you think you've got it bad? in my day, we had to sing songs and create culture to keep our data alive, and if anyone went out of key, its abort, retry, fail time again..
Why is it that virtually everything I read on slashdot, I've already seen on the AP/Reuters wire stories from my paper?
why is it so hard to understand that aggregation is a good thing if all you have open is a web-browser with slashdot in it, and no time for other web-cruising?
many people use slashdot as their home page, just to catch up on news for nerds in between Real Work. having interesting nerd-related articles pop up in this list of news items is a feature, not a problem.
not everyone has the time and energy to stay on the bleeding edge of the news-o-sphere. i'm quite happy getting my 'mainstream news-for-nerds headlines' mixed in with the rest of the usual/. blather..
but then, i've been a slashdotter since the beginning, i drank the kool-aid early..
What I think they're overlooking is that the "Integration" problem of Linux is something that used to be, and still is, a problem for the Computer Operator (he who came before 'sysadmins'), and that seperating this 'problem' into different roles of administration, you actually put the User/Operator positions into a better perspective.
Integration isn't supposed to be a user problem. Its supposed to be a problem of the person who is setting up and responsible for the computing system being used in the business case.
Microsoft have made a great deal of hoop-lah over the years over the fact that "you don't need a sysadmin to run Windows".. at least, in the early days, this was considered a feather in their cap.
But it seems to me that, conveniently, they're overlooking the fact that Linux, in fact, makes better Computer Operators; you don't really get a fully-Integrated computing system based on Linux without at least performing some of the 'old-school' functions of the Computer Operations hat. And, if you put that hat on and do the job properly, regardless of if its full-time or not, while using Linux you actually learn the bits you need in order to maintain the operator function during the course of use of the system by the business.
I believe in the separation between "Operator" (what some people call 'Administrator') and "User", and I believe that OS's that provide modular functionality for the "Operator" to apply in building a working, productive computing system end up in a better "User" experience. One thing I have always abhorred about the Microsoft way is that they seem to have tried to build one tool that does many jobs; e.g. I don't want to have to use a GUI if all the machine is going to do is serve files.. it has always seemed brain-dead that they refuse to recognize this separation of function from utility..
I've survived many a bush fire with nothing but a damp potato sack for my miseries, and much as I despise the negative impact we've had on this land, I can tell you that its a beautiful thing indeed to walk around the scorched Aussie landscape for weeks after the event, watching new life grow.. and the first rains after the fire are wonderful too, for days afterwards new wildflowers spring forth, and in the midst of the dry black and grey and red, you suddenly see green and purple and blue and pink and yellow.. and a month or two afterwards, the land is restored to its glory..
Australia is a beautiful place, so truly uniqe. Its a good thing that, at least, we are discussing its management, and our effect, and the demise so far, intelligently at least...
I don't believe Linux is innovative, and I see that pervading the entire open source movement.
maybe you see that in the bits you see, but it seems to me there are bits you're not seeing.
Linux is innovative. anyone who doesn't think so, probably hasn't built themselves an OpenEmbedded image, a GoboLinux USB-fob, a custom firewall boot-CD, a compute-server-room feeding a national ISP, a system of low-power MIPS boxes buried in the desert watching water supplies, a surf-board manufacturing fileserver, a tftp'able boot-image for the stereo, a terrabyte fileserver with streaming, an old-school MAMEbox..
Linux is a desktop, but Linux can be far, far, far, far more things than a Microsoft binary release, to far more people. Linux is a desktop, Linux is not just a desktop, Linux is a car display, Linux is a fileserver, Linux is a synthesizer, etc. it need not be 'anyones way but your own' with Linux; the rule is the code is open, its up to you to make it work.
the problem with bothering with Microsoft propaganda is that it frames you, straight away, into an either/or argument on their terms. to argue against "Linux versus Microsoft" means "Linux as a desktop" versus "The Microsoft Universe". who cares about the desktop any more? there is no desktop.
i agree with you.. i've been a unix user for many, many years now, mostly on MIPS and SGI systems (with tons of linux hacking too) and I didn't really 'groove' on Apple.. until the powerbook.
then, i switched. from SGI to Apple. pretty much right away.
intel hasn't interested me as a platform in a long time; sure its cheap and 'fast', but that all just adds up to letting crappy code get away with more and more bloat. i'm quite happy building my full system image on a 200mhz processor. the point is, its amazing how classy code can get, when it doesn't get the bleeding edge CPU to run on and therefore has to be better than 'commodity software' ever would be on 'generic platform'..
if SGI fought back against the powerbook in ways we could well only expect from the 'ghost of SGI mythos', and released itself a truly tornado-chasing laptop worthy of the logo (the old one i mean, not the new Word doc.. ack, pft! that ain't no logo!).. then.. i would definitely swith to an SGI laptop.
no need to chase Apple into the Intel storm, either.
SGI: put an 8-processor MIPS-based system in a very sexy aluminum box, with good screen, and put your OS guys to work on the GPL again.. make it a 'portable compute-system laptop', and you have an -instant- hit.
but alas, SGI have completely lost touch with their old rock and roll hardware spirit. I hope Nintendo buys them.. there might be hope in those crazy manga quarters, anyway..
you know, i really don't think he knows what that word means:
innovate: 1. To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time. 2. To begin or introduce something new.
what has microsoft introduced lately that is so new? i honestly don't know: i haven't used microsoft products seriously in 10 years. they're not even on my radar any more.
i'm not 'calling for thought oughtlaw', nor am i saying we should abandon technology. i am saying, however, that technologists with no ethics sense are the new source of fascism, and your post proves it..
I believe you are equating his belief in a path that may support such militarism as militant. For Kurzweil to be militant he would have to be "fighting or warring" to enforce his belief on other people.
i believe you are missing the point that i said 'militant technologism'; ray is saying "no matter what, humanity will evolve technology which produces the singularity, and then it will take over and rule us all". so, we would be being a kind of lets-just-say- ''God'' to one of our products, and it, eventually, our Enslaved Entity, would have to turn around and kill us because of who we are to it.
As 'we did to God', in the 20th Century.
The point is, where's the enslavement? Well, if you don't know a slave by how many cell phones/pagers he's burning oil to support, then maybe we should talk about cars and cities.. the whole damn world is enslaved. To the Technologists.
Seriously.
We killed God, now do nothing but dastardly deals with technology, and yet in the end, no matter what, we will all face a slippery spinning barrel to bend over on the Last Day of Our Lives.. I don't see Ray truly accounting for the un-knowable in his predictions, nor the un-un-knowable, either, etc. &8tc.
To put it on a familiar context, let me wax silly and ask this question: What if in fact, "Every man faces God at Death", were a 'true' statement, and our human 'evolvement' of this fact of God as a higher power is a reflection, not a result. As in, we only know about God from "Dead People". And that our incessant yanking-out-of-asses of new technology, over and over, is a consequence of our relationship with "God, the Infinite All", not, in fact, a result of a few random bags of veggies left in the sun for too long..
Look, all I'm saying is, I think Kurzweil, in wanting to 'kill religion', has overlooked it in his grand spanking arguments.. and I think he gets paid to do it that way (to the masses), or at least has developed a habit of doing that (well), lockstep like, by promoting the grandeur of 'forward thinking'.
I'm not actually a religious person, and am quite a techno-nerd in my own way, but I do believe in a higher power (concept)
i could put [(void *)(void *)();] on a t-shirt one of these days..
I'm Australian, but haven't lived there for almost 20 years.. and I have to say that every time I go back to visit, it just seems like the sun gets hotter and hotter, and stings more and more, each year.
It blew my mind to see kids being raised wearing full body swimsuits normally... my friends can't believe me when I tell them I don't live in Australia because of the weather.. then they go there, and come back fully understanding..
Are you really saying that you think the only difference between whether something is evil or not is whether people were forced into doing it against their own will?
sex programs to improve the breeding stock and remove pollutants from the genepool so as to produce 'healthier future germans' were couched in just as comfy terms as the trans-humanists are proposing..
I'm an avid fan of Kurzweil, so I may be biased here.
its okay, i don't mind admitting to earning flame points and after all lets be honest, this is slashdot. i'm not expecting intelligent conversation, so hopefully neither do you..
but i do mean militant:
You bring up some potentially valid points. While Kurzweil does occasionally present brief mention of potential ethical implications of technological advances, this is far from the focus of his work and is never adequately addressed. However, this has no negative bearing on the merit of his conclusions and predictions
'negative bearing'? i consider (Infinite Reality > Singularity) a bearing, negative or not. what argument ignores bearing?.. which is probably one of the reasons why he sees nothing wrong with it. But the question still remains, how is he in any way being militant? Not addressing the ethical implications of technology as a consequence of limiting the scope of one's work somehow equates to militance? Fascism even? What?
militant, 1. Fighting or warring.
you can't get a more sinister representation of mans desire to enact "War on All" than the design of nanites to do 'Gods Housekeeping', just so a privileged few can live forever while the seething masses starve.
for just once, i'd like to see science embrace death, and abandon all technology which kills more than it feeds.
don't give me a faster computer or a smaller one, or a new electric RFID cattleprod for my colon, give me instead a musical instrument that'll last 10,000 years that i can give to my son..
Slashdot Mirror
you think you've got it bad? in my day, we had to sing songs and create culture to keep our data alive, and if anyone went out of key, its abort, retry, fail time again
Why is it that virtually everything I read on slashdot, I've already seen on the AP/Reuters wire stories from my paper?
/. blather ..
why is it so hard to understand that aggregation is a good thing if all you have open is a web-browser with slashdot in it, and no time for other web-cruising?
many people use slashdot as their home page, just to catch up on news for nerds in between Real Work. having interesting nerd-related articles pop up in this list of news items is a feature, not a problem.
not everyone has the time and energy to stay on the bleeding edge of the news-o-sphere. i'm quite happy getting my 'mainstream news-for-nerds headlines' mixed in with the rest of the usual
but then, i've been a slashdotter since the beginning, i drank the kool-aid early..
There are lots of other places to use SVG besides on the Web.
I count 15 SVG-capable Cell Phones at my local cell-mart, actually.
It seems to me, if Desktop computers don't implement SVG, they're going to be eaten alive by the Cell Phone Giant.
What I think they're overlooking is that the "Integration" problem of Linux is something that used to be, and still is, a problem for the Computer Operator (he who came before 'sysadmins'), and that seperating this 'problem' into different roles of administration, you actually put the User/Operator positions into a better perspective.
Integration isn't supposed to be a user problem. Its supposed to be a problem of the person who is setting up and responsible for the computing system being used in the business case.
Microsoft have made a great deal of hoop-lah over the years over the fact that "you don't need a sysadmin to run Windows"
But it seems to me that, conveniently, they're overlooking the fact that Linux, in fact, makes better Computer Operators; you don't really get a fully-Integrated computing system based on Linux without at least performing some of the 'old-school' functions of the Computer Operations hat. And, if you put that hat on and do the job properly, regardless of if its full-time or not, while using Linux you actually learn the bits you need in order to maintain the operator function during the course of use of the system by the business.
I believe in the separation between "Operator" (what some people call 'Administrator') and "User", and I believe that OS's that provide modular functionality for the "Operator" to apply in building a working, productive computing system end up in a better "User" experience. One thing I have always abhorred about the Microsoft way is that they seem to have tried to build one tool that does many jobs; e.g. I don't want to have to use a GUI if all the machine is going to do is serve files
I've survived many a bush fire with nothing but a damp potato sack for my miseries, and much as I despise the negative impact we've had on this land, I can tell you that its a beautiful thing indeed to walk around the scorched Aussie landscape for weeks after the event, watching new life grow
Australia is a beautiful place, so truly uniqe. Its a good thing that, at least, we are discussing its management, and our effect, and the demise so far, intelligently at least
I don't believe Linux is innovative, and I see that pervading the entire open source movement.
..
maybe you see that in the bits you see, but it seems to me there are bits you're not seeing.
Linux is innovative. anyone who doesn't think so, probably hasn't built themselves an OpenEmbedded image, a GoboLinux USB-fob, a custom firewall boot-CD, a compute-server-room feeding a national ISP, a system of low-power MIPS boxes buried in the desert watching water supplies, a surf-board manufacturing fileserver, a tftp'able boot-image for the stereo, a terrabyte fileserver with streaming, an old-school MAMEbox
Linux is a desktop, but Linux can be far, far, far, far more things than a Microsoft binary release, to far more people. Linux is a desktop, Linux is not just a desktop, Linux is a car display, Linux is a fileserver, Linux is a synthesizer, etc. it need not be 'anyones way but your own' with Linux; the rule is the code is open, its up to you to make it work.
the problem with bothering with Microsoft propaganda is that it frames you, straight away, into an either/or argument on their terms. to argue against "Linux versus Microsoft" means "Linux as a desktop" versus "The Microsoft Universe". who cares about the desktop any more? there is no desktop.
i agree with you
then, i switched. from SGI to Apple. pretty much right away.
intel hasn't interested me as a platform in a long time; sure its cheap and 'fast', but that all just adds up to letting crappy code get away with more and more bloat. i'm quite happy building my full system image on a 200mhz processor. the point is, its amazing how classy code can get, when it doesn't get the bleeding edge CPU to run on and therefore has to be better than 'commodity software' ever would be on 'generic platform'..
if SGI fought back against the powerbook in ways we could well only expect from the 'ghost of SGI mythos', and released itself a truly tornado-chasing laptop worthy of the logo (the old one i mean, not the new Word doc.. ack, pft! that ain't no logo!)
no need to chase Apple into the Intel storm, either.
SGI: put an 8-processor MIPS-based system in a very sexy aluminum box, with good screen, and put your OS guys to work on the GPL again.. make it a 'portable compute-system laptop', and you have an -instant- hit.
but alas, SGI have completely lost touch with their old rock and roll hardware spirit. I hope Nintendo buys them.. there might be hope in those crazy manga quarters, anyway
SGI, make a laptop. Make a laptop. Make a laptop.
okay, thats a subtle difference. as long as microsoft look like they're introducing something new, they're innovating.
.. its looking like microsoft is innovating, by looking like its innovating ..
right. puts this entire 'story' in light, doesn't it
umm .. they -killed- the Tablet PC (Dauphin DTR-1 anyone?) until such a time as they had control over how people were going to 'do' Tablet PC's ..
because i honestly want to know what people think microsoft have innovated?
you know, i really don't think he knows what that word means:
innovate: 1. To begin or introduce (something new) for or as if for the first time. 2. To begin or introduce something new.
what has microsoft introduced lately that is so new? i honestly don't know: i haven't used microsoft products seriously in 10 years. they're not even on my radar any more.
for a moment there i thought the headline said "Apple to Become Wirehead Provider".
/puts the Protector back in its closet ..
phew.
.. that if you create content, the OSI model owns you ..
My Girlfriend is Austrian... so based on my recent indoctrinations, I'll also add:
- Everything is better in Wien
- If you speak German, you don't speak Viennese.
- Wien is the only baroque city. There are no others.
oooh ... reactionary. never expected that.
..
i'm not 'calling for thought oughtlaw', nor am i saying we should abandon technology. i am saying, however, that technologists with no ethics sense are the new source of fascism, and your post proves it
consider that Jeff Minter .. is .. working .. for .. / .. with .. Microsoft .. on .. a .. potentially cool .. gaming .. platform.
arrrggh!!! fuck embracing and extending the reality bubbles bill, i just wanna cry!
I believe you are equating his belief in a path that may support such militarism as militant. For Kurzweil to be militant he would have to be "fighting or warring" to enforce his belief on other people.
i believe you are missing the point that i said 'militant technologism'; ray is saying "no matter what, humanity will evolve technology which produces the singularity, and then it will take over and rule us all". so, we would be being a kind of lets-just-say- ''God'' to one of our products, and it, eventually, our Enslaved Entity, would have to turn around and kill us because of who we are to it.
As 'we did to God', in the 20th Century.
The point is, where's the enslavement? Well, if you don't know a slave by how many cell phones/pagers he's burning oil to support, then maybe we should talk about cars and cities
Seriously.
We killed God, now do nothing but dastardly deals with technology, and yet in the end, no matter what, we will all face a slippery spinning barrel to bend over on the Last Day of Our Lives
To put it on a familiar context, let me wax silly and ask this question: What if in fact, "Every man faces God at Death", were a 'true' statement, and our human 'evolvement' of this fact of God as a higher power is a reflection, not a result. As in, we only know about God from "Dead People". And that our incessant yanking-out-of-asses of new technology, over and over, is a consequence of our relationship with "God, the Infinite All", not, in fact, a result of a few random bags of veggies left in the sun for too long
Look, all I'm saying is, I think Kurzweil, in wanting to 'kill religion', has overlooked it in his grand spanking arguments
I'm not actually a religious person, and am quite a techno-nerd in my own way, but I do believe in a higher power (concept)
i could put [(void *)(void *)();] on a t-shirt one of these days..
I'm Australian, but haven't lived there for almost 20 years .. and I have to say that every time I go back to visit, it just seems like the sun gets hotter and hotter, and stings more and more, each year.
... my friends can't believe me when I tell them I don't live in Australia because of the weather .. then they go there, and come back fully understanding..
It blew my mind to see kids being raised wearing full body swimsuits normally
how to boil a frog.
So you know what boiled frog tastes like, then?
Are you really saying that you think the only difference between whether something is evil or not is whether people were forced into doing it against their own will?
Nothing short of some sort of anti-technology fascism is going to halt humans from advancing knowledge.
Kurzweil Ignores Religion At His Own Peril.
umm
sex programs to improve the breeding stock and remove pollutants from the genepool so as to produce 'healthier future germans' were couched in just as comfy terms as the trans-humanists are proposing..
I'm an avid fan of Kurzweil, so I may be biased here.
.. which is probably one of the reasons why he sees nothing wrong with it. But the question still remains, how is he in any way being militant? Not addressing the ethical implications of technology as a consequence of limiting the scope of one's work somehow equates to militance? Fascism even? What?
its okay, i don't mind admitting to earning flame points and after all lets be honest, this is slashdot. i'm not expecting intelligent conversation, so hopefully neither do you..
but i do mean militant:
You bring up some potentially valid points. While Kurzweil does occasionally present brief mention of potential ethical implications of technological advances, this is far from the focus of his work and is never adequately addressed. However, this has no negative bearing on the merit of his conclusions and predictions
'negative bearing'? i consider (Infinite Reality > Singularity) a bearing, negative or not. what argument ignores bearing?
militant, 1. Fighting or warring.
you can't get a more sinister representation of mans desire to enact "War on All" than the design of nanites to do 'Gods Housekeeping', just so a privileged few can live forever while the seething masses starve.
for just once, i'd like to see science embrace death, and abandon all technology which kills more than it feeds.
don't give me a faster computer or a smaller one, or a new electric RFID cattleprod for my colon, give me instead a musical instrument that'll last 10,000 years that i can give to my son..