Your personal wants and needs do not determine the future of computing. Just because you want/need to do things a certain way doesn't mean everybody does. Possibly many computer geeks are different from you and almost all other computer users are different from you. Most computer users are not hacker/geeks who need personal control of their systems.
Not true. Geeks certainly do create computing environments for their own needs. I'm writing this on Firefox running under Linux, which has little or nothing to do with what the majority want or are willing to pay for, or whether Microsoft moves to subscriptions. There are far more geek-friendly options now than there were 12 years ago, not fewer.
Anyways, I don't knock myself out worrying about the mythical "Joe Blow" and his supposed needs and wants. Some of what geeks invent will be adopted by the mass market, some won't. They'll continue to visit facebook, I'll continue to visit slashdot, who cares?
So in the end, many businesses will needly get saddled with higher compliance costs and then pass them down to the consumer raising the costs of living for everyone.
On the other hand, corporate malfeasance is ridiculously costly too. Not just because millions of dollars are funneled from the pockets of the many to the few, but also because investor confidence is shaken, adding friction to the economy. All these platonic libertarian notions of economy hinge on assumptions like perfect information and the upholding of contracts. The more those assumptions are false, the more the "free economy" does not work.
Yes, but the Daily Show is not SUPPOSED to have "substance".
Why do you say that? If you follow the Daily Show you won't miss any major national stories. The fact that the stories are accompanied with (supposedly humorous) commentary doesn't really affect the information content.
Of course, the environmental impact of each person will shrink as the population grows, due to reductions in (per capita) supply. The days of staking free claims on the prairie are long gone, and the average lot size continues to shrink. Housing and energy prices will continue to rise throughout our lifetimes.
Anyways, keep in mind the US could virtually halt population growth immediately simply by stopping immigration. I'm not saying we should do that, I'm only pointing out the reason the population is still growing is because the majority of us want youth-skewed demographics to support social security, and a cheap and eager labor force.
Yes, that is obviously a good idea. I think Microsoft's problem is they don't want to marginalize the personal computer. (My PocketPC is also annoyingly tied to the PC, seemingly for no reason).
And of course the cellphone co's won't give us the obvious, either. I suppose they're just allergic to downloads in general, and want to make sure you use 4 minutes of airtime every time you listen to a song.
I think time should count. If one person takes twice as long as another to produce writing of equal quality, the faster writer deserves a higher score. I know I wish I could write proposals and presentations more quickly.
How are they going to stop all that online stock market speculation?
Reminds me of the Simpson's where Ned Flanders' home was destroyed and he had no insurance because he considers it gambling.
But there are a couple differences between the stock market and outright gambling. (1) the stock market plays a vital role in the economy by allocating resources to production, and there is some sort of skill and work involved. (Maybe not in picking individual stocks over a short period, but then you can't tell me Warren Buffet's consistency is sheer luck either). (2) the stock market is not a zero sum game. The investment results in growth in the overall economy. It's not just tranferring cash from one pocket to another, like gambling (mostly) is.
That said, yes, I know people derive a certain amount of entertainment value from gambling. I just don't think a direct analogy to the stock market is quite accurate.
Ignore what you read in the news! - bandwidth is a PRECIOUS, SCARCE resource that we must carefully ration and provision by the byte. That's why the Internet is in grave peril from network neutrality proposals, there won't be any bandwidth left over for our innovative new business models!
So don't write the data at all. Once you have enough bandwidth for high-def video in real time, there is little if any need to store any data locally; just subscribe to a VM on a mainframe somewhere. If you can send uncompressed high-def video, even computer games are no problem for remote display.
everything presented so far leads me to believe that Germany was much better off after WWII than it was before.
I think that's because of where the world was on the curve of economic development at the time. The US had its most fantastic economic growth in the postwar years, too. You can say that's all due to the war, but industrialization really began before that. I think it was industrialization that caused both rapid economic development and facilitated the most destructive wars ever. Kinda hard to have a "world war" on horseback.
If you had suggested this to someone in 1965, they'd have thought you were a loony.
The robotic rovers are cool, but from what I can tell people in the 60's were expecting something more like permanent human settlement on Mars by now. Aerospace progressed incredibly from WWI into the early 1970s and then... not so much.
Are we talking hot or cold fusion here? Cold fusion doesn't need magnetic containment. And if hot, why does the story say net energy gain is the challenge? Any garden variety H-Bomb will do that... but harnessing all that energy is a slight problem.
I was originally going to write about how different it is now, but you're right that for certain segments of the US population, this is just the same thing that has been going on throughout history.
There is one new factor which I think bears mention: technology. Whenever and wherever facism takes hold next, it will have some dangerous new tools: almost unlimited searching and storage of information, and almost universal surveilance (cameras, RFID, etc). Even the KGB must have been somewhat hindered by the sheer mass of all that paper and the payroll burden of all those secret police. Even slave drivers couldn't install nannycams in every hovel. Modern efficiency and effectiveness will take on new meaning when put towards bad ends.
I think you would have trouble anywhere you hassle law enforcement, not just in a checkpoint. Recently a man was arrested for videotaping his own property because the cops came and hassled him (on a warrant for his son) and he used the video as evidence against them. They don't like that. In my neighborhood somebody came and took a dump on a cop's lawn. They ran DNA tests and tracked the guy down. I don't mind he got caught, but dna testing costs hundreds (thousands?) of dollars, do you think they would do that for any other victim of a pooping? They didn't even come to investigate when my motorcycle was stolen, they just took a report. I have also been pulled over for making a (non-obsene) hand gesture at a cop car that cut me off for no reason.
But popping a handful of probes into the brain is a very far cry from recording and reproducing a full set of neural activations throughout the entire brain simultaneously. I doubt we'll see it in our lifetimes.
what if we could record your state of mind at the time too?
We have no technology that might do that in the forseeable future, so it's a purely hypothetical question.
I have learned for myself that recording information is vastly different than learning it. As I started to use things like a PDA and laptop, I used to hoarde information on my gizmos. Eventually I realized it was just a form of procrastination. I never felt pressure to internalize information because, hey, I would always have it at my fingertips when I need it, right? But it doesn't work that way. You can't put together disparate facts and draw new conclusions until all the pieces are in your head at the same time.
What could really differentiate it from paper books though is if they manage to hook it up to some instant delivery system through the Internet.
Personally I know I'm frequently printing out manuals of a few hundred pages at work. I read them (at most) once, then use the electronic form for reference. *If* this thing is nice to look at (big if), it could serve that need.
For me it would depend a lot on the screen. I have never seen an "E ink" screen in person. If it has great contrast, and leads to long battery life, they may have something here.
Rumble is a very good feature I would miss if I were going to buy a PS3. My favorite games are driving games, and rumble is (IMHO) almost essential to know when you're starting to slide, or you have a wheel off the track on the "rumble strip" (that's what they're really called) or somebody is bumping you from behind.
Most of those socialist expenses come out in the wash anyways. They pay high taxes. We pay low taxes and then pay outrageous health care premiums, 401k contributions, college tuition, suffer more when unemployed, live with more violent crime because of higher poverty, etc. etc. etc. I do think our standard of living is a bit higher in the US, mainly because the population is less dense so there is more land to go around. But that difference is diminishing all the time, and the recent insane inflation in housing prices is also narrowing the gap. Coastal regions of the US are fast becoming like medieval Europe where the only way to own land (and I don't mean "own" as in holding 10% equity on a huge mortgage) is to inherit it.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyways, I don't knock myself out worrying about the mythical "Joe Blow" and his supposed needs and wants. Some of what geeks invent will be adopted by the mass market, some won't. They'll continue to visit facebook, I'll continue to visit slashdot, who cares?
Anyways, keep in mind the US could virtually halt population growth immediately simply by stopping immigration. I'm not saying we should do that, I'm only pointing out the reason the population is still growing is because the majority of us want youth-skewed demographics to support social security, and a cheap and eager labor force.
Yes, that is obviously a good idea. I think Microsoft's problem is they don't want to marginalize the personal computer. (My PocketPC is also annoyingly tied to the PC, seemingly for no reason). And of course the cellphone co's won't give us the obvious, either. I suppose they're just allergic to downloads in general, and want to make sure you use 4 minutes of airtime every time you listen to a song.
I think time should count. If one person takes twice as long as another to produce writing of equal quality, the faster writer deserves a higher score. I know I wish I could write proposals and presentations more quickly.
It would be cool if they could make this watch self-winding. (And by "winding" I mean something than charges a small battery).
But there are a couple differences between the stock market and outright gambling. (1) the stock market plays a vital role in the economy by allocating resources to production, and there is some sort of skill and work involved. (Maybe not in picking individual stocks over a short period, but then you can't tell me Warren Buffet's consistency is sheer luck either). (2) the stock market is not a zero sum game. The investment results in growth in the overall economy. It's not just tranferring cash from one pocket to another, like gambling (mostly) is.
That said, yes, I know people derive a certain amount of entertainment value from gambling. I just don't think a direct analogy to the stock market is quite accurate.
Ignore what you read in the news! - bandwidth is a PRECIOUS, SCARCE resource that we must carefully ration and provision by the byte. That's why the Internet is in grave peril from network neutrality proposals, there won't be any bandwidth left over for our innovative new business models!
So don't write the data at all. Once you have enough bandwidth for high-def video in real time, there is little if any need to store any data locally; just subscribe to a VM on a mainframe somewhere. If you can send uncompressed high-def video, even computer games are no problem for remote display.
You assume this is an unforeseen threat our satellites are not designed against.
Are we talking hot or cold fusion here? Cold fusion doesn't need magnetic containment. And if hot, why does the story say net energy gain is the challenge? Any garden variety H-Bomb will do that... but harnessing all that energy is a slight problem.
I think you would have trouble anywhere you hassle law enforcement, not just in a checkpoint. Recently a man was arrested for videotaping his own property because the cops came and hassled him (on a warrant for his son) and he used the video as evidence against them. They don't like that. In my neighborhood somebody came and took a dump on a cop's lawn. They ran DNA tests and tracked the guy down. I don't mind he got caught, but dna testing costs hundreds (thousands?) of dollars, do you think they would do that for any other victim of a pooping? They didn't even come to investigate when my motorcycle was stolen, they just took a report. I have also been pulled over for making a (non-obsene) hand gesture at a cop car that cut me off for no reason.
But popping a handful of probes into the brain is a very far cry from recording and reproducing a full set of neural activations throughout the entire brain simultaneously. I doubt we'll see it in our lifetimes.
I have learned for myself that recording information is vastly different than learning it. As I started to use things like a PDA and laptop, I used to hoarde information on my gizmos. Eventually I realized it was just a form of procrastination. I never felt pressure to internalize information because, hey, I would always have it at my fingertips when I need it, right? But it doesn't work that way. You can't put together disparate facts and draw new conclusions until all the pieces are in your head at the same time.
Personally I know I'm frequently printing out manuals of a few hundred pages at work. I read them (at most) once, then use the electronic form for reference. *If* this thing is nice to look at (big if), it could serve that need.
For me it would depend a lot on the screen. I have never seen an "E ink" screen in person. If it has great contrast, and leads to long battery life, they may have something here.
If I ever have to save the world I think I will hold out for at least $2000.
Rumble is a very good feature I would miss if I were going to buy a PS3. My favorite games are driving games, and rumble is (IMHO) almost essential to know when you're starting to slide, or you have a wheel off the track on the "rumble strip" (that's what they're really called) or somebody is bumping you from behind.
Most of those socialist expenses come out in the wash anyways. They pay high taxes. We pay low taxes and then pay outrageous health care premiums, 401k contributions, college tuition, suffer more when unemployed, live with more violent crime because of higher poverty, etc. etc. etc. I do think our standard of living is a bit higher in the US, mainly because the population is less dense so there is more land to go around. But that difference is diminishing all the time, and the recent insane inflation in housing prices is also narrowing the gap. Coastal regions of the US are fast becoming like medieval Europe where the only way to own land (and I don't mean "own" as in holding 10% equity on a huge mortgage) is to inherit it.