The parent post is interensing and well written. Except that we need to be clear what we mean by capitalism.
Do you-we mean by capitalism that profit maximization needs to be preserved and everything else is secondary ? If it is so you-we need to be clear about that, and the parent post makes perfect sense. But then it follows by using this definition that capitalism alone is a system that cannot survive long.
In fact, even in the most capitalistic systems a corporation can't break the laws, so there ARE constraints to profit maximization.
Which is ok because if it was not so, the "free" market, the rules, and the very same capitalistic system as we currently know it could not survive too long...
So, besides definitions, it seems to me that what it is really at stake is, "how much should a democracy limit the profit maximization for the greater good ??" (and ultimately for its own survival) ??
I am looking forward the day when every wheel in the car will have its own size, when there will be 234 different types of DVD, of course mutually incompatible, and i could finally write my/. posts in southeastern italian dialect !!!
Software patents are there to defend short term profits of some big corporations, simple as that.
The fact that those corporations are mostly based in the US is not surprising but purely incidental.
So this is not really an America vs Europe thing, and there is no secret plan with the government or the CIA to Americanize the world, it's just the corporations wanting to extend their power to europe after succeeding in the US.
And, btw, i am not American, and the grandparent's post is the best one i've seen in/. in months, seriously.
> You seem to be labouring under the misconception that the > free software/open source communities see world domination > or the destruction of Microsoft as an ultimate goal.
Not necessarily, maybe he just thinks that trying NOT to have one single company dominate the market of operating systems is a goal worth pursuing.
Maybe he just feels that de facto standards and interoperability are a good thing for the user no matter what OS one is using, and he thinks that having just a few "standard" distribution would help.
You may be fine with microsoft deciding what runs on every computer and device of almost every single person of the planet, but i for one think of it as unhealty and dangerous for competition, progress and ultimately freedom.
And besides, are you really sure that your freedom to buy a PC and install whatever OS you want can last that long if the number of linux users does not reach a critical mass ?? I would not be so sure, so please think about it again.
The solution is not to waste our time trying to keep others down, but rather to be smart and keep trying to get better and stay ahead of the pack. And this requires innovation, not regulation.
Yes.
But systematic innovation requires investments on basic research and especially education.
Which in turn requires the government to do its job, which no one else can do, which is:
1) invest in basic research and long term education.
2) make good laws "for the people" and make sure they are followed and respected.
3) ensure competition and free market, thereby destroying monopolies and cartels with zero tolerance.
Well, it seems to me that 90% of scientific computation today is done with Matlab and similar languages/environments (well, mostly Matlab).
Based upon my experiences, within universities, ONLY in CS departments Matlab is NOT (yet ?) the de facto standard (but it is still tought and used anyways, along with java and some C++).
Well both organizations deal with power, since money is today the most effective representation of power, while religion and access-to-gods has been "the" power for a long time.
One thing that people/organizations in power do, is try to get even some more power, which helps in getting even more power later on, which at the end destablizes the social system in one way or another.
In fact, concentration of power into too few hands is the single most important reason why manysocial systems collaped in the past. Examples are everywhere. From the roman empire to the middle aged church-state, form the indian 4000 old castes-based system, (in which not surprisingly the priests become the dominant caste), to even the soviet so called "social" system...
We as humans need to learn from hour history and enforce very strict rules that limit power accumulation, in all its incarnations.
> That's deliberate... >... and that's the reason why. > If it were easy to use binary drivers,...
ohh i see, so the drivers API are changed not to improve them but for the only purpose of make the using of binary drivers impossible !!
it sounds an awful lot like MS changing some code for the only purpose of making interoperability with other platforms very hard...
and all this for what ??
> is considered a disadvantage by many.
ohh i see, those unspecified "many" have to be right right ? like all those peole who believed that earth was flat, some time ago... that's what's called a scientific approach !
Mod me flamebait if you will, there's always a first, but I honestly think that it is exactly this hobbystic, unprofessional, and not-caring way of thinking that hinders the widespread adoption of linux.
Which i still believe it would be a very good thing for many reasons, but maybe it's just me...
I agree on practically all the points. I think robotics is the way to go, and it is also much more challenging...
I guess that what i was trying to say is that, if you look carefully, create a small robot that acts smart and actively interacts with the environment, MAY very well be more difficult than create a robot that can discuss the meaning of life.
QRIO and Asimo are impressive but they are way below the "smartness" of cats and mouses, which simply means there is a long way to go in autonomous robotics.
Classical AI will reach its limitations very soon, Will that will bring a machine that can discuss the meaning of life ? I don't know but i think we will find out in the next 20 years.
I think that robots winning against a human team will happen much much later than 2050.
It's more a gut feeling than a "sicentific based" prediction, but i think that perception and interaction with the real world is definitely the reign of animals, (and therefore humans).
It took evolution 1 billion years to create animals that run around and "act smart".
I think that the classical AI that models the world with language and rules, is a much simpler problem in comparison, in other words, i think that a moderately intelligent computer that can understand humans and interact with them via language (see for example http://www.cyc.com/cyc/company/news/computerizing) will see the light way before a robotic team could compete with a c-league soccer team...
I have been a user since last year and collected 10000 work units, then i moved to both the folding@home and climatepredicton projects.
Why ? because i strongly suspect they'd waste CPU cycles on the same work units rather than say: hey, "5 MILLION user are enough" we have found this and that, and until new funding arrives you better move on to other projects.
The "current progress" page hasn't been updated in years, so the "future direction" page, look for yourself...
As someone here already pointed out, the US Business sector (i.e. the bigger job absorber) was NOT responsible for the US based innovation (well except for airplanes maybe). But the internet, comes from research based at DARPA and Universities and Space flight was hugely funded by the government.
I think the author is desperately trying to convince students to enroll to engineering and CS, so he purposedly want to sell the concept that "the creative US programmer" will find a great job because he (as opposite to programmers anywhere else) will be magically be capable to "innovate" between one deadline and the other.
Very often the term "neural network" is used just as a selling point because it sounds like something extremely advanced and "related to artificial intelligence".
usually the neural network is just a very simple, possibly linear, adaptive filter which means that really contains no more than a few matrix multiplications...
yes it has some success in approximating things locally, but terms like "learning" are really misused
After RTFA (the second) it actually seems that they did try two or three things before, but really i wouldn't "welcome our new intelligent packet sizers overlords" just yet.
then some audio and ripping tools like DartPro, AltoMp3, then possibly kazaalite,... then, but only then, we are ready for the "serious" apps, and some office productivity tools...
Ok i'll give up some mod points, but i have to say i completely disagree on this.
The roadmap to desktop acceptance for Linux MUST GO THROUGH WINE. And for a simple reason. If we are anywhere serious about bringing the stereotypical Aunt Maggie (which represents is 90% of the desktop users) we can only propose ONE change at a time.
Changing together operating system AND the most used apps it's too much for most users. You are seriously waiting for that to magically happen ?
Well my friend, i think that DRM will probably have locked everybody up, and linux will be long gone, before that happens.
Slashdot Mirror
The parent post is interensing and well written. Except that we need to be clear what we mean by capitalism.
...
Do you-we mean by capitalism that profit maximization needs to be preserved and everything else is secondary ? If it is so you-we need to be clear about that, and the parent post makes perfect sense. But then it follows by using this definition that capitalism alone is a system that cannot survive long.
In fact, even in the most capitalistic systems a corporation can't break the laws, so there ARE constraints to profit maximization.
Which is ok because if it was not so, the "free" market, the rules, and the very same capitalistic system as we currently know it could not survive too long
So, besides definitions, it seems to me that what it is really at stake is, "how much should a democracy limit the profit maximization for the greater good ??" (and ultimately for its own survival) ??
Great.
Now that the infrastructure is in place, we just need a system to let the dollar bill reproduce themselves so the analogy will be perfect !!!
Actually, i am sure that some people have been constantly working on it from quite some time
g
yeeaaaah riiiiight
I am looking forward the day when every wheel in the car will have its own size, when there will be 234 different types of DVD, of course mutually incompatible, and i could finally write my
cant wait
Software patents are there to defend short term profits of some big corporations, simple as that.
/. in months, seriously.
The fact that those corporations are mostly based in the US is not surprising but purely incidental.
So this is not really an America vs Europe thing, and there is no secret plan with the government or the CIA to Americanize the world, it's just the corporations wanting to extend their power to europe after succeeding in the US.
And, btw, i am not American, and the grandparent's post is the best one i've seen in
> You seem to be labouring under the misconception that the
> free software/open source communities see world domination
> or the destruction of Microsoft as an ultimate goal.
Not necessarily, maybe he just thinks that trying NOT to have one single company dominate the market of operating systems is a goal worth pursuing.
Maybe he just feels that de facto standards and interoperability are a good thing for the user no matter what OS one is using, and he thinks that having just a few "standard" distribution would help.
You may be fine with microsoft deciding what runs on every computer and device of almost every single person of the planet, but i for one think of it as unhealty and dangerous for competition, progress and ultimately freedom.
And besides, are you really sure that your freedom to buy a PC and install whatever OS you want can last that long if the number of linux users does not reach a critical mass ??
I would not be so sure, so please think about it again.
www.cyc.com
...
...
it's a project so ambitious (it will take those guys other 15 years to come up with something IMO) that only google can afford to sponsor it
on the other hand, if such a thing will be successfull, it would really be the next very big thing in technology since the internet
I'd like to launch a slashdot poll to see how many are really surprised about this ...
seriuosly, did anyone expect this NOT to happen ??
The solution is not to waste our time trying to keep others down, but rather to be smart and keep trying to get better and stay ahead of the pack. And this requires innovation, not regulation.
Yes.
But systematic innovation requires investments on basic research and especially education.
Which in turn requires the government to do its job, which no one else can do, which is:
1) invest in basic research and long term education.
2) make good laws "for the people" and make sure they are followed and respected.
3) ensure competition and free market, thereby destroying monopolies and cartels with zero tolerance.
I just hope that the Tx1000 will not come around my PCs one night to reclaim its parts ...
Well, it seems to me that 90% of scientific computation today is done with Matlab and similar languages/environments (well, mostly Matlab).
Based upon my experiences, within universities, ONLY in CS departments Matlab is NOT (yet ?) the de facto standard (but it is still tought and used anyways, along with java and some C++).
Well both organizations deal with power, since money is today the most effective representation of power, while religion and access-to-gods has been "the" power for a long time.
...
One thing that people/organizations in power do, is try to get even some more power, which helps in getting even more power later on, which at the end destablizes the social system in one way or another.
In fact, concentration of power into too few hands is the single most important reason why manysocial systems collaped in the past. Examples are everywhere. From the roman empire to the middle aged church-state, form the indian 4000 old castes-based system, (in which not surprisingly the priests become the dominant caste), to even the soviet so called "social" system
We as humans need to learn from hour history and enforce very strict rules that limit power accumulation, in all its incarnations.
> That's deliberate... ... and that's the reason why. ...
...
...
...
>
> If it were easy to use binary drivers,
ohh i see, so the drivers API are changed not to improve them but for the only purpose of make the using of binary drivers impossible !!
it sounds an awful lot like MS changing some code for the only purpose of making interoperability with other platforms very hard
and all this for what ??
> is considered a disadvantage by many.
ohh i see, those unspecified "many" have to be right right ? like all those peole who believed that earth was flat, some time ago
that's what's called a scientific approach !
Mod me flamebait if you will, there's always a first, but I honestly think that it is exactly this hobbystic, unprofessional, and not-caring way of thinking that hinders the widespread adoption of linux.
Which i still believe it would be a very good thing for many reasons, but maybe it's just me
To put it very shortly, i think interoperability with the windows world (e.g samba & wine) is still the key to gain more users especially in offices.
...
If i buy one of these PCs, and i put it in my win2k based office, i should be able to print and share files without any RTFM
there must have been some pieces of APPLE somewhere there !!!
> the number of people switching to Linux
...
> because of the availability of office
> would cut directly into their Windows revenues
that is very true, but on the other hand, in the long term, if linux prevails microsoft can survive only by porting its apps over linux.
not an easy decision though
I can think of many reasons why one would like to use it,
...
100% compatibility with the other 95% of office users is one
I agree on practically all the points.
I think robotics is the way to go, and it is also much more challenging...
I guess that what i was trying to say is that, if you look carefully, create a small robot that acts smart and actively interacts with the environment, MAY very well be more difficult than create a robot that can discuss the meaning of life.
QRIO and Asimo are impressive but they are way below the "smartness" of cats and mouses,
which simply means there is a long way to go in autonomous robotics.
Classical AI will reach its limitations very soon,
Will that will bring a machine that can discuss the meaning of life ?
I don't know but i think we will find out in the next 20 years.
I think that robots winning against a human team will happen much much later than 2050.
) will see the light way before a robotic team could compete with a c-league soccer team ...
It's more a gut feeling than a "sicentific based" prediction, but i think that perception and interaction with the real world is definitely the reign of animals, (and therefore humans).
It took evolution 1 billion years to create animals that run around and "act smart".
I think that the classical AI that models the world with language and rules, is a much simpler problem in comparison,
in other words, i think that a moderately intelligent computer that can understand humans and interact with them via language (see for example http://www.cyc.com/cyc/company/news/computerizing
The more mess is created the more people will realize how broken is the software patenting system ...
...
I am almost hoping for a victory of Acacia in this, with the big players have to pay a lot o money and give Acacia even more strenght
what side do you stand for and why ??
... the tower of Babel fell !
:)
aka, lack of a unified language
I have been a user since last year and collected 10000 work units, then i moved to both the folding@home and climatepredicton projects.
...
Why ? because i strongly suspect they'd waste CPU cycles on the same work units rather than say: hey, "5 MILLION user are enough" we have found this and that, and until new funding arrives you better move on to other projects.
The "current progress" page hasn't been updated in years, so the "future direction" page, look for yourself
As someone here already pointed out, the US Business sector (i.e. the bigger job absorber) was NOT responsible for the US based innovation (well except for airplanes maybe). But the internet, comes from research based at DARPA and Universities and Space flight was hugely funded by the government.
I think the author is desperately trying to convince students to enroll to engineering and CS, so he purposedly want to sell the concept that "the creative US programmer" will find a great job because he (as opposite to programmers anywhere else) will be magically be capable to "innovate" between one deadline and the other.
I think this guy is plain dishonest.
Very often the term "neural network" is used
...
just as a selling point because it sounds
like something extremely advanced and "related
to artificial intelligence".
usually the neural network is just a
very simple, possibly linear, adaptive filter
which means that really contains no more
than a few matrix multiplications
yes it has some success in approximating
things locally, but terms like "learning"
are really misused
After RTFA (the second) it actually
seems that they did try two or three
things before, but really i wouldn't
"welcome our new intelligent packet sizers overlords"
just yet.
1) LastServicePack+Updates+Drivers
2) DiskKeeper
3) Norton Antivirus for NT4.0
4) ZoneAlarm
5) AdAware
6) RegCleaner
7) FinePrint
8) SSH_WinClient
9) Winzip
10) PsExplorer & TCPView
(www.sysinternals.com)
then some audio and ripping tools
like DartPro, AltoMp3,
then possibly kazaalite,
we are ready for the "serious" apps,
and some office productivity tools
Ok i'll give up some mod points, but i have to say i completely disagree on this.
The roadmap to desktop acceptance for Linux MUST GO THROUGH WINE. And for a simple reason. If we are anywhere serious about bringing the stereotypical Aunt Maggie (which represents is 90% of the desktop users) we can only propose ONE change at a time.
Changing together operating system AND the most used apps it's too much for most users. You are seriously waiting for that to magically happen ?
Well my friend, i think that DRM will probably have locked everybody up, and linux will be long gone, before that happens.