Sure, because any 10 year old who's just starting to get interested in taking computers beyond exploring the web, sending e-mail, and playing games is going to be able to convince their parents to change the OS on the home PC, know what to download, and how to install and configure Linux on their machines.
Sure, there's a lot there for someone wanting to get seriously into development - but it does not in any way currently work as the first step, unless perhaps the child has a geek parent who can set up everything to allow the child to learn at a good rate without getting frustrated. That's why old machines that had BASIC built in worked so well - just turn on a C-64, or a TI-99/4A, and presto, BASIC is there. Always. Quickly and easily.
Atari's biggest mistake has to be high up on that list, and I'm suprised nobody here has mentioned it yet.
They had the opportunity to buy the rights to produce and distribute a console from a Japanese company, back in the day when American companies were doing all the game consoles. However, it was during the video game crash, and for some reason, they decided to pass, and stick with their own system they were developing.
The system Atari could have had a huge chunk of? The Nintendo Entertainment System. Instead, they stuck to their own products, which really didn't go anywhere.
One wonders what might have happened if they had made the other choice...
Of course, we're talking about a company that had Jack Tramiel in charge, a man who was personally responsible for destroying multiple companies, and seemed to fight against turing the company around. During the Jaguar days, Atari hired someone to help get the company moving and going, a person who ended up quitting because Jack insisted in having control over everything, down to personally deciding when to approve overnight shipping of packages.
Transhumanism is about controlling the input and output to the "self", wherever it is. It really won't be like robocop at all...you'll just have a brain (or whatever part is needed) and can swap everything else out. Most transhumanists want to kill or control lesser beings, so best be informed so you can join them.
You don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about, do you?
And no, Transhumanists don't want to kill or control "lesser beings", and I don't know what you mean by that term, but I'm guessing you're meaning to imply that transhumanist folk think of everyone else as "lesser", which is also complete crap.
Just because I would love to have a body that I can change into any form that I want whenever I want, and to improve and increase the ability of mind, doesn't mean I have any desire to force anyone else to do the same, or mistreat those that choose not to. And I know of nobody that feels that way, except for the mythical "transhumanist" that you seem to refer to.
Good point - I wasn't thinking that far ahead in the future. For the first couple years after polymer bills in the US, there would be enough older bills that people would still treat them as normal, leaving the counterfeiters to work on those. Eventually though, as you point out, the old ones will leave circulation enough that when older bills are used, there can be enough scrutiny focused on them to make counterfeiting them increasingly riskier.
I'm all in favor of going down that route.
Question - are the polymer notes longer lived than paper notes? It would seem it to me, suggesting a benefit in that direction also.
If they want to make truly hard-to-counterfeit bills, add transparent windows to the bills, with different locations and patterns for each denomination. Very tricky to counterfeit, and will easily stop all the people who do just a little bit with their laser copiers and such.
Of course, that would just lead to people counterfeiting the old ones instead.
Visually impared people? In the US? They're not impared, they're just lazy mooches who can't be bothered to put effort into seeing. They shouldn't be able to tell the bills apart if they're not going to work hard enough to see clearly like all the other hard working Americans.
And don't get me started on all those people who are in wheelchairs because they are too lazy to walk. Don't give me that wussy politically-correct "they're paralyzed" crap either. That's just a lie of the liberal media!!!
Last I knew, the large midway arcade, the one with all of the classic games (or in many cases, the old ones they just never got rid of) is still there, though most of the others seem to have disappeared.
I never did get to go on the spinning ride you mention, though I did hear about it.
The Disaster Transport... I never did understand that one. After all, all they did was take Avalanche Run and build a building around it, re-theming it. And theming is NOT something Cedar Point does well - especially since they don't bother to keep it in good shape. Most of the theming stuff is off and/or broken. About the only value Disaster Transport has is that the building is usually at least somewhat air conditioned in the hot summer, so you can get out of the heat for the time you stand in line for the ride.
Of course... about 3/4ths the way down the Midway, right across from the smorgasborg restaurant they had (still do?), and near the old log ride. That was a lot of fun when I was a kid, I was on the slide a few times every year.
The one ride I will be most disappointed to see go is the Wave Swinger. It's been a tradition to ride it at least once every time I've been to the park, and when I'm forced to stop, I will be quite disappointed.
I do wonder how long until they move the parking lot to the other side of the causeway, so that they can use that space for more rides and stuff, since they're seriously running out of space on the penninsula.
Agreed about the crowds thing - the park's rides and reputation seem to attract more people each and every year, and the lines and crowds get worse - and the food from all the little stalls seems to also get worse. Though, to their credit, there is that air conditioned restaurant on the midway with salad/pasta bars and all that with food that is of rather good quality for an amusement park.
Then we did the mean streak, which sucked! Its like a rollercoaster during an earthquake, but wooden coasters usually suck like that.
The Mean Streak is a good demonstration why wooden coasters have been left behind. It set all sorts of records when it was built as the largest and fastest wooden coaster. And once upon a time, it was fun. I was there in May of the year it opened, and it was relatively smooth, and a lot of fun. I rode it a couple times that day.
The problem is that the speeds, coupled with the nature of the materials used, cause the structure of the ride to suffer. I've heard - though I am not certain - that they have like 6 full-time carpenders employed just for that ride alone, checking it every night for loose bolts and breaking wood. It is very high maintenance, and that still doesn't keep it in the shape they'd want it to be.
It's been said the ride is destroying itself due to the speeds and stresses on the material, and I don't expect it to last that long. They already have to change the rails every three years, as they degrade over time and make the ride just too rough. I've heard that riding it on that third year is pretty much a guaranteed method of getting a really bad headache. And given the fact that the ride gets rougher as the year goes on, riding in, say, October of that third year before they replace the rails is probably one of the roughest beatings you can take in a rollercoaster.
Though if you get on at the beginning of the year after a replacement, I'm sure it's still pretty damn fun.
Forgive me, but I've just got to rant for a moment. Is it just me or does it seem that no one has been able to come up with an original idea for the last 20 years.
I suspect there are a couple reasons for this. One is the 'nostalgia' factor - we all remember shows, movies, and games that we loved once upon a time, but that don't have the same attraction now, and people try to recreate and recapture some of that attention and feeling produced by the original. Some might see it as a quick way to make money, but I suspect most people involved have good intetions.
Second, original ideas that work well are not easy to come up with - or we would see a lot of them. Perhaps you should grace us with a nice listing of original ideas for people to work with, as options to reusing existing ideas. I agree, I'd like to see more of them also, but I understand the difficulty.
I do wonder about the power supply though. Seeing that I can barely get a day's worth of stand-by on my cell phone with a tiny text screen it seems keep these things powered up might require an equally revolutionary energy store.
The thing to remember when talking about e-ink is that power will not be needed to keep information displayed. Power will be required for the wireless data reception, and for changing what is displayed, but various e-ink technologies that have been mentioned all have means of showing information that are not energy intensive.
I'm not sure offhand exactly how it works, but usually involves some sort of small particle or such with, say, black on one side, and white on the other, and they are rotated to show a particular pattern of 'pixels', and then take no energy to remain in that pattern.
This is one of the big wins of e-ink - along with the fact that done properly, it should look little different from plain old paper. (though it is definitely not there yet)
If you equipped an 'e-ink newspaper' with the ability for the user to query for updates, instead of the paper constantly checking a wireless frequency, then power consumption could be quite minimal.
I do look forward to fully interactive e-ink, so that, say, you could have a notebook with e-ink paper, you jot down notes with a stylus, the paper shows the proper marks so it feels just like regular writing, but with the options to save notes, recall them later, and memory that allows one notebook to keep the information that a whole stack of real notebooks couldn't hold. Can you imagine having an e-ink journal, for example, that could hold a lifetime's worth of data in it, so you could recall anything you've ever written/drawn on the e-ink pages?
There's no presupposition there. Strong AI is not a prerequisite for nanotechnology in any way.
Of course, the existence of mature nanotechnology may enable strong AI, allowing at least the ability to brute-force AI by copying the human brain molecule for molecule and perhaps modify it to allow machine interaction and who-knows-what.
sequence breaking/low percentage games (People have managed 24% games in Metroid Prime by skipping such "necessary" items as the charge beam, gravity suit and grappling hook!) is one way to give new challenge to a beaten game.
I think the sequence breaking part is so much more interesting to look at than just simple speed runs. While it is interesting to see how efficient people can get in finding the best route through the game, it's the little 'gaps' in the design that are the most interesting to me. It's wild to see people find ways to get around needing items that were designed to be 'necessary' to win the game.
And kudos to the designers to have a robust enough game design to be able to handle people skipping entire items without the game doing strange things, and also to be prepared for people to have items earlier then they're supposed to - for example, a boss being vunerable to a weapon that they shouldn't have yet.
And I think I've seen that they've managed to get down to a 23% final score, and it appears that it's not likely that they could lower that any further.
I used to have the unfettered loathing for Rosen that most Slashdotters have. However, that changed after I read the Wired article that was profiling her.
It was very interesting to see that she did have some disagreements with the methods that the RIAA members wanted to use, but that she did her job by pushing for what the people the RIAA represented wanted, instead of what she personally wanted. (She was in favor of online music distribution and other details, if I remember correctly)
I do think that copyright law has gone way overboard - but that is still a minority view. I think many people, even those involved in enforcing it, haven't given proper thought to what it's all about, what it affects, and what it should be - either they just accept it as it is, or they're corporate folks who are looking at profit and being capitalists - doing whatever they can to make more money.
If Iraq ends up with a government that is trying to catch up to the international community, then what should we expect other than copyright laws that fit the rest of that community. And if they end up with a different gov't, perhaps an Islamic fundamentalist one, copyright law is not going to be high up on the agenda of things to worry about.
Work to get copyright law changed in those countries that are leading the charge to extend copyright periods, and smaller countries will follow their lead.
It was called Global Wars, and it was popular where I used to call up BBSes - I was usually involved in a couple games at any point in time.
I was never into the 'big' ones mentioned here - SRE, LORD, TW2002, none of them just ever really clicked for me. I spent a lot of time on Land of the Barons, Phantasia, Power Struggle, and Trade Wars 1000. TW1000 I enjoyed so much more than 2002, as there wasn't all that overly complicated multiple-ship stuff going on. And I so loved the versions that had sales that went up to 99% - nothing like getting fighters for 1 credit each (load up time!!), and even more fun was making as many planets as you could during a sale, scattering them all around the galaxy, and ones in out-of-the-way sectors months later having nearly maxxed themselves out.
I also remember Arena, though I never got very far in it - seemed quite tough.
I have to disagree with this. It's hard to come up with a remotely plausible reason how/why someone would create something like this intentionally.
We have people today willing to kill themselves, and plenty of other people in the process, for a cause. Now, I'll admit, most of the people who do this aren't exactly highly educated, and even in a world where nanotechnology exists and widely spread you're not likely to see someone with the knowledge AND materials to create a device, yet with the willingness to sacrifice everyone. But let's not kid ourselves and think it's impossible.
I also think your mention of worms/viruses on computers aren't quite relevant here. Programming/software engineering is not done in the same way as any form of engineering that creates physical devices. Programmers have the luxury of being able to create a program, run it, find the flaws using a version of the finished product, and tweak that product to fix the flaws. Engineers working on physical objects are restrained by the cost, time, and effort of creating in progress versions. Thus a lot more effort is spent on the design and reviewing the design before anything physical is actually created.
Thus you're not as likely to have people creating self-replicating nanomachines without having run the design by other people where it was heavily scrutinized.
There's also the fact that a number of ideas have already been proposed for creating mini-environments where nanomachines can be developed, where the mini-environments have an number of safeguards to prevent those nanomachines from escaping. One such example, I believe proposed by Drexler himself, involved a tiny environment that had multiple sealed layers around it, and if any of those layers were breached, it would explode internally in a manner that would destroy any machines inside. It wouldn't be hard to imagine a process where all nanomachine testing would be required to be done in such environments. Thus, the self-replicating nanomachine's checks on out-of-control replication could be thoroughly tested inside there.
There are so many safeguards that could be both built into self-replicating nanomachines, along with safeguards to the development process, that as I said, I think it would take a colossal level of carelessness to allow something like that to exist at all, and even more so to let it escape.
And how do these nanobots make new photoarrays, etch their own circuitboards, etc? I mean, yes, there's silion and such everywhere, but you still need to purify it, dope it, etch it, etc. And with nanobots, the smallest mistake makes it nonfunctional.
It's a basic assumption here that nanomachines that can self-replicate would have a full assembler as part of their machinery, and taking existing materials and turning them into raw materials would be as simple as taking molecules and pulling them apart. (Not saying it's as simple as taking apart a tinkertoy model, but it by the time nanomachines like this are possible, it should be a routine task) Then it would just involve putting the raw materials together.
Remember, at this level, molecules and atoms are being handled individually, not in enormous bulk like processes today. Saying that they'd need to "purify silicon" before using it makes no sense - the nanomachines can pick out molecules/atoms like we could pick out a marble of a specific color from a bag full.
If it drifted across a magnetic field, it would be rendered nonfunctional.
Why is this the case? Magentic fields don't stop bacteria. Nanomachines aren't all going to have little computers full of circuitry - when you're building machines at the molecular level, using the same technology we use now for computers may not make sense. There are alredy a number of designs that have been created, and more in progress, for mechanical computers, as they may be more practical for nanomachines. Heck, programs for those mechanical computers might even be stored in a DNA-like structure, if that's what works best.
Magnetic fields and EMP devices aren't going to be able to stop all-mechanical nanomachines.
I am really getting frustrated by the amount of traction the whole "grey goo" meme is getting.
Sure, it's possible that when nanotechnology gets going, that somehow a nanomachine that can convert just about any material to energy and raw materials to copy itself could be accidentally created. It could then convert the entire Earth and everything on it to copies of itself. It's POSSIBLE.
But then again, it's also possible that some species of bacteria could mutate and start doing the same things. And it's probably not any less likely than a nanomachine doing it.
A machine that could convert just about anything on the planet into useful materials, and duplicate itself endlessly, would probably be difficult to make INTENTIONALLY, let alone accidentally. It would also be extremely easy to insert safeguards to prevent anything like that from happening. Either require the presence of a particular molecule for the machines to duplicate themselves. Add replication limits to the nanomachines. Never include self-replication in the same nanomachine as one that can break down most/all things into raw materials.
Unless nanoengineers are incredibly sloppy, maliciously so, then it's not going to happen by accident.
INTENTIONAL creation of such machines is an issue of higher importance. And the type of people who would make such nanomachines are not the type who are going to listen to people saying "we can't research/develop this technology, it might be dangerous". Would a law against using aircraft for suicidal terrorism have stopped Al Queda from taking down the WTC? Nope.
The best chance at preventing/defending against such actions is to develop the technology and focus some research on using it to prevent such uses. Not saying "stop all research!"
Now, I would be enormously in favor of a global treaty banning research into nanotechnological weapons. The thought of militaries working with such technologies does scare me.
Interesting article, but I think it had a serious flaw - by assuming that programming languages in the future are just going to extend the current model even further.
Some of us working in the telecommunications industry are already familiar with SDL (Specification and Description Language) as a tool for designing and auto-coding software. Yes, auto-coding. The SDL design software lets us design a system graphically, breaking it up into sub-components and specifying message flows between those components, and defining state machiens for handling these messages.
Developing software in such manner usually requires a very little coding, as the design tool will turn the design into code. Coding may be required for interfacing with the OS or other entities, though that's improving also.
I'm starting to think as such tools mature, they're going to be the next step up, like the way programming languages were the step up from coding in assembly. They are less efficient, just as BASIC or C is less efficient than pure assembler, but they allow greater focus on a solid and robust design and less requirement to focus on repetitive details.
Imagine being able to take out the step of having to go from a design to code - focus on the design, and you're done.
They mention in a couple times, but never in depth. I think they want to focus on Dani's game creation - after all, this article was far from a complete bio. Focusing on her transsexuality would have been way too far along the lines of "sensationalism" for the article.
Besides, the "sensationalism" of transsexuality has, for the most part, faded into the past, the realm of 80's and 90's talk shows. While a lot of people are still unfamiliar with the details, the idea of it happening has long been mainstreamed. Heck, most places a geek can work that has a substantial number of programmers probably has a transsexual among them - often without any of the cow-orkers knowing about it.
Exactly - Dani Bunten was transsexual. It happens more than you'd expect in the computer realm. I think Slashdot had an article about a year or so ago about someone who had made a huge advancement in the computer field, then disappeared due to being transsexual, and her for the longest time not taking credit for the work she did as "he".
Does anyone else remember evil-Willow from Doppelgängerland (Season 3)? Rowr!
I have watched that episode on my Season 3 DVD at least 6 times - it's just a really fun episode, with a lot of great comments tossed in here and there, enough that it takes more than one watching to appreciate them all. Of course, Vamp Willow presents a lot of foreshadowing about Willow's character later on in the series.
And the great quotes, too..:)
"In my world, there are people in cages, and we can ride them like ponies."
it's all about the Slayer this year. We see her changing, growing darker and angrier, descending into the abyss even more so than right after (2nd) her return from the dead.
I think it's really poing to Buffy dying at the end of the season, as she seems to be giving up in many ways, becoming convinced there's nothing that can be done to win against The First.
Wow, you mean you've seen the end of the season already? Can you give us the tapes - and maybe also to the show's creators? I'm sure they'd like to know how the final episodes are going to turn out, as they haven't filmed them yet.
Your comment reminds me of those wonderful Amazon reviews where everyone's so glowing/negative about something before it's even released. Such quality work there.
I think this season is doing quite well - it's really creating such a dark, forboding atmosphere, one that's darker than even the darkest points of the second season. The last couple episodes are starting to make me feel that Buffy herself is giving up, becoming convinced she can't possibly win this one. Not just a temporary frustration, but like a complete sense of giving up throughout her. It's almost like she's wanting to die.
Well, they could write a brilliant sci-fi western in which there is no sound in space, no rubber-headed aliens, and no cheap technobable deus-ex-machina endings. It would be everything Star Trek isn't, and it could be the best sci-fi show on TV.
But that would probably just get canceled by fox after 14 episodes.
Well, if they write one, we can wait and see if Fox cancels it after 14 episodes.
Instead, they wrote Firefly, which I saw a couple times due to a friend watching it - and I was so happy when the episode was over because it meant I didn't have to suffer through it anymore.
And believe me, I expected it to be good, due to being written by Whedon. I was wrong.
"Sci-fi western"? My god, who even gave that idea a green light? Especially when it was so blatant - watching people go from a spacecraft onto a planet where everyone looked, acted, and sounded like they came directly from a bad western series?
What's next? People living in feudal monarchies complete with castles, knights, and longbows, where people just happen to have inter-dimensional travel and nanotechnology?
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, because any 10 year old who's just starting to get interested in taking computers beyond exploring the web, sending e-mail, and playing games is going to be able to convince their parents to change the OS on the home PC, know what to download, and how to install and configure Linux on their machines.
Sure, there's a lot there for someone wanting to get seriously into development - but it does not in any way currently work as the first step, unless perhaps the child has a geek parent who can set up everything to allow the child to learn at a good rate without getting frustrated. That's why old machines that had BASIC built in worked so well - just turn on a C-64, or a TI-99/4A, and presto, BASIC is there. Always. Quickly and easily.
Atari's biggest mistake has to be high up on that list, and I'm suprised nobody here has mentioned it yet.
They had the opportunity to buy the rights to produce and distribute a console from a Japanese company, back in the day when American companies were doing all the game consoles. However, it was during the video game crash, and for some reason, they decided to pass, and stick with their own system they were developing.
The system Atari could have had a huge chunk of? The Nintendo Entertainment System. Instead, they stuck to their own products, which really didn't go anywhere.
One wonders what might have happened if they had made the other choice...
Of course, we're talking about a company that had Jack Tramiel in charge, a man who was personally responsible for destroying multiple companies, and seemed to fight against turing the company around. During the Jaguar days, Atari hired someone to help get the company moving and going, a person who ended up quitting because Jack insisted in having control over everything, down to personally deciding when to approve overnight shipping of packages.
Transhumanism is about controlling the input and output to the "self", wherever it is. It really won't be like robocop at all...you'll just have a brain (or whatever part is needed) and can swap everything else out. Most transhumanists want to kill or control lesser beings, so best be informed so you can join them.
You don't have the slightest clue what you're talking about, do you?
And no, Transhumanists don't want to kill or control "lesser beings", and I don't know what you mean by that term, but I'm guessing you're meaning to imply that transhumanist folk think of everyone else as "lesser", which is also complete crap.
Just because I would love to have a body that I can change into any form that I want whenever I want, and to improve and increase the ability of mind, doesn't mean I have any desire to force anyone else to do the same, or mistreat those that choose not to. And I know of nobody that feels that way, except for the mythical "transhumanist" that you seem to refer to.
So stop spreading blatant lies.
Good point - I wasn't thinking that far ahead in the future. For the first couple years after polymer bills in the US, there would be enough older bills that people would still treat them as normal, leaving the counterfeiters to work on those. Eventually though, as you point out, the old ones will leave circulation enough that when older bills are used, there can be enough scrutiny focused on them to make counterfeiting them increasingly riskier.
I'm all in favor of going down that route.
Question - are the polymer notes longer lived than paper notes? It would seem it to me, suggesting a benefit in that direction also.
I think this is a great idea.
If they want to make truly hard-to-counterfeit bills, add transparent windows to the bills, with different locations and patterns for each denomination. Very tricky to counterfeit, and will easily stop all the people who do just a little bit with their laser copiers and such.
Of course, that would just lead to people counterfeiting the old ones instead.
Visually impared people? In the US? They're not impared, they're just lazy mooches who can't be bothered to put effort into seeing. They shouldn't be able to tell the bills apart if they're not going to work hard enough to see clearly like all the other hard working Americans.
And don't get me started on all those people who are in wheelchairs because they are too lazy to walk. Don't give me that wussy politically-correct "they're paralyzed" crap either. That's just a lie of the liberal media!!!
Last I knew, the large midway arcade, the one with all of the classic games (or in many cases, the old ones they just never got rid of) is still there, though most of the others seem to have disappeared.
I never did get to go on the spinning ride you mention, though I did hear about it.
The Disaster Transport... I never did understand that one. After all, all they did was take Avalanche Run and build a building around it, re-theming it. And theming is NOT something Cedar Point does well - especially since they don't bother to keep it in good shape. Most of the theming stuff is off and/or broken. About the only value Disaster Transport has is that the building is usually at least somewhat air conditioned in the hot summer, so you can get out of the heat for the time you stand in line for the ride.
Anyone else remember the potato-sack slide?
Of course... about 3/4ths the way down the Midway, right across from the smorgasborg restaurant they had (still do?), and near the old log ride. That was a lot of fun when I was a kid, I was on the slide a few times every year.
The one ride I will be most disappointed to see go is the Wave Swinger. It's been a tradition to ride it at least once every time I've been to the park, and when I'm forced to stop, I will be quite disappointed.
I do wonder how long until they move the parking lot to the other side of the causeway, so that they can use that space for more rides and stuff, since they're seriously running out of space on the penninsula.
Agreed about the crowds thing - the park's rides and reputation seem to attract more people each and every year, and the lines and crowds get worse - and the food from all the little stalls seems to also get worse. Though, to their credit, there is that air conditioned restaurant on the midway with salad/pasta bars and all that with food that is of rather good quality for an amusement park.
Then we did the mean streak, which sucked! Its like a rollercoaster during an earthquake, but wooden coasters usually suck like that.
The Mean Streak is a good demonstration why wooden coasters have been left behind. It set all sorts of records when it was built as the largest and fastest wooden coaster. And once upon a time, it was fun. I was there in May of the year it opened, and it was relatively smooth, and a lot of fun. I rode it a couple times that day.
The problem is that the speeds, coupled with the nature of the materials used, cause the structure of the ride to suffer. I've heard - though I am not certain - that they have like 6 full-time carpenders employed just for that ride alone, checking it every night for loose bolts and breaking wood. It is very high maintenance, and that still doesn't keep it in the shape they'd want it to be.
It's been said the ride is destroying itself due to the speeds and stresses on the material, and I don't expect it to last that long. They already have to change the rails every three years, as they degrade over time and make the ride just too rough. I've heard that riding it on that third year is pretty much a guaranteed method of getting a really bad headache. And given the fact that the ride gets rougher as the year goes on, riding in, say, October of that third year before they replace the rails is probably one of the roughest beatings you can take in a rollercoaster.
Though if you get on at the beginning of the year after a replacement, I'm sure it's still pretty damn fun.
Forgive me, but I've just got to rant for a moment. Is it just me or does it seem that no one has been able to come up with an original idea for the last 20 years.
I suspect there are a couple reasons for this. One is the 'nostalgia' factor - we all remember shows, movies, and games that we loved once upon a time, but that don't have the same attraction now, and people try to recreate and recapture some of that attention and feeling produced by the original. Some might see it as a quick way to make money, but I suspect most people involved have good intetions.
Second, original ideas that work well are not easy to come up with - or we would see a lot of them. Perhaps you should grace us with a nice listing of original ideas for people to work with, as options to reusing existing ideas. I agree, I'd like to see more of them also, but I understand the difficulty.
I do wonder about the power supply though. Seeing that I can barely get a day's worth of stand-by on my cell phone with a tiny text screen it seems keep these things powered up might require an equally revolutionary energy store.
The thing to remember when talking about e-ink is that power will not be needed to keep information displayed. Power will be required for the wireless data reception, and for changing what is displayed, but various e-ink technologies that have been mentioned all have means of showing information that are not energy intensive.
I'm not sure offhand exactly how it works, but usually involves some sort of small particle or such with, say, black on one side, and white on the other, and they are rotated to show a particular pattern of 'pixels', and then take no energy to remain in that pattern.
This is one of the big wins of e-ink - along with the fact that done properly, it should look little different from plain old paper. (though it is definitely not there yet)
If you equipped an 'e-ink newspaper' with the ability for the user to query for updates, instead of the paper constantly checking a wireless frequency, then power consumption could be quite minimal.
I do look forward to fully interactive e-ink, so that, say, you could have a notebook with e-ink paper, you jot down notes with a stylus, the paper shows the proper marks so it feels just like regular writing, but with the options to save notes, recall them later, and memory that allows one notebook to keep the information that a whole stack of real notebooks couldn't hold. Can you imagine having an e-ink journal, for example, that could hold a lifetime's worth of data in it, so you could recall anything you've ever written/drawn on the e-ink pages?
There's no presupposition there. Strong AI is not a prerequisite for nanotechnology in any way.
Of course, the existence of mature nanotechnology may enable strong AI, allowing at least the ability to brute-force AI by copying the human brain molecule for molecule and perhaps modify it to allow machine interaction and who-knows-what.
sequence breaking/low percentage games (People have managed 24% games in Metroid Prime by skipping such "necessary" items as the charge beam, gravity suit and grappling hook!) is one way to give new challenge to a beaten game.
I think the sequence breaking part is so much more interesting to look at than just simple speed runs. While it is interesting to see how efficient people can get in finding the best route through the game, it's the little 'gaps' in the design that are the most interesting to me. It's wild to see people find ways to get around needing items that were designed to be 'necessary' to win the game.
And kudos to the designers to have a robust enough game design to be able to handle people skipping entire items without the game doing strange things, and also to be prepared for people to have items earlier then they're supposed to - for example, a boss being vunerable to a weapon that they shouldn't have yet.
And I think I've seen that they've managed to get down to a 23% final score, and it appears that it's not likely that they could lower that any further.
I used to have the unfettered loathing for Rosen that most Slashdotters have. However, that changed after I read the Wired article that was profiling her.
It was very interesting to see that she did have some disagreements with the methods that the RIAA members wanted to use, but that she did her job by pushing for what the people the RIAA represented wanted, instead of what she personally wanted. (She was in favor of online music distribution and other details, if I remember correctly)
I do think that copyright law has gone way overboard - but that is still a minority view. I think many people, even those involved in enforcing it, haven't given proper thought to what it's all about, what it affects, and what it should be - either they just accept it as it is, or they're corporate folks who are looking at profit and being capitalists - doing whatever they can to make more money.
If Iraq ends up with a government that is trying to catch up to the international community, then what should we expect other than copyright laws that fit the rest of that community. And if they end up with a different gov't, perhaps an Islamic fundamentalist one, copyright law is not going to be high up on the agenda of things to worry about.
Work to get copyright law changed in those countries that are leading the charge to extend copyright periods, and smaller countries will follow their lead.
It was called Global Wars, and it was popular where I used to call up BBSes - I was usually involved in a couple games at any point in time.
I was never into the 'big' ones mentioned here - SRE, LORD, TW2002, none of them just ever really clicked for me. I spent a lot of time on Land of the Barons, Phantasia, Power Struggle, and Trade Wars 1000. TW1000 I enjoyed so much more than 2002, as there wasn't all that overly complicated multiple-ship stuff going on. And I so loved the versions that had sales that went up to 99% - nothing like getting fighters for 1 credit each (load up time!!), and even more fun was making as many planets as you could during a sale, scattering them all around the galaxy, and ones in out-of-the-way sectors months later having nearly maxxed themselves out.
I also remember Arena, though I never got very far in it - seemed quite tough.
I have to disagree with this. It's hard to come up with a remotely plausible reason how/why someone would create something like this intentionally.
We have people today willing to kill themselves, and plenty of other people in the process, for a cause. Now, I'll admit, most of the people who do this aren't exactly highly educated, and even in a world where nanotechnology exists and widely spread you're not likely to see someone with the knowledge AND materials to create a device, yet with the willingness to sacrifice everyone. But let's not kid ourselves and think it's impossible.
I also think your mention of worms/viruses on computers aren't quite relevant here. Programming/software engineering is not done in the same way as any form of engineering that creates physical devices. Programmers have the luxury of being able to create a program, run it, find the flaws using a version of the finished product, and tweak that product to fix the flaws. Engineers working on physical objects are restrained by the cost, time, and effort of creating in progress versions. Thus a lot more effort is spent on the design and reviewing the design before anything physical is actually created.
Thus you're not as likely to have people creating self-replicating nanomachines without having run the design by other people where it was heavily scrutinized.
There's also the fact that a number of ideas have already been proposed for creating mini-environments where nanomachines can be developed, where the mini-environments have an number of safeguards to prevent those nanomachines from escaping. One such example, I believe proposed by Drexler himself, involved a tiny environment that had multiple sealed layers around it, and if any of those layers were breached, it would explode internally in a manner that would destroy any machines inside. It wouldn't be hard to imagine a process where all nanomachine testing would be required to be done in such environments. Thus, the self-replicating nanomachine's checks on out-of-control replication could be thoroughly tested inside there.
There are so many safeguards that could be both built into self-replicating nanomachines, along with safeguards to the development process, that as I said, I think it would take a colossal level of carelessness to allow something like that to exist at all, and even more so to let it escape.
And how do these nanobots make new photoarrays, etch their own circuitboards, etc? I mean, yes, there's silion and such everywhere, but you still need to purify it, dope it, etch it, etc. And with nanobots, the smallest mistake makes it nonfunctional.
It's a basic assumption here that nanomachines that can self-replicate would have a full assembler as part of their machinery, and taking existing materials and turning them into raw materials would be as simple as taking molecules and pulling them apart. (Not saying it's as simple as taking apart a tinkertoy model, but it by the time nanomachines like this are possible, it should be a routine task) Then it would just involve putting the raw materials together.
Remember, at this level, molecules and atoms are being handled individually, not in enormous bulk like processes today. Saying that they'd need to "purify silicon" before using it makes no sense - the nanomachines can pick out molecules/atoms like we could pick out a marble of a specific color from a bag full.
If it drifted across a magnetic field, it would be rendered nonfunctional.
Why is this the case? Magentic fields don't stop bacteria. Nanomachines aren't all going to have little computers full of circuitry - when you're building machines at the molecular level, using the same technology we use now for computers may not make sense. There are alredy a number of designs that have been created, and more in progress, for mechanical computers, as they may be more practical for nanomachines. Heck, programs for those mechanical computers might even be stored in a DNA-like structure, if that's what works best.
Magnetic fields and EMP devices aren't going to be able to stop all-mechanical nanomachines.
I am really getting frustrated by the amount of traction the whole "grey goo" meme is getting.
Sure, it's possible that when nanotechnology gets going, that somehow a nanomachine that can convert just about any material to energy and raw materials to copy itself could be accidentally created. It could then convert the entire Earth and everything on it to copies of itself. It's POSSIBLE.
But then again, it's also possible that some species of bacteria could mutate and start doing the same things. And it's probably not any less likely than a nanomachine doing it.
A machine that could convert just about anything on the planet into useful materials, and duplicate itself endlessly, would probably be difficult to make INTENTIONALLY, let alone accidentally. It would also be extremely easy to insert safeguards to prevent anything like that from happening. Either require the presence of a particular molecule for the machines to duplicate themselves. Add replication limits to the nanomachines. Never include self-replication in the same nanomachine as one that can break down most/all things into raw materials.
Unless nanoengineers are incredibly sloppy, maliciously so, then it's not going to happen by accident.
INTENTIONAL creation of such machines is an issue of higher importance. And the type of people who would make such nanomachines are not the type who are going to listen to people saying "we can't research/develop this technology, it might be dangerous". Would a law against using aircraft for suicidal terrorism have stopped Al Queda from taking down the WTC? Nope.
The best chance at preventing/defending against such actions is to develop the technology and focus some research on using it to prevent such uses. Not saying "stop all research!"
Now, I would be enormously in favor of a global treaty banning research into nanotechnological weapons. The thought of militaries working with such technologies does scare me.
Interesting article, but I think it had a serious flaw - by assuming that programming languages in the future are just going to extend the current model even further.
Some of us working in the telecommunications industry are already familiar with SDL (Specification and Description Language) as a tool for designing and auto-coding software. Yes, auto-coding. The SDL design software lets us design a system graphically, breaking it up into sub-components and specifying message flows between those components, and defining state machiens for handling these messages.
Developing software in such manner usually requires a very little coding, as the design tool will turn the design into code. Coding may be required for interfacing with the OS or other entities, though that's improving also.
I'm starting to think as such tools mature, they're going to be the next step up, like the way programming languages were the step up from coding in assembly. They are less efficient, just as BASIC or C is less efficient than pure assembler, but they allow greater focus on a solid and robust design and less requirement to focus on repetitive details.
Imagine being able to take out the step of having to go from a design to code - focus on the design, and you're done.
They mention in a couple times, but never in depth. I think they want to focus on Dani's game creation - after all, this article was far from a complete bio. Focusing on her transsexuality would have been way too far along the lines of "sensationalism" for the article.
Besides, the "sensationalism" of transsexuality has, for the most part, faded into the past, the realm of 80's and 90's talk shows. While a lot of people are still unfamiliar with the details, the idea of it happening has long been mainstreamed. Heck, most places a geek can work that has a substantial number of programmers probably has a transsexual among them - often without any of the cow-orkers knowing about it.
Exactly - Dani Bunten was transsexual. It happens more than you'd expect in the computer realm. I think Slashdot had an article about a year or so ago about someone who had made a huge advancement in the computer field, then disappeared due to being transsexual, and her for the longest time not taking credit for the work she did as "he".
Does anyone else remember evil-Willow from Doppelgängerland (Season 3)? Rowr!
:)
I have watched that episode on my Season 3 DVD at least 6 times - it's just a really fun episode, with a lot of great comments tossed in here and there, enough that it takes more than one watching to appreciate them all. Of course, Vamp Willow presents a lot of foreshadowing about Willow's character later on in the series.
And the great quotes, too..
"In my world, there are people in cages, and we can ride them like ponies."
"...and I think I'm kinda gay."
And the good old "Bored now."
it's all about the Slayer this year. We see her changing, growing darker and angrier, descending into the abyss even more so than right after (2nd) her return from the dead.
I think it's really poing to Buffy dying at the end of the season, as she seems to be giving up in many ways, becoming convinced there's nothing that can be done to win against The First.
Season 7 sucked from begining to end.
Wow, you mean you've seen the end of the season already? Can you give us the tapes - and maybe also to the show's creators? I'm sure they'd like to know how the final episodes are going to turn out, as they haven't filmed them yet.
Your comment reminds me of those wonderful Amazon reviews where everyone's so glowing/negative about something before it's even released. Such quality work there.
I think this season is doing quite well - it's really creating such a dark, forboding atmosphere, one that's darker than even the darkest points of the second season. The last couple episodes are starting to make me feel that Buffy herself is giving up, becoming convinced she can't possibly win this one. Not just a temporary frustration, but like a complete sense of giving up throughout her. It's almost like she's wanting to die.
Well, they could write a brilliant sci-fi western in which there is no sound in space, no rubber-headed aliens, and no cheap technobable deus-ex-machina endings. It would be everything Star Trek isn't, and it could be the best sci-fi show on TV.
But that would probably just get canceled by fox after 14 episodes.
Well, if they write one, we can wait and see if Fox cancels it after 14 episodes.
Instead, they wrote Firefly, which I saw a couple times due to a friend watching it - and I was so happy when the episode was over because it meant I didn't have to suffer through it anymore.
And believe me, I expected it to be good, due to being written by Whedon. I was wrong.
"Sci-fi western"? My god, who even gave that idea a green light? Especially when it was so blatant - watching people go from a spacecraft onto a planet where everyone looked, acted, and sounded like they came directly from a bad western series?
What's next? People living in feudal monarchies complete with castles, knights, and longbows, where people just happen to have inter-dimensional travel and nanotechnology?