The U.S. Gov never ran it. It was always contracted out to a corporate 3rd party.
I'm not sure if NetSol can auction your name if you registered it with another registrar. It would depend, I think, on whether that registrar had paid for the name in time or not. It seems perfectly feasible for NetSol to auction the domain name if the registrar you work with didn't sent NetSol their money in time...
The thing is, Microsoft has a whole helluva lot of developers across the world who are willing to jump through many many hoops to get access to the Windows platform. Sheer numbers of programmers at MS itself, alone, will give the new language a head-start. Combine that with programmers who have no major opinion about Microsoft (they exist, think India) who would be willing to try the language, assuming it actually provides the functionality of Java AND C++, and you have another market moving jump by the boys of Redmond.
We may be mixing trends here. I think it's more likely that ALL media is slimming down and consolidating as media becomes global. It's not just that Salon had layoffs, but also that most major cities no longer have two competing daily papers. The Washington Post doesn't compete with the Washington Times, it competes with the New York Times and MSNBC. Similarly, Salon and Slate don't necessarily compete with Inside.com, but rather with The New Republic and Brill's Content. And all of them are also competing with the BBC online, CNN.com and such. The medium isn't important, the content is. The content is spreading and broadening, making media compete against each other (or consolidate!).
Think of it like expansion in baseball, for a few years after expansion, pitching always sucks. Similarly, we have expansion in media, as the 'Net lets them compete against each other, so for a while we're gonna see reporting drive to a low common denominator and fracture into highly-targeted niches until the market stabilizes again.
Here's a thought: (and it may just be related to the article, whodathunkit?) Human civilization has been a progression of moving from the specific and practical to abstractions of the specific and practical in order to better enable us to manipulate and control the specific and practical using less work because, fundamentally, we're all lazy.
Thus, computers evolved because doing math was hard. The computers are an abstraction of our thought processes when we're doing math. Programming evolved because doing everything in machine language was hard. Thus, C++ is an abstraction of lower-order code in order to make it easier for us to manipulate that code. Similarly, the Internet evolved as an abstraction of the research process, with searching, Uniform Research Locaters and such because slogging halfway across the country to get a bit of weapons research from a fellow technician was a pain in the ass.
Ultimately, doing good reporting is a pain in the ass. So what we are seeing is people doing meta-reporting, such as posting stories on Slashdot from various 'real' reporting sites. Similarly, if people are doing their own writing and reporting, it's probably because doing that reporting is an easier abstraction than doing something practical. i.e., reporting on technology is easier than DOING technology.
Thus maybe, just maybe, It's not an open-vs-closed thing, but rather a natural progression from doing hard work yourself to making it easier to mooch of someone else's hard work. The merger between AOL and Time-Warner makes it easier for AOL folks to mooch of Time-Warner's hard work and vice versa. It's not a matter of their being 'closed' because we, in turn, mooch of their work when articles from a T-W source are posted.
It's all about maximizing laziness. Perhaps the replies to this article are the best example of this: it's a helluva lot easier to post a two line complaint about Katz' article than to refute it, defend it or critique it...
The interesting thing about this article is how Katz is trying to say we need to have a moral discussion about this research because it may fundementally change some of the 'truths' we've taken for granted. And when such truths are changed, there tends to be upheaval.
(cue Bicentennial Man/Heinlein tie-in) What if the genetic research we're doing now leads to a real form of immortality? They're regrowing brain cells now. The actual ability to transplant a brain cannot be a medical impossibility. Perhaps it's a generation away, but we'll get there. So what if 100 years from now people (rich people, probably) have the ability to clone themselves from birth a million times and make those clones basically brain dead. Then, when their current body gets old and broken-down, they transplant their brain into a new clone, a younger clone, and go on living.
What does this mean for wealth accumulation? What does it mean for family life? (if my dad was 'younger' than me, thanks to this procedure) What does it mean for the entire set of instutitions that are setup around the idea of man being mortal? Afterlife? The afterlife is the body I keep in the clonebank.
The upheaval of such a thing would be incredible, considering the implications for rich/poor class conflict or north/south global conflict.
THIS is the kind of thing Katz is talking about, IMHO. We could discuss these long-term implications now, maybe find some kind of consensus or compromise among people today, before the people of tomorrow start killing each other over them.
IMHO we're already seeing the advent of meta search engines that do their own search and then do a simultaneous search using other engines. (Yahoo does this, I think, as does lycos/hotbot) That's a great kludge for these engines to extend their reach, but not a real solution.
I think we'll see more topic-specific search engines (I use trade rag sites exclusively for really good info on tech news, for example) linked together through the big search engines. The main engine (Google, or whatever) will check the search term to see if that term has been pre-linked by the engine managers to generate a search on a more topic-specific engine (for example a search on "market size" may cause the engine to do a lookup on the northpoint search engine) or engines, and then combine the results of its own search with that of the topic-specific engine for relevant results.
It's the whole idea of vertical portals taken to the next level. The vertical portals provide topic-specific searching capabilities over the 'Net to the behemoth engines and portals for a fee, or something.
Remember, the user will not get smarter, but will rather look for the faster and easier solution.
IMHO.
Re:The Church: protector of freedom and progress :
on
Cybernauts Awake!
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· Score: 1
I would read it with the following thoughts in the back of my mind: "What do they want? How do they want to use the medium (internet) to their advantage? What do they see as a threat and how does all of this influence their views?"
As you said, this is true for anything and everything you read online. There's always a PoV, even if that point of view is to try to be as objective as possible (which so many/.'ers would have each other believe of themselves;-).
Personally, I find it very refreshing to see a church taking on this topic. Churches have a wonderful history of considering the implications of things (even as they have a terrible history of understanding the things themselves). Far too often, IMHO, the promoters and protectors of change do everything they can to minimize the implications and harm of that change while beefing up the supposed benefits. This can cause a backlash as those who expected to find gold only find hard work at the end of the miracle road. (See: Russia, Market Capitalism)
I know that the Internet scares the bejeezus out of my dad, who is an old-school telco-head. And that's because it has radically altered the industry he spent 20 years learning. All his knowledge becomes just this side of useless. That's terrifying, but those at the vanguard of the revolution usually don't consider that. Churches do. Books and views like this help us on the up side of change understand and help those on the down side by saying we have a moral obligation to consider the people we may otherwise forget.
Furthermore, you KNOW where a church is coming from. Churches generally come out and admit that they're speaking from their own Point of View. That's the very nature of an impermatur or condemnation. It establishes an anchor position on the moral/social axis, so people can take their bearings and say "I am on x side of the issue as compared to the church." It helps set up a common point of reference. These things are really important when trying to have a dialog (or multilog;-) about the changes being brought about by the extension of communication and information across the world. It brings the discussion of these changes from the realm of the geek to the realm of the everyman by putting them into the common language of good, evil, right and wrong.
From that point, it's up to us to argue the merits of these changes and do our best to ameliorate the costs. It is no longer enough to say "you're a newbie/old media/bellhead/boomer; you wouldn't understand."
Perhaps we need a bill of rights referring to multi-national corporations, and some way of collecting and publicizing violations of it.
This is exactly what Clinton proposed as the long-term goal of the current negotiations IIRC.
Of course, we all see how well such international declarations actually work. See the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which China - for one - is a signatory but doesn't well support. Neither does the US in many cases (putting an 11 year old away for LIFE for murder is kinda harsh...), for that matter.
I think you are putting the cart before the horse. the ideas expressed in the constitution come as a RESULT of personal, moral and economic ideas. The Framers has the personal idea of individual liberty, the moral idea of representative government, and the economic idea of private property secured from (and by) an elected government in mind when they wrote the Constitution.
I fear when people hold up the Constitution as the end-all-be-all when in fact it is the ideas behind the Constitution that are the real power of the document. It's the ideas, and their implementation that matter, not the words themselves.
Re:I know a lot of people consider Gibson passe...
on
All Tomorrow's Parties
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· Score: 1
I have to agree. I loved Idoru because it specifically got the the 'so what?' questions raised by the amazing technological surfeit explored in the Neuromancer trilogy. Okay, we have all this technology, a global cyberspace and a purely virtual pop star, so what?
And then Gibson explores that most ancient of themes, love, and the entire question of whether love can conquer all (even virtuality!). Combining one characters quest for love with another's loyalty and a third's concern.
The technology advances, but people are still people. Similar, IMHO, to what JMS was saying with B5.
I am an analyst.;-) So, for what it's worth, I totally understand how folks have issues with us. My personal biggest beef is with the major consulting houses like Gartner and Forrester. Their market size information is totally bogus. Forrester, for example, has changed their tune on how big the 'web hosting' market size is twice in three months. And if you look back in time, you can see that markets these guys predicted would be huge wound up not even existing. (remember Push and the whole buzz aroung PointCast a couple years back?)
But there is definitely a place for analysts. If you don't have the staff to do the research and planning cost-effectively in-house, it makes good sense to outsource it to people who do it professionally. Considering how tight the labor market is for information workers, it may even be cheaper in the long run!
And it was analysts who helped Linux get some form of respect on the Street back when Red Hat went public and such. If analysts really were in the pocket of MS, there is no way they would have said Linux has a real market on the server, considering that MS has been pushing NT server hard-core for years....
Actually, I used to live in NH when the whole Seabrook fiasco started. The original evacuation plans involved getting SCHOOL BUSES to drive everyone out of the area.
There is, if memory serves, only one road that can actually get you effectively and quickly in and out of that area.
I think part of it is to control the local's reaction. (no pun intended) If everyone is inside, and they need to evacuate, it's a helluva lot easier to do, street-by-street etc. If people hear about a nuclear accident, and the authorities DON'T tell them to stay inside (for whatever reason) the first people driving out of the area like bats out of hell are enough to cause a panic. More people would probably suffer/die as the result of a panic than of the accident itself...at THIS point.
When I heard about the tragedy, I felt a frightening lack of sympathy for some of the jocks who didn't make it. But that apathy only lasted a minute. I think there's a line that is crossed as you get older. When you're a kid, EVERYTHING is real, utterly and totally real. The moment, the now, is the most important thing, so you live in a surreality OF reality. Everything is TOO real. Everything is earth shattering. but as you get older, you can see the bigger picture. These students were on the verge of getting older, but their hate just overwhelmed them. The reality of the moment overwhelmed them.
The media didn't help matters by making what is happening RIGHT NOW the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER TO HAPPEN! I think that's part of the message of the Salon article.
The important thing to know and remember, especially if you're a frustrated geek who feels like blowing up his/her school, is that it WILL get better. This too SHALL pass. I think we don't emphasize the future enough to our students in need. Not just the 'go to college' future but the 'right now only matters a little bit' future. The 'what you do now will only help you, and if you screw up, it won't hurt you too bad, do your best, and the future will be better.'
Yeah, hopeless optimism. But Hopeless Pessimism causes tragedies like this.
It's an outgrowth of alt.galactic-guide and trying to build the real HHG via articles on the web. I submitted some myself when I was younger and sillier.;-)
Check it out. IMHO it would be a great starting point for some of the more... odd... topics to be covered in the H2G2.
But you're getting the 'raw data' from the book, right? So you are exploiting the efforts of the maker of that book. And hence, you should pay for the book, THEN you can use the raw data.
I think we agree here, but are talking past each other.
If a company has created a database, you oughtn't be able to steal that data FROM the database without paying for access to the database. You can gather the data yourself, as long as you don't gather it from the database without paying for it. Hoovers.com (makers of that book) use this principle to sell subscriptions to their online databaes. IDC, Gartner and Yankee Group (consulting houses) base their entire business model on proprietary databases and gathering of 'public' data.
Sigh...too bad the Congress killed that NTIA, there was a Federal agency that gathered tons of data and published it for free consumption as a matter of policy.
In the days of early copyright law, it made SENSE that databases shouldn't be because, as was so eleganly said above Copyrights are to protect the creator of intellectual property. Software, art, literature are the products of the intellect. A collect of data is not.
However, today collections of data ARE a product of intellect. The value isn't in the data itself, but in the sheer volume and ease of manipulation OF that data. This is where the whole industry of data mining and data warehousing comes from. Databases are products, things, now as much as cars or computers are. They are as valuable as a or a book, so they should be copyrightable. It seems silly to me that a Hoover's Handbook of American Business is copyrightable where a database with the same data in it isn't.
But there's a caveat. They shouldn't be copyrightable to the point where someone cannot go back and redo the research to get the data themselves, but you oughtn't be able to make your living off of someone elses database without reimbursing them.
[tangent] Nasa could make a good bit of cash for its cash-strapped research programs by selling image CDs. Maybe do some kind of partnership with the SETI@Home project so that people running SETI@Home get a link on the S@H client to a site where they can buy an image of the region of the sky they're currently analyzing or something. Or get one for free!
As for the archive problems, surely some kind of public support/fund can be setup to improve the tape backup cycle? NASA has always been good at tapping public support, and this is the kind of issue that would be perfect for that.
Either way, here's hoping that NASA's budget doesn't get cut any more. We need to get back into space, bigtime.
The first movie (ANH) and the original trilogy suffered from their own success. There had been nothing like them before, in their scope and extent, with brand new special effects, fantasy space-mythology, new, unheard of actors, and the like. At the risk of sounding trite, ANH was the Blair Witch of SciFi. (avoids pack of rabid trekkers)
Now, anything that Lucas does with SW is going to have to deal with that which came before. It's like being the child of an incredibly famous person...who am _I_ if not a reflection on that which came before? Yeah, the dialog in TPM was weak, and some of elements were crummy as all heck (guess who, the name rhymes with links), but it was a Good Movie. I'm not looking for the solutions to life's problems or even a tale by which to live my life, just something that's entertaining and to which I can relate.
As for over-hyped, Heck Yeah TPM was over-hyped. But from the economics standpoint, it was brilliantly so. No TV advertising was necessary! That's UNPRECEDENTED for a movie.
Ultimately, SW exists to make its backers money, same as any other brand. Yeah, that's crass, but it's true. And it's been incredibly successful at that while also being quite entertaining and a common bond among geeks.
Trite dialog seems to be a pretty minor critique in light of that.
IMHO.
Re:Surveillance is the key...
on
Smart Dust
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· Score: 1
I think it's likely this is the last we'll hear, publicly, about this technology for about two years. It'll probably go top secret for a while, actually go into production, and then be revealed on Hard Copy or something.;-)
I am fascinated by the heat issue though. One means of detection of these nanites could very well be the effect they have on the ambient temperature of a room or something. IR cameras could probably pick them out from normal dust.
Hmmm...do you think the U.S. or Japan will get to these things first? US researchers made the announcement, but the Japanese are incredible at applying such technology and mass producing it.
You may want to talk to Buzz Aldrin, he's got similar ideas. This is an idea that has been bouncing around for a couple years, and is gaining momentum.
Slashdot Mirror
The U.S. Gov never ran it. It was always contracted out to a corporate 3rd party.
I'm not sure if NetSol can auction your name if you registered it with another registrar. It would depend, I think, on whether that registrar had paid for the name in time or not. It seems perfectly feasible for NetSol to auction the domain name if the registrar you work with didn't sent NetSol their money in time...
Paradox !-)
The thing is, Microsoft has a whole helluva lot of developers across the world who are willing to jump through many many hoops to get access to the Windows platform. Sheer numbers of programmers at MS itself, alone, will give the new language a head-start. Combine that with programmers who have no major opinion about Microsoft (they exist, think India) who would be willing to try the language, assuming it actually provides the functionality of Java AND C++, and you have another market moving jump by the boys of Redmond.
Paradox !-)
We may be mixing trends here. I think it's more likely that ALL media is slimming down and consolidating as media becomes global. It's not just that Salon had layoffs, but also that most major cities no longer have two competing daily papers. The Washington Post doesn't compete with the Washington Times, it competes with the New York Times and MSNBC. Similarly, Salon and Slate don't necessarily compete with Inside.com, but rather with The New Republic and Brill's Content. And all of them are also competing with the BBC online, CNN.com and such. The medium isn't important, the content is. The content is spreading and broadening, making media compete against each other (or consolidate!).
Think of it like expansion in baseball, for a few years after expansion, pitching always sucks. Similarly, we have expansion in media, as the 'Net lets them compete against each other, so for a while we're gonna see reporting drive to a low common denominator and fracture into highly-targeted niches until the market stabilizes again.
Ranting,
Paradox !-)
Here's a thought: (and it may just be related to the article, whodathunkit?) Human civilization has been a progression of moving from the specific and practical to abstractions of the specific and practical in order to better enable us to manipulate and control the specific and practical using less work because, fundamentally, we're all lazy.
Thus, computers evolved because doing math was hard. The computers are an abstraction of our thought processes when we're doing math. Programming evolved because doing everything in machine language was hard. Thus, C++ is an abstraction of lower-order code in order to make it easier for us to manipulate that code. Similarly, the Internet evolved as an abstraction of the research process, with searching, Uniform Research Locaters and such because slogging halfway across the country to get a bit of weapons research from a fellow technician was a pain in the ass.
Ultimately, doing good reporting is a pain in the ass. So what we are seeing is people doing meta-reporting, such as posting stories on Slashdot from various 'real' reporting sites. Similarly, if people are doing their own writing and reporting, it's probably because doing that reporting is an easier abstraction than doing something practical. i.e., reporting on technology is easier than DOING technology.
Thus maybe, just maybe, It's not an open-vs-closed thing, but rather a natural progression from doing hard work yourself to making it easier to mooch of someone else's hard work. The merger between AOL and Time-Warner makes it easier for AOL folks to mooch of Time-Warner's hard work and vice versa. It's not a matter of their being 'closed' because we, in turn, mooch of their work when articles from a T-W source are posted.
It's all about maximizing laziness. Perhaps the replies to this article are the best example of this: it's a helluva lot easier to post a two line complaint about Katz' article than to refute it, defend it or critique it...
Paradox !-)
Warning: this may be slightly offtopic
The interesting thing about this article is how Katz is trying to say we need to have a moral discussion about this research because it may fundementally change some of the 'truths' we've taken for granted. And when such truths are changed, there tends to be upheaval.
(cue Bicentennial Man/Heinlein tie-in)
What if the genetic research we're doing now leads to a real form of immortality? They're regrowing brain cells now. The actual ability to transplant a brain cannot be a medical impossibility. Perhaps it's a generation away, but we'll get there. So what if 100 years from now people (rich people, probably) have the ability to clone themselves from birth a million times and make those clones basically brain dead. Then, when their current body gets old and broken-down, they transplant their brain into a new clone, a younger clone, and go on living.
What does this mean for wealth accumulation? What does it mean for family life? (if my dad was 'younger' than me, thanks to this procedure) What does it mean for the entire set of instutitions that are setup around the idea of man being mortal? Afterlife? The afterlife is the body I keep in the clonebank.
The upheaval of such a thing would be incredible, considering the implications for rich/poor class conflict or north/south global conflict.
THIS is the kind of thing Katz is talking about, IMHO. We could discuss these long-term implications now, maybe find some kind of consensus or compromise among people today, before the people of tomorrow start killing each other over them.
IMHO.
IMHO we're already seeing the advent of meta search engines that do their own search and then do a simultaneous search using other engines. (Yahoo does this, I think, as does lycos/hotbot) That's a great kludge for these engines to extend their reach, but not a real solution.
I think we'll see more topic-specific search engines (I use trade rag sites exclusively for really good info on tech news, for example) linked together through the big search engines. The main engine (Google, or whatever) will check the search term to see if that term has been pre-linked by the engine managers to generate a search on a more topic-specific engine (for example a search on "market size" may cause the engine to do a lookup on the northpoint search engine) or engines, and then combine the results of its own search with that of the topic-specific engine for relevant results.
It's the whole idea of vertical portals taken to the next level. The vertical portals provide topic-specific searching capabilities over the 'Net to the behemoth engines and portals for a fee, or something.
Remember, the user will not get smarter, but will rather look for the faster and easier solution.
IMHO.
I would read it with the following thoughts in the back of my mind: "What do they want? How do they want to use the medium (internet) to their advantage? What do they see as a threat and how does all of this influence their views?"
/.'ers would have each other believe of themselves ;-).
;-) about the changes being brought about by the extension of communication and information across the world. It brings the discussion of these changes from the realm of the geek to the realm of the everyman by putting them into the common language of good, evil, right and wrong.
;-)
As you said, this is true for anything and everything you read online. There's always a PoV, even if that point of view is to try to be as objective as possible (which so many
Personally, I find it very refreshing to see a church taking on this topic. Churches have a wonderful history of considering the implications of things (even as they have a terrible history of understanding the things themselves). Far too often, IMHO, the promoters and protectors of change do everything they can to minimize the implications and harm of that change while beefing up the supposed benefits. This can cause a backlash as those who expected to find gold only find hard work at the end of the miracle road. (See: Russia, Market Capitalism)
I know that the Internet scares the bejeezus out of my dad, who is an old-school telco-head. And that's because it has radically altered the industry he spent 20 years learning. All his knowledge becomes just this side of useless. That's terrifying, but those at the vanguard of the revolution usually don't consider that. Churches do. Books and views like this help us on the up side of change understand and help those on the down side by saying we have a moral obligation to consider the people we may otherwise forget.
Furthermore, you KNOW where a church is coming from. Churches generally come out and admit that they're speaking from their own Point of View. That's the very nature of an impermatur or condemnation. It establishes an anchor position on the moral/social axis, so people can take their bearings and say "I am on x side of the issue as compared to the church." It helps set up a common point of reference. These things are really important when trying to have a dialog (or multilog
From that point, it's up to us to argue the merits of these changes and do our best to ameliorate the costs. It is no longer enough to say "you're a newbie/old media/bellhead/boomer; you wouldn't understand."
Just MHO...sorry about the rant.
Perhaps we need a bill of rights referring to multi-national corporations, and some way of collecting and publicizing violations of it.
This is exactly what Clinton proposed as the long-term goal of the current negotiations IIRC.
Of course, we all see how well such international declarations actually work. See the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, to which China - for one - is a signatory but doesn't well support. Neither does the US in many cases (putting an 11 year old away for LIFE for murder is kinda harsh...), for that matter.
I think you are putting the cart before the horse. the ideas expressed in the constitution come as a RESULT of personal, moral and economic ideas. The Framers has the personal idea of individual liberty, the moral idea of representative government, and the economic idea of private property secured from (and by) an elected government in mind when they wrote the Constitution.
I fear when people hold up the Constitution as the end-all-be-all when in fact it is the ideas behind the Constitution that are the real power of the document. It's the ideas, and their implementation that matter, not the words themselves.
I have to agree. I loved Idoru because it specifically got the the 'so what?' questions raised by the amazing technological surfeit explored in the Neuromancer trilogy. Okay, we have all this technology, a global cyberspace and a purely virtual pop star, so what?
And then Gibson explores that most ancient of themes, love, and the entire question of whether love can conquer all (even virtuality!). Combining one characters quest for love with another's loyalty and a third's concern.
The technology advances, but people are still people. Similar, IMHO, to what JMS was saying with B5.
Just MHO.
I am an analyst. ;-) So, for what it's worth, I totally understand how folks have issues with us. My personal biggest beef is with the major consulting houses like Gartner and Forrester. Their market size information is totally bogus. Forrester, for example, has changed their tune on how big the 'web hosting' market size is twice in three months. And if you look back in time, you can see that markets these guys predicted would be huge wound up not even existing. (remember Push and the whole buzz aroung PointCast a couple years back?)
But there is definitely a place for analysts. If you don't have the staff to do the research and planning cost-effectively in-house, it makes good sense to outsource it to people who do it professionally. Considering how tight the labor market is for information workers, it may even be cheaper in the long run!
And it was analysts who helped Linux get some form of respect on the Street back when Red Hat went public and such. If analysts really were in the pocket of MS, there is no way they would have said Linux has a real market on the server, considering that MS has been pushing NT server hard-core for years....
Just MHO
Actually, there may be more truth to that than you realize!
Check out what The Register has to say about cell phones and bowel discomfort! True story...
Actually, I used to live in NH when the whole Seabrook fiasco started. The original evacuation plans involved getting SCHOOL BUSES to drive everyone out of the area.
There is, if memory serves, only one road that can actually get you effectively and quickly in and out of that area.
I think part of it is to control the local's reaction. (no pun intended) If everyone is inside, and they need to evacuate, it's a helluva lot easier to do, street-by-street etc. If people hear about a nuclear accident, and the authorities DON'T tell them to stay inside (for whatever reason) the first people driving out of the area like bats out of hell are enough to cause a panic. More people would probably suffer/die as the result of a panic than of the accident itself...at THIS point.
Girls of the E-School Calendar idea from UVA. A little out there, I think. But... :)
Really good and quick "caveat emptor, we'll be okay" analysis of the unfortunate happenstance at BBC News. I highly recommend it.
I'm sure many have seen this, but...
The Onion has a very interesting, darkly humorous take on the whole thing. A very good read that strikes a little too close to the truth for many, I'm sure.
When I heard about the tragedy, I felt a frightening lack of sympathy for some of the jocks who didn't make it. But that apathy only lasted a minute. I think there's a line that is crossed as you get older. When you're a kid, EVERYTHING is real, utterly and totally real. The moment, the now, is the most important thing, so you live in a surreality OF reality. Everything is TOO real. Everything is earth shattering. but as you get older, you can see the bigger picture. These students were on the verge of getting older, but their hate just overwhelmed them. The reality of the moment overwhelmed them.
The media didn't help matters by making what is happening RIGHT NOW the MOST IMPORTANT THING EVER TO HAPPEN! I think that's part of the message of the Salon article.
The important thing to know and remember, especially if you're a frustrated geek who feels like blowing up his/her school, is that it WILL get better. This too SHALL pass. I think we don't emphasize the future enough to our students in need. Not just the 'go to college' future but the 'right now only matters a little bit' future. The 'what you do now will only help you, and if you screw up, it won't hurt you too bad, do your best, and the future will be better.'
Yeah, hopeless optimism. But Hopeless Pessimism causes tragedies like this.
Idealistically yours...
Am I the only one who knows about megadodo.com?
;-)
... odd ... topics to be covered in the H2G2.
It's an outgrowth of alt.galactic-guide and trying to build the real HHG via articles on the web. I submitted some myself when I was younger and sillier.
Check it out. IMHO it would be a great starting point for some of the more
But you're getting the 'raw data' from the book, right? So you are exploiting the efforts of the maker of that book. And hence, you should pay for the book, THEN you can use the raw data.
I think we agree here, but are talking past each other.
If a company has created a database, you oughtn't be able to steal that data FROM the database without paying for access to the database. You can gather the data yourself, as long as you don't gather it from the database without paying for it. Hoovers.com (makers of that book) use this principle to sell subscriptions to their online databaes. IDC, Gartner and Yankee Group (consulting houses) base their entire business model on proprietary databases and gathering of 'public' data.
Sigh...too bad the Congress killed that NTIA, there was a Federal agency that gathered tons of data and published it for free consumption as a matter of policy.
In the days of early copyright law, it made SENSE that databases shouldn't be because, as was so eleganly said above Copyrights are to protect the creator of intellectual property. Software, art, literature are the products of the intellect. A collect of data is not.
However, today collections of data ARE a product of intellect. The value isn't in the data itself, but in the sheer volume and ease of manipulation OF that data. This is where the whole industry of data mining and data warehousing comes from. Databases are products, things, now as much as cars or computers are. They are as valuable as a or a book, so they should be copyrightable. It seems silly to me that a Hoover's Handbook of American Business is copyrightable where a database with the same data in it isn't.
But there's a caveat. They shouldn't be copyrightable to the point where someone cannot go back and redo the research to get the data themselves, but you oughtn't be able to make your living off of someone elses database without reimbursing them.
IM (highly unpopular) O
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Nasa could make a good bit of cash for its cash-strapped research programs by selling image CDs. Maybe do some kind of partnership with the SETI@Home project so that people running SETI@Home get a link on the S@H client to a site where they can buy an image of the region of the sky they're currently analyzing or something. Or get one for free!
As for the archive problems, surely some kind of public support/fund can be setup to improve the tape backup cycle? NASA has always been good at tapping public support, and this is the kind of issue that would be perfect for that.
Either way, here's hoping that NASA's budget doesn't get cut any more. We need to get back into space, bigtime.
The first movie (ANH) and the original trilogy suffered from their own success. There had been nothing like them before, in their scope and extent, with brand new special effects, fantasy space-mythology, new, unheard of actors, and the like. At the risk of sounding trite, ANH was the Blair Witch of SciFi. (avoids pack of rabid trekkers)
Now, anything that Lucas does with SW is going to have to deal with that which came before. It's like being the child of an incredibly famous person...who am _I_ if not a reflection on that which came before? Yeah, the dialog in TPM was weak, and some of elements were crummy as all heck (guess who, the name rhymes with links), but it was a Good Movie. I'm not looking for the solutions to life's problems or even a tale by which to live my life, just something that's entertaining and to which I can relate.
As for over-hyped, Heck Yeah TPM was over-hyped. But from the economics standpoint, it was brilliantly so. No TV advertising was necessary! That's UNPRECEDENTED for a movie.
Ultimately, SW exists to make its backers money, same as any other brand. Yeah, that's crass, but it's true. And it's been incredibly successful at that while also being quite entertaining and a common bond among geeks.
Trite dialog seems to be a pretty minor critique in light of that.
IMHO.
I think it's likely this is the last we'll hear, publicly, about this technology for about two years. It'll probably go top secret for a while, actually go into production, and then be revealed on Hard Copy or something. ;-)
I am fascinated by the heat issue though. One means of detection of these nanites could very well be the effect they have on the ambient temperature of a room or something. IR cameras could probably pick them out from normal dust.
Hmmm...do you think the U.S. or Japan will get to these things first? US researchers made the announcement, but the Japanese are incredible at applying such technology and mass producing it.
Just some thoughts...
You may want to talk to Buzz Aldrin, he's got similar ideas. This is an idea that has been bouncing around for a couple years, and is gaining momentum.
Vote for representatives who fund NASA!