I'm going to go out on a limb and say the potential benefit of this is bigger than any single item you can name. I think it's probably safe to say more people have died of drought and resulting famine than all other non-natural causes combined. Certainly more than war.
People talk about lofty goals such as ending world hunger - this would go a long way. All though the dangers are unknown and possibly severe, I don't think there is a chance anyone will wait and see. They didn't with cell phones, and this would have a much larger impact.
Hehe, karma whoring an article that is dead wrong.
Yes I'm sure Apple has many months worth inventory of 15" iMacs. Righhhttt. Because people can stay in business that way when Dell has maybe a 1 day inventory. Use your common sense Slashdot editors.
Here, I'm going to mirror an article from the Drakonian Times:
Sources: iWalk PDA to be announced at MWSF
[Thursday 2 January 2003]
Apple will announce the long awaited iWalk PDA at MWSF, which is fast approaching. They've had inventory since 1992 with all the failed Newtons they didn't sell.
I think what your anecdote showed is that smart PEOPLE are better than average PEOPLE. This has absolutely nothing to do with what school you go to.
I feel like this fact is largely ignored by recruiters and even most of the posters on this article. It's all about the people. Even at the worst school in the worst country, the brightness person there is going to be a better be than some of the grads from some Ivy league schools.
To reiterate: It's all about the people. Who cares about your degree name, your school, your title, etc. How good are YOU, as an individual?
I don't think the behaviour of a single click on the Back button should be changed. But I fully agree with the idea that page 2 should be on the list (accessed by clicking the arrow or right-clicking).
For instance: I go to Slashdot.org. I click on "Read More..." to read Story 1. I realize it's all First Posts, so I click Back to go to Slashdot.org. Then I click on "Read More..." for Story 2. At this point, I still beleive that single-clicking Back should take me to Slashdot.org main page, but I think Story 1 should definitely be in the drop-down/right-click list, when it currently isn't. I want to read some real non-first-post comments!
I've always thought that audio/video is one huge information bank that has never been easily accessed. If you know of something textual, you go to Google to find it. But what if you wanted to read a Steve Jobs keynote from a couple years back? It's not particularly likely that anyone transcribed it for you. The video stream is probably long gone. But with this technology, you can have a searchable record of that fairly easily. Brilliant stuff.
Someone mentioned it can be used by the government for TIA stuff - agreed, but same with any technology. It has its positive and negative uses. I don't think we are all going to revert to cavemen to get away from it.
People like to complain endlessly about DOS and its quirks. And, yes, it does have quirks. But DOS [is] mature, it works, and its quirks really don't affect day-to-day development in most environments.
Linux does look somewhat better and cleaner than DOS. But there are lots of add-on tools for DOS that will need to get ported (GUIs, servers, word processors, batch files, etc.). Just the retraining required to get people to use it in a multi-user environment is pretty daunting--DOS is used by many people who are not primarily developers, and the switch wouldn't be easy for them.
It's been years since we have had any signficant problems with DOS; it seems to be just ticking along, doing its thing. So, I'm not convinced switching to Linux would be enough an advantage to outweigh the risks and retraining costs associated with it. I think it would take a number of large and very visible open source development projects switching to Linux to give me enough confidence in it to try it.
Interesting point AC, I never thought of it that way. Actually the first time I did use this sig, someone responded "We'll see." and got modded to funny. So there you go.
They don't know it's a dupe when they post it. They correct it after. They don't like to pull the story because they consider it censorship. (Story is useless but the comments may still have some value). Just my guess.
I have to say I've noticed the frequency of duplicates has GREATLY increased in the last couple of weeks. It's hardly a joke anymore. I think they probably average 2 or 3 duplicates a week now - they seemed to be much more rare before. Recently they are dupes within 24 hours as well. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY that the Slashdot Editors read the other editor's work before posting a story. No one has a memory that short.
I think something is broken with the system when it's all the earliest posts that get the most karma - from the exact users that don't read the article!
Confession time: I couldn't figure out why my posts were never modded up, time and time again. Then I started posting early, most often without reading the article. Booya - I was up to excellent karma in no time at all. Does anyone else see a problem with this? What if we tried something like no moderation allowed for the first 15 minutes after a story was posted? Well, I guess we'd have a lot of trolls. How about no positive moderation? Just food for thought.
I understand what you are saying. It isn't easy to get a full album right now.
However, if there is the One True Official MP3 copy available for purcahse and download online, a certain number of people will buy it, and then it will be plentifully shared on P2P networks. The difference with the current system is that there are many different rips of the same song. IMHO, once there are official MP3s they will proliferate, and the various versions of differing quality will drop off. I beleive it will proliferate to the extent where it will be just as fast and easy to download it from P2P as from the label's site.
- You pay a reasonable fee to download a high-quality MP3 album directly from the label's fast network pipe. On a cable modem, this may take you 5 minutes of active work (even less if they license Amazon One Click Shopping®!), and another 10 minutes of waiting for the 80MB download.
AND THEN you put it in your music directory which is shared on Kazaa and then
Everyone else spends a few minutes searching P2P networks for all the songs that make up a new CD release. They find them all easily, they have been purchased by a few people from the same source, and shared. You get a perfect quality album in 10 mins.
Just playing devil's advocate here. I don't see how it significantly changes from the current distribution system - someone still pays for the original music somehow, then shares it. The only change is that it may be easier for that original person to buy the whole MP3 album than it is to rip a new CD you bought from the store. I just feel like people neglect to mention this when talking about P2P.
I agree when you say that Moore's law won't hold, as it was originally stated. However it has come to take on meaning in a much bigger picture/time frame than it was originally specified. Indeed, I think most slashdotters take it to be representative of the advancement of science and technology.
If you restrict it to silicon-based ICs as we know them today, this may be right. Intel is the expert on this after all, and I'm willing to take their word.
However, if you define Moore's law as computational capacity doubling every 18 months, than it is very unlikely to end. If you project back to well before integrated circuits, or the law itself, computational capacity has been growing at this same exponential rate for many decades - even back to the earliest mechanical based "computers". There will be something to replace the current paradigm; the paradigm has already changed numerous times without throwing off the exponential curve.
Slashdot Mirror
Umm... if it found it found it's way to the labourers, then they wouldn't be working for cheap anymore would they?
People talk about lofty goals such as ending world hunger - this would go a long way. All though the dangers are unknown and possibly severe, I don't think there is a chance anyone will wait and see. They didn't with cell phones, and this would have a much larger impact.
Yes I'm sure Apple has many months worth inventory of 15" iMacs. Righhhttt. Because people can stay in business that way when Dell has maybe a 1 day inventory. Use your common sense Slashdot editors.
Here, I'm going to mirror an article from the Drakonian Times:
Sources: iWalk PDA to be announced at MWSF [Thursday 2 January 2003]
Apple will announce the long awaited iWalk PDA at MWSF, which is fast approaching. They've had inventory since 1992 with all the failed Newtons they didn't sell.
Remember: To succeed in football or life, you have to obliterate everything in your path, in a blind rage.
I feel like this fact is largely ignored by recruiters and even most of the posters on this article. It's all about the people. Even at the worst school in the worst country, the brightness person there is going to be a better be than some of the grads from some Ivy league schools.
To reiterate: It's all about the people. Who cares about your degree name, your school, your title, etc. How good are YOU, as an individual?
For instance: I go to Slashdot.org. I click on "Read More..." to read Story 1. I realize it's all First Posts, so I click Back to go to Slashdot.org. Then I click on "Read More..." for Story 2. At this point, I still beleive that single-clicking Back should take me to Slashdot.org main page, but I think Story 1 should definitely be in the drop-down/right-click list, when it currently isn't. I want to read some real non-first-post comments!
Someone mentioned it can be used by the government for TIA stuff - agreed, but same with any technology. It has its positive and negative uses. I don't think we are all going to revert to cavemen to get away from it.
Linux does look somewhat better and cleaner than DOS. But there are lots of add-on tools for DOS that will need to get ported (GUIs, servers, word processors, batch files, etc.). Just the retraining required to get people to use it in a multi-user environment is pretty daunting--DOS is used by many people who are not primarily developers, and the switch wouldn't be easy for them.
It's been years since we have had any signficant problems with DOS; it seems to be just ticking along, doing its thing. So, I'm not convinced switching to Linux would be enough an advantage to outweigh the risks and retraining costs associated with it. I think it would take a number of large and very visible open source development projects switching to Linux to give me enough confidence in it to try it.
Heheh... for the confused: Hacking with a Pringles tube
Interesting point AC, I never thought of it that way. Actually the first time I did use this sig, someone responded "We'll see." and got modded to funny. So there you go.
"Copywrite" was even more wrong!
They don't know it's a dupe when they post it. They correct it after. They don't like to pull the story because they consider it censorship. (Story is useless but the comments may still have some value). Just my guess.
I have to say I've noticed the frequency of duplicates has GREATLY increased in the last couple of weeks. It's hardly a joke anymore. I think they probably average 2 or 3 duplicates a week now - they seemed to be much more rare before. Recently they are dupes within 24 hours as well. There is NO POSSIBLE WAY that the Slashdot Editors read the other editor's work before posting a story. No one has a memory that short.
In Soviet Russia, the better system educates you!
Sorry, had to get in on the joke while it was hot.
I think something is broken with the system when it's all the earliest posts that get the most karma - from the exact users that don't read the article!
Confession time: I couldn't figure out why my posts were never modded up, time and time again. Then I started posting early, most often without reading the article. Booya - I was up to excellent karma in no time at all. Does anyone else see a problem with this? What if we tried something like no moderation allowed for the first 15 minutes after a story was posted? Well, I guess we'd have a lot of trolls. How about no positive moderation? Just food for thought.
I think it got confused when you added Eminem to the mix of Green Day and Rage. So it thought, he must like popular stuff and picked BSB.
It is estimated that this will not change by the year 2012.
However, if there is the One True Official MP3 copy available for purcahse and download online, a certain number of people will buy it, and then it will be plentifully shared on P2P networks. The difference with the current system is that there are many different rips of the same song. IMHO, once there are official MP3s they will proliferate, and the various versions of differing quality will drop off. I beleive it will proliferate to the extent where it will be just as fast and easy to download it from P2P as from the label's site.
AND THEN you put it in your music directory which is shared on Kazaa and then
Everyone else spends a few minutes searching P2P networks for all the songs that make up a new CD release. They find them all easily, they have been purchased by a few people from the same source, and shared. You get a perfect quality album in 10 mins.
Just playing devil's advocate here. I don't see how it significantly changes from the current distribution system - someone still pays for the original music somehow, then shares it. The only change is that it may be easier for that original person to buy the whole MP3 album than it is to rip a new CD you bought from the store. I just feel like people neglect to mention this when talking about P2P.
However, if you define Moore's law as computational capacity doubling every 18 months, than it is very unlikely to end. If you project back to well before integrated circuits, or the law itself, computational capacity has been growing at this same exponential rate for many decades - even back to the earliest mechanical based "computers". There will be something to replace the current paradigm; the paradigm has already changed numerous times without throwing off the exponential curve.
For a facinating look at this phenomenon at what it holds for the future, I'd recommend The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence by Ray Kurzweil.
I've got 4 letters for you: D-M-C-A.
I think that home users don't have the resources, know-how, or time to work out an effective anti-spam system.
I can't even find a good IMAP spam filter!