Torvalds should be admired ...
on
The Stallman Factor
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
... for not really giving a f*&# what others think about him at the end of the day. He knows what's real: the code; everything else is an affectation. I agree that the world would be a better place if people spent more time acting and less time bitching. At the very least, one's own life is better that way.
Of course, Bitkeeper is a relatively minor issue. If, fortune forbid, the Linux project were to face a substantial crisis in of some sort, hopefully he'll have the balls to act the same way.
If wealthy folks want to shell out big $$ to shoot themselves up into space, better for us -- they are voluntarily subsidizing manned space flight, and by extension space research, for the benefit of mankind. This is one step towards commercializing (and thereby individualizing) space development.
The article notes the objection of global warming skeptics as if there is scientific consensus that a) the build-up of so-called "greenhouses gases" causes the Greenhouse Effect (probably true) and b) that an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases is anthropogenic (probably false):
So even as the evidence grows that earth's climate is warming and that people are responsible for at least part of the change, the toughness of the modeling problem is often cited by those who oppose international action to cut the emissions of heat-trapping gases.
Yes, the Earth is warming in some areas, e.g. Siberia. But, this is totally expected if you look on a geological timescale, vis-a-vis the Ice Age cycle. The debate is centered on whether or not man or natural processes (cycles of flora and fauna, volcanoes) are driving the current trend. I have not seen any convincing evidence to support the existence of anthropogenic phenomenon, and plenty to support the existence of natural phenomenon.
There has not been a single case of genetically modified foods causing illness or death in any creature, except in those designed to perish (crop pests, for example); the "StarLink allergy" has been debunked. In the meantime, ignorant and cruel enviro-freaks are preventing high-yield, hyper-nutrient products from reaching those who need it most -- the famished in Third World countries.
Biotech companies are doing great work; it seems that the environmental movement has been hijacked by horribly misguided souls who want to coerce us into reverting to the Stone Age. They are controlling the dialectic, and even the Slashdot editors are falling for their anti-human crap.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Tolkien's remark deeper than it looks ...
on
Lord of the Geeks
·
· Score: 4
Just because Tolkien dispenses with allegory, does not mean he disavows metaphor. LOTR has strong, undeniable themes, which if they match real life, do so by accident. In fact, all great art is like this: themes are important for the most basic reasons, abstracting the metaphysics of man and his creations, having nothing to do with concretes directly. Tokien skillfully (and artfully) creates his own universe, but one we can relate to, then is off to the races as a storyteller.
The author, Julian Dibbell, must take a naturalistic view of art, where the world recreated must be a "slice of life" rather than an original creation. How stultifying, and sad. Tolkien eschews this arrested development to embrace fantasy Romanticism, and did an amazing job of it.
This is not to say, of course, that I like everything about Tolkien. His prose doesn't flow like and F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ralph Ellison, but that's but a quibble.
There is one basic problem with the US system: the FCC considers airwaves public instead of private property. As such, they can "license" bands, and then continue their meddling. If one thinks about it, this gives great aid to the license holders, in this case mega-corporations. If the airwaves were treated like real estate, the licensees would have to watch their backs.
Here is a Cato Institute paper on the issue, titled "Property Rights in Radio Communication: The Key to Reform of Telecommunications Regulation." Obviously, it's about radio, but the same principles apply to TV.
Metal foil: And hope there isn't enough transmitted power to take the current in the foil to the resistive limit.
Fine metal mesh: Better than foil because it acts like a Faraday cage, but still has the same limitation.
Directional metal mesh The wires running one direction and those at 90 deg. to the first group are electrically insulated from each other. Then, you can hook up the two wire groups to resistors with safe heat dissipation.
Animal power is also dramatically more efficient compared to fossil fuels, since our little cellular engines are quite efficient.
That might be true in terms of chemical caloric content in the foodstuffs we ingest, but not when you also count agricultural, marketing and distribution energy costs. Our omnivorous diet doesn't help either. Also, is it more efficient strap 100 horses to a car, or just have a finely-tuned four-cylinder 2.0 liter motor?
However, clean energy is generally a mask for electric engines that require fossil fuel burning at a power plant instead of on the road. They help places where loads of cars congregate, but they don't help the global picture.
Fossil fuel power plants win hands-down in both cost efficiency and enviro-friendliness due to the powers of scale. If you divide the energy produced by a large coal-fired plant in a day by the amount of harmful emissions over the same time frame, the dearth of emissions is actually quite remarkable.
If a substantial portion of people use SMALLER gas powered transportation, we save a LOT of total gas and energy usage, of the sort whose CO2/O2 cycle is thousands of years long. And perhaps it would be more popular (result in more savings) than trying to get people to use their own power.
Now that makes sense! However, if you've ever been accelerated from 0-to-60 in 5.0s in a 400hp car, you'll understand how difficult it is to convince people that the environmental savings are worth it; you wouldn't be able to convince me. Perhaps, a suitable alternative is a 150hp motorcycle that can take you from 0-to-60 in under 2.0s...
So what? Due to the wonders of global capitalism, energy is a pure commodity. Therefore, people who are willing to pay more for gas can enjoy the fruits of their labor with this fun device.
The two-stroke Bushpig model may not be that environmentally friendly, but the four-stroke Stealthman can't be that bad. Besides, how efficient is it, really, to burn food and take 30min. to get to work on a bicycle, when you can get there in half the time with one of these? To do a given amount of work in a given context, animal power is not always more enviro-friendly than machine power. If you want to bitch and moan, counter that having entertaining devices like the Wheelman disincentives forcibly packing ourselves into subway cars.
Yeah, I didn't notice that (I submitted the story). While I don't know for this specific case, two-stroke motors usually have more punch (torque) at lower RPMs than four-strokers, esp. at smaller displacements. This is why most off-road bikes use two-stroke enginees, while most on-road bikes use four-stroke engines for smoother power delivery, quieter operations and greater fuel economy.
If I get a Wheelman, I'll get the Stealthman model so I can fill up convenienty at my friendly neighborhood gas station.
Well, I wouldn't want it to be all or nothing, lest PDAs be unusable! I am talking about the desktop, and using the appliance paradigm as an argumentative device. I do this because that's what the Raskin article is about -- transforming general computer use. As you yourself have eloquently pointed out, an exclusive distributed-app paradigm is as unsuitable for general desktop/workstation use as total localization is for a PDA.
Of course getting your apps by web is convenient. It's also convenient to get your shaving kit handed to you, so you don't have to actually have to wake every morning wondering if you'll run out. The trade off, of course, is the freedom to do with your shaving kit as you damn well please. Sharpen the blade, chuck it, run it over with your car, what have you.
Now, I think that being able to check your mail via an wireless-capable PDA is the bomb, but would you want the entirety of your computing experience to be that way? I want my email and my work and my music to reside on my machine, and nobody else's. I am merely pointing out the possibility that many people, not just I, have this sense of territory, privacy, ownership. This sense of having a "home" in cyberspace will never change, as backward as techno-evangelists find it.
The "computer as appliance" vision is stultifying. There's a reason a computer has totally general input (keyboard, mouse) and output (pixel-based monitor, sound) devices -- people want their workspace to be totally abstracted from the hardware in which it resides. In this sense, the modern OS totally accomplishes its task in that the creation, installation and usage of applications are usually only limited by dev time and performance. Thereby, we humans can let our imaginations run wild.
Handhelds and kitchen-counter-top Internet appliances have a totally different engineering goal: "What the hell is Bob's phone number?" or "Mommy, can I check my email before dinner?" Just because a user wants to have total convenience in one context does not mean he or she desires the trade-off in flexibility in another. The workstation paradigm still has its place.
As for those who say that Internet-distributed apps via Mozilla-XUL or MS-.NET are the future, you are omitting an important human element: Territory. My workstation is my territory; I want to control it's config to suit my tastes, I want to determine its design tradeoffs (e.g. speed v. portability), etc. I would not be comfortable with getting all my apps via the Net no matter the speed, for it would just as weird as living in barracks and getting my toiletries by ration every morning.
There is a serious "engineering tradeoff" with neural networks: You are exchanging reliability and precision for creativity and flexibility. How much unreliability and imprecision are you willing to stand in your home automation?
Imagine if your goldfish was running the lights in your family room...
The top-bracket federal tax rate will have risen to over 50%. Denmark will have a national inferiority crisis when it wonders how the US could have a more replete welfare state.
Despite all the tax revenue, the US space program will be stuck in Earth-orbit. On the other hand, we will all have handheld PDAs capable of playing Quake at nearly 1000fps with full-3D visor display output capability.
In a related development, the Quake13 engine will be licensed primarily by enterprising pornographers.
The Internet will become totally wireless except for the fattest connections.
Fusion will still not be viable, but gas and methanol fired power plants will become the norm.
Microsoft will have a plurality in OS market share. It would be a majority, but a new, unexpected competitor will have come to market.
The article states that there is a 1 in 250 chance a piece of debris will hit somebody. This means that any one person has a 1 in 250 * 6 billion = 1.5 trillion chance of getting nailed.
If anyone's worried about this, they should coat themselves immediately with liquid rubber (available at hardware stores) to protect against lightning, ebola and cooties.
The first time I read Stallman's manifesto, the first thing that popped into my mind was, "Information wants to be free?" Now, FSF advocates under close scrutiny will admit that this only works as a figurative statement, but the fact of the matter is that Stallman uses it as base for his ethics of intellectual property.
What people need to realize is that information is such (vis-a-vis white noise) because someone put effort into creating it; to say that information has some intrinsic quality, or worse desire, to be free is ascribe behavior that is downright anthropomorphic to well-defined, abstract concept. That it is infinitely duplicable does not mean that there is not compensation due; a person is providing you a service, and you should reimburse that person for his time and effort. I like the author's charge: If you don't like the pay music, create and distribute free music.
To this end, I like Stephen King's revenue model: Honesty. He writes "Don't steal from the blind newsboy;" he has successfully gambled that people will pay the small one time fee to experience his work, not just out of grace ("patronage"), but due to a sense of ethics ("captialism").
Brian Martin's first objection of principle against intellectual property is that it is intrinsically a "social product." So, if I make, say, a microwave from scratch and wish to sell it, I can only charge you for parts, since I should be paying fiscal homage to everyone from Maxwell (E&M) to Joseph Bardeen (transistor)? Or how about my great-to-some-power-grandmother, since I am a derivative of some grueling interval of 9 months for her? His fallacy is to malign the nature of the work, rather than accepting that the nature of the product is different, and gunning for the ethical basis of property in general.
Another criticism he makes is against the economy of "deserving." I agree with this -- let there be a free-market of intellectual property, where the social value is irrelevant to the extrinsic. I must say I am non-plussed by reading a critique against socialist ethics housed inside an anti-IP strawman.
Really, the only objection that I have read that holds water is the Though Control thesis (promulgated by RMS, among others); its downfall, though, is the intrincism of "information wants to be free."
Python and Java are quite similar but for the grand depature in syntax, as you have stated. Java is like C(++), Python is like few else (Makefiles?).
I think Python's syntax is great. If you are like me, and already write code that is visually organized to the point of being painful, then Python is a godsend, because it forces everyone else to be as anal as you. Even Ruby does not enforce this because it has textual block terminators, i.e. "end". I find C(++)/Java code can be downright nasty, though Perl, with it's C-like syntax and natural language paradigm, seems to unashamedly encourage unaesthetic "poetry."
If Python has a weeknesses, they are:
No protection for internal objects, though this can be partially remedied by translating to C and compiling (use the awesome py2c utility).
Little support for bit-basic objects -- bit shifting, block object casting, etc. For example, can you write a full-fledged disk-real filesystem easily in Python? There are the marshall and pickle modules, but this is bolted-on functionality.
All in all, I would say that Python makes as functional a scripting language as Java, Javascript or VB, i.e. be watchful of bloat and security problems. Overall, however, Python is superior because it has syntax so clean that it's damn near pseudo-code. I'd like to think I'm not a zealot on the the syntax bit, but objectively, I am.
Lessig's article is about the pragmatic motivations for IP policy; the reader posts are volleying on the same foundation. What about basic property rights? If I create an IP product, be it a song, program or article, should I not have full property rights? Why should this basic right be abrogated in the case of corporations?
The Constitution is a fabulous piece of work, but the artificial provision for patents is incongruous and infuriating. Instead of contextualizing IP as a human right (like press, speech, religion, etc.), the Framers prop it up using "promotion of progress." This is clearly a collectivist argument. What we need is a dialogue about the precise nature of property rights; the policy details would be easy to codify thereafter.
Perhaps, the Slashdot community cares about rights as long as they apply to the masses -- how sad.
Passphrase cracking It is absolutely true that even brute force methods reveal passphrases in a few weeks, if not minutes, depending on the creativity of the passphrase. This means that it is important for two conventions to be followed:
Change passphrases, every, say, 2 weeks. This is only a minor inconvenience; it can be done without generating a new key pair on most encryption systems (e.g. GnuPG), which is a big plus when keys must be signed by other parties.
Stipulate certain passphrase qualities on entry, to somewhat counter user carelessness/stupidity.
Persistence of personal data Most companies keep hard records anyway, though they require back-breaking work to search and cross-index instead of using a few script commands. However, the objection is valid in the sense that digital signatures and watermarks have optimal fidelity and are difficult to dispute, unless a breach of security can be demonstrated. Any con with enough practice can replicate a handwritten signature such that even experienced counterfeit-detection experts have difficulty spotting a fake.
Cracking and signatures Encryption is not a far leap from digital authentication; SSL is considered secure, and soon all transactions will be considered so if they travel over IPSec or the ilk. In terms of public confidence, concerns for both sides of cryptography in commerce must be addressed, particularly if the same encryption platform is used for authentication and encryptions, as with OpenPGP.
Confidence in identity Ideally, getting a trust certification for a key pair should be as easy as getting a driver's license or passport... er, bad examples. Say, if you already have a driver's license or passport, you could go to a notary and have his/her well-known key sign yours. If proper passphrase practices are implemented, then this should be a one-time inconvenience (unless you want multiple keys).
The increases in efficiency and organization are obvious. However, people are uncomfortable with the supposed security flaws. Some issues which I consider myths:
It's all over if a cracker takes my private key! Well, would he/she not still need a passphrase? Just make sure passwords are not cached (this, I admit, is the weak link). Also, you can issue revocation certificates; even if someone else knows the passphrase and has your key, they cannot revoke a revocation certificate.
Then the government/corporation/slashdot-satan-for-today will know who I am! Yes, just like with your handwritten signature on any official document, esp. those requiring notarization.
My encrypted stuff can be cracked! This takes an immense amount of computer power, and most people are simply not that important. How would you encrypt things at all without computer cryptography? You could be like Richard Feynman, and create codes with your spouse to send encrypted hand-written love letters, but I personally don't have the time or mischievious inclination for that.
When I get a signed email from some beautiful celebrity who wants to go out with me, how do I know it's her? That's why all public keys that matter are themselves signed by authentication services, like VeriSign. For personal keys, use these services or maybe the notaries at your local banks will catch on to another money-making opportunity.
Any disagreements? Am I missing any critical factors?
It's simply a matter of time before XFree86 4.x becomes viable for use by everybody; what we need is a similar commitment by the hardware manufacturers (e.g. Creative, which is currently an OpenAL SIG member) to quickly produce OpenAL drivers so that the essential differences between Windows and Linux gaming are the essential differences between the two operating systems.
As a physics major, I have experience with NMR experiments in junior lab; and "spin flipping" is critical to my research group's experiment. So, I'll take a stab at explaining the experiment in greater detail for interested parties who don't appreciate Wired's liberal use of jargon...
A qubit, as the article says, is a quantum bit. All this means is that there is some quantum system/subsystem where some quality, like spin or energy, can be decomposed into precisely to two states. An ananology would Fourier's theorem: Broadly speaking, it says that you can decompose any "nice" function into an infinite sum of sines and cosines. The quantum world is cool because often, just two basis functions, up and down, are needed to completely (a pun, for you math people) describe a space in which that numerical quality resides.
Such is the case here. The scientists, if I am not mistaken, are manipulating spin. Spin is a fundamental quantity in "classical" quantum mechanics; the spin quality of spin 1/2 particles, like electrons, can be wrestled out of special relativity (first finagled by Dirac); arbitrary spin falls out of special relativity + quantum field theory (if you know group theory, it's pretty simple:-).
Now, I think this experiment uses spin 1/2 particles, i.e. particles whose total "intrinsic angular momentum" is equal to h/(4*pi), where h is Planck's constant. The cool thing about spin 1/2 particles is that their space is completely described by two components, up and down. This is because h/(2*pi) is the smallest angular momentum quantum you can have, so in order for the possible states to be "legal," the differences between any pair of them must be a multiple of h/(2*pi). But since spin 1/2 particles have a total spin of h/(4*pi), the only possible states are -h/(4*pi) and +h/(4*pi).
So what's the deal with NMR? Well, NMR is nothing more than a method for manipulating/measuring spins/magnetic states using electromagnetic radiation. So, if the molecules in question are placed in a magnetic field, then there will be an energy difference between the up, down, and "mixed" states contingent on the alignment of spins w.r.t. to the direction of the magnetic field. This is as if it were possible for a compass to get stuck in the "south" position -- there's some potential energy caught up in there. In the quantum world, one can shoot a photon a system in the "north," or up, state and have it jump to "south," or down, or high-energy state. The simple requirements for the photon: It must have an energy equal to the difference in energy of the two states; and, it must carry the appropriate amount of angular momentum, important for more complex situations. So, these scientists have been able to manipulate bits by shooting radio waves at'em.
So why are 7-qubit systems important? Because, in addition to the "external" or ambient magnetic field, each little particle that has a magnetic moment also generates a magnetic field. Having a "strongly interacting" multi-qubit system gives you a much more reliable bit, because when some flip due to a photon, the stragglers are more likely to flip as well. This will help avoid the dreaded mixed states that can screw with your data in untraceable ways. As noted by Wineland of NIST, this cute strategy has sharply diminishing returns past 15.
The "trans-crotonic" acid is probably just some acid which is transparent to the NMR frequencies they're working at, and is nice all around for refractions, etc.
There is a simple, but informative page at UCSD that has pretty pictures showing what I've been blabbering about...
Slashdot Mirror
Of course, Bitkeeper is a relatively minor issue. If, fortune forbid, the Linux project were to face a substantial crisis in of some sort, hopefully he'll have the balls to act the same way.
If wealthy folks want to shell out big $$ to shoot themselves up into space, better for us -- they are voluntarily subsidizing manned space flight, and by extension space research, for the benefit of mankind. This is one step towards commercializing (and thereby individualizing) space development.
Isn't that Detlef Schrempf? He certainly didn't play for free while in the NBA!
... ;-)
I wonder if that's a bias towards SuSE
The article notes the objection of global warming skeptics as if there is scientific consensus that a) the build-up of so-called "greenhouses gases" causes the Greenhouse Effect (probably true) and b) that an increase in the concentration of greenhouse gases is anthropogenic (probably false):
Yes, the Earth is warming in some areas, e.g. Siberia. But, this is totally expected if you look on a geological timescale, vis-a-vis the Ice Age cycle. The debate is centered on whether or not man or natural processes (cycles of flora and fauna, volcanoes) are driving the current trend. I have not seen any convincing evidence to support the existence of anthropogenic phenomenon, and plenty to support the existence of natural phenomenon.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
There has not been a single case of genetically modified foods causing illness or death in any creature, except in those designed to perish (crop pests, for example); the "StarLink allergy" has been debunked. In the meantime, ignorant and cruel enviro-freaks are preventing high-yield, hyper-nutrient products from reaching those who need it most -- the famished in Third World countries.
Biotech companies are doing great work; it seems that the environmental movement has been hijacked by horribly misguided souls who want to coerce us into reverting to the Stone Age. They are controlling the dialectic, and even the Slashdot editors are falling for their anti-human crap.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Just because Tolkien dispenses with allegory, does not mean he disavows metaphor. LOTR has strong, undeniable themes, which if they match real life, do so by accident. In fact, all great art is like this: themes are important for the most basic reasons, abstracting the metaphysics of man and his creations, having nothing to do with concretes directly. Tokien skillfully (and artfully) creates his own universe, but one we can relate to, then is off to the races as a storyteller.
The author, Julian Dibbell, must take a naturalistic view of art, where the world recreated must be a "slice of life" rather than an original creation. How stultifying, and sad. Tolkien eschews this arrested development to embrace fantasy Romanticism, and did an amazing job of it.
This is not to say, of course, that I like everything about Tolkien. His prose doesn't flow like and F. Scott Fitzgerald or Ralph Ellison, but that's but a quibble.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
There is one basic problem with the US system: the FCC considers airwaves public instead of private property. As such, they can "license" bands, and then continue their meddling. If one thinks about it, this gives great aid to the license holders, in this case mega-corporations. If the airwaves were treated like real estate, the licensees would have to watch their backs.
Here is a Cato Institute paper on the issue, titled "Property Rights in Radio Communication: The Key to Reform of Telecommunications Regulation." Obviously, it's about radio, but the same principles apply to TV.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
There are several easy ways to protect yourself:
For the technically sophisticated rioter ....
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
That might be true in terms of chemical caloric content in the foodstuffs we ingest, but not when you also count agricultural, marketing and distribution energy costs. Our omnivorous diet doesn't help either. Also, is it more efficient strap 100 horses to a car, or just have a finely-tuned four-cylinder 2.0 liter motor?
Fossil fuel power plants win hands-down in both cost efficiency and enviro-friendliness due to the powers of scale. If you divide the energy produced by a large coal-fired plant in a day by the amount of harmful emissions over the same time frame, the dearth of emissions is actually quite remarkable.
Now that makes sense! However, if you've ever been accelerated from 0-to-60 in 5.0s in a 400hp car, you'll understand how difficult it is to convince people that the environmental savings are worth it; you wouldn't be able to convince me. Perhaps, a suitable alternative is a 150hp motorcycle that can take you from 0-to-60 in under 2.0s ...
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
So what? Due to the wonders of global capitalism, energy is a pure commodity. Therefore, people who are willing to pay more for gas can enjoy the fruits of their labor with this fun device.
The two-stroke Bushpig model may not be that environmentally friendly, but the four-stroke Stealthman can't be that bad. Besides, how efficient is it, really, to burn food and take 30min. to get to work on a bicycle, when you can get there in half the time with one of these? To do a given amount of work in a given context, animal power is not always more enviro-friendly than machine power. If you want to bitch and moan, counter that having entertaining devices like the Wheelman disincentives forcibly packing ourselves into subway cars.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Yeah, I didn't notice that (I submitted the story). While I don't know for this specific case, two-stroke motors usually have more punch (torque) at lower RPMs than four-strokers, esp. at smaller displacements. This is why most off-road bikes use two-stroke enginees, while most on-road bikes use four-stroke engines for smoother power delivery, quieter operations and greater fuel economy.
If I get a Wheelman, I'll get the Stealthman model so I can fill up convenienty at my friendly neighborhood gas station.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Well, I wouldn't want it to be all or nothing, lest PDAs be unusable! I am talking about the desktop, and using the appliance paradigm as an argumentative device. I do this because that's what the Raskin article is about -- transforming general computer use. As you yourself have eloquently pointed out, an exclusive distributed-app paradigm is as unsuitable for general desktop/workstation use as total localization is for a PDA.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Of course getting your apps by web is convenient. It's also convenient to get your shaving kit handed to you, so you don't have to actually have to wake every morning wondering if you'll run out. The trade off, of course, is the freedom to do with your shaving kit as you damn well please. Sharpen the blade, chuck it, run it over with your car, what have you.
Now, I think that being able to check your mail via an wireless-capable PDA is the bomb, but would you want the entirety of your computing experience to be that way? I want my email and my work and my music to reside on my machine, and nobody else's. I am merely pointing out the possibility that many people, not just I, have this sense of territory, privacy, ownership. This sense of having a "home" in cyberspace will never change, as backward as techno-evangelists find it.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Handhelds and kitchen-counter-top Internet appliances have a totally different engineering goal: "What the hell is Bob's phone number?" or "Mommy, can I check my email before dinner?" Just because a user wants to have total convenience in one context does not mean he or she desires the trade-off in flexibility in another. The workstation paradigm still has its place.
As for those who say that Internet-distributed apps via Mozilla-XUL or MS-.NET are the future, you are omitting an important human element: Territory. My workstation is my territory; I want to control it's config to suit my tastes, I want to determine its design tradeoffs (e.g. speed v. portability), etc. I would not be comfortable with getting all my apps via the Net no matter the speed, for it would just as weird as living in barracks and getting my toiletries by ration every morning.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
There is a serious "engineering tradeoff" with neural networks: You are exchanging reliability and precision for creativity and flexibility. How much unreliability and imprecision are you willing to stand in your home automation?
Imagine if your goldfish was running the lights in your family room ...
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Merry Festivus!
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
The article states that there is a 1 in 250 chance a piece of debris will hit somebody. This means that any one person has a 1 in 250 * 6 billion = 1.5 trillion chance of getting nailed.
If anyone's worried about this, they should coat themselves immediately with liquid rubber (available at hardware stores) to protect against lightning, ebola and cooties.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
The first time I read Stallman's manifesto, the first thing that popped into my mind was, "Information wants to be free?" Now, FSF advocates under close scrutiny will admit that this only works as a figurative statement, but the fact of the matter is that Stallman uses it as base for his ethics of intellectual property.
What people need to realize is that information is such (vis-a-vis white noise) because someone put effort into creating it; to say that information has some intrinsic quality, or worse desire, to be free is ascribe behavior that is downright anthropomorphic to well-defined, abstract concept. That it is infinitely duplicable does not mean that there is not compensation due; a person is providing you a service, and you should reimburse that person for his time and effort. I like the author's charge: If you don't like the pay music, create and distribute free music.
To this end, I like Stephen King's revenue model: Honesty. He writes "Don't steal from the blind newsboy;" he has successfully gambled that people will pay the small one time fee to experience his work, not just out of grace ("patronage"), but due to a sense of ethics ("captialism").
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Brian Martin's first objection of principle against intellectual property is that it is intrinsically a "social product." So, if I make, say, a microwave from scratch and wish to sell it, I can only charge you for parts, since I should be paying fiscal homage to everyone from Maxwell (E&M) to Joseph Bardeen (transistor)? Or how about my great-to-some-power-grandmother, since I am a derivative of some grueling interval of 9 months for her? His fallacy is to malign the nature of the work, rather than accepting that the nature of the product is different, and gunning for the ethical basis of property in general.
Another criticism he makes is against the economy of "deserving." I agree with this -- let there be a free-market of intellectual property, where the social value is irrelevant to the extrinsic. I must say I am non-plussed by reading a critique against socialist ethics housed inside an anti-IP strawman.
Really, the only objection that I have read that holds water is the Though Control thesis (promulgated by RMS, among others); its downfall, though, is the intrincism of "information wants to be free."
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Python and Java are quite similar but for the grand depature in syntax, as you have stated. Java is like C(++), Python is like few else (Makefiles?).
I think Python's syntax is great. If you are like me, and already write code that is visually organized to the point of being painful, then Python is a godsend, because it forces everyone else to be as anal as you. Even Ruby does not enforce this because it has textual block terminators, i.e. "end". I find C(++)/Java code can be downright nasty, though Perl, with it's C-like syntax and natural language paradigm, seems to unashamedly encourage unaesthetic "poetry."
If Python has a weeknesses, they are:
All in all, I would say that Python makes as functional a scripting language as Java, Javascript or VB, i.e. be watchful of bloat and security problems. Overall, however, Python is superior because it has syntax so clean that it's damn near pseudo-code. I'd like to think I'm not a zealot on the the syntax bit, but objectively, I am.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
Lessig's article is about the pragmatic motivations for IP policy; the reader posts are volleying on the same foundation. What about basic property rights? If I create an IP product, be it a song, program or article, should I not have full property rights? Why should this basic right be abrogated in the case of corporations?
The Constitution is a fabulous piece of work, but the artificial provision for patents is incongruous and infuriating. Instead of contextualizing IP as a human right (like press, speech, religion, etc.), the Framers prop it up using "promotion of progress." This is clearly a collectivist argument. What we need is a dialogue about the precise nature of property rights; the policy details would be easy to codify thereafter.
Perhaps, the Slashdot community cares about rights as long as they apply to the masses -- how sad.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
- It's all over if a cracker takes my private key! Well, would he/she not still need a passphrase? Just make sure passwords are not cached (this, I admit, is the weak link). Also, you can issue revocation certificates; even if someone else knows the passphrase and has your key, they cannot revoke a revocation certificate.
- Then the government/corporation/slashdot-satan-for-today will know who I am! Yes, just like with your handwritten signature on any official document, esp. those requiring notarization.
- My encrypted stuff can be cracked! This takes an immense amount of computer power, and most people are simply not that important. How would you encrypt things at all without computer cryptography? You could be like Richard Feynman, and create codes with your spouse to send encrypted hand-written love letters, but I personally don't have the time or mischievious inclination for that.
- When I get a signed email from some beautiful celebrity who wants to go out with me, how do I know it's her? That's why all public keys that matter are themselves signed by authentication services, like VeriSign. For personal keys, use these services or maybe the notaries at your local banks will catch on to another money-making opportunity.
Any disagreements? Am I missing any critical factors?*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
It's simply a matter of time before XFree86 4.x becomes viable for use by everybody; what we need is a similar commitment by the hardware manufacturers (e.g. Creative, which is currently an OpenAL SIG member) to quickly produce OpenAL drivers so that the essential differences between Windows and Linux gaming are the essential differences between the two operating systems.
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***
A qubit, as the article says, is a quantum bit. All this means is that there is some quantum system/subsystem where some quality, like spin or energy, can be decomposed into precisely to two states. An ananology would Fourier's theorem: Broadly speaking, it says that you can decompose any "nice" function into an infinite sum of sines and cosines. The quantum world is cool because often, just two basis functions, up and down, are needed to completely (a pun, for you math people) describe a space in which that numerical quality resides.
Such is the case here. The scientists, if I am not mistaken, are manipulating spin. Spin is a fundamental quantity in "classical" quantum mechanics; the spin quality of spin 1/2 particles, like electrons, can be wrestled out of special relativity (first finagled by Dirac); arbitrary spin falls out of special relativity + quantum field theory (if you know group theory, it's pretty simple :-).
Now, I think this experiment uses spin 1/2 particles, i.e. particles whose total "intrinsic angular momentum" is equal to h/(4*pi), where h is Planck's constant. The cool thing about spin 1/2 particles is that their space is completely described by two components, up and down. This is because h/(2*pi) is the smallest angular momentum quantum you can have, so in order for the possible states to be "legal," the differences between any pair of them must be a multiple of h/(2*pi). But since spin 1/2 particles have a total spin of h/(4*pi), the only possible states are -h/(4*pi) and +h/(4*pi).
So what's the deal with NMR? Well, NMR is nothing more than a method for manipulating/measuring spins/magnetic states using electromagnetic radiation. So, if the molecules in question are placed in a magnetic field, then there will be an energy difference between the up, down, and "mixed" states contingent on the alignment of spins w.r.t. to the direction of the magnetic field. This is as if it were possible for a compass to get stuck in the "south" position -- there's some potential energy caught up in there. In the quantum world, one can shoot a photon a system in the "north," or up, state and have it jump to "south," or down, or high-energy state. The simple requirements for the photon: It must have an energy equal to the difference in energy of the two states; and, it must carry the appropriate amount of angular momentum, important for more complex situations. So, these scientists have been able to manipulate bits by shooting radio waves at'em.
So why are 7-qubit systems important? Because, in addition to the "external" or ambient magnetic field, each little particle that has a magnetic moment also generates a magnetic field. Having a "strongly interacting" multi-qubit system gives you a much more reliable bit, because when some flip due to a photon, the stragglers are more likely to flip as well. This will help avoid the dreaded mixed states that can screw with your data in untraceable ways. As noted by Wineland of NIST, this cute strategy has sharply diminishing returns past 15.
The "trans-crotonic" acid is probably just some acid which is transparent to the NMR frequencies they're working at, and is nice all around for refractions, etc.
There is a simple, but informative page at UCSD that has pretty pictures showing what I've been blabbering about ...
I hope I've been helpful w/o being condescending!
*** Proven iconoclast, aspiring epicurean ***