Cringely's current article has his take on SCO. He mentioned that he wouldn't be surprised to find Microsoft bankrolling the legal,even though he wasn't predicting it either.
In the end though, he concedes he doesn't know what is going on, and neither do other people in the field. Me? I'm guessing it will end up being a totally ill-informed upper managemnet decision that is going to roll heads.
No matter how good the 4th disc of extras is, I still can't believe that they aren't including commentary. It only takes 2 hours to do (well, 6 for the series) and it can be anything, talk about making it, impressions about seeing it again, etc.
Starcraft has been the most engaging game I've ever played. I can't stop playing it, but more significantly, I can't stop thinking about it. I come up with strategies, think over losses, ponder better ways to integrate my units. As long as BNet exists, there will always be human punks to go against to keep sharp.
It's in Software Update even if manually installed
on
Safari Beta 2 Available
·
· Score: 1, Redundant
I got it from Apple's site to start with. It looks and feels like v71, but I've only played with v73 for 10 half an hour. I just checked SoftwareUpdate and the update shows up, even with the manual installation running. We'll see what happens when I run it.
Wrong. Japan is the place for cutting edge consumer electronics, but computers don't fall into that category. Japanese computers and components are always more expensive for what you get than what is available in the US. I've lived here for almost 4 years now and have seen the prices come way down, but its still expensive.
Plus she'll be stuck with a Japanese layout keyboard. letters are standard QWERTY, but useful punctuation is all funky, like Shift+2 for quotes " and shift+7 for apostrophes '. The @ is to the right of the P key and doesn't require a modifier-key to use though:-) I ordered my laptop from the states and made a trip home to get it so I wouldn't be stuck with that stuff.
Apple's computers are almost exactly the same price as they are in the US. The slight elevated expense offsets shipping and pads daily currency fluctuations, so if she did buy over here, Apple would be a good deal. If she buys at the apple.co.jp Apple Store, she can order an American keyboard layout too.
I'd recommend an iBook and maybe wait a little bit. Word on the street is that a speed bump is coming across the line. But the OS is excellent and the Japanese support is great. Be sure to have her check out the Character Palette.
Also, check out the JEDict application. Its an incredible Japn/Engl dictionary that also has contextual menu (ctrl+click!) translation support that is indispensable! The Omnigroup applications OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner are important too.
I hope she enjoys the computer and the time over here. I love it,
This is good news, only one more to go
on
Myth II Carbonized
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
Myth: The Total Codex was the first computer game I ever played, and loved it. Didn't actually finish Myth II when I got sucked into Starcraft/Brood War but wanted to go back and replay it. Then OSX came and that was that.
I was in the middle of Rune as well when I upgraded. I wonder if and when that will be carbonized?
I was only an occasional reader of Salon, but I bought a subscription about 3 weeks ago. I figure a dime a day was worth it to support such an independent media outlet.
Even if people don't agree with their politics, helping to keep a wider editorial perspective in mass media is nothing but a good thing. As many people have commented (interestingly in opposite directions), Salon's conserv/liberal slant has moved from the beginnings. I don't know, as I wasn't a regular reader early on. But they are an independent media mechanism that can change with the times, whereas the big media outlets are less responsive to the times, so to speak, and more subject to the whim of their owners.
The distinct lack of options in media these days makes a subscription worth it to me. Yes, I know that there are redunant opinions from every perspective on the net, but Salon is a legitimate news organizatoin, not some crackpot in a basement.
I think it was reference to the fact that at first it seems intrusive that the network admins kept tabs on all of this, but since nothing is encrypted, its all open to monitoring by anyone who wants to. Hence, the fact that they could do this isn't really so bad after all (although the fact that they actually did it is a different story).
It would be worse if they were monitoring university email accounts and wotnot.
As Lessig argued in Future of Ideas, the forced access given to competitors on phone lines helped keep the game honest and reduced the ability of phone companies to leverage control on content. The cable companies don't have the same competition on their lines and exercise incredible control over what you can do with your network connection. Limiting bandwidth, barring any kind of server, blocking ports, etc. I'm not sure if they've started granting access controls in the sense of slowing down particular sites or routing you to preferred portals yet, but it will happen. You won't be able to see what you want on the internet, at least not as easily.
Just like how typing "google" into the address space on Explorer takes you to msn.com, companies with control over access to content can and will route you to preferred destinations. DSL competition on the lines helped preclude this, and I was hoping to see phone-line style forced access pushed on the cable companies. Now THAT would have fostered more competition, creativity, and helped to ensure the robustness of the internet than what we saw here today.
Considering that I intended to say adds weight AGAINST the argument that the availability of free digital content precludes sales.
What I was trying to say is that if this stuff sells, especially after the electronic versions are out, it would refute those who argue that easily accessible free versions of commercial goods damages their sales.
As much as I would like to see this succeed, I suspect that many people and most libraries would just print and bind their own copy for a fraction of the cost of a hardcover ($49!). Good things for libraries and students though, for sure.
this may prove to be a defining moment in the battle of copyright control. If these books sell, and continue to sell after the electronic copy is available, it will add some serious weight to the argument that digital availability of information precludes sales and marketability.
I'm a bit surprised they are publishing in hardcover instead of a Sam's/O'Reilley/etc sturdy paperback though.
I know that SOMAFM and others were working with the CARP regulators and COngress to hammer out a deal that would get SOMA back on the air. There was this/. article in October that sheds a little light on it. Apparently whatever they figured out got SOMA back on the air.
That's a pretty good link with some information from the Soma guy about what is going on.
Amazon does a decent job of recommneding stuff that you might like based on other people's purchasing habits. One method that I've found useful is to create a wishlist of albums that you want or like (or even own). Amazon wil provide a list of other artists requested or purchased by people who requested or purchased the same thing you just did. Plus using the wishlist is an easy-to-access way to keep track of the stuff you want, but it is also pretty easy to get carried away. I have something like 250 books, music, and dvds on my list...
Also check out interviews with band members and check their homepages. They often talk about other bands they like or people who have influenced them. Depending on the music you like, certain members may play in a few different bands, or may sit in on concert sets of other bands. I listen to a lot of live music and many of the artists I like to collect I discovered by grabbing shows that an artist I already knew about sat in on.
Message boards and fan sites probably make decent ways to hear about people, as well as topical magazines (ie, GuitarPlayer, BassPlayer, maybe ComputerMusic, etc.).
Don't forget to ask other people at the shows you see what they listen to. CHeck out the local listings of bands in the area. Take the plunge and go see a show of an unknown that plays in a club that often hosts music you like.
Exactly. This is why I believe that Eolas will eventually sell out, perhaps for nigh infinitely rich royalties but mostly likely turn over the patent (gulp!) for a pure gold lump sum. Notice those number Cringley was talking abuot before hand.
Does anyone really believe that somone would turn down (say) $5,000,000,000 and choose to fight a legal battle that would inevitably destroy you?
I'll let the rest of you choke on the idea of Microsoft owning that patent...
But tell me, if they could slide a PPC ABI in with the new journaling system update, couldn't they just get the performance hit and gain to cancel out? It'd be like journalling system for free! How hard can it be? 10.2.5 maybe?
There're a lot of reasons why Kurzweil is wrong
on
Downloading The Mind
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
"Downloading" a brain is a lot more complicated than copying a harddrive. Even if we figure out how the brain works, and then figure out how this contributes to a mind (neither of which we are close to understanding at all), downloading a brain is just a duplication of you. You yourself wouldn't notice anything, but your copy's memories would depart from your at the point of the brain scan from which the copy is instigated.
Ugh, there are so many loose ends its hard to pick one to pull on. Someone mentioned before, but your body is more than just a bunch of neurons floating in fluid. Your mind, your person, your sanity rely on constant bodily feedback. Your mind isn't just the brain, its the entire nervous system, head to toe. (check out Antonio Damasio's books Decartes's Error and The Feeling of What Happens for a thrilling discussion of this).
George Dyson's book Darwin Among the Machines doesn't address the stupendously anthropocentric idea of human intelligence on silicon but does explore some possibilities behind the emergence of intelligent (not necessarily conscious) systems on their own.
I read Dyson's book after stumbling across it browsing at a bookstore, only to learn that he lived about 2 miles from me! I went down to his boat shop and introduced myself and have had a few chats with him. He talked about Kurzweil a little bit and he actually gave me a copy of The Age of Spiritual Machines. At the time I was a naive fanboy (as opposed to the seasoned fanboy I am now) and asked him if he could write something in the book (I had him sign the Darwin book earlier). He declined, asking me with the ever present Dyson eyesmile, "What am I supposed to say? Sorry this book isn't as good as mine?" It was very humble humor, don't read it wrong.
I read Spiritual Machines and enjoyed it, if for no other reason that it provided a fun exercise in saying "that's a nice idea, but it won't work for these reason..." It addresses a lot of concerns and the whole identity dissolution theme was rather interesting to play along with. Still, I don't think that his future is a likely one.
Bah, I'm just rambling. Short end to a long story: Kurzweil's ideas are fun to read and worth the time spent if you have time to kill, but are highly unlikely. Copying humans into computers is a much bigger problem than just raw clock speed, which is what he boils it down to.
don't get off I-90 between Spokane and Missoula at night
Wow, some has a distorted sense of reality. I'm from that area, smack dab in the middle of the stretch of road you mentioned, and I can assure that it isn't dangerous there, before or after dark. In fact, the western county of Idaho along the I-90 stretch (there are only two counties on I-90 between Washington and Montana) is the second fastest growing county in the country. Every runs away from California and goes to Idaho these days.
True, the Aryan Nations is headquarted about 20 minutes north of the freeway, but they don't have much of a local presence. My sister is black and my family hasn't has any trouble with them beyond a few harrassing phone calls when there was a writeup in the local paper about biracial families that mentioned our name. It's rural and hick in many places, but it isn't dangerous. Uneducated and poor, perhaps.
A different poster mentioned that it was pitch black when he got off the freeway, which is exactly the way we like it. I used to sleep outside as a kid and fall asleep under the protectful gaze of the Milky Way and many many satellites, both of which you could easily see.
Of the four tracks available, only tele1530.mp3 sounded like music in my sense. The rest was either modem-connect-tone-ish patterns or the soundtrack to the end of "The Lawnmower Man." But the 1530 track was pretty cool indeed. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed this concert though, very high pitched and rather random from what I can tell.
Slashdot Mirror
Cringely's current article has his take on SCO. He mentioned that he wouldn't be surprised to find Microsoft bankrolling the legal,even though he wasn't predicting it either.
In the end though, he concedes he doesn't know what is going on, and neither do other people in the field. Me? I'm guessing it will end up being a totally ill-informed upper managemnet decision that is going to roll heads.
No matter how good the 4th disc of extras is, I still can't believe that they aren't including commentary. It only takes 2 hours to do (well, 6 for the series) and it can be anything, talk about making it, impressions about seeing it again, etc.
Starcraft has been the most engaging game I've ever played. I can't stop playing it, but more significantly, I can't stop thinking about it. I come up with strategies, think over losses, ponder better ways to integrate my units. As long as BNet exists, there will always be human punks to go against to keep sharp.
I got it from Apple's site to start with. It looks and feels like v71, but I've only played with v73 for 10 half an hour. I just checked SoftwareUpdate and the update shows up, even with the manual installation running. We'll see what happens when I run it.
Wrong. Japan is the place for cutting edge consumer electronics, but computers don't fall into that category. Japanese computers and components are always more expensive for what you get than what is available in the US. I've lived here for almost 4 years now and have seen the prices come way down, but its still expensive.
:-) I ordered my laptop from the states and made a trip home to get it so I wouldn't be stuck with that stuff.
Plus she'll be stuck with a Japanese layout keyboard. letters are standard QWERTY, but useful punctuation is all funky, like Shift+2 for quotes " and shift+7 for apostrophes '. The @ is to the right of the P key and doesn't require a modifier-key to use though
Apple's computers are almost exactly the same price as they are in the US. The slight elevated expense offsets shipping and pads daily currency fluctuations, so if she did buy over here, Apple would be a good deal. If she buys at the apple.co.jp Apple Store, she can order an American keyboard layout too.
I'd recommend an iBook and maybe wait a little bit. Word on the street is that a speed bump is coming across the line. But the OS is excellent and the Japanese support is great. Be sure to have her check out the Character Palette.
Also, check out the JEDict application. Its an incredible Japn/Engl dictionary that also has contextual menu (ctrl+click!) translation support that is indispensable! The Omnigroup applications OmniGraffle and OmniOutliner are important too.
I hope she enjoys the computer and the time over here. I love it,
Mod Parent up.
I came in to mention Cringely's recent articles, which are highly relevant to this discussion.
http://www.deepapple.com/downloads/?oid=705
Myth: The Total Codex was the first computer game I ever played, and loved it. Didn't actually finish Myth II when I got sucked into Starcraft/Brood War but wanted to go back and replay it. Then OSX came and that was that.
I was in the middle of Rune as well when I upgraded. I wonder if and when that will be carbonized?
I was only an occasional reader of Salon, but I bought a subscription about 3 weeks ago. I figure a dime a day was worth it to support such an independent media outlet.
Even if people don't agree with their politics, helping to keep a wider editorial perspective in mass media is nothing but a good thing. As many people have commented (interestingly in opposite directions), Salon's conserv/liberal slant has moved from the beginnings. I don't know, as I wasn't a regular reader early on. But they are an independent media mechanism that can change with the times, whereas the big media outlets are less responsive to the times, so to speak, and more subject to the whim of their owners.
The distinct lack of options in media these days makes a subscription worth it to me. Yes, I know that there are redunant opinions from every perspective on the net, but Salon is a legitimate news organizatoin, not some crackpot in a basement.
I think it was reference to the fact that at first it seems intrusive that the network admins kept tabs on all of this, but since nothing is encrypted, its all open to monitoring by anyone who wants to. Hence, the fact that they could do this isn't really so bad after all (although the fact that they actually did it is a different story).
It would be worse if they were monitoring university email accounts and wotnot.
As Lessig argued in Future of Ideas, the forced access given to competitors on phone lines helped keep the game honest and reduced the ability of phone companies to leverage control on content. The cable companies don't have the same competition on their lines and exercise incredible control over what you can do with your network connection. Limiting bandwidth, barring any kind of server, blocking ports, etc. I'm not sure if they've started granting access controls in the sense of slowing down particular sites or routing you to preferred portals yet, but it will happen. You won't be able to see what you want on the internet, at least not as easily.
Just like how typing "google" into the address space on Explorer takes you to msn.com, companies with control over access to content can and will route you to preferred destinations. DSL competition on the lines helped preclude this, and I was hoping to see phone-line style forced access pushed on the cable companies. Now THAT would have fostered more competition, creativity, and helped to ensure the robustness of the internet than what we saw here today.
No it isn't true at all.
Don't ask me why I bothered replying to this troll though.
Considering that I intended to say adds weight AGAINST the argument that the availability of free digital content precludes sales.
What I was trying to say is that if this stuff sells, especially after the electronic versions are out, it would refute those who argue that easily accessible free versions of commercial goods damages their sales.
As much as I would like to see this succeed, I suspect that many people and most libraries would just print and bind their own copy for a fraction of the cost of a hardcover ($49!). Good things for libraries and students though, for sure.
this may prove to be a defining moment in the battle of copyright control. If these books sell, and continue to sell after the electronic copy is available, it will add some serious weight to the argument that digital availability of information precludes sales and marketability.
I'm a bit surprised they are publishing in hardcover instead of a Sam's/O'Reilley/etc sturdy paperback though.
I know that SOMAFM and others were working with the CARP regulators and COngress to hammer out a deal that would get SOMA back on the air. There was this /. article in October that sheds a little light on it. Apparently whatever they figured out got SOMA back on the air.
That's a pretty good link with some information from the Soma guy about what is going on.
Me too! I didn't realize that they were back on the air though following the CARP debacle that forced them to shut down. This makes me so happy!!!
Amazon does a decent job of recommneding stuff that you might like based on other people's purchasing habits. One method that I've found useful is to create a wishlist of albums that you want or like (or even own). Amazon wil provide a list of other artists requested or purchased by people who requested or purchased the same thing you just did. Plus using the wishlist is an easy-to-access way to keep track of the stuff you want, but it is also pretty easy to get carried away. I have something like 250 books, music, and dvds on my list...
Also check out interviews with band members and check their homepages. They often talk about other bands they like or people who have influenced them. Depending on the music you like, certain members may play in a few different bands, or may sit in on concert sets of other bands. I listen to a lot of live music and many of the artists I like to collect I discovered by grabbing shows that an artist I already knew about sat in on.
Message boards and fan sites probably make decent ways to hear about people, as well as topical magazines (ie, GuitarPlayer, BassPlayer, maybe ComputerMusic, etc.).
Don't forget to ask other people at the shows you see what they listen to. CHeck out the local listings of bands in the area. Take the plunge and go see a show of an unknown that plays in a club that often hosts music you like.
Etc, etc, ad nauseam, and so on.
just FYI. The logo on the article shouldn't be LEGO, imho.
What good is having slashdot read to you if you can't post back?!? Get back to me when it takes dictation and can handle meta-moderation.
Exactly. This is why I believe that Eolas will eventually sell out, perhaps for nigh infinitely rich royalties but mostly likely turn over the patent (gulp!) for a pure gold lump sum. Notice those number Cringley was talking abuot before hand.
Does anyone really believe that somone would turn down (say) $5,000,000,000 and choose to fight a legal battle that would inevitably destroy you?
I'll let the rest of you choke on the idea of Microsoft owning that patent...
But tell me, if they could slide a PPC ABI in with the new journaling system update, couldn't they just get the performance hit and gain to cancel out? It'd be like journalling system for free! How hard can it be? 10.2.5 maybe?
"Downloading" a brain is a lot more complicated than copying a harddrive. Even if we figure out how the brain works, and then figure out how this contributes to a mind (neither of which we are close to understanding at all), downloading a brain is just a duplication of you. You yourself wouldn't notice anything, but your copy's memories would depart from your at the point of the brain scan from which the copy is instigated.
Ugh, there are so many loose ends its hard to pick one to pull on. Someone mentioned before, but your body is more than just a bunch of neurons floating in fluid. Your mind, your person, your sanity rely on constant bodily feedback. Your mind isn't just the brain, its the entire nervous system, head to toe. (check out Antonio Damasio's books Decartes's Error and The Feeling of What Happens for a thrilling discussion of this).
George Dyson's book Darwin Among the Machines doesn't address the stupendously anthropocentric idea of human intelligence on silicon but does explore some possibilities behind the emergence of intelligent (not necessarily conscious) systems on their own.
I read Dyson's book after stumbling across it browsing at a bookstore, only to learn that he lived about 2 miles from me! I went down to his boat shop and introduced myself and have had a few chats with him. He talked about Kurzweil a little bit and he actually gave me a copy of The Age of Spiritual Machines. At the time I was a naive fanboy (as opposed to the seasoned fanboy I am now) and asked him if he could write something in the book (I had him sign the Darwin book earlier). He declined, asking me with the ever present Dyson eyesmile, "What am I supposed to say? Sorry this book isn't as good as mine?" It was very humble humor, don't read it wrong.
I read Spiritual Machines and enjoyed it, if for no other reason that it provided a fun exercise in saying "that's a nice idea, but it won't work for these reason..." It addresses a lot of concerns and the whole identity dissolution theme was rather interesting to play along with. Still, I don't think that his future is a likely one.
Bah, I'm just rambling. Short end to a long story: Kurzweil's ideas are fun to read and worth the time spent if you have time to kill, but are highly unlikely. Copying humans into computers is a much bigger problem than just raw clock speed, which is what he boils it down to.
Here's a link to a page about Kurzweilian Singularity. Its worth checking out if you haven't read any of this stuff before.
It's obvious that I forgot the / in the closing tag.
don't get off I-90 between Spokane and Missoula at night
Wow, some has a distorted sense of reality. I'm from that area, smack dab in the middle of the stretch of road you mentioned, and I can assure that it isn't dangerous there, before or after dark. In fact, the western county of Idaho along the I-90 stretch (there are only two counties on I-90 between Washington and Montana) is the second fastest growing county in the country. Every runs away from California and goes to Idaho these days.
True, the Aryan Nations is headquarted about 20 minutes north of the freeway, but they don't have much of a local presence. My sister is black and my family hasn't has any trouble with them beyond a few harrassing phone calls when there was a writeup in the local paper about biracial families that mentioned our name. It's rural and hick in many places, but it isn't dangerous. Uneducated and poor, perhaps.
A different poster mentioned that it was pitch black when he got off the freeway, which is exactly the way we like it. I used to sleep outside as a kid and fall asleep under the protectful gaze of the Milky Way and many many satellites, both of which you could easily see.
Of the four tracks available, only tele1530.mp3 sounded like music in my sense. The rest was either modem-connect-tone-ish patterns or the soundtrack to the end of "The Lawnmower Man." But the 1530 track was pretty cool indeed. I'm not sure I would have enjoyed this concert though, very high pitched and rather random from what I can tell.