Two critters are said to be in the same species if they can breed and have fertile offspring.
I think he was referring to a definition that I seem to recall hearing but can't confirm, namely, and to extend your definition, that two 'critters' that can breed, but that can have only infertile offspring, are in the same genus but not the same species. (E.g., horse + donkey => mule (?))
I am looking at how successful they *were*. In contrast to microsoft, there is NO contest
Well, of course that's what you were talking about -- otherwise it would be just too weird. And yes, entertainment value often provides a large part of the initial impetus to get something off the ground. [*1]
But that doesn't mean that an entertainment-oriented approach will be more sucessful in the long run than the more serious/practical type of enterprise. If your point is just that it's what will spur the initial development, without the pioneers necessarily being very successful in the long run, then I'd agree.
Though I'd point out that this sort of makes it sound like those of us who want space exploration to proceed will basically take advantage of the over-enthusiastic early investors, hoodwinking them into spending their money to pave the way for the 2nd- (or Nth-) generation efforts, which we all know will be the ones to really take off.
The ironic thing here is that I'm really not as cynical about this stuff as I sound. I'm very excited about the possibilities, and I even agree with your basic idea. I don't even necessarily believe that the first generation efforts will fail; I just can't help but notice the potential fallacy in the argument.
-- [1] Which is why, back in the '80s, everyone knew that the IBM PC was a dead-end platform which would be killed by the Amiga, Apple IIGS, et al. [*2]
[2] See, even giving you the benefit of considering only that time period, I just can't resist poking fun at your claim. Why is that?
...a computer marketed for entertainment resulted in more sales then those marketed for trivial little tasks like word processing.... rather like how Atari and Commodore actually got people to buy their products, cause it's fun!
Yes, and to really drive the point home, look at how fantastically successful Atari and Commodore have been, compared to IBM and Microsoft.
Yes, and the fact that the interviewer actually made the mistake is just so incredibly telling. This sort of thing desperately needs to be pointed out. Sure, he made the correction, but I wish he'd called more attention to it.
You worded it so perfectly -- I wish, so, so, much, that he would have said, "Well, actually, it was the recording industry, not the government, but I understand your confusion; it's getting so hard to tell the difference these days...".
I believe that they are alleging patent infringment
Maybe your information sources are more accurate than CNet's, but the article very definitely says "trade secrets", and doesn't once mention "patents", which are almost the exact opposite type of IP.
There's (at least) one other type of IP separate from the ones you listed: "trade secrets". If reading the actual article is too much trouble, try reading the headline:
IBM has denied SCO Group's allegations that it misappropriated Unix
trade secrets, but Big Blue isn't giving hints about what its eventual strategy will be for battling the lawsuit.
Now, I only play the part of a lawyer on Slashdot, but as I understand it, a trade secret is sort of "the opposite" of a patent: instead of publishing the information openly but having a monopoly on the right to use it (even if someone else "really does" develop the same thing independently), you keep it secret, figuring that others can't copy what they don't know, but this is only good as long as the secret stays secret. You're protected against having it stolen ("misappropriated") through, e.g., corporate espionage, NDA violation, etc., but once it gets out in the open legitimately (e.g., if someone else develops it independently, or you carelessly disclose it to someone not under NDA), all bets are off.
...treats the word "singularity" as though the above constructed meaning is common knowledge.
It is.
At least, among self-respecting sci-fi geeks, it is.
Though I'd agree that it's best usually to use the full phrase "Vingean Singularity" -- it gives credit to the originator, it reduces confusion, and it has better show-off value because it sounds so much more technical.
It's not like Asimov himself was unaware of the over-protectiveness problem. He didn't tak it to quite such an extreme, but in one of the earlier Susan Calvin stories, he had a place (some sort of asteroid mining colony, istr) where people's day-to-day activities were by their nature inherently more hazardous than normal (I mean, what sort of life insurance premiums would you charge for an asteroid miner?). Anyway, their robots were interfering with their work because whenever one would see somebody doing something hazardous, like operating heavy machinery or something, it would run in and drag him to "safety" (even if there was no specific danger impending, but just an, in its judgement, unacceptably high risk factor). So, they had a bunch of robots specially built with a weakened version of the First Law. Then of course one got loose, and Calvin had to track it down and frag it.
From the synopsis, it sounded like this book is based on exactly that same point -- that Prime Intellect could automatically / spontaneously / inevitably "deduce" the Zeroth Law from the First. So, while not explicitly "wired" to be compelled to protect humanity in general, it derives the fact that it must do so by applying simple logic and arithmetic to the compulsion to protect individual humans.
Imagine a time when you want to download DeCSS for your linux boxen from a foreign server, but someone is logging your downloads Verizon and the RIAA wants access to those records
Why in Hell would the Recording Industry Association of America care who has software to break the DVD Content Scrambling System? They market music on CDs, not movies on DVDs.
Or did you mean to say MPAA?
Yeah, yeah, it's just a careless error, but things like this make us all sound like a bunch of idiots. If we can't even keep track of which evil corporate organization goes with which issue, then how is anyone supposed to take us seriously?
Thank you, so incredibly much. "Bartender, a '+1, Informative' for the AndroidCat with the link, please? On me."
I'd only heard of the story here, when someone mentioned it in passing with no URL, and someone else had begged for a URL but got no reply... Anyway, now I know.
That reminds me of when it was cool to tell lusers that there was this huge ftp site at 127.0.0.1, just log in with your existing account...
No, it's "Dude, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm afraid you've been hacked -- the FTP server at 127.0.0.1 has all your personal files. See for yourself; just log in with your normal id..."
Thing is, it only worked when a sufficiently naive person would still be likely to be using a Unix system and be familiar with FTP, whereas now, even having heard of those things is something like a guarantee of knowing too much to fall for it.
Speaking of falling for it, though -- didn't I read here a while back that this particular troll had been used on the Scientologists, with spectacular success? Like, they were in court taking a deposition and their lawyer was shouting at the guy "Tell us who runs the FTP server at 127.0.0.1!"
The way I figure it, the 12" PowerBook actually is the new iBook, corresponding to the new iMac with its new form factor (the desk lamp) and other higher-end features.
When that happened to the iMac, the old version became the eMac. So now, the way I think of the 12" PowerBook is that the iBook made a corresponding leap to a new enclosure and higher-end features, to keep it in step with the desktop "i" machine. The old version now more closely matches the eMac, so it should be called the "eBook".
In short, the "i" prefix is sort of bumped up from denoting the entry-level machines to now denote the mid-range, and the "e" prefix has been introduced to fill the gap at the entry level. Except, of course that the names for the low- and mid-range laptops haven't oficially changed to fit this scheme.
Wow. I was going to moderate on this story, but I found a thread interesting enought that I have to comment; gotta find someplace else to blow that last point.
Anyway...
My WallStreet PBG3 is close to five years old. I'm on my third battery -- on the first two, the LEDs don't even light up anymore. At first, I was getting about three hours per battery (and I was using both bays, so it could run close to six hours). After a couple years, the cells had (I guess) degraded a bit, to maybe 2.5 hours per battery.
That was before I installed Mac OS X (which I've been running since the first Public Beta (which really should have been called an "Alpha", but that's another topic)). The time per battery immediately dropped to about 1 hour -- it happening so suddenly must mean that the system is just more power-hungry (not cycling down the CPU, virtual memory keeping the HD (almost) always spinning, etc.).
That much would be almost okay, I guess, but get this: while the machine is asleep and unplugged the fan runs -- it stops when I plug it in and starts again when I unplug it, all while it's asleep. Weirdest bug I've ever heard of -- I don't even know how they could have made it do that if they tried, but there it is. It's really awful for several reasons: first, it runs down the battery pretty fast while sleeping. Even worse, it increases the risk of losing power completely. I find that after it puts itself to sleep, I have about fifteen minutes to reach an outlet if I want it to recover. Still worse, I suspect that the frequent shallow cycles (as it drains a couple percent while I carry it around unplugged for a couple hours and then plug it back in) are real murder on the battery, causing it to degrade even faster than otherwise. Within a year, the older battery wouldn't charge at all and the newer one was already pretty bad.
Since then, that one has died completely and I've tried to avoid using battery power at all, to preserve this new one.
About the only-charging-to-98% thing: I suspect that that's actually a good thing -- something they did on purpose to reduce the shallow-cycle problem. I've noticed that mine doesn't start charging unless it's below 95% when I plug it in, but then it'll go all the way to 100% (or even 101%) -- the effect is to combine several shallow cycles into one slightly deeper one.
The (other) worst thing is that when it dies, it does it abruptly, with zero warning, sometimes while the meter is reading near full -- usually 50-60%, but once as high as 87%.
I'd assume that the power drain during sleep is a matter of incomplete support for such an old model, and that the newer iBooks and PBG4s would be better that way, even if X is still such a power-hog. I would have hoped the battery longevity would be better too -- good thing I didn't buy that new iBook yet; I wonder if the new 12" PBG4 is any better.
Slashdot Mirror
currently dubbed 55808 for its Windows size
I was going to post the same quote and add only: "Sigh."
You beat me to it, so I wasn't going to post at all, but then I noticed that the very same article also says:
The Trojan currently attacks Linux-based systems...
Sigh.
As for me, all I want is to be able to encode mpeg video at something greater than real time. Show me *that* benchmark please!
Heh. I remember when all I wanted was to be able to decode MPEG-1 video in real time.
Software developers putting their own interest ahead of the users'?! What is the industry coming to?
Exactly what does IBM get by buying out Sun?
Just brainstorming, but how about:
* Control over the future of a hardware platform that's very important to software competitor Oracle.
Call them the McDonalds of the chip world.
[...]
My question is how many of those chips are stil actually being used today?
All right... How many of those McDonalds hamburgers are still in use today?
What does F* stand for?
I've always heard it explained as "Feeble".
Two critters are said to be in the same species if they can breed and have fertile offspring.
I think he was referring to a definition that I seem to recall hearing but can't confirm, namely, and to extend your definition, that two 'critters' that can breed, but that can have only infertile offspring, are in the same genus but not the same species. (E.g., horse + donkey => mule (?))
Oh, and it's all 100% Object-Oriented Perl, for those of you who care about clean code.
I want to say something here, but I can't quite find the words.
*Wanders off, muttering...*
"Perl
"..."
"Perl?
"..."
*...shakes head in confused amazement*
(It does sound like a fascinating project and all, it's just that I've never heard those two terms associated that way before.)
I am looking at how successful they *were*. In contrast to microsoft, there is NO contest
Well, of course that's what you were talking about -- otherwise it would be just too weird. And yes, entertainment value often provides a large part of the initial impetus to get something off the ground. [*1]
But that doesn't mean that an entertainment-oriented approach will be more sucessful in the long run than the more serious/practical type of enterprise. If your point is just that it's what will spur the initial development, without the pioneers necessarily being very successful in the long run, then I'd agree.
Though I'd point out that this sort of makes it sound like those of us who want space exploration to proceed will basically take advantage of the over-enthusiastic early investors, hoodwinking them into spending their money to pave the way for the 2nd- (or Nth-) generation efforts, which we all know will be the ones to really take off.
The ironic thing here is that I'm really not as cynical about this stuff as I sound. I'm very excited about the possibilities, and I even agree with your basic idea. I don't even necessarily believe that the first generation efforts will fail; I just can't help but notice the potential fallacy in the argument.
--
[1] Which is why, back in the '80s, everyone knew that the IBM PC was a dead-end platform which would be killed by the Amiga, Apple IIGS, et al. [*2]
[2] See, even giving you the benefit of considering only that time period, I just can't resist poking fun at your claim. Why is that?
Yes, and to really drive the point home, look at how fantastically successful Atari and Commodore have been, compared to IBM and Microsoft.
Kind of hard to tell these days, isn't it?
Yes, and the fact that the interviewer actually made the mistake is just so incredibly telling. This sort of thing desperately needs to be pointed out. Sure, he made the correction, but I wish he'd called more attention to it.
You worded it so perfectly -- I wish, so, so, much, that he would have said, "Well, actually, it was the recording industry, not the government, but I understand your confusion; it's getting so hard to tell the difference these days...".
Next... RIAA orders bombing of Canada
Somebody'd better warn the Baldwins.
I believe that they are alleging patent infringment
Maybe your information sources are more accurate than CNet's, but the article very definitely says "trade secrets", and doesn't once mention "patents", which are almost the exact opposite type of IP.
There's (at least) one other type of IP separate from the ones you listed: "trade secrets". If reading the actual article is too much trouble, try reading the headline:Now, I only play the part of a lawyer on Slashdot, but as I understand it, a trade secret is sort of "the opposite" of a patent: instead of publishing the information openly but having a monopoly on the right to use it (even if someone else "really does" develop the same thing independently), you keep it secret, figuring that others can't copy what they don't know, but this is only good as long as the secret stays secret. You're protected against having it stolen ("misappropriated") through, e.g., corporate espionage, NDA violation, etc., but once it gets out in the open legitimately (e.g., if someone else develops it independently, or you carelessly disclose it to someone not under NDA), all bets are off.
Ah, that would be the "ordnance ordinance", yes?
It is.
At least, among self-respecting sci-fi geeks, it is.
Though I'd agree that it's best usually to use the full phrase "Vingean Singularity" -- it gives credit to the originator, it reduces confusion, and it has better show-off value because it sounds so much more technical.
It's not like Asimov himself was unaware of the over-protectiveness problem. He didn't tak it to quite such an extreme, but in one of the earlier Susan Calvin stories, he had a place (some sort of asteroid mining colony, istr) where people's day-to-day activities were by their nature inherently more hazardous than normal (I mean, what sort of life insurance premiums would you charge for an asteroid miner?). Anyway, their robots were interfering with their work because whenever one would see somebody doing something hazardous, like operating heavy machinery or something, it would run in and drag him to "safety" (even if there was no specific danger impending, but just an, in its judgement, unacceptably high risk factor). So, they had a bunch of robots specially built with a weakened version of the First Law. Then of course one got loose, and Calvin had to track it down and frag it.
From the synopsis, it sounded like this book is based on exactly that same point -- that Prime Intellect could automatically / spontaneously / inevitably "deduce" the Zeroth Law from the First. So, while not explicitly "wired" to be compelled to protect humanity in general, it derives the fact that it must do so by applying simple logic and arithmetic to the compulsion to protect individual humans.
Imagine a time when you want to download DeCSS for your linux boxen from a foreign server, but someone is logging your downloads Verizon and the RIAA wants access to those records
Why in Hell would the Recording Industry Association of America care who has software to break the DVD Content Scrambling System? They market music on CDs, not movies on DVDs.
Or did you mean to say MPAA?
Yeah, yeah, it's just a careless error, but things like this make us all sound like a bunch of idiots. If we can't even keep track of which evil corporate organization goes with which issue, then how is anyone supposed to take us seriously?
Thank you, so incredibly much. "Bartender, a '+1, Informative' for the AndroidCat with the link, please? On me."
I'd only heard of the story here, when someone mentioned it in passing with no URL, and someone else had begged for a URL but got no reply... Anyway, now I know.
That reminds me of when it was cool to tell lusers that there was this huge ftp site at 127.0.0.1, just log in with your existing account...
No, it's "Dude, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I'm afraid you've been hacked -- the FTP server at 127.0.0.1 has all your personal files. See for yourself; just log in with your normal id..."
Thing is, it only worked when a sufficiently naive person would still be likely to be using a Unix system and be familiar with FTP, whereas now, even having heard of those things is something like a guarantee of knowing too much to fall for it.
Speaking of falling for it, though -- didn't I read here a while back that this particular troll had been used on the Scientologists, with spectacular success? Like, they were in court taking a deposition and their lawyer was shouting at the guy "Tell us who runs the FTP server at 127.0.0.1!"
The way I figure it, the 12" PowerBook actually is the new iBook, corresponding to the new iMac with its new form factor (the desk lamp) and other higher-end features.
When that happened to the iMac, the old version became the eMac. So now, the way I think of the 12" PowerBook is that the iBook made a corresponding leap to a new enclosure and higher-end features, to keep it in step with the desktop "i" machine. The old version now more closely matches the eMac, so it should be called the "eBook".
In short, the "i" prefix is sort of bumped up from denoting the entry-level machines to now denote the mid-range, and the "e" prefix has been introduced to fill the gap at the entry level. Except, of course that the names for the low- and mid-range laptops haven't oficially changed to fit this scheme.
Wow. I was going to moderate on this story, but I found a thread interesting enought that I have to comment; gotta find someplace else to blow that last point.
Anyway...
My WallStreet PBG3 is close to five years old. I'm on my third battery -- on the first two, the LEDs don't even light up anymore. At first, I was getting about three hours per battery (and I was using both bays, so it could run close to six hours). After a couple years, the cells had (I guess) degraded a bit, to maybe 2.5 hours per battery.
That was before I installed Mac OS X (which I've been running since the first Public Beta (which really should have been called an "Alpha", but that's another topic)). The time per battery immediately dropped to about 1 hour -- it happening so suddenly must mean that the system is just more power-hungry (not cycling down the CPU, virtual memory keeping the HD (almost) always spinning, etc.).
That much would be almost okay, I guess, but get this: while the machine is asleep and unplugged the fan runs -- it stops when I plug it in and starts again when I unplug it, all while it's asleep. Weirdest bug I've ever heard of -- I don't even know how they could have made it do that if they tried, but there it is. It's really awful for several reasons: first, it runs down the battery pretty fast while sleeping. Even worse, it increases the risk of losing power completely. I find that after it puts itself to sleep, I have about fifteen minutes to reach an outlet if I want it to recover. Still worse, I suspect that the frequent shallow cycles (as it drains a couple percent while I carry it around unplugged for a couple hours and then plug it back in) are real murder on the battery, causing it to degrade even faster than otherwise. Within a year, the older battery wouldn't charge at all and the newer one was already pretty bad.
Since then, that one has died completely and I've tried to avoid using battery power at all, to preserve this new one.
About the only-charging-to-98% thing: I suspect that that's actually a good thing -- something they did on purpose to reduce the shallow-cycle problem. I've noticed that mine doesn't start charging unless it's below 95% when I plug it in, but then it'll go all the way to 100% (or even 101%) -- the effect is to combine several shallow cycles into one slightly deeper one.
The (other) worst thing is that when it dies, it does it abruptly, with zero warning, sometimes while the meter is reading near full -- usually 50-60%, but once as high as 87%.
I'd assume that the power drain during sleep is a matter of incomplete support for such an old model, and that the newer iBooks and PBG4s would be better that way, even if X is still such a power-hog. I would have hoped the battery longevity would be better too -- good thing I didn't buy that new iBook yet; I wonder if the new 12" PBG4 is any better.
If I don't take the initiative to vote, I probably haven't followed the election and have no clue what is going on. Do YOU want me voting?"
Yes. I want you to ask me for advice, and then go vote as I recommend. Because I know better than you what's best for the common good.
Gould's First Law: A sufficiently powerful hammer can turn any problem into a nail.