Usually boys of average or above-average intelligence.
Probably more often boys because they're taught more that violence is acceptable, and expected, for boys. Though I'd expect to see a girl involved in something like this soon.
Above-average intelligence because they're more likely to be independent, be themselves, instead of just following everyone else.
Often loners, or have small circle of friend who are outsiders.
The fact that they're often into things that are considered unpopular, and often not doing the necessary things to be popular (buying the "right" clothes, playing sports, especially the "right" sports). So they're usually forced to be outsiders, though some do it willingly, realizing how pitiful the popular crowd really is.
Experience unstable self-esteem.
Getting picked on, taunted, made fun of, etc, tends to create this. I'd be suprised to see an outsider without this problem.
Often fascinated by cults, Satanism, weapons, themes of violence and death.
My question here is: what is a "cult" or "Satanism" to the people judging this? My experience tells me that anything other than big mainstream religion would fit. Wiccan? Oh, you're in a "cult"/a "Satanist". Heck, an atheist would probably be lumped in here.
Experience a decline in schoolwork and marks.
Treated like crap at school? Then you're not going to like being there or anything associated with it, and less likely to do the work. And it never helps when it's busywork or things you know and have known for a while.
Come from dysfunctional homes.
What's NOT a dysfunctional home? The Cleavers?
Have experience with chronic bullying and drug use.
As someone else pointed out - it doesn't mean you're DOING the bullying.
Engage in attention-seeking behavior, and don't accept criticism.
But what is "attention-seeking behavior"? Is flaunting the social norms this "evil" behavior? If you go to school with, say, blue hair, are you just doing it for attention and not because you just like it and it doesn't hurt anyone?
Not accept criticism? How many people do that very well?
I agree that this is a pretty good profile for the type of person more likely to have problems, and do bad things in school. What worries me is that they're most likely going to use it to identify the likely problem kids, and then treat those kids like they're the only part of the problem, while ignoring the intolerance, bigotry, ridicule, and bullying that CREATES people like this in the first place. They're not going to use it to find what the REAL problems are.
I just wonder if we're ever going to have people with clues in the important positions that can do things about stuff like this. Too bad we don't see geeks getting into things like politics, school administration, etc. ---
The government built the roads, so they make the rules. And if you wanna drive on them, you've got to let anyone who wants to park in your garage and sleep in your house. That's about what your "logic" boils to.
Not nearly that at all. Try again.
If we want to make the analogy correct, then the government built the roads, so they make the rules. If you want to drive them, you follow them - you drive the speed limit, get a license plate, etc. If the government decides that anyone who drives also needs to let anyone who wants park in your garage and sleep in your house, then you need to follow that - but at this point they haven't decided that.
The regulation is to prevent a corporation from buying up a large chunk of the roads, and then telling you that you can only carry certain things in your car, that you can only have so many people inside it, and you can only drive it a certain amount. And they own enough of the roads so that you don't have the option of driving only on competitor's roads, so you don't have a choice. ---
It's a good thing we don't have pure democracy. No matter what the "majority" might think, it still can't vote to simply sieze someone's property. That's why we are a republic. The rights of the minority are protected against the tyranny of the majority - sometimes.
Agreed. A pure democracy would, IMHO, rather quickly crumble from the horrible infighting, persecution, etc. One by one, each minority would be eliminated by the majority.
Too bad we don't have a government in the US that really stands up for the minorities. Because the government is "of the people", instead of fighting the people to protect the minorities, they're trying to legislate to "protect" the majority - and the majority is the one group that never needs protection.
Example? Gay marriages. These "defense of marriage" acts are nothing more than an attempt by the majority to discriminate against that minority. It harms absolutely nothing to allow them to occur. It's just the majority (especially the so-called (im)"Moral Majority") trying to exert power and control.
We have made a lot of headway in the past, as women have gained rights and the vote, non-whites have gained rights and the vote, etc. And I do think we'll continue to increase the number of minorities that are included equally. But we'll have to fight for it. ---
And I tend to be a realist, not a libertarian. Government is useful if it can be trusted, and it could be, if we weren't so fucking complacent and apathetic... (in a Democracy, you should get the government you demand, but in the days of 30% voter turnout, you get the government you deserve... And there's nothing in the Constitution delineating only 2 parties...)
Thank you... I'm glad someone said this.
There is no reason why the government in a democracy has to be such a mess. Sure, the US gov't is somewhat of one, but that's because of the lack of people voting, and the lack of paying attention to what the politicans are really doing.
They'd stop being "bought" by corporations if the public made it clear that doing so meant they never were back into office. They'd serve the people if the people made it worthwhile.
I see libertarianism as a means of allowing corporations to control the public instead of the government - and we won;t get a vote in that aspect. I know that's not the intentions, but I think it will be the resulting effect.
A little bit of regulation now, a little slap on the hand saying "don't do that", will keep us from having to carve everything apart later and look at a means of bring innovation back to the internet.
When your only option for getting the access is through a company that strictly regulates what you can use it for, then there's not going to be much incentive to try new things.
Would you use a provider that tells you "you can only use e-mail, the web, and irc" through your cable connection, and your other choice is a 28.8 modem, what good is that? ---
What would be the point of a healthy man having a cyber implant for motor movement?
If it can be done, then it bodes very well for the handicapped. You'd need to be able to track the signals in the nervous system in a healthy person to be able to replicate them in someone who is handicapped.
For him personally it serves no purpose than to see if it can be done - and since when has that not been a good enough reason for people to do something? ---
But, you forget... the Democrat party and the Republican party are not the only parties out there.
I know there aren't any other parties out there. But the way the political and voting systems work, they are the only ones for all practical purposes. It is more beneficial to me personally to vote for which ever of the two big parties is more in line with my views, because if I vote for a third party, most likely that vote is a "waste" and it makes it that more likely that the one I want least is in office.
In fact, I hope to see more and more republicans head on over to the Reform Party. Why? Because if the republican party loses a big block of voters to the reform, then it makes it more likely a democrat will get elected (the lesser of two evils in my mind).
Until they create a voting system that actually allows you to vote for a fringe candidate that fits your ideals perfectly and yet still have an influence on who gets elected, the two party system is going to be what we're stuck with. And there ain't a chance that they'll go about trying to change the system, since it benefits them the most as it is. ---
Of course, I'd proffer that it doesn't take amendments or Con-Cons to destroy the effectiveness of a Constitution. Pure apathy, or even worse, apathy combined with a charismatic leader who is more than able and willing to whip people into a froth against the "Enemy of the Week" can wreck a constitution just as well as a Con-Con can.
Apathy? While us Americans have it in droves (latest polls show only about 50% of Americans seem to really care about the freedoms in the Bill of Rights), it really doesn't matter when the only people we can vote for are ones who are trying to whittle those freedoms away.
Look at the current crop of presidential candidates we get to pick from with regards to freedom of religion, for example. There isn't a single republican candidate that's not highly religious (Christian), and even the two democrats which are visible are putting forward anti-seperation ideas. Heck, Bush has said he would put forth and Executive Order to ban Wiccans from the military (religious discrimination - illegial in the US except in the military?) Gore wants the gov't to fund more faith-based (religious) programs to help people, and Bradley wants to experiement with school vouchers (which fund religious schools).
Is there ANY goverment in this world that thinks of freedom and civil rights for everyone as more than just catch-phrases that are convienently forgotten when laws are made? ---
Re:Clueless in California
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These articles always mention that these machines can replicate themselves, i.e. on machine copies itself, then two machines make 4 copies, etc. It seems that if you wanted to build a machine to do something useful, other than just copy itself, you would need to spend a lot of effort to include the copy functionality. I mean, do you want a simple machine that can repair a heart valve, or a more complicated one that can repair a heart valve AND copy itself?
They usually are talking about the assembler when they talk about this. The assembler is a machine that can build things on the nano- scale, and is programmable. The idea is that it will first be programmed to copy itself, so that a very large number of assemblers can be created.
Once the assembler is done, then they'll start playing with it, programming it to build other things. Most of these other, non-assembler, machines will not have the ability to copy themselves, for various reasons. Perhaps a few will be made by taking the functionality of the assembler and adding on.
They aren't planning to make every nanomachine able to replicate itself. As you pointed out, that would add much more to the machine than is necessary in almost all cases, and add the worries about a badly-designed one, or flawed one, replicating out of control. ---
This is not an introductory book
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I own this book, and while I've started to read it, I've realized that it is probably not the best book to read as an introduction into nanotechnology. I've seen a number of others available at The Foresight Institute that appear to be better ones to start out with, and I plan to purchase those before coming back to this one.
It's more technical, and definately a good one for people who have more than just a passing interest in molecular nanotechnology, but not the one you'll try and get your friends and family to read.
Anyone know the names of some better introductory ones? I think there are two or three mentioned in the review, but I believe there are more than that available. ---
Re:Alright I see something here but.
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So called "futurists" like Caral Sagan and other scifi/philosophers have said that we should have moon bases established and be to mars and back by now. I don't see any of that happening.
The thing is... those should have happened by now. If the spending that had gone into the cold war and defense had, say, gone into the space program instead, we'd probably already have a big space station in orbit, have a small base on the moon, and have a ship with people en-route to Mars.
The technology is there, and has been for a while. It's the social issues that have kept it from happening, and those are much more unstable and unpredictable.
They predict nanotech will be here in 20-30 years. And if it's not here then, I bet it's not the science and technology that's not up to it, but the social issues that influence it that have kept it from occuring. ---
A bit of definition if i may: by assembler do you mean mass production or just single unit fabrication?
By assembler I mean the device that has the ability to be programmed to build things at a nanotech level. Once one of these is created, it will be programmed to build a copy of itself. At this point, you can just supply the materials and the energy and wait a while and you've got all the assemblers you need. Then you've got all you need to experiment with and create products with.
It doesn't matter how long it takes to build just one assembler by hand, as long as it can create a copy of it self in a small amount of time. ---
Could someone with a bit of information in this area provide what they see to be a reasonable timeline for nanotech? I have been doing alot of pondering on technology growth and futurism lately and wondering how much I'll see in my lifetime, especially considering how much I've ALREADY seen in my lifetime.
All the estimates I've seen, and this is from many areas, including top researchers, is 20-30 years for the first assembler. And once one of those is built, things should explode in quick succession.
They've said they will be very suprised if it is not here in 50 years.
I know people have always liked to quote the predictions about how AI would be here by now, etc, etc. But this figure is arrived at from many different directions. The progression of how much material is used for memory, and the size of computer chips are two things that will hit the nanotech level around then. Convergence from chemistry, biology, and engineering/physics directions all point to about that area.
I've seen more than enough to convince me that the odds are very good I'll see it in my lifetime. And I'm 25. ---
The admins here where I work named one type of the large machines we work on after Top Gun characters - Iceman, Maverick, Goose, Viper, Merlin, etc. Then they named another type after boxers - Foreman, Frazier, etc (those are very hard to remember).
They've also grouped some of the sun workstations by planet. I'm in the mars group, they've also got saturn, mercury, etc...
I personally would name my machines after bad weather - lightning, thunder, blizzard, cyclone, tornado, hail, hurricane. Though I was naming my x-terms after Djinns/Efreets from Magic: The Gathering. Juzam, Mahamoti, etc... ---
They are not looking for "geeks", they are looking for violently inclined kids. Most people realize that has little to do with geeks! There is something mentally wrong with violent students, and this profiling has, and does work in identifying them. It is not as simple as, "You are different or weird... therefore you must be violent and a danger to society". Gimem a break.
If it actually works like they say it does, then it is definately a good thing. It will help with safety, allow them to help the violent kinds, and REDUCE the geek profiling that is taking place in the schools. It'll show the administrators that being different is not what makes kids dangerous.
Who knows... maybe we'll be lucky and they'll find out that the "spoiled, get away with anything" jocks are more dangerous than the geeks and other outcasts could ever be. ---
Is it me, or is this an overreaction to the Mosiac article we've already seen?
We don't know how it works yet. We don't know what factors it considers important, and which it doesn't. It's a bit hasty to assume that it's going to single out the people who are different, the "geeks" as Katz likes to call anyone who's not a conformist.
Perhaps they've actually done something GOOD with this program. Perhaps they've found more of the real issues that can influence violent and troubled kids. How do we know this tool isn't a good thing, finding people in danger before something happens?
If it turns into just another geek profiling tool, then I'll gladly join in the chorus about how bad it is. But I'm not going to do that until I know that's how it's working. ---
Trade secrets are moraly preferable, since, unlike patents, they don't limit the freedom for other people to use information they have found for themselves.
Exactly. They're not "inventing" anything here that they need to protect, just learning how something in nature works. Patenting human genes is the equivalent of patenting the laws of physics - just because you discovered them doesn't give you the right to prevent anyone else from doing the same.
You should be able to patent something you create, but NOT something you discovered.
If they want something to patent to make money, they should spend the time working on faster ways to decode DNA and determine the effects of genes, not trying to beat others to the genes themselves. ---
I'd assume that both the types of profiles in question would violate this restriction (the gay sex one violating the "explicit sexual references" clause and the gay killing one violating the "hate speech" clause).
I think that's part of the point. That they seemed to "overlook" the hate speech of hundreds of members, while being quick to delete the profile of the one with the sexual reference in it.
Of course, we're living in a country where almost everyone thinks of sex references as inappropriate, but at least half the population doesn't see what's wrong with anti-gay hate speech, where "fag"/"faggot" are pretty much the only remaining slurs considered "acceptable".
I'm sure AOL would have been QUICK to remove the profile if someone had listed "nigger bashing" or "killing Japs". ---
If you think about it, our nation's freeways and roads are dangerous as hell.
That's what we get for becoming an automobile-based society. That's pretty much what we have - public transportation is poor because everyone has to have their own car. And such we have tons of traffic, traffic jams, road rage, etc.
ANYTHING that can lower that is welcomed.
I personally will be so happy when we get some sort of transportation system that does not depend on people to do all of the controlling of the vehicles. This is just the first step.
Perhaps the privacy issues with some of these possibilities will encourage better funding and use of public transportation systems where you can be anonymous. I know they're poor now, but I suspect if they received heavy usage there would be a lot more work put into better, faster, cheaper ones. ---
Is this yet another example of ST leading the way in technology or what?
Nope. The first proposals for molecular nanotechnology were in the 1950's, before even the original ST series. It's just become better known recently as technology starts to head in that direction. ---
Nintendo64 suffered in the battle with Playstation because it was the last major 64-bit system to market -- after Sega Saturn and long after Playstation.
Hu? Playstaion is only 32 bit, isn't it?
I wonder how much their technical stuff was off. Heck, they suggested that the Playstation launched in 1991 - they said that 3DO arrived for $700 when the better Playstation had launched two years earlier.
Excuse me? What world were you in? I think they were talking about the Sony and Sega systems at that point, but it was only the 16-bit systems when 3DO launched, which was followed by the Jaguar before the Playstation/Saturn even arrived in Japan.
I have a hard time trusting the article when these two simple points were erroneous.
Commentary is an essential part of journalism. Jon is someone who repackages and reinterprets events into a coherent whole. It's important to have someone connecting ideas from different stories. People who post comments do it as well.
I realize that. Katz has done a really good job of this in the past, filling out some of these ideas and showing us what effects they can have and the like. And I LIKE reading those articles.
I didn't see any of that here. I think everything in here had been mentioned in the past. It was more of a summary than even commentary. And THAT's what made me state that this article was nearly useless. It's summarizing that which we've already read.
If he wants to make sure we're aware of this idea, then he could have pointed at the previous Slashdot stories, and then added commentary which did expand and interpret them. ---
This article didn't tell us anything we hadn't already heard and knew about. I've read this stuff before, heck, I've probably read this stuff from Katz before.
Therein lies the biggest problem in Katz's articles - the tendency to restate the obvious, only after making sure to add references to Slashdot, geeks, and memes. While the Slashdot mention was appropriate here, the others seemed added on afterwards.
Katz - maybe that's why you have so many people saying such bad things about your writing. You have written some really good informational articles before. But you also write ones like this, simple rehashes. If you're mainly repeating what we've already read a couple times from other Slashdot links, then realize you're going to have your article treated worse than Slashdot treated the article in Jane's. Because it'll be just as useful. ---
I see people commenting on how this can make semiconductors better, or storage media better, etc...
Look at the bigger picture. Those are going to be SMALL concerns as molecular nanotechnology keeps developing. They'll be more side-effects than main purposes.
This is one of the reasons I keep checking Slashdot often - nanotechnology, assuming there aren't any barriers to it, is going to be the final industrial revolution. We'll be able to control matter like we do information, and the world is going to change in ways nobody can predict or expect. And I'm looking forward to seeing it happen in my lifetime. Heck, I'm starting to look around and see what it takes to get into the field, just because I think I'd rather help bring it around than just sit and hope.
This is the kind of thing that has incredible future ramifications. If you thought the invention of the transistor was big, you should realize that we're watching them approach a discovery that is magnitudes bigger. ---
Look, can you still burn the flag? Yes. If THEY didnt want us to burn it, then THEY would make it illegal.
Pay attention - you'd know they have only been a few votes shy in conress each time they've done it. Which means more than half of the people there want to outlaw it. This is for an amendment to the constitution! And all 50 states have already said they'd ratify the amendment. Only a few votes away from that!
Which freedoms are being decreased? Which do they claim that we have that we actually don't have?
Freedom of the press is continually being eroded. As time goes on, they lose a little here, lose a little there. Freedom of religion is an utter joke - it's freedom of Christianity and little more - there are countless laws based on little more than Christian morality. What, you believe that you can marry someone of the same sex, or more than one person? Nope, you're not allowed because the Christians don't do it and they made the law.
Take a peek at The Freedom Forum and you can see how well the government respects freedom.
As long as we need an ACLU to fight for the people and the constitution it's evidence that the government is going the wrong way. As long as we have to fight the gov't to try and keep what we've got we're not going to have an easy time gaining new ones. ---
The U.S. still has a long ways to go in many areas... but damn, I really am proud to be an American. At least people can actively, and outragreously attack (vocally) anything they see fit. Every American out there screaming that the United States sucks, has to realize that we are one of the few countries where they can DO that! The right to bash and ridicule you own country is something that many people really take advantafe of, without realize what kind of power that is.
As much as I appreciate the freedoms we do have, and how few other places have them in even this day and age, it still doesn't exactly do much for my nationalism (if that wasn't clear already).
I already feel that the idea of a nation is becoming outdated, but more specifically for now, I feel it's mostly lip service. They claim we have all these freedoms, but it seems we have them only because they haven't taken them away from us yet. A recent poll showed that were the bill of rights proposed in congress today, there's no chance it would be passed.
Heck, they don't even want to let us burn the flag - which harms nobody, and would put the symbol of our freedoms above the freedoms themselves.
I'll have more respect for the US when it actually starts trying to give people as much freedom as it claims they have, and works at increasing rather than decreasing them. ---
Slashdot Mirror
Usually boys of average or above-average intelligence.
Probably more often boys because they're taught more that violence is acceptable, and expected, for boys. Though I'd expect to see a girl involved in something like this soon.
Above-average intelligence because they're more likely to be independent, be themselves, instead of just following everyone else.
Often loners, or have small circle of friend who are outsiders.
The fact that they're often into things that are considered unpopular, and often not doing the necessary things to be popular (buying the "right" clothes, playing sports, especially the "right" sports). So they're usually forced to be outsiders, though some do it willingly, realizing how pitiful the popular crowd really is.
Experience unstable self-esteem.
Getting picked on, taunted, made fun of, etc, tends to create this. I'd be suprised to see an outsider without this problem.
Often fascinated by cults, Satanism, weapons, themes of violence and death.
My question here is: what is a "cult" or "Satanism" to the people judging this? My experience tells me that anything other than big mainstream religion would fit. Wiccan? Oh, you're in a "cult"/a "Satanist". Heck, an atheist would probably be lumped in here.
Experience a decline in schoolwork and marks.
Treated like crap at school? Then you're not going to like being there or anything associated with it, and less likely to do the work. And it never helps when it's busywork or things you know and have known for a while.
Come from dysfunctional homes.
What's NOT a dysfunctional home? The Cleavers?
Have experience with chronic bullying and drug use.
As someone else pointed out - it doesn't mean you're DOING the bullying.
Engage in attention-seeking behavior, and don't accept criticism.
But what is "attention-seeking behavior"? Is flaunting the social norms this "evil" behavior? If you go to school with, say, blue hair, are you just doing it for attention and not because you just like it and it doesn't hurt anyone?
Not accept criticism? How many people do that very well?
I agree that this is a pretty good profile for the type of person more likely to have problems, and do bad things in school. What worries me is that they're most likely going to use it to identify the likely problem kids, and then treat those kids like they're the only part of the problem, while ignoring the intolerance, bigotry, ridicule, and bullying that CREATES people like this in the first place. They're not going to use it to find what the REAL problems are.
I just wonder if we're ever going to have people with clues in the important positions that can do things about stuff like this. Too bad we don't see geeks getting into things like politics, school administration, etc.
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The government built the roads, so they make the rules. And if you wanna drive on them, you've got to let anyone who wants to park in your garage and sleep in your house. That's about what your "logic" boils to.
Not nearly that at all. Try again.
If we want to make the analogy correct, then the government built the roads, so they make the rules. If you want to drive them, you follow them - you drive the speed limit, get a license plate, etc. If the government decides that anyone who drives also needs to let anyone who wants park in your garage and sleep in your house, then you need to follow that - but at this point they haven't decided that.
The regulation is to prevent a corporation from buying up a large chunk of the roads, and then telling you that you can only carry certain things in your car, that you can only have so many people inside it, and you can only drive it a certain amount. And they own enough of the roads so that you don't have the option of driving only on competitor's roads, so you don't have a choice.
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It's a good thing we don't have pure democracy. No matter what the "majority" might think, it still can't vote to simply sieze someone's property. That's why we are a republic. The rights of the minority are protected against the tyranny of the majority - sometimes.
Agreed. A pure democracy would, IMHO, rather quickly crumble from the horrible infighting, persecution, etc. One by one, each minority would be eliminated by the majority.
Too bad we don't have a government in the US that really stands up for the minorities. Because the government is "of the people", instead of fighting the people to protect the minorities, they're trying to legislate to "protect" the majority - and the majority is the one group that never needs protection.
Example? Gay marriages. These "defense of marriage" acts are nothing more than an attempt by the majority to discriminate against that minority. It harms absolutely nothing to allow them to occur. It's just the majority (especially the so-called (im)"Moral Majority") trying to exert power and control.
We have made a lot of headway in the past, as women have gained rights and the vote, non-whites have gained rights and the vote, etc. And I do think we'll continue to increase the number of minorities that are included equally. But we'll have to fight for it.
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And I tend to be a realist, not a libertarian. Government is useful if it can be trusted, and it could be, if we weren't so fucking complacent and apathetic... (in a Democracy, you should get the government you demand, but in the days of 30% voter turnout, you get the government you deserve... And there's nothing in the Constitution delineating only 2 parties...)
Thank you... I'm glad someone said this.
There is no reason why the government in a democracy has to be such a mess. Sure, the US gov't is somewhat of one, but that's because of the lack of people voting, and the lack of paying attention to what the politicans are really doing.
They'd stop being "bought" by corporations if the public made it clear that doing so meant they never were back into office. They'd serve the people if the people made it worthwhile.
I see libertarianism as a means of allowing corporations to control the public instead of the government - and we won;t get a vote in that aspect. I know that's not the intentions, but I think it will be the resulting effect.
A little bit of regulation now, a little slap on the hand saying "don't do that", will keep us from having to carve everything apart later and look at a means of bring innovation back to the internet.
When your only option for getting the access is through a company that strictly regulates what you can use it for, then there's not going to be much incentive to try new things.
Would you use a provider that tells you "you can only use e-mail, the web, and irc" through your cable connection, and your other choice is a 28.8 modem, what good is that?
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What would be the point of a healthy man having a cyber implant for motor movement?
If it can be done, then it bodes very well for the handicapped. You'd need to be able to track the signals in the nervous system in a healthy person to be able to replicate them in someone who is handicapped.
For him personally it serves no purpose than to see if it can be done - and since when has that not been a good enough reason for people to do something?
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But, you forget... the Democrat party and the Republican party are not the only parties out there.
I know there aren't any other parties out there. But the way the political and voting systems work, they are the only ones for all practical purposes. It is more beneficial to me personally to vote for which ever of the two big parties is more in line with my views, because if I vote for a third party, most likely that vote is a "waste" and it makes it that more likely that the one I want least is in office.
In fact, I hope to see more and more republicans head on over to the Reform Party. Why? Because if the republican party loses a big block of voters to the reform, then it makes it more likely a democrat will get elected (the lesser of two evils in my mind).
Until they create a voting system that actually allows you to vote for a fringe candidate that fits your ideals perfectly and yet still have an influence on who gets elected, the two party system is going to be what we're stuck with. And there ain't a chance that they'll go about trying to change the system, since it benefits them the most as it is.
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Of course, I'd proffer that it doesn't take amendments or Con-Cons to destroy the effectiveness of a Constitution. Pure apathy, or even worse, apathy combined with a charismatic leader who is more than able and willing to whip people into a froth against the "Enemy of the Week" can wreck a constitution just as well as a Con-Con can.
Apathy? While us Americans have it in droves (latest polls show only about 50% of Americans seem to really care about the freedoms in the Bill of Rights), it really doesn't matter when the only people we can vote for are ones who are trying to whittle those freedoms away.
Look at the current crop of presidential candidates we get to pick from with regards to freedom of religion, for example. There isn't a single republican candidate that's not highly religious (Christian), and even the two democrats which are visible are putting forward anti-seperation ideas. Heck, Bush has said he would put forth and Executive Order to ban Wiccans from the military (religious discrimination - illegial in the US except in the military?) Gore wants the gov't to fund more faith-based (religious) programs to help people, and Bradley wants to experiement with school vouchers (which fund religious schools).
Is there ANY goverment in this world that thinks of freedom and civil rights for everyone as more than just catch-phrases that are convienently forgotten when laws are made?
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These articles always mention that these machines can replicate themselves, i.e. on machine copies itself, then two machines make 4 copies, etc. It seems that if you wanted to build a machine to do something useful, other than just copy itself, you would need to spend a lot of effort to include the copy functionality. I mean, do you want a simple machine that can repair a heart valve, or a more complicated one that can repair a heart valve AND copy itself?
They usually are talking about the assembler when they talk about this. The assembler is a machine that can build things on the nano- scale, and is programmable. The idea is that it will first be programmed to copy itself, so that a very large number of assemblers can be created.
Once the assembler is done, then they'll start playing with it, programming it to build other things. Most of these other, non-assembler, machines will not have the ability to copy themselves, for various reasons. Perhaps a few will be made by taking the functionality of the assembler and adding on.
They aren't planning to make every nanomachine able to replicate itself. As you pointed out, that would add much more to the machine than is necessary in almost all cases, and add the worries about a badly-designed one, or flawed one, replicating out of control.
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I own this book, and while I've started to read it, I've realized that it is probably not the best book to read as an introduction into nanotechnology. I've seen a number of others available at The Foresight Institute that appear to be better ones to start out with, and I plan to purchase those before coming back to this one.
It's more technical, and definately a good one for people who have more than just a passing interest in molecular nanotechnology, but not the one you'll try and get your friends and family to read.
Anyone know the names of some better introductory ones? I think there are two or three mentioned in the review, but I believe there are more than that available.
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So called "futurists" like Caral Sagan and other scifi/philosophers have said that we should have moon bases established and be to mars and back by now. I don't see any of that happening.
The thing is... those should have happened by now. If the spending that had gone into the cold war and defense had, say, gone into the space program instead, we'd probably already have a big space station in orbit, have a small base on the moon, and have a ship with people en-route to Mars.
The technology is there, and has been for a while. It's the social issues that have kept it from happening, and those are much more unstable and unpredictable.
They predict nanotech will be here in 20-30 years. And if it's not here then, I bet it's not the science and technology that's not up to it, but the social issues that influence it that have kept it from occuring.
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A bit of definition if i may:
by assembler do you mean mass production or just single unit fabrication?
By assembler I mean the device that has the ability to be programmed to build things at a nanotech level. Once one of these is created, it will be programmed to build a copy of itself. At this point, you can just supply the materials and the energy and wait a while and you've got all the assemblers you need. Then you've got all you need to experiment with and create products with.
It doesn't matter how long it takes to build just one assembler by hand, as long as it can create a copy of it self in a small amount of time.
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Could someone with a bit of information in this area provide what they see to be a reasonable timeline for nanotech? I have been doing alot of pondering on technology growth and futurism lately and wondering how much I'll see in my lifetime, especially considering how much I've ALREADY seen in my lifetime.
All the estimates I've seen, and this is from many areas, including top researchers, is 20-30 years for the first assembler. And once one of those is built, things should explode in quick succession.
They've said they will be very suprised if it is not here in 50 years.
I know people have always liked to quote the predictions about how AI would be here by now, etc, etc. But this figure is arrived at from many different directions. The progression of how much material is used for memory, and the size of computer chips are two things that will hit the nanotech level around then. Convergence from chemistry, biology, and engineering/physics directions all point to about that area.
I've seen more than enough to convince me that the odds are very good I'll see it in my lifetime. And I'm 25.
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The admins here where I work named one type of the large machines we work on after Top Gun characters - Iceman, Maverick, Goose, Viper, Merlin, etc. Then they named another type after boxers - Foreman, Frazier, etc (those are very hard to remember).
They've also grouped some of the sun workstations by planet. I'm in the mars group, they've also got saturn, mercury, etc...
I personally would name my machines after bad weather - lightning, thunder, blizzard, cyclone, tornado, hail, hurricane. Though I was naming my x-terms after Djinns/Efreets from Magic: The Gathering. Juzam, Mahamoti, etc...
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They are not looking for "geeks", they are looking for violently inclined kids. Most people realize that has little to do with geeks! There is something mentally wrong with violent students, and this profiling has, and does work in identifying them. It is not as simple as, "You are different or weird... therefore you must be violent and a danger to society". Gimem a break.
If it actually works like they say it does, then it is definately a good thing. It will help with safety, allow them to help the violent kinds, and REDUCE the geek profiling that is taking place in the schools. It'll show the administrators that being different is not what makes kids dangerous.
Who knows... maybe we'll be lucky and they'll find out that the "spoiled, get away with anything" jocks are more dangerous than the geeks and other outcasts could ever be.
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Is it me, or is this an overreaction to the Mosiac article we've already seen?
We don't know how it works yet. We don't know what factors it considers important, and which it doesn't. It's a bit hasty to assume that it's going to single out the people who are different, the "geeks" as Katz likes to call anyone who's not a conformist.
Perhaps they've actually done something GOOD with this program. Perhaps they've found more of the real issues that can influence violent and troubled kids. How do we know this tool isn't a good thing, finding people in danger before something happens?
If it turns into just another geek profiling tool, then I'll gladly join in the chorus about how bad it is. But I'm not going to do that until I know that's how it's working.
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Trade secrets are moraly preferable, since, unlike patents, they don't limit the freedom for other people to use information they have found for themselves.
Exactly. They're not "inventing" anything here that they need to protect, just learning how something in nature works. Patenting human genes is the equivalent of patenting the laws of physics - just because you discovered them doesn't give you the right to prevent anyone else from doing the same.
You should be able to patent something you create, but NOT something you discovered.
If they want something to patent to make money, they should spend the time working on faster ways to decode DNA and determine the effects of genes, not trying to beat others to the genes themselves.
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I'd assume that both the types of profiles in question would violate this restriction (the gay sex one violating the "explicit sexual references" clause and the gay killing one violating the "hate speech" clause).
I think that's part of the point. That they seemed to "overlook" the hate speech of hundreds of members, while being quick to delete the profile of the one with the sexual reference in it.
Of course, we're living in a country where almost everyone thinks of sex references as inappropriate, but at least half the population doesn't see what's wrong with anti-gay hate speech, where "fag"/"faggot" are pretty much the only remaining slurs considered "acceptable".
I'm sure AOL would have been QUICK to remove the profile if someone had listed "nigger bashing" or "killing Japs".
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If you think about it, our nation's freeways and roads are dangerous as hell.
That's what we get for becoming an automobile-based society. That's pretty much what we have - public transportation is poor because everyone has to have their own car. And such we have tons of traffic, traffic jams, road rage, etc.
ANYTHING that can lower that is welcomed.
I personally will be so happy when we get some sort of transportation system that does not depend on people to do all of the controlling of the vehicles. This is just the first step.
Perhaps the privacy issues with some of these possibilities will encourage better funding and use of public transportation systems where you can be anonymous. I know they're poor now, but I suspect if they received heavy usage there would be a lot more work put into better, faster, cheaper ones.
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Is this yet another example of ST leading the way in technology or what?
Nope. The first proposals for molecular nanotechnology were in the 1950's, before even the original ST series. It's just become better known recently as technology starts to head in that direction.
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Also, that article seemed to claim that:
Nintendo64 suffered in the battle with Playstation because it was the last major 64-bit system to market -- after Sega Saturn and long after Playstation.
Hu? Playstaion is only 32 bit, isn't it?
I wonder how much their technical stuff was off. Heck, they suggested that the Playstation launched in 1991 - they said that 3DO arrived for $700 when the better Playstation had launched two years earlier.
Excuse me? What world were you in? I think they were talking about the Sony and Sega systems at that point, but it was only the 16-bit systems when 3DO launched, which was followed by the Jaguar before the Playstation/Saturn even arrived in Japan.
I have a hard time trusting the article when these two simple points were erroneous.
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Commentary is an essential part of journalism. Jon is someone who repackages and reinterprets events into a coherent whole. It's important to have someone connecting ideas from different stories. People who post comments do it as well.
I realize that. Katz has done a really good job of this in the past, filling out some of these ideas and showing us what effects they can have and the like. And I LIKE reading those articles.
I didn't see any of that here. I think everything in here had been mentioned in the past. It was more of a summary than even commentary. And THAT's what made me state that this article was nearly useless. It's summarizing that which we've already read.
If he wants to make sure we're aware of this idea, then he could have pointed at the previous Slashdot stories, and then added commentary which did expand and interpret them.
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This article didn't tell us anything we hadn't already heard and knew about. I've read this stuff before, heck, I've probably read this stuff from Katz before.
Therein lies the biggest problem in Katz's articles - the tendency to restate the obvious, only after making sure to add references to Slashdot, geeks, and memes. While the Slashdot mention was appropriate here, the others seemed added on afterwards.
Katz - maybe that's why you have so many people saying such bad things about your writing. You have written some really good informational articles before. But you also write ones like this, simple rehashes. If you're mainly repeating what we've already read a couple times from other Slashdot links, then realize you're going to have your article treated worse than Slashdot treated the article in Jane's. Because it'll be just as useful.
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I see people commenting on how this can make semiconductors better, or storage media better, etc...
Look at the bigger picture. Those are going to be SMALL concerns as molecular nanotechnology keeps developing. They'll be more side-effects than main purposes.
This is one of the reasons I keep checking Slashdot often - nanotechnology, assuming there aren't any barriers to it, is going to be the final industrial revolution. We'll be able to control matter like we do information, and the world is going to change in ways nobody can predict or expect. And I'm looking forward to seeing it happen in my lifetime. Heck, I'm starting to look around and see what it takes to get into the field, just because I think I'd rather help bring it around than just sit and hope.
This is the kind of thing that has incredible future ramifications. If you thought the invention of the transistor was big, you should realize that we're watching them approach a discovery that is magnitudes bigger.
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Look, can you still burn the flag? Yes. If THEY didnt want us to burn it, then THEY would make it illegal.
Pay attention - you'd know they have only been a few votes shy in conress each time they've done it. Which means more than half of the people there want to outlaw it. This is for an amendment to the constitution! And all 50 states have already said they'd ratify the amendment. Only a few votes away from that!
Which freedoms are being decreased? Which do they claim that we have that we actually don't have?
Freedom of the press is continually being eroded. As time goes on, they lose a little here, lose a little there. Freedom of religion is an utter joke - it's freedom of Christianity and little more - there are countless laws based on little more than Christian morality. What, you believe that you can marry someone of the same sex, or more than one person? Nope, you're not allowed because the Christians don't do it and they made the law.
Take a peek at The Freedom Forum and you can see how well the government respects freedom.
As long as we need an ACLU to fight for the people and the constitution it's evidence that the government is going the wrong way. As long as we have to fight the gov't to try and keep what we've got we're not going to have an easy time gaining new ones.
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The U.S. still has a long ways to go in many areas... but damn, I really am proud to be an American. At least people can actively, and outragreously attack (vocally) anything they see fit. Every American out there screaming that the United States sucks, has to realize that we are one of the few countries where they can DO that!
The right to bash and ridicule you own country is something that many people really take advantafe of, without realize what kind of power that is.
As much as I appreciate the freedoms we do have, and how few other places have them in even this day and age, it still doesn't exactly do much for my nationalism (if that wasn't clear already).
I already feel that the idea of a nation is becoming outdated, but more specifically for now, I feel it's mostly lip service. They claim we have all these freedoms, but it seems we have them only because they haven't taken them away from us yet. A recent poll showed that were the bill of rights proposed in congress today, there's no chance it would be passed.
Heck, they don't even want to let us burn the flag - which harms nobody, and would put the symbol of our freedoms above the freedoms themselves.
I'll have more respect for the US when it actually starts trying to give people as much freedom as it claims they have, and works at increasing rather than decreasing them.
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