I dunno, sometimes the popculture oneliners seemed a little too hamfisted, like: "Bill Gates can't guarantee Windows; how are you gonna guarantee my safety?"
And as a fan, I'm actually quite content with the way Farscape ended on a cliffhanger. I don't NEED a tidy Hollywood wrapup which would go something like: Season 5, Ep 1: Crew finds an alien that reassembles main characters molecules; Ep 2 - 23: Yadda yadda wormholes harvy baddies yadda. Ep 24: Everybody lives happily ever after).
I find it depressing that you're putting so much effort into limiting the wifi connection, when it's more efficient to simply ask the fat guy who's been sitting in the corner for five hours, to leave. What's the difference if he's using wifi, or reading the newspaper, or a book, or sleeping?
And more generally, ultimately it's wasted effort, since eventually wifi/OpenSpectrum will be more ubiquitous and uncontrollable than the (currently overpriced) cell networks which you'll have ZERO control over. Or, in that case... would you instead be selling proprietary-wifi-inside-a-faraday-cage service?:)
most of what passes for science fiction is really just high-tech fantasy
This is becomes especially true for many people once the factual concept of the technological singularity sinks in. Suddenly the future appears much much closer, more incomprehensible, and far more shocking than most scifi can offer (by definition of Singularity).
It turns out that the Sun -- shining on the other side of the planet -- didn't go nova afterall, it only burped a nasty flare, but the scientist got some sweet end-of-the-world lov'n in anyway.:)
Truly one of the most memorable episodes in my mind.
Another problem is a lot of the analysis assumes the current world of artificial wireless bandwidth scarcity and high prices. But that could change. Mesh networks could allow devices to create their own wireless infrastructure, with no access charges, obviating fancy tricks for saving money.
You noticed that too, eh? They're projecting forward "five to 10 years" and yet they assume the antiquated cell-tower broadcast scheme will still be dominate. The telco monopoly sure won't last THAT long in the face of better tech.
Partial Open Spectrum and adhoc wireless mesh networking is a much more likely evolution. Though I expect we'll still be calling the devices "cell phones" out of habit.
Mmm, yeah, I give the latest FreeNet snapshot a wurl every few months to see if the network has finally progressed from glacial-speed to molasses-speed. Seems to still be stuck at glacial (and no, I'm not confused about freenet being your standard file-sharing app; it's not).
Facial recognition and similar tech will be of age around the same time it'll possible to fabricate the same quality video with 3D animation software for less expenditure in resources.
So you're saying that since it will be possible for Joe Sixpack to forge anyone's presence in video, that facial recognition won't be trusted? What if the video was "digitally signed" by evil DRM hardware?:)
...automatically champion the underdog with no reguard to the circumstances and no loyalty whatsoever.
Loyalty?!
Are you kidding?! Brand/company loyalty is a liabilty, NOT an asset, especially as the company becomes more impersonal and arrogant as it grows (and, yes, this is almost a given). I'll just have to assume you're a defensive NVDA shareholder, as I once was.
Apparently these people would prefer than nobody ever gets ahead...
People? sure. Faceless goliath corporations? not so much. Concentration of power almost never turns out to be a good thing, and that fact is probably embedded in our genes which manifests itself in our evolutionary psychology when we root for underdogs.
Have you ever wondered, for a moment, what truly is the essence of human civilization?
I have... but the ultimate answer to the meaning of life requires hard work.:)
(Seriously, though, I think it's only natural that people are collectively working longer and harder than ever, as we speed towards the Singularity. There'll be an eternity of leisure time waiting on the other side, IMVHO.)
The current life expectancy of them leaves a bit to be desired, but eventually this will be solved.
Yes, and it'll probably be just a coincidence that these problems are solved right about the same time that the major players' huge investments in the old LCD manufacturing tech begins to break even.:-)
Actually, the video clip the AC speaks of is the most disturbing thing I've seen to date, and I've seen a lot of very gruesome things over the years, so it's not easy to shock me.
Search for "unknown russian soldier" if you think you're desensitized enough to witness a soldier rasping for breath after getting his throat cut out then head cut off.
Almost sounds like the typical Hollywood ending where the evil-technology (Terminator/Matrix) is defeated and mankind-as-we-already-know-it prevails...
Bleh. Depressing is what it is. Back to bio? No thanks.
(I'll probably get around to reading it anyway -- since I read everything Singularity-related -- but thanks for the sad-ending (IMO) warning.)
The need to have more than your neighbor leads back hundreds of thousands of years; to impress a potential mate, to look good for the tribe. It's pathetic.
That it is, but what's interesting is how a gift economy emerges when there's an abundance of resources - your success is then judged not by your material possessions but by how much you contribute to others. This is/was common among many cultures, including native americans, scientists, etc., but is gradually being "subverted" by greed in an exchange-based (capitalistic) economy. As humans increase in population exponentially, resources will only get more scarce (so greed is good for ME), until parallel exponential trends allow a return to economies of unimaginable abundance, and then, very shortly thereafter... Singularity.
I, for one, would prefer we left these things behind ASAP, or at least refined mind and body, so as not to usurp our humanity for our primatism.
It's my #1 fear that a very high percentage of all civilizations, including our own, destroy themselves with technology vastly more advanced than their own primitive biology can cope with (hence, my.sig).
(PS. I marked you as a/. friend because I want to associate myself with link-minded individuals. Damn evolutionary psychology!:-)
I'm glad the government taxes my goodwill to hell! That way I don't have enough goodwill left over to even have to worry about picking a charity! woohoo!
I find it amusing to hear that short-sighted planetary chauvinists are still seriously talking about terraforming planets for biological-human colonization in the "far future."
The fact of the matter is that terraforming will take centuries longer than it will take humans to exponentially evolve the technology to not even need a biologically-hospitipal waste-of-matter gravity-well to live on. We'll almost certainly be tearing planets apart for their raw material instead of building human zoos on their surface.
Yeah... I know, talking about the accelerating rate of technological change and about "whacko" trans/posthumanism isn't as sexy as talk'n about terraforming or about meat-popsicles flying around in cool spaceships... so sue me.
The people in your little neighborhood mesh network are never gonna have the stuff you want.
Yeah, I'm sure no one in my local area would have cached the latest episode of Enterprise, right? As it is, I have to swarm dozens of slow sources scattered across the globe, needlessly clogging up those distant pipes with redundant data.
Wireless mesh networking will simply be a very very nice addition to the Internet as a whole -- smart, ad-hoc, wireless edges surrounding a wired core for the longhaul VS present-day last-mile bullshit.
You don't see Europeans running wild in the streets humping everything in site, yet they're exposed to "strong" nudity everywhere growing up.
Still, I'd be interested in learning of the evolutionary psychology behind Puritanical views on sex. Maybe it's simply that as people age they get bitter and embarrased by sexuality, and so take it out on the young? Or maybe keeping sex taboo actually serves to keep society more stable overall (and less stable in other -repressed- ways)?
Having to manually adjust the budgets for fire/police/education/etc as the city grows really pissed me off. I REALLY wanted an "scale to demand" option, so I would only have to micromanage if I wanted to cut back on normal funding, and would only have to build new when they scaled to capacity. Ah well.
You know, I used to think like that: "Dammit! All developers should have to learn how to code to the metal!", and indeed that's where I started - with debug.exe, TASM, and MASM on the x86 - but I'm sorry, low level programming should be left to a few masochistic specialists. Everybody else shouldn't even have to THINK about bits anymore when coding in their increasingly abstracted languages.
Home builders don't have to cut planks from trees to make better houses; Auto mechanics don't have to understand the intricacies of the fuel injector (their toolmakers do); and a baker doesn't have to grow wheat himself to make better bread... etc.
Oh come on. It HAS to be your insane job requirements that are keeping the unemployed brains away. Maybe it's the "20 years Java experience required" combined with the hassle of getting security clearance.:-)
(AI interests me greatly, but, ick... government work makes you feel dirty.)
Actually, you're suffering from a bit of nearsightedness.
You see, the automobile and aircraft belong to the set of all transportation - which is what you should be comparing computing to - so when one form of transportation seems to have hit a plateau, another form always picks up where the former left off. What you end up with is a series of overlapping S-curves which underlies the overall exponential increase in progress. It's thispattern which you should be aware of.
Legpower -> Horsepower -> Railroad -> Automobile -> Airplane -> Jetliner -> Chemical Rocket -> Ion Propulsion -> FTL. Speed and capability increasing exponentially...
Same with computing:
Electromechanical -> Relay -> Vacuum Tubes -> Transistor -> ICs -> building 3D circuits instead of 2D -> etc.
Everything up to the very last part of your post should have been moderated FUNNY, not INTERESTING. Gah.
1000+ FREE hours is just marketing - nobody seriously thinks that the fact you can't use it all in 45 days is a "big detractor".
And the new AOL8.0 commercials - with the HappyAOLUser 'propaganda' screenname which is only on-screen for a split-second - isn't any lamer than any of their other "'its so easy!" commercials.
You could have just left that part of your argument out... unless you were trying to be funny and the mods were on crack again.
(disclaimer: I hate AOL but you wouldn't know it from this post).
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And as a fan, I'm actually quite content with the way Farscape ended on a cliffhanger. I don't NEED a tidy Hollywood wrapup which would go something like: Season 5, Ep 1: Crew finds an alien that reassembles main characters molecules; Ep 2 - 23: Yadda yadda wormholes harvy baddies yadda. Ep 24: Everybody lives happily ever after).
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And more generally, ultimately it's wasted effort, since eventually wifi/OpenSpectrum will be more ubiquitous and uncontrollable than the (currently overpriced) cell networks which you'll have ZERO control over. Or, in that case... would you instead be selling proprietary-wifi-inside-a-faraday-cage service? :)
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This is becomes especially true for many people once the factual concept of the technological singularity sinks in. Suddenly the future appears much much closer, more incomprehensible, and far more shocking than most scifi can offer (by definition of Singularity).
--
It turns out that the Sun -- shining on the other side of the planet -- didn't go nova afterall, it only burped a nasty flare, but the scientist got some sweet end-of-the-world lov'n in anyway. :)
Truly one of the most memorable episodes in my mind.
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You noticed that too, eh? They're projecting forward "five to 10 years" and yet they assume the antiquated cell-tower broadcast scheme will still be dominate. The telco monopoly sure won't last THAT long in the face of better tech.
Partial Open Spectrum and adhoc wireless mesh networking is a much more likely evolution. Though I expect we'll still be calling the devices "cell phones" out of habit.
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So you're saying that since it will be possible for Joe Sixpack to forge anyone's presence in video, that facial recognition won't be trusted? What if the video was "digitally signed" by evil DRM hardware? :)
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Loyalty?!
Are you kidding?! Brand/company loyalty is a liabilty, NOT an asset, especially as the company becomes more impersonal and arrogant as it grows (and, yes, this is almost a given). I'll just have to assume you're a defensive NVDA shareholder, as I once was.
Apparently these people would prefer than nobody ever gets ahead...
People? sure. Faceless goliath corporations? not so much. Concentration of power almost never turns out to be a good thing, and that fact is probably embedded in our genes which manifests itself in our evolutionary psychology when we root for underdogs.
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I have ... but the ultimate answer to the meaning of life requires hard work. :)
(Seriously, though, I think it's only natural that people are collectively working longer and harder than ever, as we speed towards the Singularity. There'll be an eternity of leisure time waiting on the other side, IMVHO.)
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Yes, and it'll probably be just a coincidence that these problems are solved right about the same time that the major players' huge investments in the old LCD manufacturing tech begins to break even. :-)
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Search for "unknown russian soldier" if you think you're desensitized enough to witness a soldier rasping for breath after getting his throat cut out then head cut off.
--
Bleh. Depressing is what it is. Back to bio? No thanks.
(I'll probably get around to reading it anyway -- since I read everything Singularity-related -- but thanks for the sad-ending (IMO) warning.)
--
That it is, but what's interesting is how a gift economy emerges when there's an abundance of resources - your success is then judged not by your material possessions but by how much you contribute to others. This is/was common among many cultures, including native americans, scientists, etc., but is gradually being "subverted" by greed in an exchange-based (capitalistic) economy. As humans increase in population exponentially, resources will only get more scarce (so greed is good for ME), until parallel exponential trends allow a return to economies of unimaginable abundance, and then, very shortly thereafter... Singularity.
I'm with you on that.
It's my #1 fear that a very high percentage of all civilizations, including our own, destroy themselves with technology vastly more advanced than their own primitive biology can cope with (hence, my .sig).
(PS. I marked you as a /. friend because I want to associate myself with link-minded individuals. Damn evolutionary psychology! :-)
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The fact of the matter is that terraforming will take centuries longer than it will take humans to exponentially evolve the technology to not even need a biologically-hospitipal waste-of-matter gravity-well to live on. We'll almost certainly be tearing planets apart for their raw material instead of building human zoos on their surface.
Yeah... I know, talking about the accelerating rate of technological change and about "whacko" trans/posthumanism isn't as sexy as talk'n about terraforming or about meat-popsicles flying around in cool spaceships... so sue me.
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Whoever said people were like sheeple was obviously wrong! :)
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Yeah, I'm sure no one in my local area would have cached the latest episode of Enterprise, right? As it is, I have to swarm dozens of slow sources scattered across the globe, needlessly clogging up those distant pipes with redundant data.
Wireless mesh networking will simply be a very very nice addition to the Internet as a whole -- smart, ad-hoc, wireless edges surrounding a wired core for the longhaul VS present-day last-mile bullshit.
--
You don't see Europeans running wild in the streets humping everything in site, yet they're exposed to "strong" nudity everywhere growing up.
Still, I'd be interested in learning of the evolutionary psychology behind Puritanical views on sex. Maybe it's simply that as people age they get bitter and embarrased by sexuality, and so take it out on the young? Or maybe keeping sex taboo actually serves to keep society more stable overall (and less stable in other -repressed- ways)?
--
--
Home builders don't have to cut planks from trees to make better houses; Auto mechanics don't have to understand the intricacies of the fuel injector (their toolmakers do); and a baker doesn't have to grow wheat himself to make better bread... etc.
--
Oh come on. It HAS to be your insane job requirements that are keeping the unemployed brains away. Maybe it's the "20 years Java experience required" combined with the hassle of getting security clearance. :-)
(AI interests me greatly, but, ick... government work makes you feel dirty.)
--
You see, the automobile and aircraft belong to the set of all transportation - which is what you should be comparing computing to - so when one form of transportation seems to have hit a plateau, another form always picks up where the former left off. What you end up with is a series of overlapping S-curves which underlies the overall exponential increase in progress. It's this pattern which you should be aware of.
Legpower -> Horsepower -> Railroad -> Automobile -> Airplane -> Jetliner -> Chemical Rocket -> Ion Propulsion -> FTL. Speed and capability increasing exponentially...
Same with computing:
Electromechanical -> Relay -> Vacuum Tubes -> Transistor -> ICs -> building 3D circuits instead of 2D -> etc.
--
1000+ FREE hours is just marketing - nobody seriously thinks that the fact you can't use it all in 45 days is a "big detractor".
And the new AOL8.0 commercials - with the HappyAOLUser 'propaganda' screenname which is only on-screen for a split-second - isn't any lamer than any of their other "'its so easy!" commercials.
You could have just left that part of your argument out... unless you were trying to be funny and the mods were on crack again.
(disclaimer: I hate AOL but you wouldn't know it from this post).
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