So what's new? Truth in advertising doesn't exist because it's always been more profitable to stretch the truth as far as possible in the face of uninformed consumers who don't seem to complain much.
My "Unlimited Internet!" is also a lie, unless you ask a lawyer for his weasel-definition of "unlimited."
Is a moneyless society so difficult for our awesome brains to fathom?
A lot of people seem to be able to fathom the moneyless society in Star Trek, but that's only because its "fantasy" technology is so advanced that there's not much scarcity to worry about. People see "Earl grey tea. Hot", and think, "Damn! I'd never have to work again if I could copy food like mp3s! Too bad it's a fantasy."
But the thing is that StarTrek-like replicators won't be fantasy much longer. Molecular manufacturing will be in the common mans hands in only a few decades; with all the social/political/economic upheaval that brings. It's like open source on a whole new level, and like open source, there will be a selfish few trying to stomp it out. It's genetic.
Oh, and there will always be a need for money btw (since there's ALWAYS scarcity that you'd want to trade it for), but I prefer to think of it terms of whuffies rather than cold, hard, cash.
Have you noticed how many Cingular Wireless brick and mortar stores their are? TONS. that rent, and building cost is not cheap. You are paying to much for what SHOULD be free - communication.
My brother-in-law just opened a Verizon Wireless store. It's Verizon only, so he gets even better prices for being an exclusive partner. Anyway, he makes less than a dozen sales/plan-upgrades per day and he's apparently rolling in dough.
I keep telling him that his gravy train is going to be derailed by really cheap wireless meshes in a couple years, but he's confident the telcos won't allow that to happen. When I mentioned taxpayer funded Metro Area Networks he just laughed it off because the "telco could do it cheaper.":)
I'd cancel cable in a heartbeat if it wasn't for certain other people in the household who live off of RealityTV shows.
The SciFi channel has gone all low-budget-psychic-crap, so there's not much left for me to watch except sometimes the Science Channel, Sundance, IFC, TechTV (for comedy), and UPN on Wednesdays (for Enterprise).
Yes, but, can any AI write a human-biased article for a newspaper about the chessmatch it just observed? I don't think so! And if it can, it's a witch, and should be burned aliv^H^H^H^H^H.
But you could be telepresent as an electrician in the not too distant future. First it's surgeons, astronauts and other expensive tasks, and then comes your job as robotic tech gets better and cheaper.
Wouldn't it suck to be you (assuming you're a USian) if in 10 years Honda leased a bipedal robot for $30,000/year that was physically more capable than yourself? This robotic shell could then work around the clock at any number of tasks (besides just electrical) by employing multiple cheaper telepresent workers in countries like, say, India. And 10 years later, AI replaces those jobs...
Physical presence isn't permanent job security either, but I guess these days 10 years is a damn long time.
The decentralized "web of trust" model of PGP combined with the "reputation credit" model of eBay is what I'm talking about.
Yeah, lots of people are "talking about" it, but, "when all is said and done, more is said than done.":)
I agree though that decentralized trust & reputation and other systems have the potential to be a killer plugin (not an app) in the near future. The downside is that business and government aren't so keen on distributed systems because their power depends on centralized command & control hierarchies, so they don't have much incentive to get behind it.
A Welfare Salary without any regard to merit? No thanks. Too commie.
*I* vote for a form of meritocracy in a gift economy where those who still produce more wealth (in its many forms) than they consume earn a kind of karma (or "whuffie") that can be traded like money for things that are still truly scarce, such as beachfront realestate, or priority seating at the restaurant nobody goes to anymore because it's too crowded...:)
Just because everyone could live a luxurious life of mediocrity with their "StarTrek replicators" and "AI-helpers" doesn't mean society should penalize those minds (real or AI) who strive above and beyond.
If just one of these servents inject bad data, then you won't know until the end of the download...
Guess you haven't used p2p in a while eh? Apps like eMule do something called ICH (Intelligent Corruption Handling): when you run into a large corrupted chunk (9MB), instead of redownloading the entire thing, your client hashes this corrupted chunk into smaller (180KB) subchunks, and askes other clients (who you probably trust more) to do the same so you can compare and then only redownload the tiny chunks which are invalid.
Blah blah blah. Convoluted scheme.
Like slashdot's distributed moderation is a complicated scheme? True distributed trust needn't be complicated; it can be completely transparent to the user as most emergent systems are.
If you develop or use this software, then you are practically admitting to being a pirate...
Oh please. And by using a sealed envelope instead of a plaintext postcard, I'm practically admitting to being an anthrax terrorist too, right? Are you for key-escrow too? And banning guns? And tobacco rolling paper? pfft.
BitTorrent uses a partsize which is a power of 2; with a default of 256KB (2**18).
Many Gnutella clients use hash trees which have granularity variable from 1024bytes to 10MB.
eDonkey has a fairly large hashed chunksize, and interdiction has been somewhat successful in the past (notably against FreeLancer) because the chunks are multi-sourced, and as you said, if it turns out to be corrupt, you can't assign blame to a specific uploader (IP & user-hash) unless a pattern emerges.
Small chunksizes, like BitTorrent's, are great because you can pretty much be assured that you'll get the whole chunk from one uploader, so if it turns out to be corrupt, it doesn't take so long to redownload, and you can simply ignore the rogue (though I don't think BT clients do this yet). The downside of course is that the.torrent files double in size as you half the hashed partsize (and currently.torrent files are usually hosted by central webhosts rather than distributed by BT clients).
Hash trees, on the other hand, are great because not everyone needs to store the entire fine-grained hashset down to 1K. If corruption mysteriously increases, you could simply ask for another level, making it easier to detect & ignore the rogues who are uploading corrupt chunks and/or hashes.
Eventually p2p networks will have to implement distributed webs-of-trust based on keypairs rather than spoofable IP addresses or user-hashes. Everybody would start with zero trust (unless you had a 'sponsor' that would give your pubkey initial trust), but bad behavior (like uploading corruption, or hammering queues) get's you on people's distributed shitlists, and good behavior (like uploading many gigabytes of illicit data) earns you trust. Over time, well-known "trustworthy" nodes would rise to the top (or rather, "move to the center of the web"), and can be used as a foundation similar to a central server.
Without that connection [realworld takeovers], the story would hold no interest.
For me it would, because the part of the story I was most interested in *was* the "valueless" escapism of the Matrix's simulated reality, rather than what 'evil' AI entity controlled it. I'm in the minority though... being a Singularitarian who views a Matrix-like future of mind-uploads as a GOOD step on the shortening road to Singularity.
Very few know that Bush ordered all investigations of Saudis abandoned several months before it.
(And even fewer people questioned why Bush tried so hard to block the independent 9-11 investigation after-the-fact. Now, I'm no "Bush Knew!" conspiracy theorist, but it was just insane that they would fight an investigation into the deadliest terrorist attack thusfar, unless there were messy details they couldn't risk being uncovered that would jeopardize the 9-11 powergrab gravytrain to follow.)
It's a good thing hardly anyone will be following your end-of-the-world advice to buy old-fashioned arable land, else the urban sprawl of millions would destroy what's left of the wilderness. Better to leave the food production to 'evil' agri-business, and have the majority of people living in efficient cities.
Short-term, the future doesn't look so bright, but long-term (20-50 years), technological unemployment won't also mean having to starve or be exposed to the elements. Molecular nanotechnology in particular will free many people from being forced to work for mere survival.
The resulting circuitry is so effective and original that there have been designs that earned approval from the patent office.
And, IMO, it's a very bad idea to hand out patent monopolies for designs that no human invented, especially if no one can even understand how the damn thing works!
It's not that patents on evolved solutions -- which are both computationally expensive to produce, and to manufacture physically -- wouldn't necessarily promote progress (unless we're talking software algorithms), but that we'll end up with the richest corporations going for another huge IP landgrab with their "patent invention machines" set to 'Ludicrous Speed'. Isn't it bad enough that they've already squatted on our genes?
Why did a bird start banging its head against wood?
Because it was a genetic mutant, and this mutant's new behavior gave it a slight survival advantage in its niche that got passed on to present day woodpeckers.
Why did man suddenly lose his fur and walk upright?
Man 'suddenly' lost his fur because a hairless body was advantageous. It's easier to clean, and it's much easier to keep cool when sweat evaporates off skin. And walking upright freed our hands for tool use.
...if you discovered a watch in the desert, you would assume it was created by someone, not that it was made from random motions of particles in the desert.
Can this watch reproduce?
God isn't necessary for order to emerge from chaos.
A certain Anonymous Coward already pointed out that you just have to view the HTML source and then prefix the letter 'm' before the resolution in the filename. (Or you can pay for the Pro version, which lets you Save As...)
However good your music - I won't download it if I haven't heard of it.
Which is a major reason I'm looking forward to p2p netradio combined with "amazon-like" recommendation services such as AudioScrobbler, Gnod, and others. It's coming together.
It is the nature of man to compare himself with others, and sadly comparison is the root of discontentment.
Some people are conscious of their evolutionary psychology, you know. I have no conscious desire to be the tribal alpha-male with the biggest dick, and the biggest house, in order to attract the hottest baby-oven to bake my genes.
I'm usually happy-like-a-Buddist (minus any religion), largly because I "believe" that humanity will cease to exist -- either literally OR figuratively -- within this century. Thanks to accelerating technology, we'll eventually either destroy ourselves, or we'll be unrecognizably post-human.
Everything which is decentralized by design is terrorist technology.
I Have (probably) Been Trolled, but...
Centralization empowers an elite core, while decentralization empowers everybody (not just the "terrorists"), so it's only natural that the elite will fight to keep their command & control hierachies in place by trying to stifle democratizing technology like OSS, wireless mesh networking, P2P, and other emergent, self-organizing smart-mob networks. (Do I win buzzword bingo?:)
Also, being centralized makes you extremely vulnerable to attack, because the targets are juicy and obvious. A real patriot is for decentralization, because Divided We Stand (written the day after 9-11-2001).
Slashdot Mirror
So what's new? Truth in advertising doesn't exist because it's always been more profitable to stretch the truth as far as possible in the face of uninformed consumers who don't seem to complain much.
My "Unlimited Internet!" is also a lie, unless you ask a lawyer for his weasel-definition of "unlimited."
--
I've got a short list:
I hate knowing I'm paying the telco too much; I hate knowing I'm being tracked; And I hate provider lock-in.
--
--
A lot of people seem to be able to fathom the moneyless society in Star Trek, but that's only because its "fantasy" technology is so advanced that there's not much scarcity to worry about. People see "Earl grey tea. Hot", and think, "Damn! I'd never have to work again if I could copy food like mp3s! Too bad it's a fantasy."
But the thing is that StarTrek-like replicators won't be fantasy much longer. Molecular manufacturing will be in the common mans hands in only a few decades; with all the social/political/economic upheaval that brings. It's like open source on a whole new level, and like open source, there will be a selfish few trying to stomp it out. It's genetic.
Oh, and there will always be a need for money btw (since there's ALWAYS scarcity that you'd want to trade it for), but I prefer to think of it terms of whuffies rather than cold, hard, cash.
--
If I pay $0.25 per GB I'm sure those companies can get an even better bulk deal.
--
That hunk of junk should be retired as a landmark.
--
My brother-in-law just opened a Verizon Wireless store. It's Verizon only, so he gets even better prices for being an exclusive partner. Anyway, he makes less than a dozen sales/plan-upgrades per day and he's apparently rolling in dough.
I keep telling him that his gravy train is going to be derailed by really cheap wireless meshes in a couple years, but he's confident the telcos won't allow that to happen. When I mentioned taxpayer funded Metro Area Networks he just laughed it off because the "telco could do it cheaper." :)
--
--
The SciFi channel has gone all low-budget-psychic-crap, so there's not much left for me to watch except sometimes the Science Channel, Sundance, IFC, TechTV (for comedy), and UPN on Wednesdays (for Enterprise).
--
--
But you could be telepresent as an electrician in the not too distant future. First it's surgeons, astronauts and other expensive tasks, and then comes your job as robotic tech gets better and cheaper.
Wouldn't it suck to be you (assuming you're a USian) if in 10 years Honda leased a bipedal robot for $30,000/year that was physically more capable than yourself? This robotic shell could then work around the clock at any number of tasks (besides just electrical) by employing multiple cheaper telepresent workers in countries like, say, India. And 10 years later, AI replaces those jobs...
Physical presence isn't permanent job security either, but I guess these days 10 years is a damn long time.
--
Yeah, lots of people are "talking about" it, but, "when all is said and done, more is said than done." :)
I agree though that decentralized trust & reputation and other systems have the potential to be a killer plugin (not an app) in the near future. The downside is that business and government aren't so keen on distributed systems because their power depends on centralized command & control hierarchies, so they don't have much incentive to get behind it.
--
*I* vote for a form of meritocracy in a gift economy where those who still produce more wealth (in its many forms) than they consume earn a kind of karma (or "whuffie") that can be traded like money for things that are still truly scarce, such as beachfront realestate, or priority seating at the restaurant nobody goes to anymore because it's too crowded... :)
Just because everyone could live a luxurious life of mediocrity with their "StarTrek replicators" and "AI-helpers" doesn't mean society should penalize those minds (real or AI) who strive above and beyond.
--
Guess you haven't used p2p in a while eh? Apps like eMule do something called ICH (Intelligent Corruption Handling): when you run into a large corrupted chunk (9MB), instead of redownloading the entire thing, your client hashes this corrupted chunk into smaller (180KB) subchunks, and askes other clients (who you probably trust more) to do the same so you can compare and then only redownload the tiny chunks which are invalid.
Blah blah blah. Convoluted scheme.
Like slashdot's distributed moderation is a complicated scheme? True distributed trust needn't be complicated; it can be completely transparent to the user as most emergent systems are.
If you develop or use this software, then you are practically admitting to being a pirate...
Oh please. And by using a sealed envelope instead of a plaintext postcard, I'm practically admitting to being an anthrax terrorist too, right? Are you for key-escrow too? And banning guns? And tobacco rolling paper? pfft.
--
- eDonkey uses a fixed chunksize of 9MB.
- BitTorrent uses a partsize which is a power of 2; with a default of 256KB (2**18).
- Many Gnutella clients use hash trees which have granularity variable from 1024bytes to 10MB.
eDonkey has a fairly large hashed chunksize, and interdiction has been somewhat successful in the past (notably against FreeLancer) because the chunks are multi-sourced, and as you said, if it turns out to be corrupt, you can't assign blame to a specific uploader (IP & user-hash) unless a pattern emerges.Small chunksizes, like BitTorrent's, are great because you can pretty much be assured that you'll get the whole chunk from one uploader, so if it turns out to be corrupt, it doesn't take so long to redownload, and you can simply ignore the rogue (though I don't think BT clients do this yet). The downside of course is that the .torrent files double in size as you half the hashed partsize (and currently .torrent files are usually hosted by central webhosts rather than distributed by BT clients).
Hash trees, on the other hand, are great because not everyone needs to store the entire fine-grained hashset down to 1K. If corruption mysteriously increases, you could simply ask for another level, making it easier to detect & ignore the rogues who are uploading corrupt chunks and/or hashes.
Eventually p2p networks will have to implement distributed webs-of-trust based on keypairs rather than spoofable IP addresses or user-hashes. Everybody would start with zero trust (unless you had a 'sponsor' that would give your pubkey initial trust), but bad behavior (like uploading corruption, or hammering queues) get's you on people's distributed shitlists, and good behavior (like uploading many gigabytes of illicit data) earns you trust. Over time, well-known "trustworthy" nodes would rise to the top (or rather, "move to the center of the web"), and can be used as a foundation similar to a central server.
--
For me it would, because the part of the story I was most interested in *was* the "valueless" escapism of the Matrix's simulated reality, rather than what 'evil' AI entity controlled it. I'm in the minority though... being a Singularitarian who views a Matrix-like future of mind-uploads as a GOOD step on the shortening road to Singularity.
Very few know that Bush ordered all investigations of Saudis abandoned several months before it.
(And even fewer people questioned why Bush tried so hard to block the independent 9-11 investigation after-the-fact. Now, I'm no "Bush Knew!" conspiracy theorist, but it was just insane that they would fight an investigation into the deadliest terrorist attack thusfar, unless there were messy details they couldn't risk being uncovered that would jeopardize the 9-11 powergrab gravytrain to follow.)
--
Short-term, the future doesn't look so bright, but long-term (20-50 years), technological unemployment won't also mean having to starve or be exposed to the elements. Molecular nanotechnology in particular will free many people from being forced to work for mere survival.
--
mkdir ALT-255
attrib +h +s +r ALT-255
Now that I've grown up, I'm not so hypocritically embarrassed about sexuality or masturbation, so I don't even attempt to hide it.
--
And, IMO, it's a very bad idea to hand out patent monopolies for designs that no human invented, especially if no one can even understand how the damn thing works!
It's not that patents on evolved solutions -- which are both computationally expensive to produce, and to manufacture physically -- wouldn't necessarily promote progress (unless we're talking software algorithms), but that we'll end up with the richest corporations going for another huge IP landgrab with their "patent invention machines" set to 'Ludicrous Speed'. Isn't it bad enough that they've already squatted on our genes?
--
Because it was a genetic mutant, and this mutant's new behavior gave it a slight survival advantage in its niche that got passed on to present day woodpeckers.
Why did man suddenly lose his fur and walk upright?
Man 'suddenly' lost his fur because a hairless body was advantageous. It's easier to clean, and it's much easier to keep cool when sweat evaporates off skin. And walking upright freed our hands for tool use.
Can this watch reproduce?
God isn't necessary for order to emerge from chaos.
--
--
--
Which is a major reason I'm looking forward to p2p netradio combined with "amazon-like" recommendation services such as AudioScrobbler, Gnod, and others. It's coming together.
--
Some people are conscious of their evolutionary psychology, you know. I have no conscious desire to be the tribal alpha-male with the biggest dick, and the biggest house, in order to attract the hottest baby-oven to bake my genes.
I'm usually happy-like-a-Buddist (minus any religion), largly because I "believe" that humanity will cease to exist -- either literally OR figuratively -- within this century. Thanks to accelerating technology, we'll eventually either destroy ourselves, or we'll be unrecognizably post-human.
--
I Have (probably) Been Trolled, but...
Centralization empowers an elite core, while decentralization empowers everybody (not just the "terrorists"), so it's only natural that the elite will fight to keep their command & control hierachies in place by trying to stifle democratizing technology like OSS, wireless mesh networking, P2P, and other emergent, self-organizing smart-mob networks. (Do I win buzzword bingo? :)
Also, being centralized makes you extremely vulnerable to attack, because the targets are juicy and obvious. A real patriot is for decentralization, because Divided We Stand (written the day after 9-11-2001).
--