I developed an open source project a while back using the non-commercial Qt 2.3 version, but this trapped my project in limbo, because it requires the VC++ 6.0 compiler, among other reasons.
Was just recently looking at other truly open toolkits so that I could get the project out of this situation. Now I can just stay with Qt, which is nice because it has worked very well in the project.
Isn't increasing automation at odds with the concept that all wealth is created by workers? It seems to me that you can have lots of intrinsic value associated with the materials and work that transform something into a useful object. And lots of that can happen without human labor.
I suspect that as technology becomes more advanced, what with robotics, AI and nanotechnology, then there will have to be some major reassessments of how to have a fair and productive economy.
It's time for people to start questioning the 'free market' ideologues, and assess how much this ideology actually contributes to the well-being of society and how much is actually just clever propaganda for maintaining the status of the wealthy.
Lua is an open-source scripting language that kicks ass. It was created in Brazil. I wonder if the open-source tendencies mentioned in the Wired article contributed to that.
My response did have a point, and it was no more ad hominem than yours, where you characterize Kurzweil as selfish, pathetic and a kook.
I'm not defending the guy's position, the arguments he made in the CIO interview were very superficial. Maybe he makes a stronger case elsewhere.
I was just struck by the vehemence of your response. By the way, just to keep the sarcasm thing going, my preposition may not be as impressively long or commonly used as yours, but it is still technically correct.
Well, your blistering sarcasm of Kurzweil's vision and selfish desires has me wondering how noble and self-sacrificing you have been in your long life?
You see, I presume that you are equally old as Kurzweil and are quite at peace with the prospect of your own death in the next decade or so.
mhack
Running for President against Bruce Sterling
on
Ask Neal Stephenson
·
· Score: 1
If you were running against Bruce Sterling in the coming election, who would make a better president and why?
I don't think so, but I'm no expert. Another poster mentioned that the problem is due to lag between motion input and the display, which apparently is a problem for head-trackers, but shouldn't be a problem for the mouse.
I don't think it would be much different from playing an FPS on a real big monitor with your face up close. The only reason that might make you sick as hell is the bloody giblets all over the floor.
Unless, of course, you are already sick as hell before you play, in which case that should make you feel better.
Sounds like this would be perfect for making Head Mounted Displays, so we can finally get some decent low cost Virtual Reality and/or 3D display hardware. Any reason why that wouldn't work?
I know that the most sophisticated VR also requires complicated head position tracking hardware, which apparently is quite difficult to get right. Existing implementations often cause nausea and vertigo in some people.
However, a nice, crisp 3D display with mouse-driven movement of the scene should be a perfectly acceptable low-cost alternative. You would have to strap it on your head and you would look like some kind of wired-up bug freak, but what's wrong with that?
I sure as heck could use it in my molecular modelling work.
I respectfully disagree that the Palestinian issue is a red herring. I do agree with you that Arab governments have cynically used the issue to further their own political aims.
However, as you yourself point out, the unresolved issue has resulted in massive amounts of money that are diverted for other uses. It goes to corrupt leaders such as Arafat as well as funding for terrorists.
If the United States took strong leadership to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, we would remove a huge, festering sore that has hurt our credibility with the Arab public. It is the massive numbers of everyday people in the Arab world that we must compete for in the fight against Bin Laden and the other extremists.
I challenge you to name ONE single Bush Basher who has advocated that we negotiate with Bin Laden. There is no signficant position among liberals to do that.
Your response is typical of Bush supporters who use shallow rhetorical devices to distract people from the real issues.
The issue is not that we negotiate with Bin Laden, the issue is to understand the conditions of the Middle East that got us into this mess, including:
Our support of undemocratic Arab governments
Our support of excessive Israeli oppression of the Palestinians
Our support of terrorists in Afghanistan during the Soviet war
Rather than play political games, the US voters
need to learn history AND engage in sincere debate. Otherwise our nation is headed for more trouble.
Actually, the previous election works even better.
Ok, who was the fool who stepped on the butterfly?!!
It's the Election, stupid
on
A Sound of Thunder
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
If there was ever a perfect occurrence of amazing science fiction prophecy, the connection between the upcoming election and the one in the story is it.
Drexler's view of nanotechnology has always been focused on an industrial kind of nanotechnolgy, presumably because it approaches a theoretical optimum in terms of efficiency. However, as a consequence, this is a 'brittle' form of technology that is inherently less evolvable. And I agree with him that this kind of nanotechnology is unlikely to overwhelm existing ecosystems.
However, the totality of life in its present form is actually quite vulnerable to being taken over by a distinctly different and new form of life (in fact this already happened once, to a lesser degree, with photosynthesis). The reason is that, although the current totality of life appears incredibly diverse in one sense, at the most fundamental level there is an extraordinary unity.
This unity is found in the method by which the principle components of all living organisms are assembled: the linkage of amino acids on the ribosome as directed by DNA sequence.
This unity makes us (and ALL other extant life) vulnerable to outcompetition by a new type of assembly system. But if such a system emerges, it will NOT resemble the industrial kinds of nanoassemblers proposed by Drexler et. al.
Instead, this kind of system would have the flexibility and compositional variability of existing living chemical systems, which would enable it to evolve through mutation and mechanisms of selection.
Second, such a system would have machines capable of genetically-directed molecular assembly, but the components of such a system would not be limited to existing biological building blocks such as amino acids, nucleic acids, carbohydrates and lipids. Indeed, the advantages of a wider material repertoire have been pointed by Drexler.
Of course, a new kind of self-replicating system such as this would have to be initially created by pre-existing life (presumably us), but since it is evolvable, its subsequent nature could easily grow out of our control.
Now, to the final question of whether a new self-replicating system could outcompete ALL existing life. I assert that this is unlikely, but for a very different reason than that given by Drexler or others. The reason is NOT because it would be limited by energy utilization, or because that current life forms are already optimally evolved in the use of energy and materials.
Current living organisms do NOT come close to achieving the theoretical optimums of efficiency. This is only achieveable by the industrial kinds of nanomachines mentioned above, which are not a threat because of their brittle and specialized nature. In addition, the criteria for what is optimal depends on the conditions of the local environment, so that control of the nature of the local environment is a critical factor in determining who can best survive in that environment.
The real reason that the threat is limited is that any self-replicating system, no matter how optimized at the molecular level, would also need to compete for resources and control of the environment at the macroscopic scale. To compete at the macroscopic scale requires macroscopic sensor and effectors, and some kind of control system to integrate them. That is, any new form of life that hopes to take over will have to acquire something akin to a macroscopic nervous system.
While such a scenario is certainly possible, this is a whole new requirement that must be met, and I don't believe that it has been sufficiently addressed when considering the likelihood of the 'grey goo' scenario.
Thanks for an insightful look into one of the Beltway ideology tanks. I've always been curious how supposedly intelligent people can produce so much misleading and flawed work.
I've heard of a recent book by an ex-conservative journalist that exposes the corrupt process of right-wing media. You can read an exerpt
here.
Perhaps someone needs to write another book that focuses on how policy organizations are running rampant with taxpayer funds inside the beltway.
The debate about whether Linus Torvalds wrote Linux is just bait to keep the issue in the headlines. The real aim of Ken Brown and his supporters is to wage an ideological battle over the nature of intellectual property.
His flawed reasoning and poor judgement are too extensive for me to go into detail. I think the best way to summarize the error of his position is to compare him to Ebeneezer Scrooge, the greedy miser whose excessive concern with wealth blinded him to the truly important things in life.
The growth of information technology is part of a greater world of creative activity that includes science, art, music, literature and more. A critical requirement for continued creative work and innovation is an environment which enables the healthy flow of ideas between people.
Capitalism and the profit-motive play a part in enabling such creative activity, by helping to channel resources more effectively, but I maintain that the role of business and profit is strictly secondary. The true source of innovation starts with people who are passionate about creativity and discovery.
The great success of Science in the last several centuries has been critically dependent upon open communication and a free flow of ideas. The great success of software development in the last several decades has likewise been dependent upon an open environment for exploration and communication of new ideas.
Both of these creative activities are threatened by legal mechanisms such as patents and copyrights, which were originally intended to promote and reward innovation, but lately are mostly a means of protecting entrenched economic power.
I am not against Capitalism or rewarding creative endeavor, just as I presume Ken Brown is not against creativity or technological innovation. It all comes down to where you focus your energy. In Ken's (and Ebeneezer's) world, there is an obsessive emphasis is on building legal mechanisms and protecting corporate profits, at the expensive of an environment that can give birth to new innovations.
In my world, the focus is on the conditions that foster creativity and innovation, and subsequently deriving profit from the fruits made possible by those conditions.
Don't know if others have pointed this out, but I see two clear options for dealing with the over-population problem in a future society where technology allows the average lifespan to increase indefinitely.
Option 1: Reproduction only allowed for 'Finite-life-span' people
This option proposes a rule that people will only be allowed to have children if they agree to switch back to a 'finite' life span (presumably of some traditional duration like less than 100 years or so). That rule, in conjunction with a 'one-child-per-parent' rule, would prevent population explosion.
Option 2: Reproduction only allowed if you go off-planet at some point.
In this second option, indefinite-life-span people are allowed to reproduce on Earth, but after some specified duration, they have to leave the planet and 'retire' somewhere in outer space, in order to prevent population explosion.
As our technology for maintaining human health becomes more powerful, the population/reproduction issue will become critical at some point. People should remember that the same technology that can prevent aging will also be able to drastically reduce the probability of accidental death for a significant percentage of the population.
I'm curious if anyone else has thought of alternative ideas for dealing with the problem of reproduction with indefinite lifespan.
Yes, I agree, minimal known set is more correct. It's certainly possible that a smaller self-replicating system of a different nature could exist.
Also, science has produced so many unexpected and extraordinary discoveries about life in the past that I personally wouldn't be TOO surprised if a different and possibly smaller self-replicating system was discovered somewhere at some point.
I just don't know if this current nanosphere phenomenon will fit that bill though.
That's just big enough to hold a
single ribosome. Any self-replicating cell of that size which required proteins would not be able to manufacture them on its own. And without proteins, you can't replicate DNA. The minimal self-contained set of molecules that is self-replicating is physically much larger than this small size.
Therefore, if these particles are capable of replication, they must rely on some host cell for additional complex components, which places them in the category of 'not-truly-alive-on-their-own', like the viruses.
At this time, it is more correct to refer to these things as 'nano-spheres', NOT 'nanobacteria'.
Umm... you got it completely wrong. The point of the corporation is to distance the INVESTORS (aka shareholders) from the risks the corporation takes
Those risks include negligent action on the part of the corporation. Negligent action that often occurs soley because of the pressure to provide a greater return on investment.
Therefore, the investors ARE shielded from wrongdoing by the corporate mechanism that was ultimately acting to fulfill their demands.
You hit the nail on the forward looking policy, except that education IS part of industrial policy. I'm beginning to realize that this issue truly reveals the ultimate failure of the 'free market' economic and political ideology that is commonly promoted and widely accepted in US society.
The theory that the free market will always move us in the right direction to respond to any challenge only works in the very limited case where our circumstances permit us to respond to any particular challenge. Now the circumstances were well matched to the challenges in the US economy in the past.
But to assume that it will always be the case is the fundamental error. For an extreme case, consider the 'challenge' of a huge meteor hitting the Earth and causing massive disruption of global weather patterns, and subsequently, global economic activity. Obviously, the 'free-market' mechanism will fail to meet such a challenge. The challenge happens too quickly for the system to respond.
Now here's the point: in an age of ever-increasing technology, we are experiencing rapid challenges and disruptions to our economic status quo. The ability of our domestic economy to respond to these challenges is dependent upon our educational infrastructure, which in turn is dependent upon broader cultural factors such as the ability of families and institutions to provide an effective educational environment for our children.
These broader factors have much greater inertia and change on much longer timescales. The problem gets worse as the technological bar goes higher. Learning Computer Science take years. Learning Molecular Biology takes DECADES (I speak from experience in both fields). So US workers could easily reach a position where the majority will be unable to compete in the modern technological economy.
Just as many nations currently hamstrung by war, poverty and corruption are basically 'screwed', the United States population could end up screwed in the future. All it would take is the continued blind adherence to the ideology of the 'free market' as the solution to all of our economic problems.
That, and maybe the arrogance and ultimate expense of empire building.
Sorry, but that doesn't make sense. In addition to just being plain WRONG, assasinations of judges would let the government justify greater secrecy of judicial proceedings, like secret trials, evidence and testimony. In fact, they are ALREADY trying to do this, though public opposition is slowing them down. If assasinations happen, you can forget any chance of stopping PATRIOT 2 or worse. This is the absolute wrong direction we need to be heading. Our greatest security lies in openness and public oversight of the government. And that includes following the rules of law and working within the system, as frustrating as that might seem sometimes.
You know, it's moronic attitudes like yours that are a real threat to society. You don't even have a clue about what you are really advocating. If vigilantism to the point of shooting judges ever became the norm, society would be so much more dangerous, chaotic and fucked up than it is now. Instead of your current state of relative safety and pathetic ignorance, you would be far more likely to end up shot through the head on some sidewalk in the world that you are advocating.
Maybe you should read a little about Columbia (or maybe spend some time there), they have a history of shooting judges, as well as the nasty consequences that follow.
Slashdot Mirror
Was just recently looking at other truly open toolkits so that I could get the project out of this situation. Now I can just stay with Qt, which is nice because it has worked very well in the project.
Good move Trolls!
mhack
I suspect that as technology becomes more advanced, what with robotics, AI and nanotechnology, then there will have to be some major reassessments of how to have a fair and productive economy.
It's time for people to start questioning the 'free market' ideologues, and assess how much this ideology actually contributes to the well-being of society and how much is actually just clever propaganda for maintaining the status of the wealthy.
mhack
I would be interested in reading about some of your new views and techniques that you mention. Have you written anything for public consumption?
mhack
mhack
I'm not defending the guy's position, the arguments he made in the CIO interview were very superficial. Maybe he makes a stronger case elsewhere.
I was just struck by the vehemence of your response. By the way, just to keep the sarcasm thing going, my preposition may not be as impressively long or commonly used as yours, but it is still technically correct.
mhack
You see, I presume that you are equally old as Kurzweil and are quite at peace with the prospect of your own death in the next decade or so.
mhack
mhack
I don't think it would be much different from playing an FPS on a real big monitor with your face up close. The only reason that might make you sick as hell is the bloody giblets all over the floor.
Unless, of course, you are already sick as hell before you play, in which case that should make you feel better.
mhack
I know that the most sophisticated VR also requires complicated head position tracking hardware, which apparently is quite difficult to get right. Existing implementations often cause nausea and vertigo in some people.
However, a nice, crisp 3D display with mouse-driven movement of the scene should be a perfectly acceptable low-cost alternative. You would have to strap it on your head and you would look like some kind of wired-up bug freak, but what's wrong with that?
I sure as heck could use it in my molecular modelling work.
mhack
However, as you yourself point out, the unresolved issue has resulted in massive amounts of money that are diverted for other uses. It goes to corrupt leaders such as Arafat as well as funding for terrorists.
If the United States took strong leadership to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian problem, we would remove a huge, festering sore that has hurt our credibility with the Arab public. It is the massive numbers of everyday people in the Arab world that we must compete for in the fight against Bin Laden and the other extremists.
mhack
Your response is typical of Bush supporters who use shallow rhetorical devices to distract people from the real issues.
The issue is not that we negotiate with Bin Laden, the issue is to understand the conditions of the Middle East that got us into this mess, including:
Rather than play political games, the US voters need to learn history AND engage in sincere debate. Otherwise our nation is headed for more trouble.
mhack
The current mess that we are in is precisely due to a lack of understanding of history by the US voters.
mhack
Ok, who was the fool who stepped on the butterfly?!!
The people who removed that are idiots.
mhack
However, the totality of life in its present form is actually quite vulnerable to being taken over by a distinctly different and new form of life (in fact this already happened once, to a lesser degree, with photosynthesis). The reason is that, although the current totality of life appears incredibly diverse in one sense, at the most fundamental level there is an extraordinary unity. This unity is found in the method by which the principle components of all living organisms are assembled: the linkage of amino acids on the ribosome as directed by DNA sequence.
This unity makes us (and ALL other extant life) vulnerable to outcompetition by a new type of assembly system. But if such a system emerges, it will NOT resemble the industrial kinds of nanoassemblers proposed by Drexler et. al. Instead, this kind of system would have the flexibility and compositional variability of existing living chemical systems, which would enable it to evolve through mutation and mechanisms of selection.
Second, such a system would have machines capable of genetically-directed molecular assembly, but the components of such a system would not be limited to existing biological building blocks such as amino acids, nucleic acids, carbohydrates and lipids. Indeed, the advantages of a wider material repertoire have been pointed by Drexler.
Of course, a new kind of self-replicating system such as this would have to be initially created by pre-existing life (presumably us), but since it is evolvable, its subsequent nature could easily grow out of our control.
Now, to the final question of whether a new self-replicating system could outcompete ALL existing life. I assert that this is unlikely, but for a very different reason than that given by Drexler or others. The reason is NOT because it would be limited by energy utilization, or because that current life forms are already optimally evolved in the use of energy and materials.
Current living organisms do NOT come close to achieving the theoretical optimums of efficiency. This is only achieveable by the industrial kinds of nanomachines mentioned above, which are not a threat because of their brittle and specialized nature. In addition, the criteria for what is optimal depends on the conditions of the local environment, so that control of the nature of the local environment is a critical factor in determining who can best survive in that environment.
The real reason that the threat is limited is that any self-replicating system, no matter how optimized at the molecular level, would also need to compete for resources and control of the environment at the macroscopic scale. To compete at the macroscopic scale requires macroscopic sensor and effectors, and some kind of control system to integrate them. That is, any new form of life that hopes to take over will have to acquire something akin to a macroscopic nervous system.
While such a scenario is certainly possible, this is a whole new requirement that must be met, and I don't believe that it has been sufficiently addressed when considering the likelihood of the 'grey goo' scenario.
mhack
mhack
I've heard of a recent book by an ex-conservative journalist that exposes the corrupt process of right-wing media. You can read an exerpt here.
Perhaps someone needs to write another book that focuses on how policy organizations are running rampant with taxpayer funds inside the beltway.
mhack
His flawed reasoning and poor judgement are too extensive for me to go into detail. I think the best way to summarize the error of his position is to compare him to Ebeneezer Scrooge, the greedy miser whose excessive concern with wealth blinded him to the truly important things in life.
The growth of information technology is part of a greater world of creative activity that includes science, art, music, literature and more. A critical requirement for continued creative work and innovation is an environment which enables the healthy flow of ideas between people.
Capitalism and the profit-motive play a part in enabling such creative activity, by helping to channel resources more effectively, but I maintain that the role of business and profit is strictly secondary. The true source of innovation starts with people who are passionate about creativity and discovery.
The great success of Science in the last several centuries has been critically dependent upon open communication and a free flow of ideas. The great success of software development in the last several decades has likewise been dependent upon an open environment for exploration and communication of new ideas.
Both of these creative activities are threatened by legal mechanisms such as patents and copyrights, which were originally intended to promote and reward innovation, but lately are mostly a means of protecting entrenched economic power.
I am not against Capitalism or rewarding creative endeavor, just as I presume Ken Brown is not against creativity or technological innovation. It all comes down to where you focus your energy. In Ken's (and Ebeneezer's) world, there is an obsessive emphasis is on building legal mechanisms and protecting corporate profits, at the expensive of an environment that can give birth to new innovations.
In my world, the focus is on the conditions that foster creativity and innovation, and subsequently deriving profit from the fruits made possible by those conditions.
Which world do we want to live in?
mhack
Option 1: Reproduction only allowed for 'Finite-life-span' people
This option proposes a rule that people will only be allowed to have children if they agree to switch back to a 'finite' life span (presumably of some traditional duration like less than 100 years or so). That rule, in conjunction with a 'one-child-per-parent' rule, would prevent population explosion.
Option 2: Reproduction only allowed if you go off-planet at some point.
In this second option, indefinite-life-span people are allowed to reproduce on Earth, but after some specified duration, they have to leave the planet and 'retire' somewhere in outer space, in order to prevent population explosion.
As our technology for maintaining human health becomes more powerful, the population/reproduction issue will become critical at some point. People should remember that the same technology that can prevent aging will also be able to drastically reduce the probability of accidental death for a significant percentage of the population.
I'm curious if anyone else has thought of alternative ideas for dealing with the problem of reproduction with indefinite lifespan.
mhack
Also, science has produced so many unexpected and extraordinary discoveries about life in the past that I personally wouldn't be TOO surprised if a different and possibly smaller self-replicating system was discovered somewhere at some point.
I just don't know if this current nanosphere phenomenon will fit that bill though.
mhack
Therefore, if these particles are capable of replication, they must rely on some host cell for additional complex components, which places them in the category of 'not-truly-alive-on-their-own', like the viruses.
At this time, it is more correct to refer to these things as 'nano-spheres', NOT 'nanobacteria'.
mhack
Those risks include negligent action on the part of the corporation. Negligent action that often occurs soley because of the pressure to provide a greater return on investment.
Therefore, the investors ARE shielded from wrongdoing by the corporate mechanism that was ultimately acting to fulfill their demands.
The theory that the free market will always move us in the right direction to respond to any challenge only works in the very limited case where our circumstances permit us to respond to any particular challenge. Now the circumstances were well matched to the challenges in the US economy in the past.
But to assume that it will always be the case is the fundamental error. For an extreme case, consider the 'challenge' of a huge meteor hitting the Earth and causing massive disruption of global weather patterns, and subsequently, global economic activity. Obviously, the 'free-market' mechanism will fail to meet such a challenge. The challenge happens too quickly for the system to respond.
Now here's the point: in an age of ever-increasing technology, we are experiencing rapid challenges and disruptions to our economic status quo. The ability of our domestic economy to respond to these challenges is dependent upon our educational infrastructure, which in turn is dependent upon broader cultural factors such as the ability of families and institutions to provide an effective educational environment for our children.
These broader factors have much greater inertia and change on much longer timescales. The problem gets worse as the technological bar goes higher. Learning Computer Science take years. Learning Molecular Biology takes DECADES (I speak from experience in both fields). So US workers could easily reach a position where the majority will be unable to compete in the modern technological economy.
Just as many nations currently hamstrung by war, poverty and corruption are basically 'screwed', the United States population could end up screwed in the future. All it would take is the continued blind adherence to the ideology of the 'free market' as the solution to all of our economic problems.
That, and maybe the arrogance and ultimate expense of empire building.
mhack
mhack
Maybe you should read a little about Columbia (or maybe spend some time there), they have a history of shooting judges, as well as the nasty consequences that follow.
mhack