But the internet is not just a cheap medium for transferring music; it is also a cheap medium for advertisement. AND it is a global medium. The town barrier is completely broken. Micro payment might just be the missing link in the chain to make music a balanced and reasonable industry unlike the way it is now.
And I'm sure if this commercial model takes place there will be web sites dedicated to finding new interesting music, make reviews etc. There are already sites that promote all kind of products this way. These sites will help the users find artists that match their tastes, they will get comments and reviews from others, etc.
Yes but one could debate that there are other more important critical skills. Understanding the political system so you can make enlighened choices, for example. First-aid, medical knowledge (could save your life!) philosophy, psychology (we all have a brain!), communications skills, It could be anything else!
What makes computer programming more important? Plus, the possible knowledge is endless. When do you stop? Scripting languages? c++? assembly? or even transistors? quantum phenomenons at the trnsistor level? As there are so many programming languages, so many different computing domains, so many operating systems, so so so many protocols that all do the same thing, you could spend a life time trying to understand every aspect of a computer.
With CPU's operating at or above microwave oven frequencies, maybe Intel is just trying to sheild us from the harmfullradiations. Hey and since the CPU clock is a square have couldn't it even have highger more dangerous harmonics?
So the shows that are actually creative, artistic and interesting would get the money, and the shows that are just addictive psychological masturbation would go bankcrupt or have to live on their advertisements.
And this is bad why?
Maybe people would be aware that some shows don't deserve the money, that they are just watching these shows because they are designed using psychological tricks to artificially exite their curiosity and create a dependence.
Instead of comparing it to a minority group you should be comparing it to a company or club.
No, in a companie or club you know who the members are. There are official rules they must obay in order to stay in the organisation. There is a hierarchy of people making sure the rules are obeyed.
A community is people with something in common. The member isn't well defined. Are you a member if you use linux? Are you a member if you have used other open source software? Do you need to have contributed to a project to be a member? Maybe you need to have contributed to Linux? Or maybe you just need to have used a product that was made by open source software (Most websites).
If someone that has something in common with you does a crime does it mean you are guilty?
The "business model" of linux is one where everything is decentralized. Everyone for themselves. If I don't like a part of it I get the source code and change it my way. Its the survival of the fittest. It makes the best products. There is not a closed group that you have to be member of and that is what makes it great.
So for those households, which are very much in the minority with respect to this country's total population, the responsibility automatically falls on the video game companies to contingency-plan for the worst of situations?
I'm not saying its all their responsability. The reponsability is shared with other organizations as you pointed out. I'm sure the gaming companies didn't know better as the effect of games on kids is hard to predict. But if we keep seeing this kind of incident, and that we determine that there is trully a danger to inocent people in letting kids play certain types of violent games even after the Department of Social Services and other organizations has done all they could. Then, If it's going to save lives of inocent people then it might be wise have more regulation.
Why aren't cities absolutely stuffed to the gills with kids running amok with guns, shooting and raping everyone in sight?
Ok now you are just being irrational. It doesn't need to be that bad to be problematic.
The truth is that the most common psyche is the balanced psyche
I totally agree. But even if only 1% is unbalanced, and 1% of that 1% is going to murder someone because of games. It still going to kill alot of people.
Yes but, that is not an argument to let kids play violent games.
The game industry knows that THERE ARE problem kids out there, THERE ARE psychologically unstable kids out there. There is a chance that if a kid is not stable it could be inherited. Thus, his parents might not be better that him, and the parents are not necessarilly able to take care of the kid aproprietly. If a game is what it takes to make unstable kids go too far, maybe we should put restrictions on those games.
I'm not saying I'm for that kind of control over people, there are good arguments that support the opposite. I'm just saying you don't have an argument.
When I first read this article it jsut didn't make any sense. I mean the 25000$ thing is just preposterous. At first it sound pretty much impossible to give that much money to everybody. But the more I think about it the more I think it might work. (everything but the idea of putting advertisment everywhere). I don't know about 25000$ but there could be some kind of fund with an amount that is determined by what is possible to collect. I think it makes sense that the amount would naturally grow more and more when the country would make use of more and more automation and robots.
The only thing I wonder is how would this country perform in a global economy? Would people become lasy and less productive thus decreasing global competition, and could the robots compensate for this decrease in competition?
This is really scaring me. Because it really looks like SCO is putting, destroying linux a priority over saving its own butt and winning in court. I don't like to make assumptions, because I could be wrong, but let's speculate. It looks more and more like this lawsuit is in fact for the benefit of another companie, SCO knows it is going to lose but the point is to make as much damage to linux as they can while doing it. And since, I am sure any trace of discution/conspiring with this third companie is probably non existant, there is really no proof and people promoting linux can never get compensated for the damage.
When is this actually going to court? It is obvious that when it does the juge will make them stop all of this nonsence. I hope it is soon. Could someone ask for an injunction on this destructive behaviour, negative publicity etc. until the whole thing gets settled? Who would be responsible in representing and protecting linux and the GPL?
Now what corporation could SCO be doing this for???;-)
And that's great for us.
[...]
BTW, anybody notice how SCO's actions are more and more in line with Microsoft's wishes? Attacking GPL is one such thing, urging IBM and others to abandon their "futile" GPL use...
The two paragraphs you have just written contraticts themselves. If this lawsuit is in fact for the benefit of another companie, SCO knows it is going to lose but the point is to make as much damage to linux as they can while doing it. And since, I am sure any trace of discution/conspiring with this third companie is probably non existant. there is really no proof and people representing linux can never get compensated for the damage. So SCO doing damage to linux is NOT "great for us".
from enova's web site:
Q: What is "X-Wall SE"?
A: The X-Wall SE is an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) that encrypts and decrypts the entire hard disk bit by bit (including boot sector, temp files, swap files and the operating system) with real-time performance using the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) certified DES (Data Encryption Standard) and TDES (Triple DES) algorithms.
Q: How can X-Wall SE encrypt the entire disk in "real-time"?
A: X-Wall SE is specifically engineered for high speed communications with the disk. X-Wall SE offers 1.1 Giga bit per second or higher real-time performance to all IDE compatible hard drives. Since X-Wall SE hardware performs all encryption and decryption tasks, there is no software to cause memory and interrupt overhead.
Q: Can X-Wall SE work with all types of operating systems?
A: The X-Wall SE requires no device drivers and is independent from all operating systems. The only requirement is an Ultra ATA (Ultra DMA) compliant disk drive.
Q: What is "DES/TDES"?
A: DES (Data Encryption Standard) was originally introduced by NSA (National Security Agency) and IBM and has since become a Federal data encryption standard as defined in FIPS 46-3 (Federal Information Processing Standard). DES works on 64-bit data segments with a 64-bit key of which 8 bits provide parity, resulting in a 56-bit effective length. A variant on DES is TDES, in which the plain text is processed three times with two or three different DES secret keys. With two encryption keys used, the result is an encryption equivalent to using a 112-bit key. With three keys, the result is an encryption equivalent to using a 168-bit key. In practice with a 128-bit TDES, the plain text is encrypted with the first key, decrypted with the second key, and then encrypted again with the first key.
Q: How is key length related to security?
A: In general, a larger key length creates a stronger cipher, which means an eavesdropper must spend more time and resources to find the decryption key. For instance, 240 (a DES 40-bit strength) represents a key space of 1,099,511,627,776 possible combinations. While this number seems impressive, it is definitely feasible for a microprocessor or a specially designed ASIC to perform the huge number of calculations necessary to derive the key. Surprisingly an investment of only about US$10,000 investment in FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) will be able to recover a 40-bit key in 12 minutes. Further, a US$10,000,000 investment in ASIC will be able to recover a 40-bit key in 0.05 second. A government agency that can afford investing US$100,000,000 or more will be able to recover a 40-bit key in a whopping 0.002 second! Thus a 40-bit length cipher offers a bare minimum protection for your confidentiality and privacy. Fortunately the "work factor" increases exponentially as we increase the key length. For example, an increase of one bit in length doubles the key space, so 241 represents key space of 2,199,023,255,552 possible combinations. A 2112 bit TDES cipher offers extremely strong security (5,192,296,858,534,827,628,530,496,329,220,096 possible combinations) that should resist known attacks for the next 15 to 20 years, considering the advance of semiconductor design and manufacturing.
oh and here's the link:
http://www.enovatech.net/html/ps_se_qa.htm
I have difficulty beliving what you are saying is true. Didn't you guys have a seperate network not connected to the ouside world where all sensitive project are done and backdoors irrelevent? In my experience sensitive information have been kept in such a network.
I am convinced agencies such as the NSA, FBI, CIA... all have one. Or maybe you are not in a department where the information is considered sensitive and you should be.
Ok I can see why some people might have seen this as flamebait but the man has got a point.
We realy don't need to worry about the goverment outlawing open source because it would be bad for the economy.
If it ever happens, it will promote the growth of companies in the rest of the world were they are able to use this free and infinite resource (open source software). And companies not using it will become uncompetitive. They will have to move out of the country where they can use open source.
Some people think that open source is more of a left Marxist thing, but here it fits right in the world of capitalism, where it acts as a free resource and it carries its own economic weight.
How often do we create resources instead of depleting them!
But you are assuming that the people who used the theory didn't think about them, which thinking about it, seems about right.
But ideally I still think a real genious would have put is theories in practice, at lease to test them.
Then the possibilities of mastering/manipulating you social environment would have been great. And Useful to get what you want. You would have been all mighty powerfull.
Weather you decided to abuse your power and just have fun with what you achieved or decided to use your superior intellect wisely and return to your observing and studying people would be a choice to make. And I guess, in a matter of speaking, you can say that the later choice will make you "grow" more, in some ways.
Yes I wish I would have known more at that point but on the other hand I like the person I am now, and maybe the suffering of being a nerd contributed to making me, who I am.
Yes, I remember having a discution about one of our theory stating that in fact if a popular person dressed wierd it started a trend and if a nerd dressed wierd it got him ridiculed.
That would be a huge waste of FPGA technology. You can use a 2$ microcontroler that contains a 15MHz CPU to control smart consumer electronics. The chips can be programmed in C. motorola You don't need specific chips anymore. FPGA implements massive parallelism. In what consumer electronics do you need massive parallelism? The 2$ microcontroler will be a lot easyer to program since it only does 1 instruction at a time and you don't need to worry about reconfiguring your chip hardware and sincronizing the different parts of the it like in an FPGA.
The only place in consumer electronics where an FPGA would be usefull would be in application where space is critical like in PDA, handhelds... There the FPGA could be reprogrammed to be used as different periferals. For example if you need a sound card voila the chip transform into one. Then later you need a modem and again it is programmed into the chip. It would save space by having one chip transforming into different chips. But I'm not even sure the gain would be that big compared to having one standard chip that contains, video card/modem/sound card modules that can be turned on and off.
I think people are trying to get too much credit for this new area of research. This is not new, it has existed for a years. And the "Old Kind of Science" has a lot of merit too. The difference between the two is not a mathimatical discovery or a physical theory, it is computing power. Scientists have know for a long time that things can be simulated by cellular automata. I find Wolfram arrogant for trying to get credits for this way of thinking. The passage from algebraic approximations to cellular automata comes from the computers.
A few years ago it would have been practically impossible to use these kinds of theory. We are just now getting the computing speed and memory (at an affordable price) needed to simulate, millions on molecules in a cell, or millions of cells in a body, or millions of neurons in a brain, or millions of atoms in a stream of water etc...
Of course now that we have the computers we can advance our knowledge in the field of cellular automata, being able to test the theories and refine them.
And I am of the same opinion as Barabási or Wolfram: I think this kind of aproach is incredibly powerful, enabling us to predict things and create artificial intelligence in a way never possible before.
This however does not make algebric solutions or aproximations less usefull. Math is a tool wether it is in the algebraic form or in the form of cellular automata. BOTH methods are aproximations of reality. Unless we find the grand unified theory of everything and we simulate things to the smalest most elementary particle, we will always make aproximations. And even if we find the basic rules to the univers its going to be a long time before we get to computing power to simulate large systems from "infinitely" small particles.
Of course maybe cellular automata model is a little closser the real world. But the aproximation we have to make is worst. In every iteration of these simulations we make a small error. These error add with time so that if we simulate something for more than a few seconds we need have a result that is far from reality. Algebraic solutions dont have that cummulative error problem.
P.S. I have to admit I haven't read Wolfram's book or Barabási`s book because I was lacking free time. So I hope I am getting the idea of these theories right. Tell me if I don't make sense.
And besides, the politicians will only take us seriously if we play their game. It is not when lobbying and putting political pressure that they think we are just those "anoying hackers". It is when we break their laws by writing illigal code. Of course sometimes we have no choice, actions have to be taken. But, democraty works based on the fact that different groups put pressure to get something and we end up getting something balanced in between what everybody wants. Now if a group stops putting pressure then it will get nothing and the other groups will get everything.
Maybe lobbying looks like it doesn't work because it will nerver give you all of what you want, but realy it serves to get more of what you want, not all of it.
We do have some national parks and politics that are good for the environment. We owe them to people who put pressure on the goverment and to people who acted by making scientific studies promoting those policies.
Of course democraty dosn't always work, but it has a better chance of working if you try it than if you just try to work around it.
Slashdot Mirror
But the internet is not just a cheap medium for transferring music; it is also a cheap medium for advertisement. AND it is a global medium. The town barrier is completely broken. Micro payment might just be the missing link in the chain to make music a balanced and reasonable industry unlike the way it is now.
And I'm sure if this commercial model takes place there will be web sites dedicated to finding new interesting music, make reviews etc. There are already sites that promote all kind of products this way. These sites will help the users find artists that match their tastes, they will get comments and reviews from others, etc.
Yes but one could debate that there are other more important critical skills. Understanding the political system so you can make enlighened choices, for example. First-aid, medical knowledge (could save your life!) philosophy, psychology (we all have a brain!), communications skills, It could be anything else!
What makes computer programming more important? Plus, the possible knowledge is endless. When do you stop? Scripting languages? c++? assembly? or even transistors? quantum phenomenons at the trnsistor level? As there are so many programming languages, so many different computing domains, so many operating systems, so so so many protocols that all do the same thing, you could spend a life time trying to understand every aspect of a computer.
With CPU's operating at or above microwave oven frequencies, maybe Intel is just trying to sheild us from the harmfull radiations.
Hey and since the CPU clock is a square have couldn't it even have highger more dangerous harmonics?
-Puts thin foil hat on-
Or, SCO is opening a door for some big companies who have interest in the continuation of this lawsuit, to give them money....
-removes thin foil hat-
I think someone has difficulty accepting his sexuality....
I shut down every night to save energy! With the new CPU's generating all the heat its worth it.
So the shows that are actually creative, artistic and interesting would get the money, and the shows that are just addictive psychological masturbation would go bankcrupt or have to live on their advertisements.
And this is bad why?
Maybe people would be aware that some shows don't deserve the money, that they are just watching these shows because they are designed using psychological tricks to artificially exite their curiosity and create a dependence.
Instead of comparing it to a minority group you should be comparing it to a company or club.
No, in a companie or club you know who the members are. There are official rules they must obay in order to stay in the organisation. There is a hierarchy of people making sure the rules are obeyed.
A community is people with something in common. The member isn't well defined. Are you a member if you use linux? Are you a member if you have used other open source software? Do you need to have contributed to a project to be a member? Maybe you need to have contributed to Linux? Or maybe you just need to have used a product that was made by open source software (Most websites).
If someone that has something in common with you does a crime does it mean you are guilty?
The "business model" of linux is one where everything is decentralized. Everyone for themselves. If I don't like a part of it I get the source code and change it my way. Its the survival of the fittest. It makes the best products. There is not a closed group that you have to be member of and that is what makes it great.
fusion: noun the act or process of liquefying or melting
ice is considered to be cold to be cold right?
So for those households, which are very much in the minority with respect to this country's total population, the responsibility automatically falls on the video game companies to contingency-plan for the worst of situations?
I'm not saying its all their responsability. The reponsability is shared with other organizations as you pointed out. I'm sure the gaming companies didn't know better as the effect of games on kids is hard to predict. But if we keep seeing this kind of incident, and that we determine that there is trully a danger to inocent people in letting kids play certain types of violent games even after the Department of Social Services and other organizations has done all they could. Then, If it's going to save lives of inocent people then it might be wise have more regulation.
Why aren't cities absolutely stuffed to the gills with kids running amok with guns, shooting and raping everyone in sight?
Ok now you are just being irrational. It doesn't need to be that bad to be problematic.
The truth is that the most common psyche is the balanced psyche
I totally agree. But even if only 1% is unbalanced, and 1% of that 1% is going to murder someone because of games. It still going to kill alot of people.
Yes but, that is not an argument to let kids play violent games.
The game industry knows that THERE ARE problem kids out there, THERE ARE psychologically unstable kids out there. There is a chance that if a kid is not stable it could be inherited. Thus, his parents might not be better that him, and the parents are not necessarilly able to take care of the kid aproprietly. If a game is what it takes to make unstable kids go too far, maybe we should put restrictions on those games.
I'm not saying I'm for that kind of control over people, there are good arguments that support the opposite. I'm just saying you don't have an argument.
When I first read this article it jsut didn't make any sense. I mean the 25000$ thing is just preposterous. At first it sound pretty much impossible to give that much money to everybody. But the more I think about it the more I think it might work. (everything but the idea of putting advertisment everywhere).
I don't know about 25000$ but there could be some kind of fund with an amount that is determined by what is possible to collect. I think it makes sense that the amount would naturally grow more and more when the country would make use of more and more automation and robots.
The only thing I wonder is how would this country perform in a global economy? Would people become lasy and less productive thus decreasing global competition, and could the robots compensate for this decrease in competition?
This is really scaring me. Because it really looks like SCO is putting, destroying linux a priority over saving its own butt and winning in court. I don't like to make assumptions, because I could be wrong, but let's speculate.
;-)
It looks more and more like this lawsuit is in fact for the benefit of another companie, SCO knows it is going to lose but the point is to make as much damage to linux as they can while doing it. And since, I am sure any trace of discution/conspiring with this third companie is probably non existant, there is really no proof and people promoting linux can never get compensated for the damage.
When is this actually going to court? It is obvious that when it does the juge will make them stop all of this nonsence. I hope it is soon.
Could someone ask for an injunction on this destructive behaviour, negative publicity etc. until the whole thing gets settled? Who would be responsible in representing and protecting linux and the GPL?
Now what corporation could SCO be doing this for???
And that's great for us. [...] BTW, anybody notice how SCO's actions are more and more in line with Microsoft's wishes? Attacking GPL is one such thing, urging IBM and others to abandon their "futile" GPL use...
The two paragraphs you have just written contraticts themselves. If this lawsuit is in fact for the benefit of another companie, SCO knows it is going to lose but the point is to make as much damage to linux as they can while doing it. And since, I am sure any trace of discution/conspiring with this third companie is probably non existant. there is really no proof and people representing linux can never get compensated for the damage. So SCO doing damage to linux is NOT "great for us".
That is what is used:
from enova's web site:
Q: What is "X-Wall SE"?
A: The X-Wall SE is an ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) that encrypts and decrypts the entire hard disk bit by bit (including boot sector, temp files, swap files and the operating system) with real-time performance using the NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) certified DES (Data Encryption Standard) and TDES (Triple DES) algorithms.
Q: How can X-Wall SE encrypt the entire disk in "real-time"?
A: X-Wall SE is specifically engineered for high speed communications with the disk. X-Wall SE offers 1.1 Giga bit per second or higher real-time performance to all IDE compatible hard drives. Since X-Wall SE hardware performs all encryption and decryption tasks, there is no software to cause memory and interrupt overhead.
Q: Can X-Wall SE work with all types of operating systems?
A: The X-Wall SE requires no device drivers and is independent from all operating systems. The only requirement is an Ultra ATA (Ultra DMA) compliant disk drive.
Q: What is "DES/TDES"?
A: DES (Data Encryption Standard) was originally introduced by NSA (National Security Agency) and IBM and has since become a Federal data encryption standard as defined in FIPS 46-3 (Federal Information Processing Standard). DES works on 64-bit data segments with a 64-bit key of which 8 bits provide parity, resulting in a 56-bit effective length. A variant on DES is TDES, in which the plain text is processed three times with two or three different DES secret keys. With two encryption keys used, the result is an encryption equivalent to using a 112-bit key. With three keys, the result is an encryption equivalent to using a 168-bit key. In practice with a 128-bit TDES, the plain text is encrypted with the first key, decrypted with the second key, and then encrypted again with the first key.
Q: How is key length related to security?
A: In general, a larger key length creates a stronger cipher, which means an eavesdropper must spend more time and resources to find the decryption key. For instance, 240 (a DES 40-bit strength) represents a key space of 1,099,511,627,776 possible combinations. While this number seems impressive, it is definitely feasible for a microprocessor or a specially designed ASIC to perform the huge number of calculations necessary to derive the key. Surprisingly an investment of only about US$10,000 investment in FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Arrays) will be able to recover a 40-bit key in 12 minutes. Further, a US$10,000,000 investment in ASIC will be able to recover a 40-bit key in 0.05 second. A government agency that can afford investing US$100,000,000 or more will be able to recover a 40-bit key in a whopping 0.002 second! Thus a 40-bit length cipher offers a bare minimum protection for your confidentiality and privacy. Fortunately the "work factor" increases exponentially as we increase the key length. For example, an increase of one bit in length doubles the key space, so 241 represents key space of 2,199,023,255,552 possible combinations. A 2112 bit TDES cipher offers extremely strong security (5,192,296,858,534,827,628,530,496,329,220,096 possible combinations) that should resist known attacks for the next 15 to 20 years, considering the advance of semiconductor design and manufacturing.
oh and here's the link: http://www.enovatech.net/html/ps_se_qa.htm
I have difficulty beliving what you are saying is true. Didn't you guys have a seperate network not connected to the ouside world where all sensitive project are done and backdoors irrelevent? In my experience sensitive information have been kept in such a network.
... all have one. Or maybe you are not in a department where the information is considered sensitive and you should be.
I am convinced agencies such as the NSA, FBI, CIA
OK this deserves more visibility! At the risk of repeating myself.
Today I read this from advocado:
"SCO hints it may sue Linus Torvalds for patent infringement"
and then a few articles below:
"Microsoft to purchase UNIX rights from SCO"
refering to this article.
Coincidence? Has anyone else noticed?
starm_
Today I read this from advocado:
"SCO hints it may sue Linus Torvalds for patent infringement"
and then a few articles below:
"Microsoft to purchase UNIX rights from SCO"
refering to this article.
Coincidence?
starm_
Ok I can see why some people might have seen this as flamebait but the man has got a point.
We realy don't need to worry about the goverment outlawing open source because it would be bad for the economy. If it ever happens, it will promote the growth of companies in the rest of the world were they are able to use this free and infinite resource (open source software). And companies not using it will become uncompetitive. They will have to move out of the country where they can use open source.
Some people think that open source is more of a left Marxist thing, but here it fits right in the world of capitalism, where it acts as a free resource and it carries its own economic weight.
How often do we create resources instead of depleting them!
Starm
But you are assuming that the people who used the theory didn't think about them, which thinking about it, seems about right.
But ideally I still think a real genious would have put is theories in practice, at lease to test them.
Then the possibilities of mastering/manipulating you social environment would have been great. And Useful to get what you want. You would have been all mighty powerfull.
Weather you decided to abuse your power and just have fun with what you achieved or decided to use your superior intellect wisely and return to your observing and studying people would be a choice to make. And I guess, in a matter of speaking, you can say that the later choice will make you "grow" more, in some ways.
Yes I wish I would have known more at that point but on the other hand I like the person I am now, and maybe the suffering of being a nerd contributed to making me, who I am.
Yes, I remember having a discution about one of our theory stating that in fact if a popular person dressed wierd it started a trend and if a nerd dressed wierd it got him ridiculed.
That would be a huge waste of FPGA technology. You can use a 2$ microcontroler that contains a 15MHz CPU to control smart consumer electronics. The chips can be programmed in C. motorola You don't need specific chips anymore. FPGA implements massive parallelism. In what consumer electronics do you need massive parallelism? The 2$ microcontroler will be a lot easyer to program since it only does 1 instruction at a time and you don't need to worry about reconfiguring your chip hardware and sincronizing the different parts of the it like in an FPGA.
The only place in consumer electronics where an FPGA would be usefull would be in application where space is critical like in PDA, handhelds... There the FPGA could be reprogrammed to be used as different periferals. For example if you need a sound card voila the chip transform into one. Then later you need a modem and again it is programmed into the chip. It would save space by having one chip transforming into different chips. But I'm not even sure the gain would be that big compared to having one standard chip that contains, video card/modem/sound card modules that can be turned on and off.
I think people are trying to get too much credit for this new area of research. This is not new, it has existed for a years. And the "Old Kind of Science" has a lot of merit too. The difference between the two is not a mathimatical discovery or a physical theory, it is computing power. Scientists have know for a long time that things can be simulated by cellular automata. I find Wolfram arrogant for trying to get credits for this way of thinking. The passage from algebraic approximations to cellular automata comes from the computers.
A few years ago it would have been practically impossible to use these kinds of theory. We are just now getting the computing speed and memory (at an affordable price) needed to simulate, millions on molecules in a cell, or millions of cells in a body, or millions of neurons in a brain, or millions of atoms in a stream of water etc...
Of course now that we have the computers we can advance our knowledge in the field of cellular automata, being able to test the theories and refine them.
And I am of the same opinion as Barabási or Wolfram: I think this kind of aproach is incredibly powerful, enabling us to predict things and create artificial intelligence in a way never possible before.
This however does not make algebric solutions or aproximations less usefull. Math is a tool wether it is in the algebraic form or in the form of cellular automata. BOTH methods are aproximations of reality. Unless we find the grand unified theory of everything and we simulate things to the smalest most elementary particle, we will always make aproximations. And even if we find the basic rules to the univers its going to be a long time before we get to computing power to simulate large systems from "infinitely" small particles.
Of course maybe cellular automata model is a little closser the real world. But the aproximation we have to make is worst. In every iteration of these simulations we make a small error. These error add with time so that if we simulate something for more than a few seconds we need have a result that is far from reality. Algebraic solutions dont have that cummulative error problem.
P.S. I have to admit I haven't read Wolfram's book or Barabási`s book because I was lacking free time. So I hope I am getting the idea of these theories right. Tell me if I don't make sense.
And besides, the politicians will only take us seriously if we play their game. It is not when lobbying and putting political pressure that they think we are just those "anoying hackers". It is when we break their laws by writing illigal code. Of course sometimes we have no choice, actions have to be taken. But, democraty works based on the fact that different groups put pressure to get something and we end up getting something balanced in between what everybody wants. Now if a group stops putting pressure then it will get nothing and the other groups will get everything.
Maybe lobbying looks like it doesn't work because it will nerver give you all of what you want, but realy it serves to get more of what you want, not all of it.
We do have some national parks and politics that are good for the environment. We owe them to people who put pressure on the goverment and to people who acted by making scientific studies promoting those policies.
Of course democraty dosn't always work, but it has a better chance of working if you try it than if you just try to work around it.
gnein
What about the pile of protocols being stacked over each other but doing nothing more than was possible with TCP. Especially all that XML based stuff!