you realize there are only 33 million people in canada right? If 6.5 million copies were sold in canada, that means 1 out of 5 people read neuromancer. Does that sound right?
That may be true in the sense that the dumb terminals will be using an embeddable form of Linux with little capability. When virtually all computing power is on the cloud, in the hands of private corporations, who's going to be coding open source apps for the cloud platform? There will probably be several platforms out there, but they will all probably work on something similar to the Apple store model, where your rights are severely limited. Is that where we want the open source community to flourish? I would think that some processing power is required to stay in the hands of developers or else we are going to be screwed.
While some claim that bandwidth isn't up to snuff, and maintaining enough servers to support a massive number of gamers is not feasible, etc, etc, this will all change in a short amount of time. This type of service is on the cusp of being a reality, and it will change computing forever. If a video game can be supported through a remote terminal, then ANY application could be supported. Eventually more and more apps will be available only on the cloud, and hardware costs will go down, then you'll find that 20 years later only dumb terminals exist in the hands of the average consumer. As wireless connectivity matures even phones will all just be dumb terminals. You never need to upgrade your phone, unless you want a bigger screen or different input method. The applications you RENT will be unpiratable, because there is no publicly available platform to run them on, and you can use the same app across your desktop and phone, but with modified interfaces as the device would report it's capabilities to the cloud, and the cloud would change the interface appropriately.
How does linux fit into all of this? Will there be a new ideological movement in the future to keep processing power in the hands of consumers? How do you install linux on a dumb terminal?
But if you are looking for another computer word that has made it into common usage, how about "reboot"? It's now used to describe starting anything over from scratch, especially in things like movies. For instance, the new Star Trek movie has been called a reboot by several movie critics.
I can imagine a time far in the future where "reboot" is listed in the dictionary with the etymology saying "origin unclear, borrowed from computer terminology". 95% of people will not know that it comes from the REpeating the action of BOOTstrapping a computer. Bootstrapping or booting a computer comes from the term "to lift oneself up by the bootstraps", which is impossible and refers to the apparent chicken and egg problem of a computer loading itself up with software.
When it comes to shipping out labor, everyone seems to miss the big picture.
What is the purpose of a nation? To benefit and protect the citizens therein (at least that's what is sold to the citizens). Everyone has to be a member of a nation whether they want to or not, and most nations only allow you to be a citizen of their nation and no other. So people are effectively trapped within one system. As of yet there is no such thing as a global citizen.
So a nation's goal is not to server the world, but to serve its citizens. If it can serve both the world and its citizens simultaneously, that is great. But if it has to choose between one or the other, then it must serve its citizens first.
Originally in the US corporations were limited entities that were only allowed to exist for public benefit and only for a limited duration until their objective was reached. But that changed over time, and now corporations are some of the most powerful entities in the US. Corporations in the US benefit from many things, including physical production, access to the US market, subsidies, government contracts, tax breaks, tariffs, and many other benefits from being registered as a US corporation.
One must remember that a nation and its government is there to serve the betterment of its citizens, and not corporations. If it benefits a corporation to outsource to another country, but not the citizens, why do it? The nation has no obligation to benefit the corporation unless it also benefits citizens. In fact that's why US corporations are given all the advantages they get - in the end it benefits the citizens.
But once the public is being injured by the current regulations governing international business, it's time to change the laws. Why benefit a tiny proportion of the US population consisting of high-level execs as well as foreign nationals at the expense of the vast majority of the US population through regulation?
If a company wants to be "global" and hire foreign workers at the expense of US citizens, I have no problem with that. But they must lose the benefits of a being a registered US corporation. They must truly go international, meaning no tax breaks, no subsidies, no being on the advantageous side of tariffs, etc..
Imagine if you could play GTA but across the whole world, dealing with drug cartels in Columbia and making weapons trades with the Russian mafia. Or recreate a WW2 battle. Google earth could become a platform for any game that is based in real world geography.
The API may not be robust enough and the detail may not be comprehensive enough to do this yet, but it seems like it could be done in short time if Google so wished.
The platform could become a general gaming engine as well, where you could select a universe (real world / Star Wars World / J.R.R. Tolkien world, etc) and visit other planets.
I suppose google could call this Google Universe, a MMO engine based in GIS technology, with one of the Universes being managed by google based on real data, and any others being created by 3rd party developers.
Complex variables are not interpolated in double quotes unless you use curly braces, so the \n will probably be interpreted as a line feed if they remain consistent.
So if you wanted to use a name space in an interpolated variable, you would use the following notation:
echo "Hello ${Foo\n}";
BTW i think the backslash is a stupid design decision as well...
So, here's how computers get massively smarter than us really fast. 10-20 years AFTER the first sentient AIs are created, we'll have sentient AIs that can operate at tens to hundreds of times faster than real time. Now, imagine you create a group of "research brains" that all work together at hundreds of times real time. So in a year, for example, this group of "research brains" can do the thinking that would require a group of humans to spend at least a few hundred years doing. Add to that the fact that you can tweak the brains to make them better at math or other subjects and that you have complete control over their reward system (doing research could give them a heroin-like reward), and you're going to have super brains.
Ummm, EVEN IF you could create a sentient AI that operates "faster than real time" (you mean faster than the human brain?), what makes you think they will continue to operate in servitude of our desires? If somehow an ant created you, would you work on their hill or would you go do human stuff?
But the statment we can create a sentient AI smarter than us any time in the near future is already hugely suspect...
I'm imagining the person who wrote this tag sweating and pacing, then finding out about this judgment and falling to his knees, shedding tears of relief and joy, and looking to the sky thanking god for this miracle.
Space is much larger than a single planet, but it is also much more sparse, so the actual amount of interactive content could be about the same if desired. Also, distance is just an abstract concept in a virtual world, and can be traversed at any rate the programmers wish to allow, so it is also not an issue.
The whole "canine" thing has been played out for more than 10 years now. There are several things we have evolved to do but now use our higher conscious abilities to override those behaviors. You are evolved to live on the savanna and run hours a day hunting and gathering. You are not evolved to sit in front of a computer all day which is why your neck and back and arms and eyes hurt.
Yes we are capable of eating meat, but that doesn't mean we can't change our behavior. We are human and have a mind and can choose what we want to do instead of follow pure instinct.
Many (most?) humans are completely predictable and react completely on reflex. They are stupid and bump into things (literally and figuratively) all the time. What is your point?
Sure, within a certain regime of theories about reality, you refine them and approach something that you can call scientific truth, given the current base assumptions and best theories. But as has happened through history, a paradigm shift pulls the rug out of an entire set of theories. People refined celestial theories with the earth at the center of the universe, getting closer to the "truth", then the rug got pulled out from under them. The whole set of all scientific theory can be thought of as a hierarchical structure, with paradigm shifts happening all over the tree. If something near the leaves changes, then only a few theories depending on that need to be modified or replaced. The closer you get to the top, the more everything changes. But also, the more unlikely it is that it will change. Fundamental changes only happen every millennium or so. Excuse the extremity of the following example, but it is only a thought experiment: if it turned out that you lived in a simulation and you awoke to a world with completely different rules, the entire scientific endeavor would be lost and your "truth" no longer.
Scientific truth is only relative to a set of assumptions and the current state of human knowledge and cannot be called absolute truth, as a change in a major theory will change everything that depends on it and throw off the minor differences that were converging on a supposed truth.
Now these paradigm shifts might be considered movements towards the truth, but once again, something could be pulled out from underneath that nullifies them.
"Science converges asymptotically to the truth. Even if scientists can never be absolutely certain of the truth, they are always getting nearer to absolute truth."
How can you say that science converges asymptotically to the truth? That implies that you know in advance what the truth is. Why bother with the science in the first place then?
Wikipedia may not be 100% factual, but data rarely is 100% factual. Anyway, Wikipedia is represented as being a compendium of facts. Does this mean that Wikipedia is not actually copyrighted, and can be used without attribution?
You are reading about this armor as if it were something out of a DND rule book. Either it's real or it's fiction. If it's real, then there are three possibilities:
1. The tech is mostly classified, meaning they have access to things that you wouldn't expect existed, e.g. high speed landscape detection and evasion systems that you hadn't expected were possible at this current time
2. It's just a patent for patent's sake, and IBM did the minimum required to get the patent
I met this guy at a Foo camp party in Beijing, and he gave a presentation on how he reverse engineers Nintendo Wiis. He uses some kind of custom chassis that connects to both sides of the Wii's motherboard and burns off the tops of chips to look at their structure through a microscope. Pretty impressive...
Slashdot Mirror
you realize there are only 33 million people in canada right? If 6.5 million copies were sold in canada, that means 1 out of 5 people read neuromancer. Does that sound right?
That may be true in the sense that the dumb terminals will be using an embeddable form of Linux with little capability. When virtually all computing power is on the cloud, in the hands of private corporations, who's going to be coding open source apps for the cloud platform? There will probably be several platforms out there, but they will all probably work on something similar to the Apple store model, where your rights are severely limited. Is that where we want the open source community to flourish? I would think that some processing power is required to stay in the hands of developers or else we are going to be screwed.
LS
While some claim that bandwidth isn't up to snuff, and maintaining enough servers to support a massive number of gamers is not feasible, etc, etc, this will all change in a short amount of time. This type of service is on the cusp of being a reality, and it will change computing forever. If a video game can be supported through a remote terminal, then ANY application could be supported. Eventually more and more apps will be available only on the cloud, and hardware costs will go down, then you'll find that 20 years later only dumb terminals exist in the hands of the average consumer. As wireless connectivity matures even phones will all just be dumb terminals. You never need to upgrade your phone, unless you want a bigger screen or different input method. The applications you RENT will be unpiratable, because there is no publicly available platform to run them on, and you can use the same app across your desktop and phone, but with modified interfaces as the device would report it's capabilities to the cloud, and the cloud would change the interface appropriately.
How does linux fit into all of this? Will there be a new ideological movement in the future to keep processing power in the hands of consumers? How do you install linux on a dumb terminal?
LS
But if you are looking for another computer word that has made it into common usage, how about "reboot"? It's now used to describe starting anything over from scratch, especially in things like movies. For instance, the new Star Trek movie has been called a reboot by several movie critics.
I can imagine a time far in the future where "reboot" is listed in the dictionary with the etymology saying "origin unclear, borrowed from computer terminology". 95% of people will not know that it comes from the REpeating the action of BOOTstrapping a computer. Bootstrapping or booting a computer comes from the term "to lift oneself up by the bootstraps", which is impossible and refers to the apparent chicken and egg problem of a computer loading itself up with software.
LS
are you sure that's not an anti-spam feature?
When it comes to shipping out labor, everyone seems to miss the big picture.
What is the purpose of a nation? To benefit and protect the citizens therein (at least that's what is sold to the citizens). Everyone has to be a member of a nation whether they want to or not, and most nations only allow you to be a citizen of their nation and no other. So people are effectively trapped within one system. As of yet there is no such thing as a global citizen.
So a nation's goal is not to server the world, but to serve its citizens. If it can serve both the world and its citizens simultaneously, that is great. But if it has to choose between one or the other, then it must serve its citizens first.
Originally in the US corporations were limited entities that were only allowed to exist for public benefit and only for a limited duration until their objective was reached. But that changed over time, and now corporations are some of the most powerful entities in the US. Corporations in the US benefit from many things, including physical production, access to the US market, subsidies, government contracts, tax breaks, tariffs, and many other benefits from being registered as a US corporation.
One must remember that a nation and its government is there to serve the betterment of its citizens, and not corporations. If it benefits a corporation to outsource to another country, but not the citizens, why do it? The nation has no obligation to benefit the corporation unless it also benefits citizens. In fact that's why US corporations are given all the advantages they get - in the end it benefits the citizens.
But once the public is being injured by the current regulations governing international business, it's time to change the laws. Why benefit a tiny proportion of the US population consisting of high-level execs as well as foreign nationals at the expense of the vast majority of the US population through regulation?
If a company wants to be "global" and hire foreign workers at the expense of US citizens, I have no problem with that. But they must lose the benefits of a being a registered US corporation. They must truly go international, meaning no tax breaks, no subsidies, no being on the advantageous side of tariffs, etc..
It's really simple.
LS
What the grandparent says is true. For example, you can look at this link from the spreadsheet:
http://www.oncoding.net/64.jpg
It is clearly a message of solidarity. As someone who lives in China, I can tell you it's also a CYA thing of course, but the grandparent is spot on.
LS
Imagine if you could play GTA but across the whole world, dealing with drug cartels in Columbia and making weapons trades with the Russian mafia. Or recreate a WW2 battle. Google earth could become a platform for any game that is based in real world geography.
The API may not be robust enough and the detail may not be comprehensive enough to do this yet, but it seems like it could be done in short time if Google so wished.
The platform could become a general gaming engine as well, where you could select a universe (real world / Star Wars World / J.R.R. Tolkien world, etc) and visit other planets.
I suppose google could call this Google Universe, a MMO engine based in GIS technology, with one of the Universes being managed by google based on real data, and any others being created by 3rd party developers.
The potential is pretty exciting...
LS
A list of 10 things, then couch it with the term "things to love". Fuck off with the Digg style shit. It's clearly marketing for google.
Complex variables are not interpolated in double quotes unless you use curly braces, so the \n will probably be interpreted as a line feed if they remain consistent.
So if you wanted to use a name space in an interpolated variable, you would use the following notation:
echo "Hello ${Foo\n}";
BTW i think the backslash is a stupid design decision as well...
LS
So, here's how computers get massively smarter than us really fast. 10-20 years AFTER the first sentient AIs are created, we'll have sentient AIs that can operate at tens to hundreds of times faster than real time. Now, imagine you create a group of "research brains" that all work together at hundreds of times real time. So in a year, for example, this group of "research brains" can do the thinking that would require a group of humans to spend at least a few hundred years doing. Add to that the fact that you can tweak the brains to make them better at math or other subjects and that you have complete control over their reward system (doing research could give them a heroin-like reward), and you're going to have super brains.
Ummm, EVEN IF you could create a sentient AI that operates "faster than real time" (you mean faster than the human brain?), what makes you think they will continue to operate in servitude of our desires? If somehow an ant created you, would you work on their hill or would you go do human stuff?
But the statment we can create a sentient AI smarter than us any time in the near future is already hugely suspect...
LS
story tag: "thankgod"
I'm imagining the person who wrote this tag sweating and pacing, then finding out about this judgment and falling to his knees, shedding tears of relief and joy, and looking to the sky thanking god for this miracle.
LS
Behold the power of Apple's guerrilla marketing...
Space is much larger than a single planet, but it is also much more sparse, so the actual amount of interactive content could be about the same if desired. Also, distance is just an abstract concept in a virtual world, and can be traversed at any rate the programmers wish to allow, so it is also not an issue.
Yours is the first post that actually gets to a philosophical crossroads that gets down to the core of the split.
it is unwarranted to assume a crab "feels" anything at all.
I agree. But I also agree that it is unwarranted to assume a crab DOESN'T feel anything at all.
LS
The whole "canine" thing has been played out for more than 10 years now. There are several things we have evolved to do but now use our higher conscious abilities to override those behaviors. You are evolved to live on the savanna and run hours a day hunting and gathering. You are not evolved to sit in front of a computer all day which is why your neck and back and arms and eyes hurt.
Yes we are capable of eating meat, but that doesn't mean we can't change our behavior. We are human and have a mind and can choose what we want to do instead of follow pure instinct.
Many (most?) humans are completely predictable and react completely on reflex. They are stupid and bump into things (literally and figuratively) all the time. What is your point?
You work for them or something? I've bought 5 dollar keyboards that have all the features you just described.
Sure, within a certain regime of theories about reality, you refine them and approach something that you can call scientific truth, given the current base assumptions and best theories. But as has happened through history, a paradigm shift pulls the rug out of an entire set of theories. People refined celestial theories with the earth at the center of the universe, getting closer to the "truth", then the rug got pulled out from under them. The whole set of all scientific theory can be thought of as a hierarchical structure, with paradigm shifts happening all over the tree. If something near the leaves changes, then only a few theories depending on that need to be modified or replaced. The closer you get to the top, the more everything changes. But also, the more unlikely it is that it will change. Fundamental changes only happen every millennium or so. Excuse the extremity of the following example, but it is only a thought experiment: if it turned out that you lived in a simulation and you awoke to a world with completely different rules, the entire scientific endeavor would be lost and your "truth" no longer.
Scientific truth is only relative to a set of assumptions and the current state of human knowledge and cannot be called absolute truth, as a change in a major theory will change everything that depends on it and throw off the minor differences that were converging on a supposed truth.
Now these paradigm shifts might be considered movements towards the truth, but once again, something could be pulled out from underneath that nullifies them.
A bit of a divergence, but...
"Science converges asymptotically to the truth. Even if scientists can never be absolutely certain of the truth, they are always getting nearer to absolute truth."
How can you say that science converges asymptotically to the truth? That implies that you know in advance what the truth is. Why bother with the science in the first place then?
LS
Wikipedia may not be 100% factual, but data rarely is 100% factual. Anyway, Wikipedia is represented as being a compendium of facts. Does this mean that Wikipedia is not actually copyrighted, and can be used without attribution?
-1 Not Insightful
You are reading about this armor as if it were something out of a DND rule book. Either it's real or it's fiction. If it's real, then there are three possibilities:
1. The tech is mostly classified, meaning they have access to things that you wouldn't expect existed, e.g. high speed landscape detection and evasion systems that you hadn't expected were possible at this current time
2. It's just a patent for patent's sake, and IBM did the minimum required to get the patent
3. The system just doesn't work
I met this guy at a Foo camp party in Beijing, and he gave a presentation on how he reverse engineers Nintendo Wiis. He uses some kind of custom chassis that connects to both sides of the Wii's motherboard and burns off the tops of chips to look at their structure through a microscope. Pretty impressive...
Not sure how she's part of the democratic party... all her policies seem to be in line with the republican platform.
LS