To me, the most amazing part of the article is on page 5:
If visual and tactile sensations mimic the information that usually flows between Aurora's own arm and brain, long-term interaction with a BMI could possibly stimulate her brain to incorporate the robot into its representations of her body--schema known to exist in most brain regions. In other words, Aurora's brain might represent this artificial device as another part of her body. Neuronal tissue in her brain might even dedicate itself to operating the robot arm and interpreting its feedback.
So, not only could you teach your brain to replace a damaged limb with a prosthetic one, but you could potentially teach your brain to operate a totally *new* limb! How cool would that be??
And the whole idea of remotely controlling limbs makes me think that the concept of Hector from Saturn 3 [www.imdb.com] probably seemed far-fetched at the time, but starts to be less and less so...
Based on your discussion of Ontario politics, I am taken to assume you're a Canadian citizen.
To clarify, I am a US citizen residing in Ontario. This allows me to 'take advantage' of the current exchange rate *grin*, as well as be exposed to advantages, disadvantages and idiosynchracies of both countries and their respective laws/regulations. This is also why I am familiar with the Ontario highways and OPP practices, and why I mention the first amendment, DMCA etc.
I partially agree with Cringley. A situation very similar to the speed limit scenario is already happening in Canada. Last month the Ministry of Transportation in Ontario started toying with the idea of raising the speed limit on the 401 highway from 100km/h (63mph) to 120km/h (75mph), because that is how fast people drive there nowadays. The Ministry says it's done some research with the help of the OPP (state troopers), and it's come to the conclusion that despite the higher average speed there are fewer accidents and fatalities, so the raising of the speed limit might be possible.
Naturally, there are some issues with this proposal (people will start driving even faster and more aggressively, accident rates will increase dramatically etc.), but those are not relevant here. What *is* relevant is that what Cringley describes is possible *if* EVERYONE does it. Truth is, almost everyone does. It's much easier to single out those who obey the official speed limit (most often American drivers passing through / visiting) than those who don't. Mind you, this didn't happen overnight, it took time -- first people averaged 105km/h, then 110 and so on. Kinda like what's happening with our constitutional rights right now (i.e. the first amendment, slowly being eroded by those with enough money). Right now, you can pretty much be sure you won't get pulled over unless you're going over 120, unless you stand out.
Personally, if everyone violated the DMCA on small scale (as in, don't copy 100 cds a day to make a profit from it), nobody would probably care. If Napster took longer to become the service that it was, it probably wouldn't have been as visible to the people at RIAA. But, it happened virtually 'overnight', made a big splash thanks to the media, got noticed relatively quickly, and viola! I betcha if someone started a nation-wide promotion of cheap, reliable radar detectors, those would become outlawed within weeks.
So, to recap, I think civil disobedience would be the way to defeat the monster, I'm just not sure about the proposed tempo.
Unfortunately I must agree with the other poster -- certain areas of the suburbs do have a bad smell to them. If you want to know what I mean, take a drive along the I-190, get off at River Road (just before the Grand Island toll booths) and head into Tonawanda. Just as you exit, notice the refinery tanks on your left and right. Then, as you pass by the Niawanda Park, observe landfills on your right. I used to live in Gateway Park apartments (the site of CanalFest), which are located some two miles away. And I used to commute along that route every day. On some days I just couldn't drive with the windows down, as much as I'd like to. BTW, another place like this is the stretch of the I-190 in Niagara Falls (between Rt.62 and Rt.198) -- more landfills. The Buffalo News article makes a great point, though: Lake Erie is an excellent natural air conditioner. Now that I live in St.Catharines (if you're from around here, you know where that is), I frequently find that on any sunny day, home is 10F warmer than downtown Buffalo. And that's only 25 miles (40km for the Damn English Units impaired) away. How messed up is that?:) Still, the climate here is great, as far as I'm concerned. Having lived in Philadelphia for years, I don't miss its summer triple-H's and double 90s. Western New York rules!
Or, better still, have VNC on her computer, and (with her permission) walk her through doing something herself, increasing her self-confidence, saving you time trying to figure out what she was clicking on... Naturally, you'd need to assure her that you're not spying on her while she's emailing back and forth with cooking class mates or what not...
OK, I'm a tad confused by your logic here. IBM certifies their hardware for Linux and sells that hardware day in, day out. They are making a good buck off of it while they're at it. They also charge a pretty penny for service contracts. How much do they give back to the community? Not a whole lot. UnitedLinux, it seems, wants to do the same thing, but for a wider range of vendors. Both IBM and UL go through a lot of trouble to verify that a particular system works with Linux and periphery software. Why is UL the bad guy, and IBM not? As other posters mentioned, the target audience for UL are big corporations, who don't have time to go through all the hoops of assuring that their Linux computers will be 100% compatible with that distro they chose. Sure, it might be cheaper to do it yourself, but when you're a big corporation, you don't have the time or the resources to do that. It's not what you do on a daily basis. You don't have the experts in-house to do that for you. It's a lot less of a hassle to go with someone who guarantees compatibility. Even if it costs more. Now why is that unreasonable if such a vendor charges you for that 100% compatibility assurance? Remember, they're not selling a run-of-the-mill RedHat or SUSE distro. They're selling a distribution which they've modified on their own. Which they've worked for. They've earned that money.
I speak from personal experience. I know what it's like to create a custom boot kernel for that IBM x330 or Netfinity computer with that particular IBM RAID controller, only so that I can boot it up and install Linux on it. It's not rocket science, but it takes effort -- sifting through man pages, online documentation, looking for that one itsy bitsy detail that makes it all tick. I get paid to do that -- why shouldn't they?
I guess it would all depend on what the frequency of that particular system was. Certain frequencies (such as the analog cellphone spectrum) are illegal to snoop on, others have no such rules associated with them. If you were snooping on a frequency which is not regulated in this manner, you should be OK, since in the US anything not explicitly forbidden is allowed (until, naturally, someone sets a precedent).
I know of one maglev system in public use in the US, and that is the automated and unmanned Airtrain rail used at the Newark International Airport in New Jersey to connect all the terminals to parking lots. Although it doesn't reach very high speeds, it's a really cool technological design (especially the U-turn points at the ends of the track!)
I don't know about your provider / plan, but I live in south-eastern Ontario, I have an email-enabled cell phone from Rogers AT&T and all incoming email/SMS is free, regardless of text messaging plans. I'd say, switch if you can.
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To me, the most amazing part of the article is on page 5:
If visual and tactile sensations mimic the information that usually flows between Aurora's own arm and brain, long-term interaction with a BMI could possibly stimulate her brain to incorporate the robot into its representations of her body--schema known to exist in most brain regions. In other words, Aurora's brain might represent this artificial device as another part of her body. Neuronal tissue in her brain might even dedicate itself to operating the robot arm and interpreting its feedback.
So, not only could you teach your brain to replace a damaged limb with a prosthetic one, but you could potentially teach your brain to operate a totally *new* limb! How cool would that be??
And the whole idea of remotely controlling limbs makes me think that the concept of Hector from Saturn 3 [www.imdb.com] probably seemed far-fetched at the time, but starts to be less and less so...
Based on your discussion of Ontario politics, I am taken to assume you're a Canadian citizen.
To clarify, I am a US citizen residing in Ontario. This allows me to 'take advantage' of the current exchange rate *grin*, as well as be exposed to advantages, disadvantages and idiosynchracies of both countries and their respective laws/regulations. This is also why I am familiar with the Ontario highways and OPP practices, and why I mention the first amendment, DMCA etc.
I partially agree with Cringley. A situation very similar to the speed limit scenario is already happening in Canada. Last month the Ministry of Transportation in Ontario started toying with the idea of raising the speed limit on the 401 highway from 100km/h (63mph) to 120km/h (75mph), because that is how fast people drive there nowadays. The Ministry says it's done some research with the help of the OPP (state troopers), and it's come to the conclusion that despite the higher average speed there are fewer accidents and fatalities, so the raising of the speed limit might be possible.
Naturally, there are some issues with this proposal (people will start driving even faster and more aggressively, accident rates will increase dramatically etc.), but those are not relevant here. What *is* relevant is that what Cringley describes is possible *if* EVERYONE does it. Truth is, almost everyone does. It's much easier to single out those who obey the official speed limit (most often American drivers passing through / visiting) than those who don't. Mind you, this didn't happen overnight, it took time -- first people averaged 105km/h, then 110 and so on. Kinda like what's happening with our constitutional rights right now (i.e. the first amendment, slowly being eroded by those with enough money). Right now, you can pretty much be sure you won't get pulled over unless you're going over 120, unless you stand out.
Personally, if everyone violated the DMCA on small scale (as in, don't copy 100 cds a day to make a profit from it), nobody would probably care. If Napster took longer to become the service that it was, it probably wouldn't have been as visible to the people at RIAA. But, it happened virtually 'overnight', made a big splash thanks to the media, got noticed relatively quickly, and viola! I betcha if someone started a nation-wide promotion of cheap, reliable radar detectors, those would become outlawed within weeks.
So, to recap, I think civil disobedience would be the way to defeat the monster, I'm just not sure about the proposed tempo.
The half the Canadians living in Ontario are criminals :) Have you ever seen how many of them get pulled over for speeding in New York State?
:)
And they told me Canada was safer than the States...
Heh... good thing I re-read your post... at first glance I thought it said melodic depressive metal bands
Unfortunately I must agree with the other poster -- certain areas of the suburbs do have a bad smell to them. If you want to know what I mean, take a drive along the I-190, get off at River Road (just before the Grand Island toll booths) and head into Tonawanda. Just as you exit, notice the refinery tanks on your left and right. Then, as you pass by the Niawanda Park, observe landfills on your right. I used to live in Gateway Park apartments (the site of CanalFest), which are located some two miles away. And I used to commute along that route every day. On some days I just couldn't drive with the windows down, as much as I'd like to. :)
BTW, another place like this is the stretch of the I-190 in Niagara Falls (between Rt.62 and Rt.198) -- more landfills.
The Buffalo News article makes a great point, though: Lake Erie is an excellent natural air conditioner. Now that I live in St.Catharines (if you're from around here, you know where that is), I frequently find that on any sunny day, home is 10F warmer than downtown Buffalo. And that's only 25 miles (40km for the Damn English Units impaired) away. How messed up is that?
Still, the climate here is great, as far as I'm concerned. Having lived in Philadelphia for years, I don't miss its summer triple-H's and double 90s. Western New York rules!
Or, better still, have VNC on her computer, and (with her permission) walk her through doing something herself, increasing her self-confidence, saving you time trying to figure out what she was clicking on... Naturally, you'd need to assure her that you're not spying on her while she's emailing back and forth with cooking class mates or what not...
OK, I'm a tad confused by your logic here. IBM certifies their hardware for Linux and sells that hardware day in, day out. They are making a good buck off of it while they're at it. They also charge a pretty penny for service contracts. How much do they give back to the community? Not a whole lot. UnitedLinux, it seems, wants to do the same thing, but for a wider range of vendors. Both IBM and UL go through a lot of trouble to verify that a particular system works with Linux and periphery software. Why is UL the bad guy, and IBM not? As other posters mentioned, the target audience for UL are big corporations, who don't have time to go through all the hoops of assuring that their Linux computers will be 100% compatible with that distro they chose. Sure, it might be cheaper to do it yourself, but when you're a big corporation, you don't have the time or the resources to do that. It's not what you do on a daily basis. You don't have the experts in-house to do that for you. It's a lot less of a hassle to go with someone who guarantees compatibility. Even if it costs more. Now why is that unreasonable if such a vendor charges you for that 100% compatibility assurance? Remember, they're not selling a run-of-the-mill RedHat or SUSE distro. They're selling a distribution which they've modified on their own. Which they've worked for. They've earned that money.
I speak from personal experience. I know what it's like to create a custom boot kernel for that IBM x330 or Netfinity computer with that particular IBM RAID controller, only so that I can boot it up and install Linux on it. It's not rocket science, but it takes effort -- sifting through man pages, online documentation, looking for that one itsy bitsy detail that makes it all tick. I get paid to do that -- why shouldn't they?
I guess it would all depend on what the frequency of that particular system was. Certain frequencies (such as the analog cellphone spectrum) are illegal to snoop on, others have no such rules associated with them. If you were snooping on a frequency which is not regulated in this manner, you should be OK, since in the US anything not explicitly forbidden is allowed (until, naturally, someone sets a precedent).
I know of one maglev system in public use in the US, and that is the automated and unmanned Airtrain rail used at the Newark International Airport in New Jersey to connect all the terminals to parking lots. Although it doesn't reach very high speeds, it's a really cool technological design (especially the U-turn points at the ends of the track!)
What a way to recycle old 10Base2 cabling and terminators... We could make million$!
I don't know about your provider / plan, but I live in south-eastern Ontario, I have an email-enabled cell phone from Rogers AT&T and all incoming email/SMS is free, regardless of text messaging plans. I'd say, switch if you can.