I know that it technically only applies to making things illegal after the fact, but isn't the spirit of that law the idea that the rules in place at the time of an action shall be the rules that apply to that action? Without that basic tenet, you quickly run in to some very messy and entangling problems...
As a matter of fact, yes, you are 9/10 of the way to owning it. Because you are (supposed to be) "innocent until proven guilty", he would have to prove that that particular TV was taken from his house. If he can't, you pretty much own it.
Let's turn you're example on it's ear. You walk in to a store with a candy bar in your pocket (no receipt). As you walk out, the store owner stops you and accuses you of stealing (he notice the bulge in your jacket pocket), turns out your pocket to find the candy bar, and calls the police. Do you deserve to be busted for shoplifting? All the shopkeeper knows is that you were walking out of the store concealing a candy bar that he has good reason to believe belongs to him.
The whole trick is, how do you "prove" that you own something? What the hell does it mean to "own" something anyway? Ownership is an idea that grows up from this idea that if I have something in my possession, you have no right to take it from me. From there, the idea is extended a little by saying that if I set the thing in my possession down and turn my back, you still don't have the right to take it from me because I "own" it. Simply put (sort of), ownership is a mechanism of security whereby our ancestors could gather what they needed to survive without having to hoard it all on their person or guard it constantly. When you say, "I own this TV," you're really saying implicitly, "I trust that no one will take this while I'm gone." When someone violates that trust, you are betrayed, and there is a small fracture in society (since society is based on the bonds of trust).
The genius of Karl Marx was in recognizing the ownership was an artificial institution. His folly/stupidity was in not realizing that you would have to replace it with something better in order to eliminate it. A system where everyone owns everything is the same as one where no one owns anything, and since ownership is a concept created by man, the state of no one owning anything must have come first. If a state of no one owning anything were really more efficient/better, then ownership would have never come about on such a wide scale.
I remember, back in the day, when I was in grade school, all the CD drives the school had required that the CDs be in plastic cases. I always thought that they were bass ackwards, and I was right! We'll see what they do with these new disks.
"If you look at the audio/video components of high quality A/V files then you'll notice that quality audio takes up at least as much - if not more - space as the video"
Why else do you think they did ogg vorbis first? That way, they have a ready made, high compression, high quality audio track waiting when they get the video side done, rather than implementing both at once.
Albert Einstein once said something along the lines of, "It's amazing that curiosity survives the rigors of a formal education." My only problem with computers in the classroom is that the kids aren't permitted to play with them. Their interaction is extremely structured and regimented out of fear that they'll break the software. Honestly, though, kids that young can learn the same stuff with legos, bricks, and crayons. At that age, the only thing I'd have them do with computers is basic exposure (maybe some learning games, touch typing games, just stuff to get them comfortable). That's mostly an issue of expense, however, and I'm sure that will disappear in the future.
In the meantime, the best way to encourage creativity is to get the hell out of the kids' way and let them be creative! If they come up with some wild eyed theory, don't just tell them that they're wrong, help them find out for themselves.... (cutting rant short to go study;)).
will be the MCP! It will have built in Digital Rights Management, and an FBI keystroke logger.
No thank you. I'll keep my computer and my OS local and under my direct, physical control, thank you very much.
Read that again. "Automatically" is the problem. In order to do it right, it should automatically check (giving the user the option to shut down checking, of course), notify the user, and only upgrade if the user clicks on "Ok." Basically, I read this as M$ getting sick of users not getting the latest security patches (which they shouldn't have needed in the first place), so they want the option of forcing the user to upgrade. God I'm glad my computer is 100% MS free.
Isn't Bungie a fully owned subsidiary of M$? I wonder if the Bungie folks consulted their masters, and if they did, does this portend a possible softening of M$'s hard line against Open Source? There's more to this, I feel it (whether this is a nod to Open Source from M$, or if this will be followed by a reigning in of Bungie's autonomy, I don't know).
True that, but even more so is the fact that the relationship goes the other way. Others have to interact with the governments, if the governments change standard, then those others will have to, too.
So they've finally found the genetic equivalent of an #ifdef and other such instructions to the compiler, eh? Is anyone who knows anything about programming honestly surprised?
I still have three questions, though. First, is it possible for a Hox gene to suppress another Hox gene? Second, are the Hox genes only responsible for suppression, and if so, what genes, if any, are responsible for activation/enhancement? Third, is it possible that there is some mechanism whereby genes can "tell" if they're inbread, and if they are does this mechanism induce more rapid mutation (i.e. transcription errors) in either the initial cell divisions or in the reproductive cells during adult life? The first two seem more likely, the last one, not so much.
I wonder if they'll find the monkey-man gene? "God, schmod, I want my monkey-man!" --Bart Simpson
Well, the honesty of pirating depends on your point of view, the practical consequences (trade sanctions, government raids, etc.) do add a significant potential cost factor to pirating that isn't there for open source software.
If Open Source can win the minds of the actual majority of the world, Microsoft may one day be forced to be compatible with it in order to continue doing business in these places. One can only hope...
Think of the name of the company: *id* software. It's supposed to be simple software that appeals to the gamers id (i.e. cruelty, lust, greed, et al.). The id does not need, nor does it understand deep plots, or innovative gameplay. It understands revenge, the joy of domination, you know, the primitive stuff.
At least they're not making the kind of tame that their title also implies: porn.
cnn.com is running a story about DDOS attacks! One paragraph is particularly interesting,
"The most effective tool for denial of service attacks is ironically not a piece of software, but a web site. Fans of the web site know of it as the "Slashdot effect," and it has been known to slow all but the most reliable servers down to a crawl."
There's a difference between high markup and high profit. Even if purchasing the item only cost you $1500, all those other things are costs associated with obtaining it.
The December 2001 Scientific American (www.sciam.com) had an interesting article on page 56 (sorry if I don't have a link, I actually pay for this stuff:P) titled "How We Came to be Human," excerpted from the book titled The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human, by Ian Tattersall. Here is a paragraph excerpted from the article that pretty much gets the gist of the relevant bit of the article:
"Let's look again, for a moment, at what our knowledge of the evolutionary process suggests may have occurred. First, it's important to remember that new structures do not arise for anything. They simply come about spontaneously, as byproducts of copying errors that routinely occur as genetic information is passed from one generation to the next. Natural selection is most certainly not a generative force that calls new structures into existence; it can only work on variations that are presented to it, whether to eliminate unfavorable variants or to promote successful ones. We like to speak in terms of "adaptations," since this helps us to make up stories about how and why particular innovations have arisen, or have been successful, in the course of evolution; but in reality, all new genetic variants must come into being as exaptations. The difference is that while adaptations are features that fulfill specific, identifiable functions (which they cannot do, of course, until they are in place), exaptations are simply features that have arisen and are potentially available to be co-opted into some new function. This is routine stuff, for many new structures stay around for no better reason that that they just don't get in the way."
So, basically, it is impossible for humans, as a whole, to evolve right now because there is not pressure from natural selection. What we are doing, however, is building up exaptations that may become useful if we ever come under the pressure of natural selection again. If you think of various genetic traits as a bell curve, as indeed they must be, right now the bell curve is widening out. This is a good thing (tm) because it means that the species has a better shot at surviving unexpected events.
To the article at hand. "According to Darwin's theory, individual animals best suited to their environments live longer and have more children, and so spread their genes through populations. This produces evolutionary changes." If the SciAm article is right, then this is wrong. Exaptation produces changes/differences within the species, natural selection only shifts the mean of the distribution by killing off a biased part of it.
"In addition, human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a blending that blocks evolutionary change." This quote right here, assuming that evolution is a good thing, borders on being racist about interracial marriages. I wonder if this was intentional or not?
I suppose that they're complaining about a lack of a change in the mean? The problem is that long distance breeding doesn't effect this, it only insures that there is still one mean (well, there are actually several, but inter-breeding prevents those means from growing so far apart that speciation occurs).
One thing I learned about from one of my high school teachers (ironically, he was using it as an argument against evolution, heh) is that the fossil record shows that species will arrive on the scene, change a bit, but then disappear, replaced by a similar, but not quite the same species. If the theory about exaptation is correct, however, this is exactly what should happen. Consider this possible narrative: take some specie that has been around for a while, long enough for exaptations to build up, now something in the environment suddenly changes so that different individuals are selected for (i.e. a change in climate, some prey species goes extinct, etc.), as long is it is still possible for some breeding population to survive (even if it means inbreeding), then some of the exaptations will become adaptations (simply meaning that they're useful now), and the adaptations will become prominent in as little as two or three generations, depending on the kill of rate for those who don't have the adaptations. The population will drop dramatically in size, if the kill off rate is even decently high, making the old specie seem to disappear. As time goes by, the mean will settle in to a more perfectly adapted place as the population grows and stabilizes and what was formerly considered to be how evolution worked takes over. This may explain why we have been unable to find a missing link for humans, since 50 or 60 years is literally instantaneous on a geologic time scale.
BlackGriffen
"No, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making something for $1 and then selling it for $10... if people are willing to pay $10 for it. I also have nothing against making something for $1 and selling it for $10,000. Mainly because, you don't have to buy it."
This bit is off topic, but what about things like water, food, and medicine? You know, things that you literally cannot live without. I know that this doesn't apply to software at all, but I just wanted others to ponder it briefly.
You're also totally wrong. The problem with selling something at a high markup, even if the market will pay for it, is that it is inherently dishonest. When you name a price for something, you are implying that the product is worth its price to you. If it only cost you $1 to get, and you're trying to charge $10000, that's pretty damn dishonest, isn't it? Whether the market is willing to pay that much or not is irrelevant to a moral discussion. That's like saying that because it was physically possible to kill someone, you were morally justified in doing so (the example is much more extreme, but on purpose).
Everything Apple uses is pretty stock and standard:
PCI, AGP, SDRAM (DDR is coming eventually...), USB, Firewire, ATA...
In fact about the only non-standard things on a Mac are the motherboard, CPU, and that new monitor plug thing they introduced with the Cube, which has adaptors available for it.
That's only if you want to run the computer as a dedicated, headless, system. If you just want to utilize the extra processor cycles from a computer that isn't under heavy demand (i.e. a school computer lab, a secretary's computer, etc.) or that has significant down time, then you need the monitor. BUT the fact that the machines would be doing double duty should be factored in to the equation if that is true.
From what I understand, Maya is a popular Mac program, and it takes quite a while to do the crunching for that program. Now, artists are always clamoring for faster machines in order to bring such times down. I wonder if it would be possible to run Maya or photoshop in pooch. Also, I wonder how well pooch would handle running on a headless Darwin system (OSX is nice and all, but the GUI does have some operating overhead). This way, instead of buying a new computer for a 50% increase in speed, they could buy it for a 100% increase (assuming new computer is 1.5X faster than old, and the old won't be able to contribute it's all). I could see this working. Of course, the apps would have to be completely re-coded to see a real speed benefit, but having the computer simply work as a headless slave that handles compiles/renders/etc., whilst the human continues to use the front one sounds like a good idea...
The other nice part about the cluster is that with you only need to shut down the OS9 nodes when you want to continue regular use. The OSX nodes can be left running with a simple renice to make it more user responsive.
Whether or not this can be done with a Beowulf cluster, I have no idea.
BlackGriffen
Never mind controlling a pointer...
on
Think And Click
·
· Score: 1
Slashdot Mirror
I know that it technically only applies to making things illegal after the fact, but isn't the spirit of that law the idea that the rules in place at the time of an action shall be the rules that apply to that action? Without that basic tenet, you quickly run in to some very messy and entangling problems...
BlackGriffen
As a matter of fact, yes, you are 9/10 of the way to owning it. Because you are (supposed to be) "innocent until proven guilty", he would have to prove that that particular TV was taken from his house. If he can't, you pretty much own it.
Let's turn you're example on it's ear. You walk in to a store with a candy bar in your pocket (no receipt). As you walk out, the store owner stops you and accuses you of stealing (he notice the bulge in your jacket pocket), turns out your pocket to find the candy bar, and calls the police. Do you deserve to be busted for shoplifting? All the shopkeeper knows is that you were walking out of the store concealing a candy bar that he has good reason to believe belongs to him.
The whole trick is, how do you "prove" that you own something? What the hell does it mean to "own" something anyway? Ownership is an idea that grows up from this idea that if I have something in my possession, you have no right to take it from me. From there, the idea is extended a little by saying that if I set the thing in my possession down and turn my back, you still don't have the right to take it from me because I "own" it. Simply put (sort of), ownership is a mechanism of security whereby our ancestors could gather what they needed to survive without having to hoard it all on their person or guard it constantly. When you say, "I own this TV," you're really saying implicitly, "I trust that no one will take this while I'm gone." When someone violates that trust, you are betrayed, and there is a small fracture in society (since society is based on the bonds of trust).
The genius of Karl Marx was in recognizing the ownership was an artificial institution. His folly/stupidity was in not realizing that you would have to replace it with something better in order to eliminate it. A system where everyone owns everything is the same as one where no one owns anything, and since ownership is a concept created by man, the state of no one owning anything must have come first. If a state of no one owning anything were really more efficient/better, then ownership would have never come about on such a wide scale.
BlackGriffen
I remember, back in the day, when I was in grade school, all the CD drives the school had required that the CDs be in plastic cases. I always thought that they were bass ackwards, and I was right! We'll see what they do with these new disks.
BlackGriffen
"If you look at the audio/video components of high quality A/V files then you'll notice that quality audio takes up at least as much - if not more - space as the video"
Why else do you think they did ogg vorbis first? That way, they have a ready made, high compression, high quality audio track waiting when they get the video side done, rather than implementing both at once.
BlackGriffen
Albert Einstein once said something along the lines of, "It's amazing that curiosity survives the rigors of a formal education." My only problem with computers in the classroom is that the kids aren't permitted to play with them. Their interaction is extremely structured and regimented out of fear that they'll break the software. Honestly, though, kids that young can learn the same stuff with legos, bricks, and crayons. At that age, the only thing I'd have them do with computers is basic exposure (maybe some learning games, touch typing games, just stuff to get them comfortable). That's mostly an issue of expense, however, and I'm sure that will disappear in the future.
;)).
In the meantime, the best way to encourage creativity is to get the hell out of the kids' way and let them be creative! If they come up with some wild eyed theory, don't just tell them that they're wrong, help them find out for themselves.... (cutting rant short to go study
BlackGriffen
will be the MCP! It will have built in Digital Rights Management, and an FBI keystroke logger.
No thank you. I'll keep my computer and my OS local and under my direct, physical control, thank you very much.
BlackGriffen
Read that again. "Automatically" is the problem. In order to do it right, it should automatically check (giving the user the option to shut down checking, of course), notify the user, and only upgrade if the user clicks on "Ok." Basically, I read this as M$ getting sick of users not getting the latest security patches (which they shouldn't have needed in the first place), so they want the option of forcing the user to upgrade. God I'm glad my computer is 100% MS free.
BlackGriffen
Isn't Bungie a fully owned subsidiary of M$? I wonder if the Bungie folks consulted their masters, and if they did, does this portend a possible softening of M$'s hard line against Open Source? There's more to this, I feel it (whether this is a nod to Open Source from M$, or if this will be followed by a reigning in of Bungie's autonomy, I don't know).
BlackGriffen
True that, but even more so is the fact that the relationship goes the other way. Others have to interact with the governments, if the governments change standard, then those others will have to, too.
BlackGriffen
So they've finally found the genetic equivalent of an #ifdef and other such instructions to the compiler, eh? Is anyone who knows anything about programming honestly surprised?
I still have three questions, though. First, is it possible for a Hox gene to suppress another Hox gene? Second, are the Hox genes only responsible for suppression, and if so, what genes, if any, are responsible for activation/enhancement? Third, is it possible that there is some mechanism whereby genes can "tell" if they're inbread, and if they are does this mechanism induce more rapid mutation (i.e. transcription errors) in either the initial cell divisions or in the reproductive cells during adult life? The first two seem more likely, the last one, not so much.
I wonder if they'll find the monkey-man gene? "God, schmod, I want my monkey-man!" --Bart Simpson
BlackGriffen
"at least more honest then pirating."
Well, the honesty of pirating depends on your point of view, the practical consequences (trade sanctions, government raids, etc.) do add a significant potential cost factor to pirating that isn't there for open source software.
If Open Source can win the minds of the actual majority of the world, Microsoft may one day be forced to be compatible with it in order to continue doing business in these places. One can only hope...
BlackGriffen
Think again, he couldn't even rip off CP/M right. He bought Q-DOS, renamed it MS-DOS, and it has sucked since.
BlackGriffen
Think of the name of the company: *id* software. It's supposed to be simple software that appeals to the gamers id (i.e. cruelty, lust, greed, et al.). The id does not need, nor does it understand deep plots, or innovative gameplay. It understands revenge, the joy of domination, you know, the primitive stuff.
At least they're not making the kind of tame that their title also implies: porn.
BlackGriffen
" so long as they fit the context of the game."
You mean like the milk commercials in the Zelda games?
BlackGriffen
cnn.com is running a story about DDOS attacks! One paragraph is particularly interesting,
"The most effective tool for denial of service attacks is ironically not a piece of software, but a web site. Fans of the web site know of it as the "Slashdot effect," and it has been known to slow all but the most reliable servers down to a crawl."
j/k =D
BlackGriffen
There's a difference between high markup and high profit. Even if purchasing the item only cost you $1500, all those other things are costs associated with obtaining it.
BlackGriffen
The December 2001 Scientific American (www.sciam.com) had an interesting article on page 56 (sorry if I don't have a link, I actually pay for this stuff :P) titled "How We Came to be Human," excerpted from the book titled The Monkey in the Mirror: Essays on the Science of What Makes Us Human, by Ian Tattersall. Here is a paragraph excerpted from the article that pretty much gets the gist of the relevant bit of the article:
"Let's look again, for a moment, at what our knowledge of the evolutionary process suggests may have occurred. First, it's important to remember that new structures do not arise for anything. They simply come about spontaneously, as byproducts of copying errors that routinely occur as genetic information is passed from one generation to the next. Natural selection is most certainly not a generative force that calls new structures into existence; it can only work on variations that are presented to it, whether to eliminate unfavorable variants or to promote successful ones. We like to speak in terms of "adaptations," since this helps us to make up stories about how and why particular innovations have arisen, or have been successful, in the course of evolution; but in reality, all new genetic variants must come into being as exaptations. The difference is that while adaptations are features that fulfill specific, identifiable functions (which they cannot do, of course, until they are in place), exaptations are simply features that have arisen and are potentially available to be co-opted into some new function. This is routine stuff, for many new structures stay around for no better reason that that they just don't get in the way."
So, basically, it is impossible for humans, as a whole, to evolve right now because there is not pressure from natural selection. What we are doing, however, is building up exaptations that may become useful if we ever come under the pressure of natural selection again. If you think of various genetic traits as a bell curve, as indeed they must be, right now the bell curve is widening out. This is a good thing (tm) because it means that the species has a better shot at surviving unexpected events.
To the article at hand. "According to Darwin's theory, individual animals best suited to their environments live longer and have more children, and so spread their genes through populations. This produces evolutionary changes." If the SciAm article is right, then this is wrong. Exaptation produces changes/differences within the species, natural selection only shifts the mean of the distribution by killing off a biased part of it.
"In addition, human populations are now being constantly mixed, again producing a blending that blocks evolutionary change." This quote right here, assuming that evolution is a good thing, borders on being racist about interracial marriages. I wonder if this was intentional or not?
I suppose that they're complaining about a lack of a change in the mean? The problem is that long distance breeding doesn't effect this, it only insures that there is still one mean (well, there are actually several, but inter-breeding prevents those means from growing so far apart that speciation occurs).
One thing I learned about from one of my high school teachers (ironically, he was using it as an argument against evolution, heh) is that the fossil record shows that species will arrive on the scene, change a bit, but then disappear, replaced by a similar, but not quite the same species. If the theory about exaptation is correct, however, this is exactly what should happen. Consider this possible narrative: take some specie that has been around for a while, long enough for exaptations to build up, now something in the environment suddenly changes so that different individuals are selected for (i.e. a change in climate, some prey species goes extinct, etc.), as long is it is still possible for some breeding population to survive (even if it means inbreeding), then some of the exaptations will become adaptations (simply meaning that they're useful now), and the adaptations will become prominent in as little as two or three generations, depending on the kill of rate for those who don't have the adaptations. The population will drop dramatically in size, if the kill off rate is even decently high, making the old specie seem to disappear. As time goes by, the mean will settle in to a more perfectly adapted place as the population grows and stabilizes and what was formerly considered to be how evolution worked takes over. This may explain why we have been unable to find a missing link for humans, since 50 or 60 years is literally instantaneous on a geologic time scale.
BlackGriffen
They aren't allowed to use explosives and guns and such, though.
I thought M$ was going on strike for some reason. Maybe to end the antitrust trial? I don't know, I guess I'm just too used to negative M$ stuff here.
"No, there's absolutely nothing wrong with making something for $1 and then selling it for $10... if people are willing to pay $10 for it. I also have nothing against making something for $1 and selling it for $10,000. Mainly because, you don't have to buy it."
This bit is off topic, but what about things like water, food, and medicine? You know, things that you literally cannot live without. I know that this doesn't apply to software at all, but I just wanted others to ponder it briefly.
You're also totally wrong. The problem with selling something at a high markup, even if the market will pay for it, is that it is inherently dishonest. When you name a price for something, you are implying that the product is worth its price to you. If it only cost you $1 to get, and you're trying to charge $10000, that's pretty damn dishonest, isn't it? Whether the market is willing to pay that much or not is irrelevant to a moral discussion. That's like saying that because it was physically possible to kill someone, you were morally justified in doing so (the example is much more extreme, but on purpose).
BlackGriffen
Everything Apple uses is pretty stock and standard:
PCI, AGP, SDRAM (DDR is coming eventually...), USB, Firewire, ATA...
In fact about the only non-standard things on a Mac are the motherboard, CPU, and that new monitor plug thing they introduced with the Cube, which has adaptors available for it.
When was the last time you looked at a Mac?
BlackGriffen
That's only if you want to run the computer as a dedicated, headless, system. If you just want to utilize the extra processor cycles from a computer that isn't under heavy demand (i.e. a school computer lab, a secretary's computer, etc.) or that has significant down time, then you need the monitor. BUT the fact that the machines would be doing double duty should be factored in to the equation if that is true.
BlackGriffen
From what I understand, Maya is a popular Mac program, and it takes quite a while to do the crunching for that program. Now, artists are always clamoring for faster machines in order to bring such times down. I wonder if it would be possible to run Maya or photoshop in pooch. Also, I wonder how well pooch would handle running on a headless Darwin system (OSX is nice and all, but the GUI does have some operating overhead). This way, instead of buying a new computer for a 50% increase in speed, they could buy it for a 100% increase (assuming new computer is 1.5X faster than old, and the old won't be able to contribute it's all). I could see this working. Of course, the apps would have to be completely re-coded to see a real speed benefit, but having the computer simply work as a headless slave that handles compiles/renders/etc., whilst the human continues to use the front one sounds like a good idea...
BlackGriffen
The other nice part about the cluster is that with you only need to shut down the OS9 nodes when you want to continue regular use. The OSX nodes can be left running with a simple renice to make it more user responsive.
Whether or not this can be done with a Beowulf cluster, I have no idea.
BlackGriffen
Did the monkey's Quake performance improve?
BlackGriffen