which school are you talking about? I went to Linn Mar, and they kept us in sort of a bubble. We couldn't go more than three miles away from marion or we'd explode.
This may seem trite, but remember the adage, "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day..." Assuming the people actually want to become "developed" (as many cultures want nothing to do with it). It's very surprising what technology can do to developing areas. Of course, there's the technological benefits, but I've been more interested in the non-technological aspects. For instance, learning about technology, or doing something that we might find very simple, can be a socially activating thing. Suddenly this person that thought he or she was completely out of the loop can do incredible things with a computer. It can be quite a self confidence booster.
If you're interested in getting more info on the effects of high tech on poor areas, check out the book, "High Technology and Low-Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology", edited by some of the greats, Donald Schon, Bish Sanyal, and William Mitchel. ISBN: 026269199X
of all the shitty towns in iowa, why wouldn't you pick on souix city? CR may smell, and you might not be able to get a decent cup of coffee or pint of beer, but at least they've got a 100 foot aluminum tree. what does soiux city have? a holiday inn and five hundred factories.
I've been toying with a design for something like this. In my design, you can have a tiny little pin with a transmitter in it. There are sensors, networked to your PC through some means, scattered throughout your house that measure the strength of the signal from your transmitter, and tell your PC to send a proportional volume of your music to the speakers. Sort of Gates-esque. The music would follow you around, so from your point of view the volume would be fairly constant.
Re:technology has finally come into their hands
on
RMS On eBooks
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· Score: 1
I think your opinion is based on the notion that our culture will be shaped entirely by the commercial forces that have for decades had pretty much a monopoly on information and entertainment disemination. But I think that has been the case because it hasn't presented huge, culture-stagnating problems in terms of freedom and choice. The past fifty years have been the most dynamic in the course of humanity, and much of that is due to these commercial forces that you're talking about. It was a tremendous growth period, and it isn't showing signs of even coming close to a stable equillibrium. But this kind of change can't go on forever without some sort of reversion.
I agree that the commercial forces mentioned are now poised to do nasty things to our sense of individuality and personal freedoms in more expansive ways than they have done in the past. In the past we as a culture have tolerated it because it worked "well enough". If we (the Royal we) perceive the new culture as being overly nasty in some way, we will find some natural way around it.
An example that you mentioned is the contest between Gnutilla and Napster. Somebody out there thought that Napster was a cool idea, but it didn't jive with that person's sense of freedom. Thus was born Gnutilla. Most people don't have a problem with Napster (or rather, their personal benefit outweighs their sense of loss) so they continue using it. But if Napster would do something nasty like requiring you to submit usage information along with your search queries, more people would switch to something like Gnutilla, and at the same time, Gnutilla would be forced to improve in order to accomodate the influx of new users.
The same sort of thing works with electronic books. As long as people believe that using e-books is beneficial over physical books, these new books will be used. If it isn't beneficial, the companies that are in the content business will make sure to change just enough that they can still make money.
I know this thread is almost dead, but I feel this needs to be said: Visualize your goal: 5%. If a party gets 5% of the popular vote, they are elligible for all sorts of federal perks (and money) for the next presidential election.
Imagine Bush or Gore winning this election, whichever one you dislike more. Now imagine the other one winning. Do you notice a change in your disposition? Do you really think it matters if tweedle dee or tweedle dum is sitting in the chair? Not at all. While voting for Nader might not have any immediate effects, it will be so noted in the log that x% of the vote went to a non-republicrat party. That will cause people in both parties to take a long hard look at the numbers and ask themselves if maybe they should change.
Five percent of the vote. That's all it will take to get the attention of the party leaders.
I worked on a project with a guy a couple semesters ago who was graduating. He did exactly zero work for the project, and even missed the final presentation because he was busy at Sun getting interviewed. I was a better programmer/computer scientist than this guy was when I was a freshman, and sun hired him. That really made me optimistic about the future, knowing what sort of morons I was, um, competing with.
I'm no open source zealot, either. I don't think that there is one fundamental philosophy that applies to all situations at all points in time. But I think that people tend to go with closed-source when open-source is more appropriate, and I believe Wolfram would stand to benefit if they open sourced parts of mathematica.
The reason that I say this is that there are bugs in mathematica that SHOULD NOT BE THERE. This goes beyond the usability glitches--every complex software application has its share of locusts. But there are some (a few that I have been aware of) conceptual bugs in some of the computation algorithms that have been there for a few releases. A guy I know actually contacted them about this, and they bug was STILL there in the next release.
If Wolfram were to open source the algorithm code, people could fix bugs and improve efficiency. This would not bother their own development process. With the libraries under the LGPL and their integration software under a closed-source licence, it would improve the quality of the software as a whole, they could still sell it at the same price, and the quality would improve. Dig?
We have a small grant to develop a web-based virtual math book this summer. The details of this that might interest to this thread are: a) We have to develop (or find) a framework for doing numerical and symbolic math in a web browser (specifically things related to linear algebra), b) we need to create (or find) components for editing/displaying equations, c) this will be GPL'ed wherever possible, unless higher powers intrude. The design is still up in the air, however, and everybody is free to give input.
Google is a tricky piece of work. Macromedia Flash is an amazing bit of programming. I only wish that someone had patented HTTP, GPLed it, and then refused to let Amazon play, effectively kicking them out of the sandbox.
The GPL forbids you from preventing any person, organization, or field of endeavor from using the covered software. This notion is also covered in the Open Source Definition, clauses 5 and 6.
I very much want Linux to succeed, but I do think that there are certain ideals that need to be maintained. Avoiding AOL is one of them.
snip
While I'm all for the spread of Linux as a desktop OS, I'm afraid it will never happen. Most people just want a computer that they can turn on, click on icons, and chat/word-process/etc.
Not to incite bad mojo, but don't you see something slightly contradictory with that?
AOL represents the end-user client, the appliance in the computer, the thing that ma and pa can install by themselves and begin using without having to go through an arduous learning process. (recent 5.0 mishaps notwithstanding)
The Linux glory days are for the most part gone, unless you roll your own. The future is uncertain, but it may be something that is just as good--but if our ideals don't adopt to the changing times, we'll be left with crust. It's a choice: play the game, even if AOL is on the lineup, or take your bat and go home.
This was my first thought when I saw the post on the 3D camera. I think it's cool that others are on this wavelength (post #8 was on this topic as well). But I wonder about the export formats and their interoperability with various 3d game engines. I really don't know too much about those engines, so maybe someone could fill me in: is there a conversion util for VRML (or any of the other formats the camera outputs) to any of the 3D engines? I think that this would be a great tool even outside of the game setting. Imagine IRCing in a virtual version of your bedroom, or the playboy mansion, or an asteroid floating around near a nebula.
This is similar to an idea we have had
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GPL for Books?
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· Score: 1
Recently some people at my university have been talking about the possibility of designing a sort of evolving textbook. (This is totally in the "what if" stage, so nothing I say is official in any way.) The basic idea is that we would create an otherwise normal textbook, but there would also have a complete copy of the book on a web site. Users would be able to read the book there, and if they have questions, they could post them right in the text, with the actual text being the anchor point. Embedded discussions would evolve as users reply to one another. Because the subject matter for the book would be ODEs, we were investigating creating a set of open source tools for end-users to visualize and manipulate complex mathematical formulas. Anyway, this is something that we have been thinking about working on, and if anybody out there has input on the subject, let me know somehow.
Unless the people say, in no uncertain terms, that they will not stand for this, these companies will do this sort of thing more and more. The corporations only understand one thing: money. If We the People (to use an american-centric word) don't pass legislation that fines companies loads of money if they infringe We the People's rights, then it is in their best interest to compile information on people.
But please think about user profiling for a bit: It isn't inherently evil. Most people don't want all their personal data floating from corporation to corporation. But unless this information is being used against you in some way, why do you care? In fact, it might be beneficial to you. How many times, guys, do you sit through some feminine hygeine commercial on TV, wishing they would realize they're missing their target? It is pretty much a fact of life, especially on this still-free network of ours, that advertising will be pretty much everywhere. If you're going to be subjected to all sorts of inane advertising, wouldn't you rather it be about something which you might be interested in? Just some thoughts to chew on.
Microsoft is one of the most commercially influential software companies around today. But Gates is right: Microsoft will eventually be replaced. Back in the days of big iron, IBM was the boss, and nobody really thought that they would ever be replaced. But they have, at least in terms of their hegemony. This is because the game has changed. It changed from big iron to the PC. Now the game is changing again from the PC to anything that starts with "e-". Gates knows this; and that's why they went balls-out on the Internet. But they've lost ground. And the game continues to change. Right now, we're changing the game. Open source, free software, whatever flag you want to wave, is starting to change the economics on the bottom.
My guess is that Gates is well aware of what is going on, but because it is so fundamentally different from everything that Microsoft was built on, he won't have a way to counter it. They're fighting on multiple fronts, and eventually, they will lose their grip. At that point, somebody else will notice that the game has changed, and microsoft will be replaced.
It might not happen today, or tomorrow, but within a matter of a few decades, Microsoft will be just another brick in the wall. Look at IBM today. I've seen numerous Slashdot stories and posts from readers who openly support IBM and their new business strategy. It may be hard for some to really imagine, but people such as ourselves might be saying the same sort of thing about the Microsoft many of us not villify.
I don't think I missed your point. I agree with what you say. All I'm saying is that the fool variety of newbie will always exist. Given that, the folks who create distributions have to allocate resources toward various aspects of their distro, one aspect of which is the install. Given the decentralized development model of linux distributions, there is no way to prevent the problem of releasing an arguably shitty installation routine which may alienate new users. This is indeed a problem, but the solution to this would be centralizing the development model.
But you are right about people getting a bad first impression, and not wanting to have anything to do with it for a long time. But I think this is a property of how Linux distros are made, and there is no good way to deal with that problem, complaining included. I, for one, have no right to bitch about Debian's (or anybody else's) install process, because I haven't made any effort to improve it. (not that I think you were bitching;)
Newbies who walk into Best Buy and blindly pick up a software package without doing any research on the subject before hand are not only newbies, they are fools. I would not advocate dumbing something down for the sake of fools who do not do their homework. But newbies (fool and non-fool alike) need to start somewhere, and this is a concept that Red Hat has taken to heart to a degree greater than debian has. But that has come at a cost. I, as a seasoned Linux user, have found debian to be a bit more difficult to install than, say, recent versions of red hat, but debian has given me fewer headaches in the long run.
If any of them were any good, IBM (and others) would invest in them.
reconsider that. what you say isn't logical. You're saying that the fact that IBM and others only invest in RedHat proves that the other distros don't have merit, but I could line up thousands of slashdotters who'd argue that debian or suse or whatever kicks redhat in the arse. I'm a redhat user, mostly because that's what I have used in the past, and it fits how I need the OS to install/function. I'd imagine that IBM and others are choosing RedHat to be their Linux prodigy child because it's a smart marketing move. From where I stand, redhat is the frontrunner in the corporate world, and companies will just run with that because of redhat's established name.
The other distros have qualities to them that are better for some people than redhat's distro... IBM picking redhat is purely a marketing move and says very little about the quality of other distros compared to rh.
I went into this thread so I could mention the people who were thinking about computers on every desk and a global network that would connect them. I guess mdxi got there first.
*But* you shouldn't pigeonhole this latest wave of marketroid hype and asian teen porn as being entirely bad. We do have computers on practically every desk, and thanks to many, many different individuals and companies, including people as revered as lick and bob taylor to people/companies as universally slammed as gates and AOL.
As for signal/noise ratios... that's a function of the people, not the technology. Slashdot has a sometimes poor ratio itself, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Without Microsoft, you're right, the internet would probably still be a place of intelligent discourse, but, the number of people using it would be far fewer. I think that was a good tradeoff.
At the local level, voters sometimes have access to issues (such as voting for a tax increase to fund a public stadium for the (almost) exclusive use of the Denver Broncos) that aren't rerouted through representatives.
You're right, though, we aren't true to the Athenian way of doing things. I stand corrected.
Slashdot Mirror
which school are you talking about? I went to Linn Mar, and they kept us in sort of a bubble. We couldn't go more than three miles away from marion or we'd explode.
This may seem trite, but remember the adage, "Give a man a fish and he eats for a day..." Assuming the people actually want to become "developed" (as many cultures want nothing to do with it). It's very surprising what technology can do to developing areas. Of course, there's the technological benefits, but I've been more interested in the non-technological aspects. For instance, learning about technology, or doing something that we might find very simple, can be a socially activating thing. Suddenly this person that thought he or she was completely out of the loop can do incredible things with a computer. It can be quite a self confidence booster.
If you're interested in getting more info on the effects of high tech on poor areas, check out the book, "High Technology and Low-Income Communities: Prospects for the Positive Use of Advanced Information Technology", edited by some of the greats, Donald Schon, Bish Sanyal, and William Mitchel. ISBN: 026269199X
of all the shitty towns in iowa, why wouldn't you pick on souix city? CR may smell, and you might not be able to get a decent cup of coffee or pint of beer, but at least they've got a 100 foot aluminum tree. what does soiux city have? a holiday inn and five hundred factories.
I've been toying with a design for something like this. In my design, you can have a tiny little pin with a transmitter in it. There are sensors, networked to your PC through some means, scattered throughout your house that measure the strength of the signal from your transmitter, and tell your PC to send a proportional volume of your music to the speakers. Sort of Gates-esque. The music would follow you around, so from your point of view the volume would be fairly constant.
I think your opinion is based on the notion that our culture will be shaped entirely by the commercial forces that have for decades had pretty much a monopoly on information and entertainment disemination. But I think that has been the case because it hasn't presented huge, culture-stagnating problems in terms of freedom and choice. The past fifty years have been the most dynamic in the course of humanity, and much of that is due to these commercial forces that you're talking about. It was a tremendous growth period, and it isn't showing signs of even coming close to a stable equillibrium. But this kind of change can't go on forever without some sort of reversion.
I agree that the commercial forces mentioned are now poised to do nasty things to our sense of individuality and personal freedoms in more expansive ways than they have done in the past. In the past we as a culture have tolerated it because it worked "well enough". If we (the Royal we) perceive the new culture as being overly nasty in some way, we will find some natural way around it.
An example that you mentioned is the contest between Gnutilla and Napster. Somebody out there thought that Napster was a cool idea, but it didn't jive with that person's sense of freedom. Thus was born Gnutilla. Most people don't have a problem with Napster (or rather, their personal benefit outweighs their sense of loss) so they continue using it. But if Napster would do something nasty like requiring you to submit usage information along with your search queries, more people would switch to something like Gnutilla, and at the same time, Gnutilla would be forced to improve in order to accomodate the influx of new users.
The same sort of thing works with electronic books. As long as people believe that using e-books is beneficial over physical books, these new books will be used. If it isn't beneficial, the companies that are in the content business will make sure to change just enough that they can still make money.
Imagine Bush or Gore winning this election, whichever one you dislike more. Now imagine the other one winning. Do you notice a change in your disposition? Do you really think it matters if tweedle dee or tweedle dum is sitting in the chair? Not at all. While voting for Nader might not have any immediate effects, it will be so noted in the log that x% of the vote went to a non-republicrat party. That will cause people in both parties to take a long hard look at the numbers and ask themselves if maybe they should change.
Five percent of the vote. That's all it will take to get the attention of the party leaders.
I worked on a project with a guy a couple semesters ago who was graduating. He did exactly zero work for the project, and even missed the final presentation because he was busy at Sun getting interviewed. I was a better programmer/computer scientist than this guy was when I was a freshman, and sun hired him. That really made me optimistic about the future, knowing what sort of morons I was, um, competing with.
The reason that I say this is that there are bugs in mathematica that SHOULD NOT BE THERE. This goes beyond the usability glitches--every complex software application has its share of locusts. But there are some (a few that I have been aware of) conceptual bugs in some of the computation algorithms that have been there for a few releases. A guy I know actually contacted them about this, and they bug was STILL there in the next release.
If Wolfram were to open source the algorithm code, people could fix bugs and improve efficiency. This would not bother their own development process. With the libraries under the LGPL and their integration software under a closed-source licence, it would improve the quality of the software as a whole, they could still sell it at the same price, and the quality would improve. Dig?
We have a small grant to develop a web-based virtual math book this summer. The details of this that might interest to this thread are: a) We have to develop (or find) a framework for doing numerical and symbolic math in a web browser (specifically things related to linear algebra), b) we need to create (or find) components for editing/displaying equations, c) this will be GPL'ed wherever possible, unless higher powers intrude. The design is still up in the air, however, and everybody is free to give input.
The GPL forbids you from preventing any person, organization, or field of endeavor from using the covered software. This notion is also covered in the Open Source Definition, clauses 5 and 6.
snip
While I'm all for the spread of Linux as a desktop OS, I'm afraid it will never happen. Most people just want a computer that they can turn on, click on icons, and chat/word-process/etc.
Not to incite bad mojo, but don't you see something slightly contradictory with that?
AOL represents the end-user client, the appliance in the computer, the thing that ma and pa can install by themselves and begin using without having to go through an arduous learning process. (recent 5.0 mishaps notwithstanding)
The Linux glory days are for the most part gone, unless you roll your own. The future is uncertain, but it may be something that is just as good--but if our ideals don't adopt to the changing times, we'll be left with crust. It's a choice: play the game, even if AOL is on the lineup, or take your bat and go home.
If anybody has the old version (before they pulled the article) in their browser/proxy cache, could you please post the old article somewhere?
This was my first thought when I saw the post on the 3D camera. I think it's cool that others are on this wavelength (post #8 was on this topic as well). But I wonder about the export formats and their interoperability with various 3d game engines. I really don't know too much about those engines, so maybe someone could fill me in: is there a conversion util for VRML (or any of the other formats the camera outputs) to any of the 3D engines? I think that this would be a great tool even outside of the game setting. Imagine IRCing in a virtual version of your bedroom, or the playboy mansion, or an asteroid floating around near a nebula.
Recently some people at my university have been talking about the possibility of designing a sort of evolving textbook. (This is totally in the "what if" stage, so nothing I say is official in any way.) The basic idea is that we would create an otherwise normal textbook, but there would also have a complete copy of the book on a web site. Users would be able to read the book there, and if they have questions, they could post them right in the text, with the actual text being the anchor point. Embedded discussions would evolve as users reply to one another. Because the subject matter for the book would be ODEs, we were investigating creating a set of open source tools for end-users to visualize and manipulate complex mathematical formulas. Anyway, this is something that we have been thinking about working on, and if anybody out there has input on the subject, let me know somehow.
A gentle reminder that Time-Warner assigned "Person of the Century" to Albert Einstein.
I heard he's upped the amount to $10.24 to account for inflation. That $2.56 price was so70's.
But please think about user profiling for a bit: It isn't inherently evil. Most people don't want all their personal data floating from corporation to corporation. But unless this information is being used against you in some way, why do you care? In fact, it might be beneficial to you. How many times, guys, do you sit through some feminine hygeine commercial on TV, wishing they would realize they're missing their target? It is pretty much a fact of life, especially on this still-free network of ours, that advertising will be pretty much everywhere. If you're going to be subjected to all sorts of inane advertising, wouldn't you rather it be about something which you might be interested in? Just some thoughts to chew on.
Microsoft is one of the most commercially influential software companies around today. But Gates is right: Microsoft will eventually be replaced. Back in the days of big iron, IBM was the boss, and nobody really thought that they would ever be replaced. But they have, at least in terms of their hegemony. This is because the game has changed. It changed from big iron to the PC. Now the game is changing again from the PC to anything that starts with "e-". Gates knows this; and that's why they went balls-out on the Internet. But they've lost ground. And the game continues to change. Right now, we're changing the game. Open source, free software, whatever flag you want to wave, is starting to change the economics on the bottom.
My guess is that Gates is well aware of what is going on, but because it is so fundamentally different from everything that Microsoft was built on, he won't have a way to counter it. They're fighting on multiple fronts, and eventually, they will lose their grip. At that point, somebody else will notice that the game has changed, and microsoft will be replaced.
It might not happen today, or tomorrow, but within a matter of a few decades, Microsoft will be just another brick in the wall. Look at IBM today. I've seen numerous Slashdot stories and posts from readers who openly support IBM and their new business strategy. It may be hard for some to really imagine, but people such as ourselves might be saying the same sort of thing about the Microsoft many of us not villify.
I don't think I missed your point. I agree with what you say. All I'm saying is that the fool variety of newbie will always exist. Given that, the folks who create distributions have to allocate resources toward various aspects of their distro, one aspect of which is the install. Given the decentralized development model of linux distributions, there is no way to prevent the problem of releasing an arguably shitty installation routine which may alienate new users. This is indeed a problem, but the solution to this would be centralizing the development model.
;)
But you are right about people getting a bad first impression, and not wanting to have anything to do with it for a long time. But I think this is a property of how Linux distros are made, and there is no good way to deal with that problem, complaining included. I, for one, have no right to bitch about Debian's (or anybody else's) install process, because I haven't made any effort to improve it. (not that I think you were bitching
back to diffEQ. Ack.
Newbies who walk into Best Buy and blindly pick up a software package without doing any research on the subject before hand are not only newbies, they are fools. I would not advocate dumbing something down for the sake of fools who do not do their homework. But newbies (fool and non-fool alike) need to start somewhere, and this is a concept that Red Hat has taken to heart to a degree greater than debian has. But that has come at a cost. I, as a seasoned Linux user, have found debian to be a bit more difficult to install than, say, recent versions of red hat, but debian has given me fewer headaches in the long run.
and where might somebody find this CD?
reconsider that. what you say isn't logical. You're saying that the fact that IBM and others only invest in RedHat proves that the other distros don't have merit, but I could line up thousands of slashdotters who'd argue that debian or suse or whatever kicks redhat in the arse. I'm a redhat user, mostly because that's what I have used in the past, and it fits how I need the OS to install/function. I'd imagine that IBM and others are choosing RedHat to be their Linux prodigy child because it's a smart marketing move. From where I stand, redhat is the frontrunner in the corporate world, and companies will just run with that because of redhat's established name.
The other distros have qualities to them that are better for some people than redhat's distro... IBM picking redhat is purely a marketing move and says very little about the quality of other distros compared to rh.
look at the HTML source of www.transmeta.com.
then look at the source for www.linux.com.
that was my first thought.
I went into this thread so I could mention the people who were thinking about computers on every desk and a global network that would connect them. I guess mdxi got there first.
*But* you shouldn't pigeonhole this latest wave of marketroid hype and asian teen porn as being entirely bad. We do have computers on practically every desk, and thanks to many, many different individuals and companies, including people as revered as lick and bob taylor to people/companies as universally slammed as gates and AOL.
As for signal/noise ratios... that's a function of the people, not the technology. Slashdot has a sometimes poor ratio itself, but it doesn't have to be that way.
Without Microsoft, you're right, the internet would probably still be a place of intelligent discourse, but, the number of people using it would be far fewer. I think that was a good tradeoff.
At the local level, voters sometimes have access to issues (such as voting for a tax increase to fund a public stadium for the (almost) exclusive use of the Denver Broncos) that aren't rerouted through representatives.
You're right, though, we aren't true to the Athenian way of doing things. I stand corrected.