No one ever thought of installing a microwave oven implant into the mouth so that you can just pull the TV dinner out of the freezer and chow down!
Did someone forget about a little thing called radiation? It's bad enough frying your brain for several minutes each day, let alone cooking your mouth in ambient waves 24/7. If this thing is invented, we're going to see a marked increase in the number of mouth tumours over the coming decades.
Why not lobby your cable companies and government representatives for an equitable solution to the problem? And yes, there is one. Here in Australia, a company called Optus had a bandwidth system called Netstats.
The way it works is that they take the average user daily download over a 14 day rolling period, chop out the lowest and highest 5% of users, then give everyone a limit of 10x that. It worked out to about 19GB per month. It's a dynamic system that they touted as growing with the usage patterns of their customers, which I thought was very sensible.
Unfortunately they have buckled to duopoly pressures, and have now opted to follow the lead of Australia's dominant ISP/Teleco by adopting a restrictive 3GB a month cap. Maybe Australia is a testbed for corporate greed, and since users here just took the new plans up the arse, companies overseas believe you will all do the same too. My advice - unlimited internet access IS unreasonable and unrealistic, but a Netstats system is fair for both users and the ISPs. Lobby for the middle ground or you're going to lose everything.
Over here in Australia, the number 2 (of 2) cable ISP had a highly sensible system in place to ensure their bandwidth was being used fairly by the users. It was simply -
All users may download 10 times the daily average user download, calculated over a 14 day period.
This system worked great because it was dynamic system and would continue to grow with Internet usage patterns determined by the users themselves.
Unfortunately the greed factor kicked in, and realising they did not have to be so virtuous in a duopoly market, Optus recently implemented a 3GB monthly cap (after which the speed is throttled to 28.8). Nonetheless, I think the 10x system would be a very sensible plan for ISPs everywhere.
"And indeed in the end the PCE encapsulates both the ultimate power and the ultimate weakness of science. For it implies that all the wonders of the universe can in effect be captured by simple rules, yet it shows that there can be no way to know all the consequences of these rules, except in effect just to watch and see how they unfold."
So in the end, after all of the formulas and grandstanding we are left with a fact that states the blindingly obvious - that it would require a universe to perform an accurate simulation of the universe.
Maybe Wolfram is covertly religious, and this research is designed to be handed to his deity of choice so that it can create a new universe to service his ego?
On a more serious note, I do see the intrinsic academic value in discovering whether a universe-creating mathematical formula does exist, but how this will change the nature of our science when such a formula cannot be applied to situations in the real world is beyond me.
Optus was never going to be a viable competitor to Telstra. The Australian broadband industry is being held by the balls at the whim of this one company.
Telstra is a telecommunications company that happens to be the largest company in Australia. It was created by the government as a public utility by from the public purse in the early 1900's. Through the 20th century, the Australian public paid for all of its infrastructure development many times over.
If the CEO of Telstra (Ziggy - http://members.ozemail.com.au/%7Eisherwood/fugitiv e.gif) wasn't a soul-less ex-banker, we could have cheap unlimited broadband in Australia. Yet, if you study his strategy and read his speeches through the years, his plan is to get Telstra the brand into every aspect of Australian life. The company whose example he cited in his plans was AOL, and if you look at the directions they have been taking, a clear picture can be seen. Telstra have blamed their introduction of a 3GB cap (upload and download inclusive) on the 'fact' that overseas data is too expensive and due to leechers, those people who buy broadband but don't continue using it like a dialup connection. Interestingly, Telstra own 90% of the fibre and copper wire infrastructure in Australia but have also included local data transfer into the 3GB as well - *except* (And here's the good part) when using Telstra's own web portal www.bigpond.com. You can download as much music and reviews, streaming video, game demos and files, news, and other amazing content as you want without being charged to the quota. Yes ladies and gentlement, they are succeeding where AOL has failed. Telstra's aim is to cordone off the entire Australian Internet population into their own Intranet, like a herd of sheep, and all is going to plan. Now that the artificial bottlenecks have been put in place and we have been charged to buggery out of accessing the global part of the Internet (US8 cents per megabyte if you go over the 3GB), the shackles are popped on and we're *free* to roam around in captivity.
The only way for this situation to get better is if the government (who still owns 51% of Telstra), make a decision to split the company into service and infrastructure, then keep the infrastructure publicly owned (just like the road system). Only then are we going to see competition in Australian broadband, and only then will we find freedom.
I read the article and I understand that it's only a brief summary of the book's theme, but there seemed to be a quite obvious omission in the underlying nature of his theory. Wolfram postulates an algorithm for existance (ie-creation code), but then doesn't explain what this is compiled with?
Even if, for example, this code comes into activation at the beginning of a big-bang, what underlying (pre-existing) energy force is being compiled through this algorithm to create creation? My only guess is potential energy. In my understanding, potential energy is the only existential absolute. When you think about it, even when we apply the word 'nothing' in the English language, there is always a potential for that state to be changed into a something - ie. For anything to have come into existance in the first place (even black holes), there has to be the potential for it to exist. In other words, potential energy permeates everything and is the underlying force behind all that is.
It's also undefinable and innately mysterious.
I think the greatest issue confronting science is that it is limited from the outset to observation and experimentation, when that's only half of the equation. Existance comprises of both creation and that which brings about creation - potential energy/God/Brahma. Hopefully Stephen Wolfram's book will push the envelope of conventional scientific understanding by attempting to unite the two into a unified cosmology.
Re:Why Nvidia's on top
on
The Age of Nvidia
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Not only do they support other OS' such as Linux, but their drivers for Linux are actually damn good: benchmarks show that Nvidia Linux drivers operate about 99% as well as Windows drivers.
In the area of Drivers, I'm amazed by the fact that they have one set for all of their video cards (Detonator), and how they have managed to supplement the power of each card purely on the software side. Because of that, the life of my TNT 1 video card was extended by another year, due to a 40% speed increase after upgrading from Detonator 2 to 3. It blew me away at the time (after all, there are no drivers for my other computer hardware that upgrade their performance so dramatically), and made me an Nvidia fanboy.
It is a little worrying that Nvidia are becoming so large though. Ever since the assimilation of 3DFX, the price of the top end Nvidia cards has blown out a lot. One can only hope they don't become a lumbering behemoth in future.
WIPO is behind such ideas as the TRIPS (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) agreement within the WTO.
Here are some excerpts from various websites on the matter:
The TRIPS Agreement has been subject to major international contention due to its stipulation that biological organisms be subject to intellectual property protection.
..Article 27.3 (b) means that Members cannot exclude micro-organisms and non-biological and microbiological processes from patent protection. They must also provide patent or an otherwise (i.e. sui generis) form of intellectual property protection for plant varieties.
Dispute over what the term "sui generis" means: Sui generis is Latin for "of its own kind" and has been interpreted by many countries as an option to provide protection for indigenous and relatively non-commercial knowledges. The U.S. is instead pushing for compliance to the 1991 UPOV convention to be the only sui generis option. The 1991 UPOV convention provides no protection for indigenous and/or relatively non-commercial knowledges.
The imposition of patent rights over biological resources and traditional knowledge unfairly deprives communities of their rights over, and access to, the same resources they have nurtured and conserved over generations.
THE European Parliament has voted to adopt the report of the Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee on the proposed EC directive, modifying European Patent Law to legalise the patenting of animals, plants, human genes, cells and other parts of the human body.
..in the case of patents on human materials, the name and address of the person in question have to be given and the voluntary and informed consent of the person from whom the material has been taken has to be proved.
The new legislation would allow biotechnology companies to go into the Third World's fields and forests, come back home with valuable genetic resources then patent them in Europe.
The Africa Group, in particular, has voiced clear opposition to the patenting of life.
--End of excerpts
We seem to spend a lot of time in here complaining about the RIAA 'nazis' trying to steal away our music, but while that gets us whipped up and keeps us occupied, there are many larger sharks in the pond gobbling away at our future access to seeds, medecines and even whole species. If everything in the world can be bought, then everything can be taken away by 'legal authority'.
I wonder what the price on life will be. If your entire genetic identity can be voluntarily given away, how long will it be until all of the homeless, the poor and the desperate prostitute their DNA to the highest bidder ? It also makes me wonder what happens to the child born to two parents who have sold their code.
Perhaps like the RIAA, once the multinationals have bought enough people, they will begin to push for further control of their patented good. Performance rights ? Royalties ? Complete and pervasive knowledge of where the person is and what they are doing at all times through a satellite controlled implant ?:)
Forget Orwell, 1984 was almost two decades ago now. We have the WTO!
"It will have a devastating impact on Microsoft. It will have a devastating impact on the PC ecosystem and particularly consumers," Webb said.
An 'ecosystem' implies biodiversity. The world operating system market is verging on monoculture. If anybody is the *weed* in this technological ecosystem, it would definately be Microsoft Windows. I say - bring on the devastation!
Even in the remote chance that we do develop a manned space ship that is capable of supporting generational travel to some nearby part of the galaxy, then unless there's something terminally wrong with planet Earth, it's more than likely a ship which is twice as fast will be developed within the next decade. Before the first ship even arrives at its destination, we would most probably have a ship that could make the journey there and back in less than half the time.
It's kind of like imagining what would happen to a family who got lost on a small self-supporting island (a family who could not make radios out of coconuts) during the late 1800's, and being found by GPS or satellite photos somewhere in the 1980/1990's.
The technology of any offworlders we send out into space will be obsolete a year after they have left, let alone generations. So is there any point in sending people until the travel time is negligable ?
"The greatest evil of the world, next to communism, is Socialism and I would like to see it finally die like it should have died last century as the failed experiment it was."
Ahhh, I take it you have never used Napster or any file sharing service ?
Didn't you know, when you share mp3s you're partaking in Communism ! Mwahahaha !
Just look at the newly announced pricing plans for broadband from our national telecom Telstra. Not content with being the largest company in Australia with yearly record profits, a week ago they announced their new pricing regime for broadband users, of whom all but the most miserly downloaders are considered to be creating an "undue burden" upon their network.
Henceforth, the cable modem plan I am on (for now) - "Freedom Plan" - will contain the following provisos come December:
Price - US$35.
Monthly allowable download - 3 Gigabytes.
Maximum download speed - 32 KiloBYTES per second.
Maximum upload speed - 8 KiloBYES per second.
But what happens if you go over your limit? No problem, you only have to pay 9 cents per MB up to 5 GB and 8.5 cents per MB after 5 GB. Wow, sounds appealing!
If this plan is not free enough for you, and you're tired of staring at wads of cash, then by all means take the 10GB plan!
Only US$200 per month but they remove the bandwidth caps.
For more information on these great plans, take a look here ->
BTW, to all Australians who read this and are considering voting for the incumbant Liberal party on this Saturday's election, please ponder over the philosophies of senator Richard Alston, minister for IT and communications. "They rolled out broadband in South Korea, and the kids used it to play games. My kids don't need any more help in this department". Ahh, there you have it, vision for the nation.
Slashdot Mirror
No one ever thought of installing a microwave oven implant into the mouth so that you can just pull the TV dinner out of the freezer and chow down!
Did someone forget about a little thing called radiation? It's bad enough frying your brain for several minutes each day, let alone cooking your mouth in ambient waves 24/7. If this thing is invented, we're going to see a marked increase in the number of mouth tumours over the coming decades.
Why not lobby your cable companies and government representatives for an equitable solution to the problem? And yes, there is one. Here in Australia, a company called Optus had a bandwidth system called Netstats.
The way it works is that they take the average user daily download over a 14 day rolling period, chop out the lowest and highest 5% of users, then give everyone a limit of 10x that. It worked out to about 19GB per month. It's a dynamic system that they touted as growing with the usage patterns of their customers, which I thought was very sensible.
Unfortunately they have buckled to duopoly pressures, and have now opted to follow the lead of Australia's dominant ISP/Teleco by adopting a restrictive 3GB a month cap. Maybe Australia is a testbed for corporate greed, and since users here just took the new plans up the arse, companies overseas believe you will all do the same too. My advice - unlimited internet access IS unreasonable and unrealistic, but a Netstats system is fair for both users and the ISPs. Lobby for the middle ground or you're going to lose everything.
Over here in Australia, the number 2 (of 2) cable ISP had a highly sensible system in place to ensure their bandwidth was being used fairly by the users. It was simply -
All users may download 10 times the daily average user download, calculated over a 14 day period.
This system worked great because it was dynamic system and would continue to grow with Internet usage patterns determined by the users themselves.
Unfortunately the greed factor kicked in, and realising they did not have to be so virtuous in a duopoly market, Optus recently implemented a 3GB monthly cap (after which the speed is throttled to 28.8). Nonetheless, I think the 10x system would be a very sensible plan for ISPs everywhere.
Now that we are aware that the bulk of the Empire's army is made up of Jango Fetts, is Lucas going to redub all of their voices for eps 4 through 6?
Sounds like a lot of work to me!
Front Page news year 2003, "New IP laws arrive, world celebrates".
Front Page news year 2004 "Pandemic of economically motivated assassinations involving inventors"
So in the end, after all of the formulas and grandstanding we are left with a fact that states the blindingly obvious - that it would require a universe to perform an accurate simulation of the universe.
Maybe Wolfram is covertly religious, and this research is designed to be handed to his deity of choice so that it can create a new universe to service his ego?
On a more serious note, I do see the intrinsic academic value in discovering whether a universe-creating mathematical formula does exist, but how this will change the nature of our science when such a formula cannot be applied to situations in the real world is beyond me.
Optus was never going to be a viable competitor to Telstra. The Australian broadband industry is being held by the balls at the whim of this one company.
v e.gif) wasn't a soul-less ex-banker, we could have cheap unlimited broadband in Australia. Yet, if you study his strategy and read his speeches through the years, his plan is to get Telstra the brand into every aspect of Australian life. The company whose example he cited in his plans was AOL, and if you look at the directions they have been taking, a clear picture can be seen. Telstra have blamed their introduction of a 3GB cap (upload and download inclusive) on the 'fact' that overseas data is too expensive and due to leechers, those people who buy broadband but don't continue using it like a dialup connection. Interestingly, Telstra own 90% of the fibre and copper wire infrastructure in Australia but have also included local data transfer into the 3GB as well - *except* (And here's the good part) when using Telstra's own web portal www.bigpond.com. You can download as much music and reviews, streaming video, game demos and files, news, and other amazing content as you want without being charged to the quota. Yes ladies and gentlement, they are succeeding where AOL has failed. Telstra's aim is to cordone off the entire Australian Internet population into their own Intranet, like a herd of sheep, and all is going to plan. Now that the artificial bottlenecks have been put in place and we have been charged to buggery out of accessing the global part of the Internet (US8 cents per megabyte if you go over the 3GB), the shackles are popped on and we're *free* to roam around in captivity.
Telstra is a telecommunications company that happens to be the largest company in Australia. It was created by the government as a public utility by from the public purse in the early 1900's. Through the 20th century, the Australian public paid for all of its infrastructure development many times over.
If the CEO of Telstra (Ziggy - http://members.ozemail.com.au/%7Eisherwood/fugiti
The only way for this situation to get better is if the government (who still owns 51% of Telstra), make a decision to split the company into service and infrastructure, then keep the infrastructure publicly owned (just like the road system). Only then are we going to see competition in Australian broadband, and only then will we find freedom.
I read the article and I understand that it's only a brief summary of the book's theme, but there seemed to be a quite obvious omission in the underlying nature of his theory. Wolfram postulates an algorithm for existance (ie-creation code), but then doesn't explain what this is compiled with?
Even if, for example, this code comes into activation at the beginning of a big-bang, what underlying (pre-existing) energy force is being compiled through this algorithm to create creation? My only guess is potential energy. In my understanding, potential energy is the only existential absolute. When you think about it, even when we apply the word 'nothing' in the English language, there is always a potential for that state to be changed into a something - ie. For anything to have come into existance in the first place (even black holes), there has to be the potential for it to exist. In other words, potential energy permeates everything and is the underlying force behind all that is.
It's also undefinable and innately mysterious.
I think the greatest issue confronting science is that it is limited from the outset to observation and experimentation, when that's only half of the equation. Existance comprises of both creation and that which brings about creation - potential energy/God/Brahma. Hopefully Stephen Wolfram's book will push the envelope of conventional scientific understanding by attempting to unite the two into a unified cosmology.
In the area of Drivers, I'm amazed by the fact that they have one set for all of their video cards (Detonator), and how they have managed to supplement the power of each card purely on the software side. Because of that, the life of my TNT 1 video card was extended by another year, due to a 40% speed increase after upgrading from Detonator 2 to 3. It blew me away at the time (after all, there are no drivers for my other computer hardware that upgrade their performance so dramatically), and made me an Nvidia fanboy.
It is a little worrying that Nvidia are becoming so large though. Ever since the assimilation of 3DFX, the price of the top end Nvidia cards has blown out a lot. One can only hope they don't become a lumbering behemoth in future.
WIPO is behind such ideas as the TRIPS (trade-related aspects of intellectual property rights) agreement within the WTO.
:
:)
Here are some excerpts from various websites on the matter
The TRIPS Agreement has been subject to major international contention due to its stipulation that biological organisms be subject to intellectual property protection.
..Article 27.3 (b) means that Members cannot exclude micro-organisms and non-biological and microbiological processes from patent protection. They must also provide patent or an otherwise (i.e. sui generis) form of intellectual property protection for plant varieties.
Dispute over what the term "sui generis" means: Sui generis is Latin for "of its own kind" and has been interpreted by many countries as an option to provide protection for indigenous and relatively non-commercial knowledges. The U.S. is instead pushing for compliance to the 1991 UPOV convention to be the only sui generis option. The 1991 UPOV convention provides no protection for indigenous and/or relatively non-commercial knowledges.
The imposition of patent rights over biological resources and traditional knowledge unfairly deprives communities of their rights over, and access to, the same resources they have nurtured and conserved over generations.
THE European Parliament has voted to adopt the report of the Parliament's Legal Affairs Committee on the proposed EC directive, modifying European Patent Law to legalise the patenting of animals, plants, human genes, cells and other parts of the human body.
..in the case of patents on human materials, the name and address of the person in question have to be given and the voluntary and informed consent of the person from whom the material has been taken has to be proved.
The new legislation would allow biotechnology companies to go into the Third World's fields and forests, come back home with valuable genetic resources then patent them in Europe.
The Africa Group, in particular, has voiced clear opposition to the patenting of life.
--End of excerpts
We seem to spend a lot of time in here complaining about the RIAA 'nazis' trying to steal away our music, but while that gets us whipped up and keeps us occupied, there are many larger sharks in the pond gobbling away at our future access to seeds, medecines and even whole species. If everything in the world can be bought, then everything can be taken away by 'legal authority'.
I wonder what the price on life will be. If your entire genetic identity can be voluntarily given away, how long will it be until all of the homeless, the poor and the desperate prostitute their DNA to the highest bidder ? It also makes me wonder what happens to the child born to two parents who have sold their code.
Perhaps like the RIAA, once the multinationals have bought enough people, they will begin to push for further control of their patented good. Performance rights ? Royalties ? Complete and pervasive knowledge of where the person is and what they are doing at all times through a satellite controlled implant ?
Forget Orwell, 1984 was almost two decades ago now. We have the WTO!
"It will have a devastating impact on Microsoft. It will have a devastating impact on the PC ecosystem and particularly consumers," Webb said.
An 'ecosystem' implies biodiversity. The world operating system market is verging on monoculture. If anybody is the *weed* in this technological ecosystem, it would definately be Microsoft Windows. I say - bring on the devastation!
Even in the remote chance that we do develop a manned space ship that is capable of supporting generational travel to some nearby part of the galaxy, then unless there's something terminally wrong with planet Earth, it's more than likely a ship which is twice as fast will be developed within the next decade. Before the first ship even arrives at its destination, we would most probably have a ship that could make the journey there and back in less than half the time.
It's kind of like imagining what would happen to a family who got lost on a small self-supporting island (a family who could not make radios out of coconuts) during the late 1800's, and being found by GPS or satellite photos somewhere in the 1980/1990's.
The technology of any offworlders we send out into space will be obsolete a year after they have left, let alone generations. So is there any point in sending people until the travel time is negligable ?
At last, another government equalling in Internet idiocy to Australia's.
"The greatest evil of the world, next to communism, is Socialism and I would like to see it finally die like it should have died last century as the failed experiment it was."
Ahhh, I take it you have never used Napster or any file sharing service ?
Didn't you know, when you share mp3s you're partaking in Communism ! Mwahahaha !
US government decides to subsidize overseas OS development by crippling own industry !
Henceforth, the cable modem plan I am on (for now) - "Freedom Plan" - will contain the following provisos come December
Price - US$35.
Monthly allowable download - 3 Gigabytes.
Maximum download speed - 32 KiloBYTES per second.
Maximum upload speed - 8 KiloBYES per second.
But what happens if you go over your limit? No problem, you only have to pay 9 cents per MB up to 5 GB and 8.5 cents per MB after 5 GB. Wow, sounds appealing!
If this plan is not free enough for you, and you're tired of staring at wads of cash, then by all means take the 10GB plan!
Only US$200 per month but they remove the bandwidth caps.
For more information on these great plans, take a look here ->
http://users.bigpond.net.au/move/pricing/cable.h tm
With cable like this, dialup seems liberating !
BTW, to all Australians who read this and are considering voting for the incumbant Liberal party on this Saturday's election, please ponder over the philosophies of senator Richard Alston, minister for IT and communications. "They rolled out broadband in South Korea, and the kids used it to play games. My kids don't need any more help in this department". Ahh, there you have it, vision for the nation.