I have to agree completely with a previous poster, who suggested that the BSD license would be the most appropriate. Government contracts are paid for by tax dollars ultimately, and in the end a large percentage of that comes from business as well as from individuals. Having had to fill out taxes for my business for the first time last year, I can tell you that the IRS (or whatever the tax collecting body for your government is) certainly requires a large chunk of change. Therefore, I believe it only fair that everyone has the opportunity to benefit from software developed with government dollars.
I don't believe a closed source license is a good one at all, but likewise I don't think the GPL is the best idea either. Either putting it directly into the public domain, or using a BSD style license is the best solution, IMHO.
NOTE: This is for discussions of software being *developed* with government dollars, not when bidding is going on to use existing software for a contract, which is a whole different issue. But when development is done with everyone's dollars, it should be open for use by all.
I agree with this totally. A surprisingly large, and ever increasing, amount of OS X libraries use altivec, which means that developers using those libraries get some acceleration for free. Altivec is much easier to optimize stuff for then MMX, SSE2, etc.
I am very pleased that Spirited Away has recieved the recognition it deserved. I was fortunate enough to be able to see it on the big screen, and both the animation and the story were very pleasant. Spirited Away is one of the rare films that I could take a bunch of kids to watch, yet still enjoy the movie myself, because the story can be appreciated on a number of levels.
Miyazaki has directed an unusually large number of very nice animated pieces, and Studio Ghibli is well known as delivering some of the highest quality films out there, live or animated. I hope that this may do something to bring more mainstream appreciation to animation as an adult story telling medium in the United States.
As a note, if anyone is interested in seeing a list of other films by Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, they can look at nausicaa.net.
Shareware is far from dead, and I doubt it ever truly will be so long as there are independent developers. A quick look at a site like Version Tracker (www.versiontracker.com) shows that there is a ton of shareware in active development. This isn't so much in games, like many people think, but with utilities. The virtual desktop software I have come to depend on is an example of very good, high quality shareware.
Shareware as a model has the advantage of being able to use viral marketing. If there is a program I really enjoy, I can tell my friends about it and give them a copy. They can do the same if they like it, ad infinitum. This, like many other free formats, cuts the cost of advertising tremendously, very important for a small developer. And depending on the market one can also make a bit of money off of the work, which seems to be harder to do with other formats. The best shareware often is a full version, but then offers additional incentives or bonuses to register.
I think that shareware, at least on the Mac platform where there are less commercial developers, has a long and distinguished history and will continue to play a part on the software scene.
One of the things that I have not seen discussed too much (at least on many gaming sites I read) is the lack of dynamic environments in most games. It has always bothered me that despite the graphics and models of games getting more and more realistic, approaching photorealism in some cases, I can still often shoot a rocket at a thin window or flower and have no effect. For a long time it was a running joke among a bunch of us playing Command and Conquer that the the main forces were nuts to make their buildings out of metal and advanced nanotech materials; instead, they should have used trees, which were not only plentiful but also capable of withstanding a direct nuclear strike with no damage.
Granted, some games have been doing more with deformable terrain, but not enough. Red Faction had its GeoMod system, and some RTSs like C&C Tiberium Sun have things like rivers that freeze, but it really hasn't been taken to the extreme it should be. Especially in MMORPGs, I would be really intrigued if players could actually rearrange the face of the land. With really powerful spells or technology, it seems like one should be able to knock down mountains or carve out lakes. I think that, properly utilized, this would add a whole new dimension to strategy. Is the enemy's base at the bottom of a valley? Blast apart a nearby river and see if their base can survive underwater. Trigger a volcano on the area above them. Cause an avalanche to fall as they follow through a pass below a snowy slope. All sorts of things could be possible.
Also, it would be nice to see more of a system in games where players can create their own new parts of the game. Already some games are starting to do this as well, with players able to make more powerful weapons and items. However, I would also like to see players able to create pretty much anything in game that they might mod. It is perfectly possible in certain situations that players might even be able to influence the creation of a new race, of new spells or monsters. More of this should be available as a part of the world.
Yikes, getting kind of long winded here. Anyway, I hope in the future the CPU gets used more, as well as the GPU! Just my 2cents.
I guess that there are multiple sides to any story, though in the end I find the efforts of sites like anti-leech both amusing and somewhat dangerous. On the one hand, I do understand that serving a website can be expensive, and that as the recession continues many people are becomming more and more desperate to avoid going under. However, anti-leech is bad for at least two major reasons, one economic, and one societal.
1. Alienating your customers rarely makes for a solid business plan: As the RIAA and countless other harsh regimes(both in business and government) have learned, the more you clamp down, the more people squirm to escape your grasp. Companies forget that one of the whole points of the WWW is choice- and that includes the choice to go to another website if this one is treating me badly. I don't think I need to point out that long term business is built on repeat customers, but then again maybe I do. Repeat customers are ideal, because they are likely to spend more, and have a far lower cost of acquisition. You generally get repeat customers by building loyalty, a positive feeling towards the company. Loyalty does not generally follow from pissing people off.
2. Even more so then with programming, many people start learning their HTML by looking out how another site has done it. I now do a lot of website development, but I got my start when I was younger in part through liberal copying/tinkering with already built stuff until I figured it out well enough to do myself. This makes me concerned about their 'anti-view-source' offerings. While I suspect much of their stuff can be circumvented, the very people who might benefit most from looking at code are new to the web and thus might not know how to get around stuff. If such things became widespread, it could have a somewhat chilling effect on the learning that goes on for the general, casual designer, who might never have the chance to get bit by the bug and learn more(/me looks over at large pile of Mt. Dew bottles, not totally sure this would be bad;).
Any how, I hope that the concept embodied by antileech gets thoroughly trounced. Heh, and I haven't even touched on the whole rediculousness of the 'theft' thing, but I'm sure that will get pretty well gone over by others.
...but it is vitally important that you actually let Apple know if you like their stance! I have seen posts already that say something to the effect of 'I applaud Apple for their policy...'. Don't tell us (the slashdot audience), tell Apple. They are about to come up against the big sword that hangs over all who would try to hold out, and this sword packs power: exlusive content. Media is going to come out in formats that are DRM exclusive. We say now that if it's DRM, what good is it? But what if the next Lord of The Rings was available in a DRM format only, or what if it was something else we really wanted? This isn't about just dumb movies or boy bands, this is about the future of all media.
Apple is going to come under pressure from its own customers to include support for this stuff. If we want them to stay on the high road and not curb consumer's rights, we need to tell them, both in words and with our wallets when possible. The same goes for any company that takes a similar stance. It may behoove you to go to their feedback page and tell them what you think, before they become convinced that nobody cares.
As good a person as I am, with plenty of karma etc, I am not quite sure I deserve 30 free mod points on the new system. Oh well, "Use 'em or lose 'em." ^_^
Downloading only a third of the problem...
on
Downloading The Mind
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· Score: 5, Insightful
and not necessarily even the harder third. It is one thing to be able to copy all the information in a human brain. Especially as storage becomes holographic, with 3 dimensional light patterns being used, even everything a person knows could probably be fit. The problems remaining are two fold: how to access the information, and then what to do with it.
Copying the information would require an extremely sophisticated, as well as invasive, set of technologies. Nanotech would probably need to be used to get the proper connections throughout the mind. As far as simply linking the brain, many people have discussed 'plugs' and such that would intercept external sensory/control feeds, such as the optic nerve and spinal cord, and then allow that information to be manipulated/redirected. Thus signals to move a leg could be altered so that they would move a mechanical leg, or even something else entirely. In such a way people could transplant their brains into robotic/cyborg surrogates, not even necessarily human looking. A fighter pilot, for instance, might just transport his brain into the plane. Thus the command to 'run' or 'walk' might be mapped onto engine throttling or some such. External camera's would send a feed, acting as 'eyes', etc. However, none of this makes any attempt at all to actually access stuff in reverse, from the brain. We record memories and such in the structure of the main brain, and thus something would need to go into the brain to read those. And because the 3-D structure of the brain is so critical, preserving the meta-information of how the other memories and such were encoded is also critical. Otherwise, you might end up with a record of memories and thoughts, but no way to actually connect those to form the personality.
Heh, I seem to be ending up with a long post, but the last thing to deal with, assuming sucessful duplication (including the metainformation) is "what now?" A way would have to be found to basically create an artificial neural net that would be able to recreate the exact structure of the original brain. Who knows, it might be possible to do such a thing virtually, having different sectors connected to each other and thus having a person exist in cyberspace. That, however, is pure speculation.
I actually find a lot of the stuff going on very exciting. Brains seem to last a lot longer then the body supporting them does anyway, so being able to basically have your brain in a very strong container that could be moved from body to body would probably work pretty well, and could potentially be very doable. However, total artifical replacement seems a long ways off. In some ways, what he is talking about in this article is sort of like cryrogenics today. You can get yourself frozen, but for the time being there is no way to ever undo the process.
This is one of the books you should read if you are interested in research, both with weapons and peaceful purposes, that was done with nuclear weapons. Theodore B. Taylor was one of the most interesting and ingeninous nuclear researchers ever, and had many ideas for using directed charge nuclear devices for everything from rockets to digging subways that would span the entire continent. He also discusses how easily nuclear devices can be made, and a lot of the current state-of-the-art in devices. A definite good read. More info about the book can be found on amazon here.
A smart thing to do would be to run Virtual PC. I have an OSX native copy (version 5.x) with Windows 2000 (as well as various flavors of Linux, not important here) and it is perfectly capable of emulating something with as low requirements as Nero quite well. As a general rule, I find that the emulation environment runs around half the speed of the processor as an equivalent P3, so an 800Mhz G4 would be a ~400 P3, give or take. If you have a duel machine this will be slightly higher, but the bigger advantage is devoting a processor to VPC and then being able to do a lot of other stuff.
Oh yeah, and along with Nero I would recommend people find a copy of VirtualDub. Fantastic program, PC only I think, but can convert between a LOT of different video formats quite well. Get the latest version here, but it also may be worth finding an old version around somewhere, 1.3 or something, because it can also convert ASF files to things like AVI/MPEG! Unfortunetly Microsoft strongarmed him to take out the feature, and I don't know if he has been able to put it back yet. Oh, and something many people here will appreciate, it is now GPLed!
I work with 3D design, and can certainly attest to the difficulty in mimicking people. The huge numbers of muscles and tiny details of morphology that make up a human face is a tremendously important part of making realism. However, ultimately a surface is needed, as it is, in the end, the light that is reflected back to our eyes. How real the surface looks is a required part of the equation, and some of the new advancements being made in rendering are quite exciting to me. For instance, many older raytracers only handle how light directly reflects off the surface of a texture. But in reality, things like human skin are not opaque, but are slightly translucent. The light passes into the skin, reflects off things like blood vessels, and exits again. Light also behaves in other interesting ways in certain situations. And some effects are simply dependent on computational power. Radiosity, for instance, can make scenes look much more realistic, but is too cycle-hungry to be used all the time in full-screen video. Being able to set these sorts of properties without having to program complex custom render modules for each movie will go a long way towards making artificial people more common.
I see that currently that Wellington wireless speed is 11Mbps. This leads me to suspect that they are using the 802.11b standard, which is pretty widespread at this point (Airport, and numerous PC solutions). However, if they plan on going to 56 I wonder which one they will be using. 802.11a supports the much higher speed, but at a price of greatly reduced range. I guess it seems most likely that they will use one of the new standards, such 802.11g, info on which can be found here. This one runs in the 2.4GHz band, and is supposed to support 54Mbps. However, a final draft hasn't been approved.
Now this is a situation that I'm sure airlines will love: business passengers now wanting to carry little bottles of fuel instead of spare batteries for their portables. This will become even worse if cells arrive that run off of pure hydrogen-"PEM (proton exchange membrane) fuel cells that run on hydrogen." This technology, should it be cheap enough, will get very popular very quickly(who wouldn't love to have a 10 our notebook life that can be extended without shutdown). But I wonder what the policy will be? Ten hours should be plenty for any flight, so maybe airlines will just say that any refills can't be in carry-on bags.
The other problem is that planes are closed environments. Just as you can't smoke on a plane, it seems possible that any emmisions given off by fuel cells other then water vapor might also cause them to be banned. It may be that the battery won't be abandoned just yet.
When evaluating the usefulness of a potential fuel, one of the most important things is how efficiently that fuel can be converted to energy, and in engines the heat differential between the coldest and hottest parts of the system. Matter-Antimatter is very efficient, as there is direct mass->energy conversion. Combustion is very inefficient(a lot of burned fuel, not much energy).
Nuclear efficiency is in between. While there is not complete conversion, there is some mass going to energy, unlike in chemical rockets. However, nuclear physics is practical and well understood. A system would probably not work just as a bunch of bombs going off(though research was done on that, see The Binding Curve of Energy), instead liquid fuel, possibly liquid hydrogen or ammonia, would be sent through a nuclear core, then expelled. This would allow radiation release to be kept in check pretty easily, and a highly efficient super-heated plasma would propel the ship. In addition, unlike normal rockets the plasma could be controlled with magnetic fields.
While nuclear certainly holds a great stigma to many people, and is not as sexy as advanced antimatter/space warp/whatever systems, it is here and could be turned into a drive with minimal fuss. I could see a single nation/group(of sufficient economic strength, aka US, EU, possibly Japan) or coalition of nations getting behind this and making a ship to do it. The others will be needed, and research should continue, but if we want to go to other planets in the next couple of decades, this is probably the technology to do it with.
It pisses me off that the company Crayon itself admitted that it was just looking for a quick buck. Crayon is so generic, it KDE would almost certainly have won in court, but like so many other tech companies the time it would take while it would be barred from distributing SuSE made it easier just to settle. Which is exactly what one Günther von Gravenreuth was counting on. As stated in The Register,"He presents himself as a normal lawyer, but in fact he is a dangerous criminal. He is dangerous because he infiltrates the judicial system by means of legal practices. His intentions are destructive. He tries to hurt legally inexperienced developers, designers, service providers and other members of the information technology generation.
In particular, he uses the regulations of trademark and patent law, because in this area the judical uncertainty is very high."
It always annoys me to see this kind of abuse of the legal system, where over complicated proceedings and legal language makes it too much trouble for companies to fight, and encourages them to just settle. This rewards frivolous suits, instead of punishing them as it should. Sigh.
I have been using Macs for awhile now, since using my first SE/30 almost a decade ago(heck, I even have an old Apple IIe kicking around). Apple has made a big change in its move to OS X, but what has made it a lot better for me is how at each major update (beta>10.0>10.1) there has been an obvious willingness to respond to feedback they have been given. The system has come a long way since the PB, restoring many old features and functionality that users asked for. Yes it has flaws, especially evident in Job's insistance on doing things His Way(TM) in many cases. But that is definitely changing. In the beta, the menu bar didn't even really exist, the NeXTish dock tried to cover even more stuff. Metadata and networking seem to be improving somewhate, and springloaded folders look to make a comeback in the next version.
I view all the moans from other Mac users in much the same way I remember the horror people expressed at the transition from OS 6 to OS 7. I am thrilled to be able to have a command line and all the power it offers at my finger tips, and the stability is very welcome. It is just fun to play with again, especially since it is so much more customizable. The system is still fresh, and has great potential. People should try to think of it as it will be in a year or two, with a bit more polish, and a lot more software. I hope that the linux community will be able to gain valuable stuff from OS X, just as we can gain from *nix. As long as Apple continues to show a willingness to respond to what users want, I have a lot of optimism for the system.
Of course Apple has been intensly close-source-minded. You have to remember, up until the mid-90s few serious businesses would actually look at open-source as something to actually use in a commercial product. Apple has taken a brave and important step. If opensource actually ever wants to expand beyond the server market, our "oh, if the user doesn't get it they are stupid" rhetoric must go. Mom needs to be able to use it.
Further, you need to do more research about your arguments. Open source zealots may never bother to check copyright law, but companys really -have- to defend their copyrighted stuff every single time. If they don't they risk losing the rights to it. In addition, Apple -doesn't- own the Sorensen codec: they license it. They can't control whether or not it is open sourced. Finally, your arguments about aqua and other core technologies are ludicrous. People should be very clear: Apple is a commercial company, which means they need to make real -money-. If everything is free, why would anyone pay for the OS? What would cover development costs. The OS is comparatively cheap, because of hardware, but it is still the corner stone of Apple's business. People can get the base Darwin for free, just like linux. If you want the extra stuff Apple worked so hard on, you're just going to have to pay for it.
This is a great start, and I hope that it is very sucessful and prompts other commercial companies too start to champion open source. Value added solutions can be viable business models.
I have played and enjoyed consoles since the original NES. Despite the many faces that have come and gone, a few constant things seem to always add up to success. A system needs to be easy to develop for, have enough power/expandability to not be far behind to competition, and/or have forward momentum from a previous successful system. However, often success breeds arrogence, and companies forget these principles.
A combination of two or more of these usually makes up for a lack in the others. Likewise, failure in multiple categories often doom a system. Nintendo dominated with the SNES, which had an incredible set of developers. But they took a long time developing a replacement, and when they did the N64 was both hard to develop for, couldn't run old games, and didn't have the ability to easily hold as much as the PS1(FMV on a cartridge?). It had plenty of power over the PS1, but not much else.
Likewise, the current PS2 isn't as easy to develop for, or as powerful as the Xbox and Gamecube. But it is easy enough, and since it can run all the PS1 games and came out first it has a huge market penetration jump start. If a company can only afford to initially develop for one platform, they will probably do it on the system that has the most market share. Likewise, many consumers will buy the system with the most games, building an upward momentum for the system. Neither Nintendo(with experience) or Microsoft(with $$$) are small contenders who can be counted out, which is good as it will make sure none of the companies sit on their laurels. Hopefully, we will get to seem some really great development in the years ahead.
The Xbox has some pretty good hardware, and the price is very good. Microsoft is selling it at a loss, I think around $100 per unit(of course, they have plenty of cash so losing money doesn't matter as much as gaining market share). This could make them quite cost effective price/performance wise compared to just buying stuff off the shelf in a cheap pc. I read somewhere awhile back that someone was trying to make it so the PS2 could be used to render stuff, and the Xbox is supposed to have slightly better hardware power. If the Xbox can be hacked to run linux(shouldn't be a big deal, since it is supposed to be a lot like a PC), and get some more connections stuff(like with this USB) then it may be worth getting one/few to connect to a network as an extra GPU. Linux being an OS of choice for the MS Xbox. Mmm, that irony smarts doesn't it...
It seems sort of like a bigger versioin of the Dialectizer, a site that allows you to insert a url and then have all the text on the page translated into a number of amusing "languages," such as redneck, jive, elmer fudd, etc./. readers may especially appreciate the hacker dialect. ^_^ Try this version of slashdot!(hit the dialectize button). CmdrTaco's gone l33+!
I was very surprised a while back to read these articles on a big companies actually saving a lot of money, and one of them is none other then Intel! The article details about how Intel was inspired by Napster and switched some stuff to linux. From the article:
"Free operating system Linux was another unexpected result from ad hoc Internet collaboration embraced by Intel, saving the chipmaker $200 million," Busch said. The company ditched expensive Unix servers with proprietary Unix software and replaced them with cheaper servers equipped with Intel's own chips that run Linux software.
Online retailer Amazon.com shaved millions of dollars from its technology costs last quarter by switching to the Linux operating system, a disclosure that could provide some guidance for other companies seeking to cut expenses in a stagnant economy.
Provide guidance for other companies? And the title, "Linux saved us millions." Sounds great to me. At least some corporations finally seem to be learning that OSS does have advantages, and they can in many cases be spelled out in nice, crisp greenbacks.
"Why do we care? Understanding sunspots is essential for understanding the 11-year solar cycle, solar flare explosions, and huge coronal mass ejections that affect life and society on Earth."
Solar flares can screw up satellites and such, but as people begin to move into space more(missions to mars in the next 50 years, moon in possibly less, aren't beyond the realm of consideration anymore) this will become even more important. Getting caught by a flare without any of the protection Earth's magentosphere offers is a quick way to get fried. Any interplanet ship would obviously have to have some kind of shielding(probably between water/fuel tanks), but being able to more accurately understand and predict flares, especially for cheaper/shorter moon trips, will be vital.
"Well you see your honor, when all those free credit card numbers appeared in my e-mail, I just assumed that they were free trial numbers like the mail said. I just KNEW that they couldn't have been ripped off from peoples' passport accounts, because Microsoft swore to me on their holy closed source code that it was -impossible-! How was I too know ordering all that expensive stuff right away wouldn't be ok..."
Slashdot Mirror
I don't believe a closed source license is a good one at all, but likewise I don't think the GPL is the best idea either. Either putting it directly into the public domain, or using a BSD style license is the best solution, IMHO.
NOTE: This is for discussions of software being *developed* with government dollars, not when bidding is going on to use existing software for a contract, which is a whole different issue. But when development is done with everyone's dollars, it should be open for use by all.
I agree with this totally. A surprisingly large, and ever increasing, amount of OS X libraries use altivec, which means that developers using those libraries get some acceleration for free. Altivec is much easier to optimize stuff for then MMX, SSE2, etc.
Miyazaki has directed an unusually large number of very nice animated pieces, and Studio Ghibli is well known as delivering some of the highest quality films out there, live or animated. I hope that this may do something to bring more mainstream appreciation to animation as an adult story telling medium in the United States.
As a note, if anyone is interested in seeing a list of other films by Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli, they can look at nausicaa.net.
Shareware as a model has the advantage of being able to use viral marketing. If there is a program I really enjoy, I can tell my friends about it and give them a copy. They can do the same if they like it, ad infinitum. This, like many other free formats, cuts the cost of advertising tremendously, very important for a small developer. And depending on the market one can also make a bit of money off of the work, which seems to be harder to do with other formats. The best shareware often is a full version, but then offers additional incentives or bonuses to register.
I think that shareware, at least on the Mac platform where there are less commercial developers, has a long and distinguished history and will continue to play a part on the software scene.
Granted, some games have been doing more with deformable terrain, but not enough. Red Faction had its GeoMod system, and some RTSs like C&C Tiberium Sun have things like rivers that freeze, but it really hasn't been taken to the extreme it should be. Especially in MMORPGs, I would be really intrigued if players could actually rearrange the face of the land. With really powerful spells or technology, it seems like one should be able to knock down mountains or carve out lakes. I think that, properly utilized, this would add a whole new dimension to strategy. Is the enemy's base at the bottom of a valley? Blast apart a nearby river and see if their base can survive underwater. Trigger a volcano on the area above them. Cause an avalanche to fall as they follow through a pass below a snowy slope. All sorts of things could be possible.
Also, it would be nice to see more of a system in games where players can create their own new parts of the game. Already some games are starting to do this as well, with players able to make more powerful weapons and items. However, I would also like to see players able to create pretty much anything in game that they might mod. It is perfectly possible in certain situations that players might even be able to influence the creation of a new race, of new spells or monsters. More of this should be available as a part of the world.
Yikes, getting kind of long winded here. Anyway, I hope in the future the CPU gets used more, as well as the GPU! Just my 2cents.
I guess that there are multiple sides to any story, though in the end I find the efforts of sites like anti-leech both amusing and somewhat dangerous. On the one hand, I do understand that serving a website can be expensive, and that as the recession continues many people are becomming more and more desperate to avoid going under. However, anti-leech is bad for at least two major reasons, one economic, and one societal.
;).
1. Alienating your customers rarely makes for a solid business plan: As the RIAA and countless other harsh regimes(both in business and government) have learned, the more you clamp down, the more people squirm to escape your grasp. Companies forget that one of the whole points of the WWW is choice- and that includes the choice to go to another website if this one is treating me badly. I don't think I need to point out that long term business is built on repeat customers, but then again maybe I do. Repeat customers are ideal, because they are likely to spend more, and have a far lower cost of acquisition. You generally get repeat customers by building loyalty, a positive feeling towards the company. Loyalty does not generally follow from pissing people off.
2. Even more so then with programming, many people start learning their HTML by looking out how another site has done it. I now do a lot of website development, but I got my start when I was younger in part through liberal copying/tinkering with already built stuff until I figured it out well enough to do myself. This makes me concerned about their 'anti-view-source' offerings. While I suspect much of their stuff can be circumvented, the very people who might benefit most from looking at code are new to the web and thus might not know how to get around stuff. If such things became widespread, it could have a somewhat chilling effect on the learning that goes on for the general, casual designer, who might never have the chance to get bit by the bug and learn more(/me looks over at large pile of Mt. Dew bottles, not totally sure this would be bad
Any how, I hope that the concept embodied by antileech gets thoroughly trounced. Heh, and I haven't even touched on the whole rediculousness of the 'theft' thing, but I'm sure that will get pretty well gone over by others.
Apple is going to come under pressure from its own customers to include support for this stuff. If we want them to stay on the high road and not curb consumer's rights, we need to tell them, both in words and with our wallets when possible. The same goes for any company that takes a similar stance. It may behoove you to go to their feedback page and tell them what you think, before they become convinced that nobody cares.
As Monty Python said:
Well let's see, look around now. Can you spot the loony?
*KAPOW!!*
Ah yes, another loony spotted...
As good a person as I am, with plenty of karma etc, I am not quite sure I deserve 30 free mod points on the new system. Oh well, "Use 'em or lose 'em." ^_^
Copying the information would require an extremely sophisticated, as well as invasive, set of technologies. Nanotech would probably need to be used to get the proper connections throughout the mind. As far as simply linking the brain, many people have discussed 'plugs' and such that would intercept external sensory/control feeds, such as the optic nerve and spinal cord, and then allow that information to be manipulated/redirected. Thus signals to move a leg could be altered so that they would move a mechanical leg, or even something else entirely. In such a way people could transplant their brains into robotic/cyborg surrogates, not even necessarily human looking. A fighter pilot, for instance, might just transport his brain into the plane. Thus the command to 'run' or 'walk' might be mapped onto engine throttling or some such. External camera's would send a feed, acting as 'eyes', etc. However, none of this makes any attempt at all to actually access stuff in reverse, from the brain. We record memories and such in the structure of the main brain, and thus something would need to go into the brain to read those. And because the 3-D structure of the brain is so critical, preserving the meta-information of how the other memories and such were encoded is also critical. Otherwise, you might end up with a record of memories and thoughts, but no way to actually connect those to form the personality.
Heh, I seem to be ending up with a long post, but the last thing to deal with, assuming sucessful duplication (including the metainformation) is "what now?" A way would have to be found to basically create an artificial neural net that would be able to recreate the exact structure of the original brain. Who knows, it might be possible to do such a thing virtually, having different sectors connected to each other and thus having a person exist in cyberspace. That, however, is pure speculation.
I actually find a lot of the stuff going on very exciting. Brains seem to last a lot longer then the body supporting them does anyway, so being able to basically have your brain in a very strong container that could be moved from body to body would probably work pretty well, and could potentially be very doable. However, total artifical replacement seems a long ways off. In some ways, what he is talking about in this article is sort of like cryrogenics today. You can get yourself frozen, but for the time being there is no way to ever undo the process.
This is one of the books you should read if you are interested in research, both with weapons and peaceful purposes, that was done with nuclear weapons. Theodore B. Taylor was one of the most interesting and ingeninous nuclear researchers ever, and had many ideas for using directed charge nuclear devices for everything from rockets to digging subways that would span the entire continent. He also discusses how easily nuclear devices can be made, and a lot of the current state-of-the-art in devices. A definite good read. More info about the book can be found on amazon here.
Oh yeah, and along with Nero I would recommend people find a copy of VirtualDub. Fantastic program, PC only I think, but can convert between a LOT of different video formats quite well. Get the latest version here, but it also may be worth finding an old version around somewhere, 1.3 or something, because it can also convert ASF files to things like AVI/MPEG! Unfortunetly Microsoft strongarmed him to take out the feature, and I don't know if he has been able to put it back yet. Oh, and something many people here will appreciate, it is now GPLed!
I work with 3D design, and can certainly attest to the difficulty in mimicking people. The huge numbers of muscles and tiny details of morphology that make up a human face is a tremendously important part of making realism. However, ultimately a surface is needed, as it is, in the end, the light that is reflected back to our eyes. How real the surface looks is a required part of the equation, and some of the new advancements being made in rendering are quite exciting to me. For instance, many older raytracers only handle how light directly reflects off the surface of a texture. But in reality, things like human skin are not opaque, but are slightly translucent. The light passes into the skin, reflects off things like blood vessels, and exits again. Light also behaves in other interesting ways in certain situations. And some effects are simply dependent on computational power. Radiosity, for instance, can make scenes look much more realistic, but is too cycle-hungry to be used all the time in full-screen video. Being able to set these sorts of properties without having to program complex custom render modules for each movie will go a long way towards making artificial people more common.
I see that currently that Wellington wireless speed is 11Mbps. This leads me to suspect that they are using the 802.11b standard, which is pretty widespread at this point (Airport, and numerous PC solutions). However, if they plan on going to 56 I wonder which one they will be using. 802.11a supports the much higher speed, but at a price of greatly reduced range. I guess it seems most likely that they will use one of the new standards, such 802.11g, info on which can be found here. This one runs in the 2.4GHz band, and is supposed to support 54Mbps. However, a final draft hasn't been approved.
The other problem is that planes are closed environments. Just as you can't smoke on a plane, it seems possible that any emmisions given off by fuel cells other then water vapor might also cause them to be banned. It may be that the battery won't be abandoned just yet.
Nuclear efficiency is in between. While there is not complete conversion, there is some mass going to energy, unlike in chemical rockets. However, nuclear physics is practical and well understood. A system would probably not work just as a bunch of bombs going off(though research was done on that, see The Binding Curve of Energy), instead liquid fuel, possibly liquid hydrogen or ammonia, would be sent through a nuclear core, then expelled. This would allow radiation release to be kept in check pretty easily, and a highly efficient super-heated plasma would propel the ship. In addition, unlike normal rockets the plasma could be controlled with magnetic fields.
While nuclear certainly holds a great stigma to many people, and is not as sexy as advanced antimatter/space warp/whatever systems, it is here and could be turned into a drive with minimal fuss. I could see a single nation/group(of sufficient economic strength, aka US, EU, possibly Japan) or coalition of nations getting behind this and making a ship to do it. The others will be needed, and research should continue, but if we want to go to other planets in the next couple of decades, this is probably the technology to do it with.
In particular, he uses the regulations of trademark and patent law, because in this area the judical uncertainty is very high."
It always annoys me to see this kind of abuse of the legal system, where over complicated proceedings and legal language makes it too much trouble for companies to fight, and encourages them to just settle. This rewards frivolous suits, instead of punishing them as it should. Sigh.
I view all the moans from other Mac users in much the same way I remember the horror people expressed at the transition from OS 6 to OS 7. I am thrilled to be able to have a command line and all the power it offers at my finger tips, and the stability is very welcome. It is just fun to play with again, especially since it is so much more customizable. The system is still fresh, and has great potential. People should try to think of it as it will be in a year or two, with a bit more polish, and a lot more software. I hope that the linux community will be able to gain valuable stuff from OS X, just as we can gain from *nix. As long as Apple continues to show a willingness to respond to what users want, I have a lot of optimism for the system.
Further, you need to do more research about your arguments. Open source zealots may never bother to check copyright law, but companys really -have- to defend their copyrighted stuff every single time. If they don't they risk losing the rights to it. In addition, Apple -doesn't- own the Sorensen codec: they license it. They can't control whether or not it is open sourced. Finally, your arguments about aqua and other core technologies are ludicrous. People should be very clear: Apple is a commercial company, which means they need to make real -money-. If everything is free, why would anyone pay for the OS? What would cover development costs. The OS is comparatively cheap, because of hardware, but it is still the corner stone of Apple's business. People can get the base Darwin for free, just like linux. If you want the extra stuff Apple worked so hard on, you're just going to have to pay for it.
This is a great start, and I hope that it is very sucessful and prompts other commercial companies too start to champion open source. Value added solutions can be viable business models.
A combination of two or more of these usually makes up for a lack in the others. Likewise, failure in multiple categories often doom a system. Nintendo dominated with the SNES, which had an incredible set of developers. But they took a long time developing a replacement, and when they did the N64 was both hard to develop for, couldn't run old games, and didn't have the ability to easily hold as much as the PS1(FMV on a cartridge?). It had plenty of power over the PS1, but not much else.
Likewise, the current PS2 isn't as easy to develop for, or as powerful as the Xbox and Gamecube. But it is easy enough, and since it can run all the PS1 games and came out first it has a huge market penetration jump start. If a company can only afford to initially develop for one platform, they will probably do it on the system that has the most market share. Likewise, many consumers will buy the system with the most games, building an upward momentum for the system. Neither Nintendo(with experience) or Microsoft(with $$$) are small contenders who can be counted out, which is good as it will make sure none of the companies sit on their laurels. Hopefully, we will get to seem some really great development in the years ahead.
The Xbox has some pretty good hardware, and the price is very good. Microsoft is selling it at a loss, I think around $100 per unit(of course, they have plenty of cash so losing money doesn't matter as much as gaining market share). This could make them quite cost effective price/performance wise compared to just buying stuff off the shelf in a cheap pc. I read somewhere awhile back that someone was trying to make it so the PS2 could be used to render stuff, and the Xbox is supposed to have slightly better hardware power. If the Xbox can be hacked to run linux(shouldn't be a big deal, since it is supposed to be a lot like a PC), and get some more connections stuff(like with this USB) then it may be worth getting one/few to connect to a network as an extra GPU. Linux being an OS of choice for the MS Xbox. Mmm, that irony smarts doesn't it...
It seems sort of like a bigger versioin of the Dialectizer, a site that allows you to insert a url and then have all the text on the page translated into a number of amusing "languages," such as redneck, jive, elmer fudd, etc. /. readers may especially appreciate the hacker dialect. ^_^ Try this version of slashdot!(hit the dialectize button). CmdrTaco's gone l33+!
I was very surprised a while back to read these articles on a big companies actually saving a lot of money, and one of them is none other then Intel! The article details about how Intel was inspired by Napster and switched some stuff to linux. From the article:
"Free operating system Linux was another unexpected result from ad hoc Internet collaboration embraced by Intel, saving the chipmaker $200 million," Busch said. The company ditched expensive Unix servers with proprietary Unix software and replaced them with cheaper servers equipped with Intel's own chips that run Linux software.
Amazon also made the switch In some ways, this is even better.
Online retailer Amazon.com shaved millions of dollars from its technology costs last quarter by switching to the Linux operating system, a disclosure that could provide some guidance for other companies seeking to cut expenses in a stagnant economy.
Provide guidance for other companies? And the title, "Linux saved us millions." Sounds great to me. At least some corporations finally seem to be learning that OSS does have advantages, and they can in many cases be spelled out in nice, crisp greenbacks.
From the site:
"Why do we care? Understanding sunspots is essential for understanding the 11-year solar cycle, solar flare explosions, and huge coronal mass ejections that affect life and society on Earth."
Solar flares can screw up satellites and such, but as people begin to move into space more(missions to mars in the next 50 years, moon in possibly less, aren't beyond the realm of consideration anymore) this will become even more important. Getting caught by a flare without any of the protection Earth's magentosphere offers is a quick way to get fried. Any interplanet ship would obviously have to have some kind of shielding(probably between water/fuel tanks), but being able to more accurately understand and predict flares, especially for cheaper/shorter moon trips, will be vital.
"Well you see your honor, when all those free credit card numbers appeared in my e-mail, I just assumed that they were free trial numbers like the mail said. I just KNEW that they couldn't have been ripped off from peoples' passport accounts, because Microsoft swore to me on their holy closed source code that it was -impossible-! How was I too know ordering all that expensive stuff right away wouldn't be ok..."