of-trust than Pagerank.
--
A quote I have hanging on my wall:
That will only become more true as the pace of change quickens. Artificial scarcity be damned.
(Right beside that quote I've also got a few Singularity quotes, about the exponential nature of progress, and the likelihood of mankind surving these next few critical decades.)
--
Yes, it's every company's right to try and maximize profit, but when you push too hard you end up getting 100% of nothing.
--
No.
Before mid-century we'll have the option to become immortal (if it doesn't conflict with your religious beliefs), and have begun the process of human IA (Intelligence Amplification) on our way to Singularity. More than enough time to live out many fantasies.
--
Friend of mine is an airline pilot, and even he will admit that it's likely his career will be cut short by advancing tech.
(OT: and since tech is advancing exponentially, it'll replace many more jobs than it creates, which is too bad if you live a country where welfare is still a dirty word.)
--
I gave up the smelly/expensive RC hobby a while ago though, and the last time I flew a plane it wasn't even real.
(*ARFs == Almost Ready to Fly kits)
--
You worry about it? Really? Gave yourself away as a wine snob. :)
I despise just about ALL overpriced celebrity branded crap, except Paul Newman's Newman's Own, because he gives most of the money to charity, instead of hoarding more blingbling. (And I just gave myself away as an "Anti-consumerist Playah Hater")
--