The problem is not technology, as such, but the economic/commercial system that drives it. With all the geeks here, used to thinking about information systems, I am really disappointed at how few are making the obvious connection.
Quite simply, there is a memory leak in our information system for keeping track of who has contributed what to our common society. Don't be fooled by the big juju of the men in the dark suites. There is a reason why the charging of interest on a loan was once punished with death.
The deeper problem is that if a culture can, by means of a unbalanced exchange medium, make its little serfs work harder for its own propagation and the spreading of it's memeplexes, that culture will have an advantage in the natural selection of cultures... As long as the ecosystem where this selection takes place can sustain the growth...
And we like to think we have a personal choice... We all know what happens to a person or a culture that just refuse to compete. Of course you will want all those gadgets, anything to make you stay on top of the unwashed masses, and even better if it gives you a little time left over to play and learn. Only problem with that is that fear, anxiety, and panic are able to make people work a lot harder that the sheer joy of creating stuff..
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
All this seem to me like a real unnholy mix of researchers with no thought to the consequences of their work, and "law and order" forces just reflexively grabbing for any power they can somehow justify.
Sure, face recognision could have a lot of cool aplications, but under the current political/economic system it is unfortunately the most ugly uses that has the most plentifull suporters, with the most money to spend..
When I think of what I have read and been told, of the british police treatment of travelers, gypsies, house culture, and basically everyone choosing to live other lives than "the matrix" has designed for us, it makes me want to move to somewhere very far from "western culture"...
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
That technology is neutral is an idea that should be dead and cold by now. "The media is the message"... One simple picture: a sword. Is a sword a neutral technology? you could use it to dig a hole or something i guess, but I would say it's a little more likely to be used for chopping somebodies head in two.. "If all you have is a hammer every problem looks a little like a nail"... I am afraid it looks like every technology has it's biases, and it will require some concious thought to figure out how they will shape society, and wherther we want to try it out on our selves or not.
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
"Actually"? You claim to KNOW this? I noticed you live in the same city as FAST headquarters.. But maybe you cant talk about that;-)
No, seriously, there are a couple of pages at the fast site that imply rather clearly that alltheweb uses the PMC. Not explicitly though, you'r right about that. I seem to remember a picture of one of those dell machines full of those cards, but of course I cant find it now...
Anyway, just look at this quote from the PMC faq, and compare this with allthewb's claim of scaling lineraly.
>Since the PMC search through data at a fixed speed (100 MB/s), the >response time for a query is independent of its complexity. In a >software solutions the response time increases more than linear with >increasing query complexity.
Gaute
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
A main axis around which this debate revolves seems to be the idealism of RMS, vs. the "hard realities of a free market".
ERS wants to cozy up to the "market forces" and states that he "just wants just code that does not suck". In the long run running the risk of disillusioning a lot of the altruism which ultimately makes this thing work...
As I perceive it there is a certain hope that we are working on an open frontier here, we can contribute something positive to the future in the face of all the shit happening in the rest of the world. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think a lot of good coders would not work half as hard on their OSS projects if they knew that "the man" would be the one to prosper the most for it.
RMS would probably be one of those people. He seems to think that free software is on a roll, and with it we will be able to shoehorn some decency and ideals back into society, and that "open source" is basically playing out this card way to cheap.
Problem about this is that it's a dog eat dog world out there currently, and morals is basically a dirty word, if not in what is preached, so definitely in practice.
Their is one thing that jumps in my face about this whole debate however as a proponent of alternative currencies, and that is all the agonizing over the various merits of all sorts of licenses and "software philosophy" , but not one word uttered about our money system, which is just as much a pice of software as anything written in C.
It is a social information system, nothing more. An agreement among people to use some particular token as a medium of exchange.
Why on earth is everybody taking today's system of managing this medium as a given natural fact? And then people either despise it and get branded as starry eyed utopians, or they maintain that "resistance is futile" and idealism is just waste...
This is just like saying that all OSes are bad/god depending on the first one that you happen to come into contact with....
Oh.. how I wish some of all this clever analysis would be spent on exploring fixes to the current money system.
In my opinion there is literally at least two bugs in it.. Bugs that would cause memory leaks and overflow in any normal software. In stead they cause money overflow for some, and total deprivation for others. This is NOT the natural sate of affairs.
ESR writes of open source as a "gift economy" and the regular one as a "scarcity economy" is it only me that wonders why there has to be scarcity of something that is essentially information?
Digital cash is just around the corner, and with it private currencies a real possibility, a technical fix may not be that far out of reach.
Quote "There is probably nothing that humans make more efforts for, and understand less about, than money."
Gaute -- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
There's money and there's capitalism...
on
RMS Responds
·
· Score: 1
A main axis around which this debate revolves seems to be the idealism of RMS, vs. the "hard realities of a free market".
What jumps in my face as a proponent of alternative currencies is all the agonizing over the various merits of all sorts of licences and "software philosophy" , but not one word about our money system, which is just as much a price of software as anything written in C.
It is a social information system, nothing more. An agreement among people to use some particular token as a medium of exchange.
Why on earth is everybody taking todays system of managing this medium as a given natural fact? And then people either despise it and get branded as starry eyed utopians, or they maintain that "resistance is futile" and idealism is just waste...
This is just like saying that all OSes are bad/god depending on the first one that you happen to come into contact with....
Oh.. how I wish some of all this clever analysis would be spent on exploring fixes to the current money system.
In my opinion there is literally at least two bugs in it.. Bugs that would cause a memory leaks and overflow in any normal software. In stead they cause money overflow for some, and total deprivation for others. This is NOT the natural sate of affairs.
ESR writes of open source as a "gift economy" and the regular one as a "scarcity economy" is it only me that wonders why there has to be scarcity of something that is essentially information?
Digital cash is just around the corner, and with it private currencies a real possibility, a technical fix may not be that far out of reach.
Quote "There is probably nothing that humans make more efforts for, and understand less about, than money." Gaute -- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
I would love one for reading news or watever on my back on a radioLAN in the park, but for a proper werable I wold stil prefer the Private eye, or the M1.
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is not technology, as such, but the economic/commercial system that drives it.
With all the geeks here, used to thinking about information systems, I am really disappointed at how few are making the obvious connection.
Quite simply, there is a memory leak in our information system for keeping track of who has contributed what to our common society. Don't be fooled by the big juju of the men in the dark suites. There is a reason why the charging of interest on a loan was once punished with death.
The deeper problem is that if a culture can, by means of a unbalanced exchange medium, make its little serfs work harder for its own propagation and the spreading of it's memeplexes, that culture will have an advantage in the natural selection of cultures...
As long as the ecosystem where this selection takes place can sustain the growth...
And we like to think we have a personal choice...
We all know what happens to a person or a culture that just refuse to compete. Of course you will want all those gadgets, anything to make you stay on top of the unwashed masses, and even better if it gives you a little time left over to play and learn. Only problem with that is that fear, anxiety, and panic are able to make people work a lot harder that the sheer joy of creating stuff..
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
All this seem to me like a real unnholy mix of researchers with no thought to the consequences of their work, and "law and order" forces just reflexively grabbing for any power they can somehow justify.
Sure, face recognision could have a lot of cool aplications, but under the current political/economic system it is unfortunately the most ugly uses that has the most plentifull suporters, with the most money to spend..
When I think of what I have read and been told, of the british police treatment of travelers, gypsies, house culture, and basically everyone choosing to live other lives than "the matrix" has designed for us, it makes me want to move to somewhere very far from "western culture"...
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
That technology is neutral is an idea that should be dead and cold by now. "The media is the message"... One simple picture: a sword. Is a sword a neutral technology? you could use it to dig a hole or something i guess, but I would say it's a little more likely to be used for chopping somebodies head in two.. "If all you have is a hammer every problem looks a little like a nail"...
I am afraid it looks like every technology has it's biases, and it will require some concious thought to figure out how they will shape society, and wherther we want to try it out on our selves or not.
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
You claim to KNOW this?
I noticed you live in the same city as FAST headquarters..
But maybe you cant talk about that
No, seriously, there are a couple of pages at the fast site that imply rather clearly that alltheweb uses the PMC.
Not explicitly though, you'r right about that.
I seem to remember a picture of one of those dell machines full of those cards, but of course I cant find it now...
Anyway, just look at this quote from the PMC faq,
and compare this with allthewb's claim of scaling lineraly.
>Since the PMC search through data at a fixed speed (100 MB/s), the
>response time for a query is independent of its complexity. In a
>software solutions the response time increases more than linear with
>increasing query complexity.
Gaute
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
Check out this
http://www.fast.no/product/fastpmc.html
gaute
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
A main axis around which this debate revolves seems to be the idealism of RMS, vs. the "hard realities of a free market".
ERS wants to cozy up to the "market forces" and states that he "just wants just code that does not suck". In the long run running the risk of disillusioning a lot of the altruism which ultimately makes this thing work...
As I perceive it there is a certain hope that we are working on an open frontier here, we can contribute something positive to the future in the face of all the shit happening in the rest of the world. Correct me if I am wrong, but I think a lot of good coders would not work half as hard on their OSS projects if they knew that "the man" would be the one to prosper the most for it.
RMS would probably be one of those people. He seems to think that free software is on a roll, and with it we will be able to shoehorn some decency and ideals back into society, and that "open source" is basically playing out this card way to cheap.
Problem about this is that it's a dog eat dog world out there currently, and morals is basically a dirty word, if not in what is preached, so definitely in practice.
Their is one thing that jumps in my face about this whole debate however as a proponent of alternative currencies, and that is all the agonizing over the various merits of all sorts of licenses and "software philosophy" , but not one word uttered about our money system, which is just as much a pice of software as anything written in C.
It is a social information system, nothing more. An agreement among people to use some particular token as a medium of exchange.
Why on earth is everybody taking today's system of managing this medium as a given natural fact? And then people either despise it and get branded as starry eyed utopians, or they maintain that "resistance is futile" and idealism is just waste...
This is just like saying that all OSes are bad/god depending on the first one that you happen to come into contact with....
Oh.. how I wish some of all this clever analysis would be spent on exploring fixes to the current money system.
In my opinion there is literally at least two bugs in it.. Bugs that would cause memory leaks and overflow in any normal software. In stead they cause money overflow for some, and total deprivation for others. This is NOT the natural sate of affairs.
ESR writes of open source as a "gift economy" and the regular one as a "scarcity economy" is it only me that wonders why there has to be scarcity of something that is essentially information?
Digital cash is just around the corner, and with it private currencies a real possibility, a technical fix may not be that far out of reach.
If I have sparked anyone's curiosity with this post please check out http://www.transaction.net/money/book/index.html
Quote "There is probably nothing that humans make more efforts for, and understand less about, than money."
Gaute
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
What jumps in my face as a proponent of alternative currencies is all the agonizing over the various merits of all sorts of licences and "software philosophy" , but not one word about our money system, which is just as much a price of software as anything written in C.
It is a social information system, nothing more. An agreement among people to use some particular token as a medium of exchange.
Why on earth is everybody taking todays system of managing this medium as a given natural fact? And then people either despise it and get branded as starry eyed utopians, or they maintain that "resistance is futile" and idealism is just waste...
This is just like saying that all OSes are bad/god depending on the first one that you happen to come into contact with....
Oh.. how I wish some of all this clever analysis would be spent on exploring fixes to the current money system.
In my opinion there is literally at least two bugs in it.. Bugs that would cause a memory leaks and overflow in any normal software. In stead they cause money overflow for some, and total deprivation for others. This is NOT the natural sate of affairs.
ESR writes of open source as a "gift economy" and the regular one as a "scarcity economy" is it only me that wonders why there has to be scarcity of something that is essentially information?
Digital cash is just around the corner, and with it private currencies a real possibility, a technical fix may not be that far out of reach.
If I have sparked anyones curiosity with this post please check out http://www.transaction.net/money/b ook/index.html
Quote "There is probably nothing that humans make more efforts for, and understand less about, than money." Gaute
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find
I would love one for reading news or watever on my back on a radioLAN in the park, but for a proper werable I wold stil prefer the Private eye, or the M1.
-- We plunge for the slipstream the realness to find