For years now, the intellectual elite of this world have labored mightily to stamp out all superficial signs of racism, sexism, gayism, and other isms, by banning "insensitive" speech and images, in an effort to sweep the natural human impulse to hate under the rug.
Repellent as Mr. Pazzo and his intellectually deformed ilk are, the undeniable fact is the internet itself --that is, the human connectivity it brings about -- facilitates their unpleasant behavior, as what were formerly isolated kooks find courage, companionship and new ideas through "virtual communities" on sites like Orkut, as they have in the past through other forms of communication such as BBS's and Usenet.
Abolition of such groups seems impractical withour the imposition of barriers to entry as would defeat the whole purpose of virtual communities.
Like other socially detrimental practices such as downloading music, taking drugs, and practicing illict sex, hatred, like it or not, serves a vital purpose to a not insubstantial number of people. The repressed have returned, more disgusting than ever, much to the chagrin of our minions of political correctness, and there is no easy solution in sight.
Until the gods tire of idiocy and invent a race with greater souls than our own, it seems for the time being we will simply have to thicken our skins and put up with these unpleasant reminders dark side of humanity
The tragedy here is less the fate of one misdemeanorous student and more in what this story says about the state of education today.
That this kind of cheating is so prevalent as to drive the GRE board back to humble graphite and tree pulp can only mean that the once noble relation of student and teacher has degenerated into adversity, and the institution of the examination, once seen as a test to be passed honorably and as a way of betterment of the self, is now seen as nothing but an inconvenient obstacle on the road to success and self-indulgence, to be overcome by any means necessary.
I might also add that it does not cast the state of IT security in a flattering light that the only way the GRE board has of feeling secure in its test results is to go back to handwritten tests. Makes me nervous about the legions of electronic voting machines upon which our democracy increasingly depends...
If you ask me, this is cause to rejoice. As much for what this website is not as for what it is. This site is not some multimillion-dollar-making scheme, nor is it one person's springboard to "international fame". It is a simple site asking a simple question, and offering a simple, almost insignificant service. A tiny chance to vent, just for a moment. Yet 32,000 souls have bitched, ranted, whined, moaned, and otherwise unburdened themselves.
So what, one might ask. Why is this reason to make merry? Because of the connection. The site makes its plea, and people give what they have, leaving their hearts just a tiny bit lighter. People reaching out to each other across the void, to total strangers, in a trusting bond of shared service.
We live in dark times. Madmen think nothing of murdering thousands to advance their creeds, wars rage across the globe, slaughtering the children of nations from the richest to the poorest. Human greed and shortsightedness have afflicted the globe with pollution and plagues. Still, the shadows have not stifled all hope; there is light, creeping in around the edges of the dark, showing the way out: somewhere there is a mail server that has received 32,000 (and counting) emails. 32,000 instances of basic unselfish sharing. Power of the human spirit, my friends.
That's what all this is about. You know it, I know it, we all know it. Companies wanting to preserve their competitive advantage slap copyrights on anything in sight and charge through the nose for maintenance and upgrades.
You can see where all this is going, this me-first grubby-fisted lusting after dollars, this coveting of "trade secrets" and "intellectual property". As this practice proliferates, and as technological devices become more and more commonplace, consumers will be faced with a double-headed devil dog of a choice over every product they buy. Either buy into a proprietary "service plan" or throw the product away as soon as it breaks.
Say goodbye to the entrepenurial repair business, say hello to a world of locked-down trade secrets, where ideas are golden geese to be guarded and coveted, and most of humanity languishes in thrall to the companies with the most ruthless legal departments.
Does it have to be this way? No. We have it in ourselves to say no to this nightmarish future. Open source is one start, the idea of knowledge as a common good, to be shared not just because superior products result from open standards, but because freedom is a basic human need, like food or air.
The real goal, however, is to resist the greed that is the source of all this stifling legal red tape, and that comes down to each and every one of us. It starts with little things, like downloading Firefox, or giving a dollar to a panhandler. The future doesn't have to suck.
So now I can download and watch a video... of an MPEG... being played on an OS... which is being EMULATED under another OS.... which is being run on hardware designed for an entirely different OS.
It is fitting that the video in question is from The Matrix. I just want to know what combination of blue and red pills to you take understand the whole setup.
Here is director Godfrey Reggio's commentary on Naqoyqatsi:
"So forget science fiction. We now live the fiction of science. We are now, not in some remote future, cyborgs. We are at one with our environment - we are technology. In this wonderland, freedom becomes the pursuit of our technological happiness. Our standard of living is predicated on commodity consumption, as the shibboleth of the new religion is 'pray for more'."
I find this more than a little patronizing and offensive. The style of the *quatsi films is to contrast long, lovingly photographed, breathtaking footage of natural landscapes and phenomena with speeded-up and otherwise *tweaked* footage (complete with silly-sounding background music) so as to somehow illustrate the ALIENATION of TECHNOLOGICAL MAN or some such nonsense.
It is clear from his comments and style of filmmaking that Reggio is not the least bit interested in exploring why people might find technology FASCINATING. Nor does he pay the scantest attention to how many people are selflessly working to use technology to PRESERVE the environment he so clearly reveres, and HELP the indigenous humyns he empathizes with.
Instead, Reggio uses his considerable talents, budget, and technology to develop one-sided propaganda that belittles ordinary consumers (so inferior to big important filmmakers and composers!) and preaches to the choir.
Form this sheet: "...the 25120 will obtain 50% higher speed than you will obtain..."the 25120 is easily cooled by a six foot fan, 1/2" from the package..."
So, they had overclockers back in 1972? Nothing new under the sun, I guess...
Wasn't this the sort of thing the internet was designed to avoid in the first place? Anyway, the whole thing just underscores the importance of high-bit crypto. The best firewall in the world win't help secure your data if somebody runs off with your computer. Something to keep in mind in this day and age of intrusive "patriotic" legislation.
We have the guy with the same name as a noted Ed Wood hanger-on and crackpot psychic spouting "broadcast electricity will save the world" theories" straight out of the mind of Nikolai Tesla! It's quite the tech-loony smorgasbord. Where do the tinfoil hats fit in?
I've spent more time than I care to admit fooling around with GNOME and fvwm configurations, and I would have to say the most efficient setup for my Linux desktop would probably be to just set it to look and operate as much like MS Windows as possible.
Why? Because I use Windows NT all day long at work, so that's what I'm used to. Like the qwerty keyboard, 'doze UI may not be the best, but is what most people are most familiar with. This is not a silly attempt to generate flames. I think there is some merit to just conceding the "look and feel" battle to M$ and concentrating on areas where there is a competitive advantage, like security, or just developing quality free software, with no privacy-transgressing EULAs.
Of course, tinkering with window managers and desktop setups is still a fun pastime.:)
Surprisingly passable copies can be obtained simply by aiming a digital camcorder at a cinema screen -- especially if the pirate has access to the projection booth, with a head-free view and a direct link to the sound system.
It would be awfully tempting for a low-paid movie theatre projectionist to accept a few bucks from some quick-thinking pirate, and sneak a high-quality digital video camera into the projection booth for some quick-n-dirty pirated videos of first-run movies!
How long before DMCA-types start mandating surveillance of projection booths in all theaters, and a national licensing/registration system for projectionsts? Laugh now if you will, but check back in 6 months...
The central problem of the Tech vs. Content industry conflict is the postive-feedback mechanism involved.
To wit: "pirates" use some technological device to "steal" copyrighted material, which leads to an intrusive technological "solution" to the problem (i.e., CD's that break your computer and damage your speakers), which leads to some ingenious workaround, which in turn leads to an even more cumbersome technological countermeasure...
What the Content folks need to realize is that eventually, this fedback mechanism will hit a point of diminishing returns, and the anti-"piracy" measures will make the media more trouble than it's worth to purchase and use, and consumers will simply stop buying, and seek out some other form of entertainment, like going outside and playing softball...
You know, maybe the Tech v. Content struggle isn't so bad after all... :D Seriously, though, it would probably behoove the Content industry to try rethinking the idea of intellectual property as it is presently understood, before their frantic efforts to protect their "property" end up wiping out their source of profit.
...when Artificial Intelligence is finally perfected, as long as we can imbue our silicon children with the capacity to love and understand.
Robots will one day do all of the grunt work in the world, leaving humans free to pursue art, coking, fishing, playing frisbee golf, etc.
Robots with silicon hearts brimming over with lovewill help take care of our elderly, freeing up humans from having to perform disagreeable (read: body-fluid related) tasks.
One day, robot explorers will be sent out into space, to travel for long distances and in conditions that humans would not be able to survive. On siutable far-off alien planets, they will set down, and begin manufacturing other robots, eventually setting up whole colonies full of nigh-indestructible mechanical settlers, each with a silicon brain containing the whole of humynkind's history and culture. Perhaps, a million years hence, humyn civilization will survive only in the light of distant stars, in the love-fillied "Artificial" minds of our robot children.
These music subscription sites are just the smoldering remains of the wreckage of the dot-com bubble. Yet another high-tech soultion in search of a problem.
In order to compete with existing P2P file-sharing, a subscription site needs to offer some advantage over them. The fact that a sub site is legit will not be sufficient until there are significant negative consequences to "ilicit" (read free-as-in-beer) file sharing.
So... how to compete? A sub site would therefore have to offer superior selection and accessibility. That means offering ANY file users want REAL FAST, RIGHT NOW. So far, given the high cost of bandwidth and securing the rights to songs, no sub site is anywhere near realizing this.
Note that this means it is in their interest for sub sites to crack down on "illicit" P2P file sharing. Don't be surprised whan the folks behind these sites to back law enforcement efforts to go after "pirate" P2P software like GNUtella, etc. Could a Napster-FBI alliance be far off? Stay alert...
What made STAR WARS a great film is that it was a synthesis of all the aspects of moviemaking, not only special effects space battles, but polt, acting, a great script, and even the details like music (try to imagine STAR WARS witout that glorious theme!), and even the credits: think about the famous screen crawl at the start of the film.
Don't get me wrong, Space battles and lightsaber duels are great, but let's hope Lucas is able to inject some life into the two-dimensional caricatures who pranced around onscreen during Episode I (name three differences between Obi-Wan and Kwi-Gon-Jinn's personalities, or for that matter, between Obi-Wan and Queen Amidiala), otherwise those of us for whom the STAR WARS flame burns bright in our hearts may be in for another ho-hum prequel.
Of the geneticists who said they intentionally withheld data regarding their published work, 80 percent reported it required too much effort to produce the requested information, 64 percent said they were protecting the ability of a student or junior faculty member to publish and 53 percent said they were protecting their own right to publish further findings.
What we have here is a a type of market failure. This does not mean that free markets have failed, but rather that the present market equillibrium is at a situation that is less than optimal for society, a situation that John Maynard Keynes addressed in his General Theory of Economics".
Keep in mind that classical economics assumes perfect information flow for its theories to hold. A situation like this, where academic career concerns and complexity of data interferes with the free flow of information is a clear situation for the government to step in and free up the market, as it is trying to do with the Microsoft monopoly.
Some sort of federally-funded central information clearing-house, where research information could be purchased by the government and put into a freely-accessible database, would be a good first step.
The film The Right Stuff gives a good feel for what it was like for these early pioneers: half hero, half guinea pig., funny way to be.
These early explorers were in many ways treated like lab animals, yet they soared trough the heavens like living gods: can you imagine what it was like being the first humyn to see the earth from space?
And yet, it is the fate of all pioneers for the trails they first blazed to be trod by myriad lesser souls. As the unspoiled lands explored by Lewis, Clark, and Sacajawea are now criss-crossed by highways, so the ethereal realm of the early astronauts is now a playground for billionaires.
Once again the trees of penury have crowded out the forest of freedom and democracy. Once again the need to slosh throught the thicket of misinformation, carving out a trail of truth, comes about.
For many businesses, it will be a marketing dream come true. Retailers will be falling over themselves to bombard people passing their doors with targeted come-ons... But it will also work the other way round, enabling you to find what you want. In other words: rejoice! Not only will it businesses be able to bombard you with ads, consumers will have even more opportunity to be immersed in the advertiing they love so much! Huzzah!
But the prospect of every place on Earth being crammed with invisible electronic notes,...conjures the spectre of an information traffic jam... Crouch isn't unduly worried... It is largely a question of managing hardware and being very careful about balancing loads between servers In other words, the problem isn't the intellectual moise pollution of a million billion advertisements floating in the air, the problem is potential server loads and lag times! Well, I for one COULD NOT CARE LESS how long the latest Pizza Hut jingle takes to download on my cell phone!!
I REALLY like this part:A universal open messaging system also raises questions about privacy and the reliability of information. Unscrupulous merchants may attach scurrilous messages about their competitors... Crouch and his colleagues... say the prototypes they are running will help them deal with the problems of privacy and security. That is too funny. Obviously, the "scurrilous" messages referred too will also include any "sublvertive", anti-establishment, or otherwise non-mainstream (read non business-related) messages. It will be interesting the hail of lawsuits that result when dstrong, free geeks attempt to use this system for their own purposes...
And finally, this howler: There are some very simple mechanisms that can restrict who gets to post you a message, and who gets to read the ones you write, they say. You could, for instance, join a paid service that would scrutinise messages and guarantee their authenticity and usefulness Oh man, that is TOOOO FUUUNNNNYYY!!! You have to PAY to not receive SPAM on your GPS! It seems the right to not be constantly harrassed by nuisance mesages is now for sale to the highest bidder.
This usiness of buying and selling the air is just madness.It's almost enough to make you wonder if federal regulation might mot be a good thing. I do, however, have faith that strong, free geeks will discover ways to divert this wave of greed-induced information diaorrhea.
SAME... it is important to structure Camelot components so that they can be sold in ways that are useful to the corporations (emphasis mine)
OLD... . If someone produced a CD-ROM with "maps of the world" on it, then one can imagine selling a retail package with one viewer and the CD-ROM. (emphasis mine)
STORY.... . In any event corporations should be interested in site-licensing arrangements
...they start with a genuinely innovative idea (using the rebinding features of the PostScript language to develop documents that can do not require the complete PS parser to be read,thus vastly improving portability, as a much smaller reader application compatible with any IPS can then be distributed), and all they can think about is the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR.
What about truth? What about freedom?! What about human rights, or helping developing countries? ANY hint of idealism is shunted aside. The glorious implications of "Camelot" have been abandoned along with the name, and Adobe is today just another software behemoth slugging it out with the Micro$oft gorilla. Sometimes it's too easy to be cynical.
Slashdot Mirror
For years now, the intellectual elite of this world have labored mightily to stamp out all superficial signs of racism, sexism, gayism, and other isms, by banning "insensitive" speech and images, in an effort to sweep the natural human impulse to hate under the rug.
Repellent as Mr. Pazzo and his intellectually deformed ilk are, the undeniable fact is the internet itself --that is, the human connectivity it brings about -- facilitates their unpleasant behavior, as what were formerly isolated kooks find courage, companionship and new ideas through "virtual communities" on sites like Orkut, as they have in the past through other forms of communication such as BBS's and Usenet.
Abolition of such groups seems impractical withour the imposition of barriers to entry as would defeat the whole purpose of virtual communities.
Like other socially detrimental practices such as downloading music, taking drugs, and practicing illict sex, hatred, like it or not, serves a vital purpose to a not insubstantial number of people. The repressed have returned, more disgusting than ever, much to the chagrin of our minions of political correctness, and there is no easy solution in sight.
Until the gods tire of idiocy and invent a race with greater souls than our own, it seems for the time being we will simply have to thicken our skins and put up with these unpleasant reminders dark side of humanity
The tragedy here is less the fate of one misdemeanorous student and more in what this story says about the state of education today.
That this kind of cheating is so prevalent as to drive the GRE board back to humble graphite and tree pulp can only mean that the once noble relation of student and teacher has degenerated into adversity, and the institution of the examination, once seen as a test to be passed honorably and as a way of betterment of the self, is now seen as nothing but an inconvenient obstacle on the road to success and self-indulgence, to be overcome by any means necessary.
I might also add that it does not cast the state of IT security in a flattering light that the only way the GRE board has of feeling secure in its test results is to go back to handwritten tests. Makes me nervous about the legions of electronic voting machines upon which our democracy increasingly depends...
If you ask me, this is cause to rejoice. As much for what this website is not as for what it is. This site is not some multimillion-dollar-making scheme, nor is it one person's springboard to "international fame". It is a simple site asking a simple question, and offering a simple, almost insignificant service. A tiny chance to vent, just for a moment. Yet 32,000 souls have bitched, ranted, whined, moaned, and otherwise unburdened themselves.
So what, one might ask. Why is this reason to make merry? Because of the connection. The site makes its plea, and people give what they have, leaving their hearts just a tiny bit lighter. People reaching out to each other across the void, to total strangers, in a trusting bond of shared service.
We live in dark times. Madmen think nothing of murdering thousands to advance their creeds, wars rage across the globe, slaughtering the children of nations from the richest to the poorest. Human greed and shortsightedness have afflicted the globe with pollution and plagues. Still, the shadows have not stifled all hope; there is light, creeping in around the edges of the dark, showing the way out: somewhere there is a mail server that has received 32,000 (and counting) emails. 32,000 instances of basic unselfish sharing. Power of the human spirit, my friends.
That's what all this is about. You know it, I know it, we all know it. Companies wanting to preserve their competitive advantage slap copyrights on anything in sight and charge through the nose for maintenance and upgrades.
You can see where all this is going, this me-first grubby-fisted lusting after dollars, this coveting of "trade secrets" and "intellectual property". As this practice proliferates, and as technological devices become more and more commonplace, consumers will be faced with a double-headed devil dog of a choice over every product they buy. Either buy into a proprietary "service plan" or throw the product away as soon as it breaks.
Say goodbye to the entrepenurial repair business, say hello to a world of locked-down trade secrets, where ideas are golden geese to be guarded and coveted, and most of humanity languishes in thrall to the companies with the most ruthless legal departments.
Does it have to be this way? No. We have it in ourselves to say no to this nightmarish future. Open source is one start, the idea of knowledge as a common good, to be shared not just because superior products result from open standards, but because freedom is a basic human need, like food or air.
The real goal, however, is to resist the greed that is the source of all this stifling legal red tape, and that comes down to each and every one of us. It starts with little things, like downloading Firefox, or giving a dollar to a panhandler. The future doesn't have to suck.
...jeez, I'm in the wrong line of work.
So now I can download and watch a video... of an MPEG... being played on an OS... which is being EMULATED under another OS.... which is being run on hardware designed for an entirely different OS.
It is fitting that the video in question is from The Matrix. I just want to know what combination of blue and red pills to you take understand the whole setup.
It is clear from his comments and style of filmmaking that Reggio is not the least bit interested in exploring why people might find technology FASCINATING. Nor does he pay the scantest attention to how many people are selflessly working to use technology to PRESERVE the environment he so clearly reveres, and HELP the indigenous humyns he empathizes with.
Instead, Reggio uses his considerable talents, budget, and technology to develop one-sided propaganda that belittles ordinary consumers (so inferior to big important filmmakers and composers!) and preaches to the choir.
Zionist government steal Palestinian land from families who have lived there 100+ years to build housing settlements for bigoted religious fanatics
Israeli troops respond to unarmed protesters with bullets
Palestinian people are harrassed and humiliated every day by Zionist border police and army troops
Palestinian people have been denied legal representation as a nation ("Statehood") for 50+ years making them prsisoners in their own land
The only concentration camps in middle east are Zionist-run refugee camps for palestinian refugees with no future no hope
END THE ILLEGAL OCCUPATION!!! The bombings will not stop until there is JUSTICE!!!
So, they had overclockers back in 1972? Nothing new under the sun, I guess...
Nevada Test Site: perverting Einstein's discoveries for the purpose of killing humyn beings for over 50 years!
Wasn't this the sort of thing the internet was designed to avoid in the first place? Anyway, the whole thing just underscores the importance of high-bit crypto. The best firewall in the world win't help secure your data if somebody runs off with your computer. Something to keep in mind in this day and age of intrusive "patriotic" legislation.
2. Tinkertoy: storage structures too delicate, engineers kept losing fins for making "windmill" structure.
3: Play-Doh: kept getting stuck in carpet.
4. Erector Set: engineers spent too much time making jokes about name.
Any truth to the rumors that Talking::androidhead is going to be one of the standard modules when Perl 6.0 is finally released?
We have the guy with the same name as a noted Ed Wood hanger-on and crackpot psychic spouting "broadcast electricity will save the world" theories" straight out of the mind of Nikolai Tesla! It's quite the tech-loony smorgasbord. Where do the tinfoil hats fit in?
Why? Because I use Windows NT all day long at work, so that's what I'm used to. Like the qwerty keyboard, 'doze UI may not be the best, but is what most people are most familiar with. This is not a silly attempt to generate flames. I think there is some merit to just conceding the "look and feel" battle to M$ and concentrating on areas where there is a competitive advantage, like security, or just developing quality free software, with no privacy-transgressing EULAs.
Of course, tinkering with window managers and desktop setups is still a fun pastime. :)
It would be awfully tempting for a low-paid movie theatre projectionist to accept a few bucks from some quick-thinking pirate, and sneak a high-quality digital video camera into the projection booth for some quick-n-dirty pirated videos of first-run movies!
How long before DMCA-types start mandating surveillance of projection booths in all theaters, and a national licensing/registration system for projectionsts? Laugh now if you will, but check back in 6 months...
To wit: "pirates" use some technological device to "steal" copyrighted material, which leads to an intrusive technological "solution" to the problem (i.e., CD's that break your computer and damage your speakers), which leads to some ingenious workaround, which in turn leads to an even more cumbersome technological countermeasure...
What the Content folks need to realize is that eventually, this fedback mechanism will hit a point of diminishing returns, and the anti-"piracy" measures will make the media more trouble than it's worth to purchase and use, and consumers will simply stop buying, and seek out some other form of entertainment, like going outside and playing softball...
You know, maybe the Tech v. Content struggle isn't so bad after all... :D Seriously, though, it would probably behoove the Content industry to try rethinking the idea of intellectual property as it is presently understood, before their frantic efforts to protect their "property" end up wiping out their source of profit.
That's a LOT of mp3's! Where do you find the time?
Robots will one day do all of the grunt work in the world, leaving humans free to pursue art, coking, fishing, playing frisbee golf, etc.
Robots with silicon hearts brimming over with love will help take care of our elderly, freeing up humans from having to perform disagreeable (read: body-fluid related) tasks.
One day, robot explorers will be sent out into space, to travel for long distances and in conditions that humans would not be able to survive. On siutable far-off alien planets, they will set down, and begin manufacturing other robots, eventually setting up whole colonies full of nigh-indestructible mechanical settlers, each with a silicon brain containing the whole of humynkind's history and culture. Perhaps, a million years hence, humyn civilization will survive only in the light of distant stars, in the love-fillied "Artificial" minds of our robot children.
In order to compete with existing P2P file-sharing, a subscription site needs to offer some advantage over them. The fact that a sub site is legit will not be sufficient until there are significant negative consequences to "ilicit" (read free-as-in-beer) file sharing.
So... how to compete? A sub site would therefore have to offer superior selection and accessibility. That means offering ANY file users want REAL FAST, RIGHT NOW. So far, given the high cost of bandwidth and securing the rights to songs, no sub site is anywhere near realizing this.
Note that this means it is in their interest for sub sites to crack down on "illicit" P2P file sharing. Don't be surprised whan the folks behind these sites to back law enforcement efforts to go after "pirate" P2P software like GNUtella, etc. Could a Napster-FBI alliance be far off? Stay alert...
But the heart and soul of STAR WARS is undeniably the characters: rakish Han Solo the rogue with a heart of gold, trading insults with spunky Princess Leia, so beautiful and so brave; gung-ho Luke Skywalker, the hero right out of Joseph Campbell, who manages to be annoying and inspiring at the same time; even characters like R2-D2 and Chewbacca, who don't have a coherent line in the script, are developed as recognizable personalities! A cast straight out of Shakespeare or Dickens is what makes Lucas' film an immortal classic.
Don't get me wrong, Space battles and lightsaber duels are great, but let's hope Lucas is able to inject some life into the two-dimensional caricatures who pranced around onscreen during Episode I (name three differences between Obi-Wan and Kwi-Gon-Jinn's personalities, or for that matter, between Obi-Wan and Queen Amidiala), otherwise those of us for whom the STAR WARS flame burns bright in our hearts may be in for another ho-hum prequel.
What we have here is a a type of market failure. This does not mean that free markets have failed, but rather that the present market equillibrium is at a situation that is less than optimal for society, a situation that John Maynard Keynes addressed in his General Theory of Economics".
Keep in mind that classical economics assumes perfect information flow for its theories to hold. A situation like this, where academic career concerns and complexity of data interferes with the free flow of information is a clear situation for the government to step in and free up the market, as it is trying to do with the Microsoft monopoly.
Some sort of federally-funded central information clearing-house, where research information could be purchased by the government and put into a freely-accessible database, would be a good first step.
These early explorers were in many ways treated like lab animals, yet they soared trough the heavens like living gods: can you imagine what it was like being the first humyn to see the earth from space?
And yet, it is the fate of all pioneers for the trails they first blazed to be trod by myriad lesser souls. As the unspoiled lands explored by Lewis, Clark, and Sacajawea are now criss-crossed by highways, so the ethereal realm of the early astronauts is now a playground for billionaires.
Oh well, on to Mars, I suppose.
Once again the trees of penury have crowded out the forest of freedom and democracy. Once again the need to slosh throught the thicket of misinformation, carving out a trail of truth, comes about.
For many businesses, it will be a marketing dream come true. Retailers will be falling over themselves to bombard people passing their doors with targeted come-ons... But it will also work the other way round, enabling you to find what you want.
In other words: rejoice! Not only will it businesses be able to bombard you with ads, consumers will have even more opportunity to be immersed in the advertiing they love so much! Huzzah!
But the prospect of every place on Earth being crammed with invisible electronic notes, ...conjures the spectre of an information traffic jam... Crouch isn't unduly worried... It is largely a question of managing hardware and being very careful about balancing loads between servers
In other words, the problem isn't the intellectual moise pollution of a million billion advertisements floating in the air, the problem is potential server loads and lag times! Well, I for one COULD NOT CARE LESS how long the latest Pizza Hut jingle takes to download on my cell phone!!
I REALLY like this part:A universal open messaging system also raises questions about privacy and the reliability of information. Unscrupulous merchants may attach scurrilous messages about their competitors... Crouch and his colleagues... say the prototypes they are running will help them deal with the problems of privacy and security.
That is too funny. Obviously, the "scurrilous" messages referred too will also include any "sublvertive", anti-establishment, or otherwise non-mainstream (read non business-related) messages. It will be interesting the hail of lawsuits that result when dstrong, free geeks attempt to use this system for their own purposes...
And finally, this howler: There are some very simple mechanisms that can restrict who gets to post you a message, and who gets to read the ones you write, they say. You could, for instance, join a paid service that would scrutinise messages and guarantee their authenticity and usefulness
Oh man, that is TOOOO FUUUNNNNYYY!!! You have to PAY to not receive SPAM on your GPS! It seems the right to not be constantly harrassed by nuisance mesages is now for sale to the highest bidder.
This usiness of buying and selling the air is just madness.It's almost enough to make you wonder if federal regulation might mot be a good thing. I do, however, have faith that strong, free geeks will discover ways to divert this wave of greed-induced information diaorrhea.
it is important to structure Camelot components so that they can be sold in ways that are useful to the corporations (emphasis mine)
OLD...
. If someone produced a CD-ROM with "maps of the world" on it, then one can imagine selling a retail package with one viewer and the CD-ROM. (emphasis mine)
STORY....
. In any event corporations should be interested in site-licensing arrangements
...they start with a genuinely innovative idea (using the rebinding features of the PostScript language to develop documents that can do not require the complete PS parser to be read,thus vastly improving portability, as a much smaller reader application compatible with any IPS can then be distributed), and all they can think about is the ALMIGHTY DOLLAR.
What about truth? What about freedom?! What about human rights, or helping developing countries? ANY hint of idealism is shunted aside. The glorious implications of "Camelot" have been abandoned along with the name, and Adobe is today just another software behemoth slugging it out with the Micro$oft gorilla. Sometimes it's too easy to be cynical.