A side effect is any effect other than the intended effect.
No. A side effect is a minor effect aside from the intended effect. I'm objecting to your (and the drug companies') definition, since it is used to mislead.
Reductionist euphemism? Welcome to the world -- everything is a reduction.
That is a specious use of the word. Reduction is a provisional tool when examining systems, and needs to be discarded at the earliest opportunity. A forest is not an aggregation of trees.
Reductionism is a mistaken theory that any complex system can be understood through analysis of its individual components. Occasionally it is elevated to near religious status, such as in your post, but usually it is used to promote interests, where it remains merely propagandistic.
Drug companies are guilty of the latter, in this case.
Side effect is a reductionist euphemism. Try 'shitty effect'.
Everything a drug does is an effect. We are organisms, complex systems. Is my left kidney a side organ just because my brain and gonads are my primary interest?
Really, it just comes off as drugmaker propaganda.
We don't try to make daycare, social working, teaching and other female-dominated areas more enticing for men
I guess that's one difference between Canuckistan and Jesusland. Up here in the great Red North, we do have various programs and initiatives to encourage more gender parity in those professions. Or maybe you have those programs too, and have filtered them out of your blinkered consciousness.
We are already training lots of people who suck, are apathetic toward it and/or would be happier elsewhere.
You need to get out more. That pretty much describes higher education in general, at least the larger departments. Nothing special about CS here, move along.
A woman's destiny, is not in her gender, but in herself and God's plan for her. Oh wait, did I just say God's plan for her? Another strike for political incorrectness.
OK, troll... who modded that insightful? However, in my not-so-short life, 'God's plan' is nearly always invoked to enforce the moral code of some pale puffy guy with rimless square glasses and a bad haircut. We all know that God has long flowing hair and muscles, so that's just plain wrong.
Let them make their own decisions and stop telling them that their choice isn't good enough.
Why do right-wing moralists use this same sleight-of-mind over and over? The whole point is that social pressures don't let people make their own decisions. Only a few of the 14-year-olds I have known have truly ignored social pressures. The discussion is about transcending social pressures, but you seem to have naturalized those attitudes into invisibility and unchangeability. Both the social environment in IT has to change as well as attitudes in general society, before women are able to make a choice about that career solely on the basis of interest and ability.
The irony is that feminism has accomplished nothing for women.
I love reading crap like that. It's right up there in humour with people who complain to me about labour unions--on the weekend. Your mischaracterization of feminism is just ignorant, since there is no monolithic group, no central party, no central authority to the 'movement' beyond what the media tries to sell us... and the vast majority of feminists don't want to force women to do anything.
If anything, it is attitudes like yours that present the greatest barrier for females entering IT. I have a friend who's a firefighter; it isn't the job that's hard, it's her co-workers. My sister operates heavy machinery with great skill; it isn't the job that's hard, it's the constant commentary, and she had to hide her pregnancy so they would let her continue working. Why should women have to be emotionally tougher than men to do the same job? Is that part of God's plan? Given the whiney nature of your rant, I guess that you would fold quickly if you had to put up with what my sister does.
A. "Mac users wind up looking for the word 'Mac' on anything they buy." -- I do this too, but only when I'm too stooopid to research the product online first, since many manufacturers simply omit compatibility information on the box. USB thumb drives are an example of this... truly PnP on OS X, yet that is ignored on the packaging.
B. Windows does this job satisfactorily... if you're lucky, as I've seen plenty of minor glitches, especially with video display. OS X also has an enormous set of drivers. Adding a mouse or monitor is seamless, no modal dialogues, it Just Works. Plug and unplug a couple of mice at once on OS X for a demo. Add a second monitor, well, that's been pretty much painless since OS 8.6 or earlier.
There are lousy drivers and hardware quirks on both platforms. I've never seen a driver bring OS X to its knees, however (oh, ok, one lousy ATA controller firmware version, does that count?)
An Apple OS on x86 would be pretty much the same thing as you have now: well-designed proprietary hardware with mostly commodity parts. Price and speed would be about the same. They'd never let you build your own L337 boxen, in fact they'd probably use some variation on the ROM solution they used to use, but go ahead and upgrade your factory Apple.
Most people I know who pirate Windows do so because they simply can't afford to buy a copy. Granted, that's not many people since Windows comes with the computer.... "Holy shit, this is expensive, and I'm sick of hunting for friends with Windows CDs. Hey, my Mac using friend never has to reinstall his OS, . .."
It isn't too different in Mac-land. Users with old machines who want to try the latest system often borrow install disks from friends. In my experience, they do that until they really want to upgrage and there isn't a copy handy, or they really rely on it, or they have hardware problems--then they'll buy OS disks. This is all facilitated by the lack of activation on Mac OS, since the beginning.
There is a registration nag, but once you tell it to shut up, it does. As usual, Apple isn't too bad at walking the line between control and user friendliness.
Reinstalls are an occasional fact of life with OS X, too, just never for spyware, viruses, or registry-dll hell. That said, it's been a few years between installs for any of the 8 production machines I watch over--just upgrades/updates and migrating to new disks.
It's not difficult. It's just not something that the iPod does.
Woah, slow down there, bucko, don't be so sure of yourself. That's the SJ reality distortion field (TM) talking. In fact, quality recording is a suppressed feature. We aren't talking about a design ethos here, we're talking about crippleware.
It's a digital audio player. I'm proposing an attachment that adds decent-quality recording, which is something found on, oh, lets see, my freakin' cheapo minidisc player? Oh, and quite a few of the even cheaper portable cassette players I've had over the years. All Apple has to do is stop disabling this in firmware.
This is why I don't have an iPod yet. I want a preamp A/D converter accessory that will allow me to hook up a couple of XLR cables and connect decent quality mics, and record to disk as an aiff. Why is that so freakin' difficult? It would walk all over solutions like $1500 field recorders, which means that there are a whole lotta musicians who will pawn their spare axe just to get one. Not to mention journalists, videographers, etc.
Look, I'll even take a quiet mono 1/8" jack, just let me record uncompressed audio with some preamp. Market niche anyone?
I just bought a Mac G3 All-in-one (made in '98) for $25 for the kids. First thing, throw spare RAM and HD in there; second, swap out that bagpipe-loud fan. When I get in there, I realize that there's one 92mm fan for the whole case, sucking air off the logic board and directing it upwards through the power supply, which does not have its own fan. I was impressed by that, even more so now that the (cheap quiet Nexus) fan emits under 20db and moves more air.
OK, I'm just going to start submitting whatever story I see on the front page. A delay of a couple of hours for a duplicate story seems to be the going rate.
Nope. Both the sad mac and bomb came with error codes that helped a little, at least, if you knew something about hardware or software and could look up the code. Many a time I've located bad RAM or a software conflict in the good ol' Classic days. Glad to see the end of those days, though. All I get is the occasional app going down, no reboot then, and a few kernel panics (the modern sadmac) on machines with bad RAM or a dodgy ATA card
Wow, brave of you to post an un-munged address. Anyway, this is an appropriate thread given the topic.
I do acknowledge that many of the ideas proposed by SF writers are prophetic, sometimes downright predictive. I'm just pointing out that a) it's a crapshoot and b) the story comes first, which means tapping in to mythic narrative structures and genre tropes. Hollywood use of SF tropes is often far too weak or superficial, and that's where the future-realism breaks down; a writer like Clarke is also a scientist and knows how to work the tropes for both believable thought experiment and mythic structure.
I think the challenge of creating a comprehensive future scenario that includes "all fields of human advancement" is beyond the skill of hollywood scriptwriters, the imagination of their producers, and is perceived to be beyond the tolerance of the general audience. Remember that the show exists in order to deliver you as a market to advertisers, it's mainly a dull numbers game, and the chances hollywood takes are based on the perception of what is seen to be the widest possible audience for that genre.
The story template that is the old standby requires that the audience identify with the characters without too much work. They can't be too alien to us, since we're presumed to be lazy (we have so much choice) and mildly xenophobic. However, how puzzling would our daily routines be to a 17th C. european commoner? They would be affronted by much of what we consider everyday. Even more so how 2300 CE life would be difficult for us, I conjecture (thoughtful futurephiles excluded). So, there are a few key technological changes each story proposes that figure strongly, but culture, politics, relationships etc. are left all too familiar. Most SF on the screen is more like a disguised current affairs show than predictive, and that's intentional. Blame it on producers who don't really grok SF, but control its development on screen.
SF authors deal with these problems as well, I think. Each tends to concentrate on a range of specific developments, that then become generators for the story. Comprehensiveness is just too much work, and likely to detract from the story.
As far as ethics goes, I agree that cultural change is one of the weakest components of SF predictions. The cyberpunk style in part is a response to that, I think. For me, some of the most interesting writers are those that use the frontier trope to explore how people adapt both physically and culturally. John Varley (Steel Beach), Samuel Delaney (Triton), and KS Robinson (Mars trilogy) are some of the most interesting in that respect, looking at what a confluence of myriad cultures in the confines of new colonies will mean, especially when shaped by the new constraints and freedoms of space and technology.
The problem with Trek is it's saddled with the weak predictions sanctioned by hollywood 40 years ago, and many of the themes it dealt with are no longer current. It's a space cartoon, and is only constrained by itself and our limited understanding of what's possible technically. 300 years in an accellerated rate of change is simply unpredictable to me anyway, since I think we're in for a historical singularity before then.
Reminds me of the treatment of runaway slaves in the confederacy: once caught, remove the toes of one foot, or, make them wear a heavy iron collar with big hooks that reach out a couple of feet to guarantee getting caught up in the bushes. The average non-slave just thought it was sad but necessary.
i think roddenberry would have approved of stories that emphasized that genetic engineering could eliminate disease and misery.
The idealistic/ideological narrative of Progress isn't that interesting a story unless there's resistance and complication. Atomic power was going to free us all... but we won't deal with the waste properly or open up the process, so people oppose its widespread deployment, and the biggest impact the tech has had on our lives is to loom over us with mushroom clouds and fear of the end-times. Saviour or total annihilation? That's the dialectic driving the narrative about any major speculative tech. Placing limits on deployment seems to be a moral thread in the Rodenberry universes.
there are all sorts of technical advancements that will happen between now and the 23rd/24th century--strong ai, genetic engineering, space elevators, and so forth.
Well yes, I used those examples because nanotech will be ubiquitous, and bodymods are, and will be, very telling cultural expressions. Of course the really interesting discoveries haven't been discovered yet, the things that will be everyday yet seem indistinguishable from magic to us. Imagine a Jacobean drama about computer nerds, swapping mp3s and grabbing pop cans from a beer fridge... you see the problem.
Then there's the 'where's my flying car' issue-- some things that seem self-evident as future developments just aren't that practical or enough of a priority.
Good SF can't hope to be really predictive. I just wish writers/producers would extrapolate based on good guesses and informed SF, both 'hard' and 'soft.' It amazes me how much of hollywood relies on the SF genre (especially blockbusters), yet, many of those films are standard hollywood formula productions with a thin patina of afterthought SF, leaving horrible continuity problems no self-respecting print author (or reader) would stomach.
In other words, we need actual SF thinkers making these movies.
Ah, sorta like the games Deus-Ex and Deus-Ex 2. I'd simply like to see some real humans on the show.
No, not really. I was thinking of something less martial, more ordinary: nanobots that keep your breath smelling good and your furniture buffed, and bodymods that make tatoos look laughably simple. To me, that everyday sense of the practical and the frivolous, in a way that makes us primitives squeamish, combined with the inevitable innovative fusion of many cultures, would build a setting for real human characters, ca. 2100 onward.
As for nano and body customization...there are budgets. Too much of this stuff costs real money whether on a linux CGI farm or with realistic props. Hell, if you wanted the aliens to be "right" there would be virtually NO humaniod aliens on the show.... But that's another, more general discussion that isn't limited to Star Trek.
Well, yes, that's my point, I think the 21st century could use a little biorealism in its SF. NO humanoid aliens, please. The discussion starts with ST, in some ways, since they're the worst offenders in this respect.
The budget issue isn't as much of a big deal as you think, what with re-using shots, cut-aways, subtle effects, using low-res when it works, and simply make up. You think that goofy convoluted forehead was cheap and easy to stick on every ST extra? Having imaginative body mods isn't a far stretch, or expensive if well-designed. Likewise, nanotech will be mainly invisible, other than its occasional effects: it's more a matter of writing these things into the everyday world of the scripts, without ta-da. These things need to be used judiciously anyway, or they take over from the actors.
Star Trek (NG I think) dropped a hint in one episode about why the galaxy is filled with quasi-euro humanoids... something about a common ancestor. It wasn't part of the overall continuity concerns in the series, obviously, kind of like the Great Klingon Makeover. We Don't Talk About It.
after Enterprise (which I think didn't get a fair shake), what can they do?
Well, as long as you think Starfleet, you're hosed, eh. The nature of a military crew is stuffy and of limited range; as heros they're constrained by protocol. That's why DS9 blossomed; they had vicious killer terrorist freedomfighter rebels subsumed into the command structure, crazy religious leaders pushing their weight around, a cop-crook dynamic with mafioso Ferengi subplots, a guy with a serious identity crisis (Odo)--actually two, given that the station commander and central character Sisko discovers to his chagrin that he's a prophet of sorts -- war criminals that just won't quit, cross-species sexuality with some reasonable tension, persistent and complex spy characters, etc. It's full of civilians and underworld elements and even everyday moments, and not just as plot props.
So let's try something more civilian, maybe, with a definable story arc. Remember 7of9's parents? Scientist explorers out of their depth. That's a good starting premise, so: a small crew of honest researchers who wind up framed and fleeing Starfleet. Let's say they have plenty of close calls, and plenty of good deeds and catastrophes to make them interesting heroes. Then send them off to the Federation's frontier (other side from Gamma, please) so they can keep on exploring while running, and solving the Big Mystery of why they were framed. Maybe they'll even meet someone who isn't bipedal, mammalian, and wearing togas or jumpers.
Great, one thing I appreciated about JMS was his resistance to the hollywood notion that aliens -- a whole galaxy of them -- are pretty much all white people with convoluted foreheads and a different arrangement of internal organs.
I mean, I know that SF on TV is pretty much a kind of stage-play allegory, but it all feels so grounded in a '60s kind of shiny smarmy middle-class american morality (yes, I know all about demographics, I'm a director/producer). JMS's B5 brought a touch of biological diversity into the vidiotic galaxy.
What I would really like is a SF series that takes nanotech and extreme body customization into human -- not just evil borg -- society. One that has Samuel Delaney's sense of cultural development, Ridley Scott's visual and human grittiness, and KS Robinson's sense of the march of history. B5 had some of all that, but some truly cheesy interludes and unconvincing dialogue, and in the end fell back frequently to rely on the hollywood galactic tropes, so he should be able to cope in the ST version of 'future.' Here's hoping he can move the franchise into something more... contemporary.
There is still no empire though, the US holds something like 14 territories whereas Britain and France hole 15 and 16 respectively and that is the real tail end of Britains Empire building.
Look, you obviously didn't follow the links in my post. The whole notion of 'empire' is being redefined. Some call it the New World Order, including Poppy and W.
There are radical differences in the way hegemony is managed between the Romans, lets say, and the post-colonial period that we're now in; those kinds of empires can't exist now, for a whole range of reasons. Essentially, the New American Century is already here.
Whilst military bases might provide the US with a global military reach they don't generate any direct income or economic benefit which is the real point of Empires.
The relationship between big-ticket trading, industries, etc. and those who run the --empire, forgive me-- is so complex and profuse and obscured by sleight of press that it's understandable how people miss seeing a 'direct benefit.' Anyway, I guess you don't live in the commonwealth, or you'd know that that empire always worked hand in hand with business. In Canada we had the Hudson's Bay Company. I guess that makes it Haliburton in Iraq.
America doesn't really have an Empire, it has military bases scattered about the place but that's it.
Yes, you're right, it is really a trivial matter. Oh wait... I forgot that there are over SEVEN-freaking-hundred of them. If a base in damn near every strategic location on the globe doesn't indicate a new kind of empire, then it's a meaningless word. Google for 'Chalmers Johnson' for a nice overview.
The USA has minor holdings in both major oceans, like the remnants of any colonial power. Here's the CIA's listing of American "Dependencies:"
American Samoa, Baker Island, Guam, Howland Island, Jarvis Island, Johnston Atoll, Kingman Reef, Midway Islands, Navassa Island, Northern Mariana Islands, Palmyra Atoll, Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Wake Island
note: from 18 July 1947 until 1 October 1994, the US administered the Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands. It entered into a political relationship with all four political units: the Northern Mariana Islands is a commonwealth in political union with the US (effective 3 November 1986); Palau concluded a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 1 October 1994); the Federated States of Micronesia signed a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 3 November 1986); the Republic of the Marshall Islands signed a Compact of Free Association with the US (effective 21 October 1986)
In addition to these direct footprints of empire, the US has the ability to recommend, set, and enforce policy over much of the world. Even Brzezinski points out that "Europe is still predominantly an American protectorate."
The purposes of USA's military presence around the world are pretty clear to those on the outside. Imagine a German base on the edge of Bangor, a French base outside of Cleveland, a Canadian base in Fargo, a Japanese base in Seattle, a Venezuelan base in Miami. How would the locals feel? What would it mean to US nationalism? It isn't a disingenuous question. If you pooh-pooh the 'thought experiment' on grounds of impossibility, it is an indication of a disinclination to think outside of the doctrine of Pax Americana.
Take old rubber tires and cut them into 1 cm. chunks. Mix that with a slury of earth and a white polymer, and you get a cool, soft, inexpensive material that is waterproof and resilient. It'll give as you walk on it, and feel good to the bare footed.
It does feel good walking on recycled tyre foam, it was used as a spongy concrete-like playground safety base for awhile. Then the scuttle got out about how tyre manufacturing uses cadmium as a colour fixant, and it seems to have stopped being used.
Cadmium is a nastypollutant. Tire dust has enough cadmium (etc.) in it to be a real concern; they voluntarily took it out of pesticides in '97, but it is still used in many manufacturing processes. Direct application to the feet by walking on it barefoot is only going to increase our already elevated intake.
I agree wholeheartedly that architects need to get out of their CAD caves and back into the tribe, watch the patterns of movement and usage, and design for that. You know, what actually happens, instead of what looks pretty on a freakin' screen. If your design anticipates everyday behaviour, it will be pretty enough. Slap all the gewgaws you want on it after thinking about living vectors.
Windows is currently getting attacked more because it is more popular.
Most of us who actually have to support such machines think that it is getting attacked more because it comes out of the box screaming "oh please, violate me!"--instead of gracefully starting services and opening ports only when really needed and with an element of real user control and caution. cf. OS X.
Copyright infringement is a type of theft.... When you take something without securing permission to take it, even if you are just taking a copy of intellectual property, that is theft.
I respectfully disagree, and submit that you are strategically oversimplifying semantics, since you cannot take something that the owner still has. The complaints about hijacking potential revenue streams are disingenuous arguments based on possibilites, not actualities. If you use something without permission (e.g. make an unauthorized copy, or sharing copies with others), that is an abuse of trust and a breach of rules of usage. If you take credit for the idea or cultural product (e.g. 'I made it' or reselling a counterfeit), then that is where the notion of theft applies, as a consequence of fraud. Sharing and fraud can both be violations of the rules of usage (copyright + moral rights), but significantly different in degree.
This whole debate reminds me of the pre-digital issue of cultural appropriation. It rears its ugly head when literate societies that have notions like intellectual property encounter (usually 'colonize') societies that are oral and consider stories to be under carefully administered stewardship (not ownership). Usually, some author hears a story and repackages it into a successful book with their name on it, which violates the codes of stewardship in various ways. Complaints about such behaviour, however, go unheeded, since both the law and the media in which these debates are aired operate under the paradigms of ownership, not stewardship.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure, but don't coast with the clutch engaged, you'll throw a rod.
Um, actually it's "Weapons of Mass Distraction," which is a conventional weapon.
No. A side effect is a minor effect aside from the intended effect. I'm objecting to your (and the drug companies') definition, since it is used to mislead.
Reductionist euphemism? Welcome to the world -- everything is a reduction.
That is a specious use of the word. Reduction is a provisional tool when examining systems, and needs to be discarded at the earliest opportunity. A forest is not an aggregation of trees.
Reductionism is a mistaken theory that any complex system can be understood through analysis of its individual components. Occasionally it is elevated to near religious status, such as in your post, but usually it is used to promote interests, where it remains merely propagandistic.
Drug companies are guilty of the latter, in this case.
Side effect is a reductionist euphemism. Try 'shitty effect'. Everything a drug does is an effect. We are organisms, complex systems. Is my left kidney a side organ just because my brain and gonads are my primary interest? Really, it just comes off as drugmaker propaganda.
I guess that's one difference between Canuckistan and Jesusland. Up here in the great Red North, we do have various programs and initiatives to encourage more gender parity in those professions. Or maybe you have those programs too, and have filtered them out of your blinkered consciousness.
We are already training lots of people who suck, are apathetic toward it and/or would be happier elsewhere.
You need to get out more. That pretty much describes higher education in general, at least the larger departments. Nothing special about CS here, move along.
A woman's destiny, is not in her gender, but in herself and God's plan for her. Oh wait, did I just say God's plan for her? Another strike for political incorrectness.
OK, troll... who modded that insightful? However, in my not-so-short life, 'God's plan' is nearly always invoked to enforce the moral code of some pale puffy guy with rimless square glasses and a bad haircut. We all know that God has long flowing hair and muscles, so that's just plain wrong.
Let them make their own decisions and stop telling them that their choice isn't good enough.
Why do right-wing moralists use this same sleight-of-mind over and over? The whole point is that social pressures don't let people make their own decisions. Only a few of the 14-year-olds I have known have truly ignored social pressures. The discussion is about transcending social pressures, but you seem to have naturalized those attitudes into invisibility and unchangeability. Both the social environment in IT has to change as well as attitudes in general society, before women are able to make a choice about that career solely on the basis of interest and ability.
The irony is that feminism has accomplished nothing for women.
I love reading crap like that. It's right up there in humour with people who complain to me about labour unions--on the weekend. Your mischaracterization of feminism is just ignorant, since there is no monolithic group, no central party, no central authority to the 'movement' beyond what the media tries to sell us... and the vast majority of feminists don't want to force women to do anything.
If anything, it is attitudes like yours that present the greatest barrier for females entering IT. I have a friend who's a firefighter; it isn't the job that's hard, it's her co-workers. My sister operates heavy machinery with great skill; it isn't the job that's hard, it's the constant commentary, and she had to hide her pregnancy so they would let her continue working. Why should women have to be emotionally tougher than men to do the same job? Is that part of God's plan? Given the whiney nature of your rant, I guess that you would fold quickly if you had to put up with what my sister does.
A. "Mac users wind up looking for the word 'Mac' on anything they buy." -- I do this too, but only when I'm too stooopid to research the product online first, since many manufacturers simply omit compatibility information on the box. USB thumb drives are an example of this... truly PnP on OS X, yet that is ignored on the packaging.
B. Windows does this job satisfactorily... if you're lucky, as I've seen plenty of minor glitches, especially with video display. OS X also has an enormous set of drivers. Adding a mouse or monitor is seamless, no modal dialogues, it Just Works. Plug and unplug a couple of mice at once on OS X for a demo. Add a second monitor, well, that's been pretty much painless since OS 8.6 or earlier.
There are lousy drivers and hardware quirks on both platforms. I've never seen a driver bring OS X to its knees, however (oh, ok, one lousy ATA controller firmware version, does that count?)
An Apple OS on x86 would be pretty much the same thing as you have now: well-designed proprietary hardware with mostly commodity parts. Price and speed would be about the same. They'd never let you build your own L337 boxen, in fact they'd probably use some variation on the ROM solution they used to use, but go ahead and upgrade your factory Apple.
"Holy shit, this is expensive, and I'm sick of hunting for friends with Windows CDs. Hey, my Mac using friend never has to reinstall his OS, . .
It isn't too different in Mac-land. Users with old machines who want to try the latest system often borrow install disks from friends. In my experience, they do that until they really want to upgrage and there isn't a copy handy, or they really rely on it, or they have hardware problems--then they'll buy OS disks. This is all facilitated by the lack of activation on Mac OS, since the beginning.
There is a registration nag, but once you tell it to shut up, it does. As usual, Apple isn't too bad at walking the line between control and user friendliness.
Reinstalls are an occasional fact of life with OS X, too, just never for spyware, viruses, or registry-dll hell. That said, it's been a few years between installs for any of the 8 production machines I watch over--just upgrades/updates and migrating to new disks.
Woah, slow down there, bucko, don't be so sure of yourself. That's the SJ reality distortion field (TM) talking. In fact, quality recording is a suppressed feature. We aren't talking about a design ethos here, we're talking about crippleware.
It's a digital audio player. I'm proposing an attachment that adds decent-quality recording, which is something found on, oh, lets see, my freakin' cheapo minidisc player? Oh, and quite a few of the even cheaper portable cassette players I've had over the years. All Apple has to do is stop disabling this in firmware.
This is why I don't have an iPod yet. I want a preamp A/D converter accessory that will allow me to hook up a couple of XLR cables and connect decent quality mics, and record to disk as an aiff. Why is that so freakin' difficult? It would walk all over solutions like $1500 field recorders, which means that there are a whole lotta musicians who will pawn their spare axe just to get one. Not to mention journalists, videographers, etc.
Look, I'll even take a quiet mono 1/8" jack, just let me record uncompressed audio with some preamp. Market niche anyone?
I just bought a Mac G3 All-in-one (made in '98) for $25 for the kids. First thing, throw spare RAM and HD in there; second, swap out that bagpipe-loud fan. When I get in there, I realize that there's one 92mm fan for the whole case, sucking air off the logic board and directing it upwards through the power supply, which does not have its own fan. I was impressed by that, even more so now that the (cheap quiet Nexus) fan emits under 20db and moves more air.
OK, I'm just going to start submitting whatever story I see on the front page. A delay of a couple of hours for a duplicate story seems to be the going rate.
Fundamentalist morality. Excluding capitalist fundamentalism, since sex sells.
Nope. Both the sad mac and bomb came with error codes that helped a little, at least, if you knew something about hardware or software and could look up the code. Many a time I've located bad RAM or a software conflict in the good ol' Classic days. Glad to see the end of those days, though. All I get is the occasional app going down, no reboot then, and a few kernel panics (the modern sadmac) on machines with bad RAM or a dodgy ATA card
.
I do acknowledge that many of the ideas proposed by SF writers are prophetic, sometimes downright predictive. I'm just pointing out that a) it's a crapshoot and b) the story comes first, which means tapping in to mythic narrative structures and genre tropes. Hollywood use of SF tropes is often far too weak or superficial, and that's where the future-realism breaks down; a writer like Clarke is also a scientist and knows how to work the tropes for both believable thought experiment and mythic structure.
I think the challenge of creating a comprehensive future scenario that includes "all fields of human advancement" is beyond the skill of hollywood scriptwriters, the imagination of their producers, and is perceived to be beyond the tolerance of the general audience. Remember that the show exists in order to deliver you as a market to advertisers, it's mainly a dull numbers game, and the chances hollywood takes are based on the perception of what is seen to be the widest possible audience for that genre.
The story template that is the old standby requires that the audience identify with the characters without too much work. They can't be too alien to us, since we're presumed to be lazy (we have so much choice) and mildly xenophobic. However, how puzzling would our daily routines be to a 17th C. european commoner? They would be affronted by much of what we consider everyday. Even more so how 2300 CE life would be difficult for us, I conjecture (thoughtful futurephiles excluded). So, there are a few key technological changes each story proposes that figure strongly, but culture, politics, relationships etc. are left all too familiar. Most SF on the screen is more like a disguised current affairs show than predictive, and that's intentional. Blame it on producers who don't really grok SF, but control its development on screen.
SF authors deal with these problems as well, I think. Each tends to concentrate on a range of specific developments, that then become generators for the story. Comprehensiveness is just too much work, and likely to detract from the story.
As far as ethics goes, I agree that cultural change is one of the weakest components of SF predictions. The cyberpunk style in part is a response to that, I think. For me, some of the most interesting writers are those that use the frontier trope to explore how people adapt both physically and culturally. John Varley (Steel Beach), Samuel Delaney (Triton), and KS Robinson (Mars trilogy) are some of the most interesting in that respect, looking at what a confluence of myriad cultures in the confines of new colonies will mean, especially when shaped by the new constraints and freedoms of space and technology.
The problem with Trek is it's saddled with the weak predictions sanctioned by hollywood 40 years ago, and many of the themes it dealt with are no longer current. It's a space cartoon, and is only constrained by itself and our limited understanding of what's possible technically. 300 years in an accellerated rate of change is simply unpredictable to me anyway, since I think we're in for a historical singularity before then.
Reminds me of the treatment of runaway slaves in the confederacy: once caught, remove the toes of one foot, or, make them wear a heavy iron collar with big hooks that reach out a couple of feet to guarantee getting caught up in the bushes. The average non-slave just thought it was sad but necessary.
The idealistic/ideological narrative of Progress isn't that interesting a story unless there's resistance and complication. Atomic power was going to free us all... but we won't deal with the waste properly or open up the process, so people oppose its widespread deployment, and the biggest impact the tech has had on our lives is to loom over us with mushroom clouds and fear of the end-times. Saviour or total annihilation? That's the dialectic driving the narrative about any major speculative tech. Placing limits on deployment seems to be a moral thread in the Rodenberry universes.
there are all sorts of technical advancements that will happen between now and the 23rd/24th century--strong ai, genetic engineering, space elevators, and so forth.
Well yes, I used those examples because nanotech will be ubiquitous, and bodymods are, and will be, very telling cultural expressions. Of course the really interesting discoveries haven't been discovered yet, the things that will be everyday yet seem indistinguishable from magic to us. Imagine a Jacobean drama about computer nerds, swapping mp3s and grabbing pop cans from a beer fridge... you see the problem.
Then there's the 'where's my flying car' issue-- some things that seem self-evident as future developments just aren't that practical or enough of a priority.
Good SF can't hope to be really predictive. I just wish writers/producers would extrapolate based on good guesses and informed SF, both 'hard' and 'soft.' It amazes me how much of hollywood relies on the SF genre (especially blockbusters), yet, many of those films are standard hollywood formula productions with a thin patina of afterthought SF, leaving horrible continuity problems no self-respecting print author (or reader) would stomach.
In other words, we need actual SF thinkers making these movies.
No, not really. I was thinking of something less martial, more ordinary: nanobots that keep your breath smelling good and your furniture buffed, and bodymods that make tatoos look laughably simple. To me, that everyday sense of the practical and the frivolous, in a way that makes us primitives squeamish, combined with the inevitable innovative fusion of many cultures, would build a setting for real human characters, ca. 2100 onward.
As for nano and body customization...there are budgets. Too much of this stuff costs real money whether on a linux CGI farm or with realistic props. Hell, if you wanted the aliens to be "right" there would be virtually NO humaniod aliens on the show. ... But that's another, more general discussion that isn't limited to Star Trek.
Well, yes, that's my point, I think the 21st century could use a little biorealism in its SF. NO humanoid aliens, please. The discussion starts with ST, in some ways, since they're the worst offenders in this respect.
The budget issue isn't as much of a big deal as you think, what with re-using shots, cut-aways, subtle effects, using low-res when it works, and simply make up. You think that goofy convoluted forehead was cheap and easy to stick on every ST extra? Having imaginative body mods isn't a far stretch, or expensive if well-designed. Likewise, nanotech will be mainly invisible, other than its occasional effects: it's more a matter of writing these things into the everyday world of the scripts, without ta-da. These things need to be used judiciously anyway, or they take over from the actors.
Star Trek (NG I think) dropped a hint in one episode about why the galaxy is filled with quasi-euro humanoids... something about a common ancestor. It wasn't part of the overall continuity concerns in the series, obviously, kind of like the Great Klingon Makeover. We Don't Talk About It.
Well, as long as you think Starfleet, you're hosed, eh. The nature of a military crew is stuffy and of limited range; as heros they're constrained by protocol. That's why DS9 blossomed; they had vicious killer terrorist freedomfighter rebels subsumed into the command structure, crazy religious leaders pushing their weight around, a cop-crook dynamic with mafioso Ferengi subplots, a guy with a serious identity crisis (Odo)--actually two, given that the station commander and central character Sisko discovers to his chagrin that he's a prophet of sorts -- war criminals that just won't quit, cross-species sexuality with some reasonable tension, persistent and complex spy characters, etc. It's full of civilians and underworld elements and even everyday moments, and not just as plot props.
So let's try something more civilian, maybe, with a definable story arc. Remember 7of9's parents? Scientist explorers out of their depth. That's a good starting premise, so: a small crew of honest researchers who wind up framed and fleeing Starfleet. Let's say they have plenty of close calls, and plenty of good deeds and catastrophes to make them interesting heroes. Then send them off to the Federation's frontier (other side from Gamma, please) so they can keep on exploring while running, and solving the Big Mystery of why they were framed. Maybe they'll even meet someone who isn't bipedal, mammalian, and wearing togas or jumpers.
I mean, I know that SF on TV is pretty much a kind of stage-play allegory, but it all feels so grounded in a '60s kind of shiny smarmy middle-class american morality (yes, I know all about demographics, I'm a director/producer). JMS's B5 brought a touch of biological diversity into the vidiotic galaxy.
What I would really like is a SF series that takes nanotech and extreme body customization into human -- not just evil borg -- society. One that has Samuel Delaney's sense of cultural development, Ridley Scott's visual and human grittiness, and KS Robinson's sense of the march of history. B5 had some of all that, but some truly cheesy interludes and unconvincing dialogue, and in the end fell back frequently to rely on the hollywood galactic tropes, so he should be able to cope in the ST version of 'future.' Here's hoping he can move the franchise into something more... contemporary.
Look, you obviously didn't follow the links in my post. The whole notion of 'empire' is being redefined. Some call it the New World Order, including Poppy and W.
There are radical differences in the way hegemony is managed between the Romans, lets say, and the post-colonial period that we're now in; those kinds of empires can't exist now, for a whole range of reasons. Essentially, the New American Century is already here.
Whilst military bases might provide the US with a global military reach they don't generate any direct income or economic benefit which is the real point of Empires.
The relationship between big-ticket trading, industries, etc. and those who run the --empire, forgive me-- is so complex and profuse and obscured by sleight of press that it's understandable how people miss seeing a 'direct benefit.' Anyway, I guess you don't live in the commonwealth, or you'd know that that empire always worked hand in hand with business. In Canada we had the Hudson's Bay Company. I guess that makes it Haliburton in Iraq.
Yes, you're right, it is really a trivial matter. Oh wait... I forgot that there are over SEVEN-freaking-hundred of them. If a base in damn near every strategic location on the globe doesn't indicate a new kind of empire, then it's a meaningless word. Google for 'Chalmers Johnson' for a nice overview.
The USA has minor holdings in both major oceans, like the remnants of any colonial power. Here's the CIA's listing of American "Dependencies:"
In addition to these direct footprints of empire, the US has the ability to recommend, set, and enforce policy over much of the world. Even Brzezinski points out that "Europe is still predominantly an American protectorate."
The purposes of USA's military presence around the world are pretty clear to those on the outside. Imagine a German base on the edge of Bangor, a French base outside of Cleveland, a Canadian base in Fargo, a Japanese base in Seattle, a Venezuelan base in Miami. How would the locals feel? What would it mean to US nationalism? It isn't a disingenuous question. If you pooh-pooh the 'thought experiment' on grounds of impossibility, it is an indication of a disinclination to think outside of the doctrine of Pax Americana.
Um. Common usage in Canada for the past few years has been "oiligarchy"--because it is a better pun, eh.
It does feel good walking on recycled tyre foam, it was used as a spongy concrete-like playground safety base for awhile. Then the scuttle got out about how tyre manufacturing uses cadmium as a colour fixant, and it seems to have stopped being used.
Cadmium is a nasty pollutant. Tire dust has enough cadmium (etc.) in it to be a real concern; they voluntarily took it out of pesticides in '97, but it is still used in many manufacturing processes. Direct application to the feet by walking on it barefoot is only going to increase our already elevated intake.
I agree wholeheartedly that architects need to get out of their CAD caves and back into the tribe, watch the patterns of movement and usage, and design for that. You know, what actually happens, instead of what looks pretty on a freakin' screen. If your design anticipates everyday behaviour, it will be pretty enough. Slap all the gewgaws you want on it after thinking about living vectors.
Most of us who actually have to support such machines think that it is getting attacked more because it comes out of the box screaming "oh please, violate me!"--instead of gracefully starting services and opening ports only when really needed and with an element of real user control and caution. cf. OS X.
I respectfully disagree, and submit that you are strategically oversimplifying semantics, since you cannot take something that the owner still has. The complaints about hijacking potential revenue streams are disingenuous arguments based on possibilites, not actualities. If you use something without permission (e.g. make an unauthorized copy, or sharing copies with others), that is an abuse of trust and a breach of rules of usage. If you take credit for the idea or cultural product (e.g. 'I made it' or reselling a counterfeit), then that is where the notion of theft applies, as a consequence of fraud. Sharing and fraud can both be violations of the rules of usage (copyright + moral rights), but significantly different in degree.
This whole debate reminds me of the pre-digital issue of cultural appropriation. It rears its ugly head when literate societies that have notions like intellectual property encounter (usually 'colonize') societies that are oral and consider stories to be under carefully administered stewardship (not ownership). Usually, some author hears a story and repackages it into a successful book with their name on it, which violates the codes of stewardship in various ways. Complaints about such behaviour, however, go unheeded, since both the law and the media in which these debates are aired operate under the paradigms of ownership, not stewardship.