That is very informative. I'm sure that quite a few young writers make this mistake. Are there any protections for when an artist is taken advantage of?
It makes me wonder about what I have heard about standard contracts in the recording industry. The description of multi-record contracts implies that the record companies are buying rights to future works as well, and if it were only something like a first-refusal right, the artist would be able to sell recordings if the company did not want to release it. Is it because they are often involved in the production process as well?
I also remember reading that movie producers won't go ahead without clear copyright to the screenplay. In this case, at least they are typically investing a lot of their own resources in the production process. With a record, all they are providing is finance and recording facilities (maybe), and the only other creative input is the recording engineers who are probably just on salary and not entitled to any of the royalties (or is this wrong?).
What I wonder is how they get off calling anyone sharing music files criminals at the same time they are ripping off the consumer for hundreds of millions of dollars? They certainly don't have a ethical leg to stand on, and the legal one is a little shaky as well.
They will deserve their fate, which they have earned by continuing to treat their customers and talent with contempt.
Local TV did a piece on this, and the claim is that if you are a good candidate, and you use a reputable doctor, you shouldn't expect any problems. It seems some centers may be to ready to do it for anyone, and some people just shouldn't. They seemed to indicate it related to the specific physiology of your eyes.
Obviously you want good advice from a competent practitioner, and getting a second opinion is probably also a good idea. I'm sure the doctor can answer any questions relating to night vision concerns as well.
The question I would have is whether it has any impact on loss of depth perception. I've always thought if this process was reliable it would be good to get rid of the glasses, but now that I'm getting into the bifocal zone, I don't know that it would be as worthwhile. It would still be nice to only need reading glasses, but probably not if there was even a small risk of bad problems.
That's pretty weak. I would think that someone walking around the mall with mirrors on his shoes trying to get a peek would run afoul of a "peeping tom" law. Even more so if using cameras.
I'm guessing that this is done to try to detect shoplifters putting items under their skirts, but I fail to see how this justifies invading everyones privacy in this way. Although a skirt doesn't ensure the privacy of what is under it, placing cameras with the express purpose of looking under a skirt is clearly an invasion of privacy. If it wouldn't be permitted to an individual, I see no reason to permit mall security to do the same.
Maybe someone with more legal knowledge can add something, but this is a search and would require showing cause. Also, wouldn't it have to be done by the police, not private security.
The is very little in this article that isn't in the class of, "If you don't know this already, you probably shouldn't be running any dynamic content". I thought it would at least go into stuff about securing pages that allow updating of content or configuration from web pages, but I didn't see any of this. Stuff like SSL, authentication and certificates.
I think this is about right. Top institutions are distinquished by the quality of both the students and the faculty. On the other hand, not everyone who is qualified is or can be at M.I.T., so there are a lot of people who can benefit from this material just as much as if they were able to attend, and others can absorb all of it at their own rate.
When I was there as an undergraduate, I didn't think the curiculum was at a level above the rest, and I attributed most of MIT's reputation to the student selection process. I have come to realize that the background I got as an undergraduate was on a par with what most people get in a Masters program. You can pack more into a four year program if the students are all at a relatively high level.
There is no reason why many institutions can't make it possible for their top students and faculty to keep pace and match these programs. The motivated individual could make this happen on their own. Technical material in particular are not as dependant on social maturity to succeed can be mastered by young geniuses if it is available.
You shouldn't get too down on them for trying to avoid litigation. Unless you are willing to fund their legal bills related to taking a stand, you don't really have a right to complain.
On the other hand, it isn't much of a Wayback Machine if it doesn't have anything before HTTP came alone. I seem to recall someone was trying to archive the bulk of all NetNews back in the 80s, not to mention all the BBS stuff. I don't see too much of this on their site.
Isn't it obvious? It would still compete with their current products, therefore they have an active interest in preventing you from using it. Your only choice is to pay again for the new version, whether you want it or not.
More interesting is that a lot of software just disappears when the company that owned it goes belly up. Often, there are provisions to escrow the source so that it will continue to be available to customers who will now need to support themselves now that the company is gone. Wouldn't it be better to release it to the public domain or under GPL if the owner is no longer a viable entity?
Next question for the lawyerly types out there: Upon her demise, is it possible for an author to will her works into the public domain?
The problem is with publishers who have standard contracts for this sort of thing, and are not interested in what the author wants. I gather from things I've read that industry standard contracts are more of a problem for recording artists, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same is true for print publishing. Note what happened when the courts decided that publishers needed to separately by the on-line rights to a work, they just added this right to the standard contract. I doubt that any writers got any bigger cut from this change.
It's pretty hard for the individual artist or writer to stand their ground in the face of this. The only way is to organize, and either collectively bargan for appropriate rights, or only work with publishers who give favorable terms. Many artists and writers need to wake up to the fact that they are the talent, and the publishers would have nothing without them.
You missed the point. The works being distributed are in the public domain and therefore there is no DRM issue.
On the other hand, paper can be recycled, and if they print on paper that has already been recycled, then the environmental issue is small and managable. Plastic and ??? materials in CDRs probably are more of an environmental problem.
Also, no-doubt you can download these works on-line if you want to read them that way, but until displays get a lot better, this won't be the most popular way to read a book.
The display technology probably can be made good enough to make a nice reading device, but it probably would cost a bit more than most people want to spend.
Bottom line is that both of them and their "followers" (if this term can even be used in this context) have done a lot for free software. The RMS camp will continue to exert an important influence within the community and their work will be highly valued, but as you say "business seems to have and apathy for ideals."
Pragmatism is very important for bringing useful things into the market quickly, and naturally that is where many people are coming from. On the other hand, in the long run, ideas (and ideals) do matter.
It is important that the GPL is widely adopted, and there isn't a lot of confusion from variations on license terms, but that doesn't mean you should get religious about it. In the long run, these things will settle out, and they already are.
The microkernel ideas behind Mach and all of its derivatives are an important advance in Computer Science, and the HURD project is where these ideas are being devoloped in full. They are not ready for full scale deployment, but when they are, they will be adopted quickly. That is the beauty of a single clear Free license (GPL), because there is no reason that these two projects can't exchange large pieces of code. If the Linux team wants to pull in the HURD microkernel in a major release cycle, there is no licensing issue. The only issue is whether it make technical sense. Nobody should worry that the HURD doesn't have many drivers, since it should be possible to import drivers from Linux. In fact it should be possible to import them wholesale if the interfaces can be matched.
Since they change the look and feel with every release, and move important functions around so that you have to search for them.
I wouldn't have touched XP yet, except that an artist friend of mine just upgraded from a hand-me-down machine to a new one. That was his first comment, why did they change everything? He's thinking about returning it and spending a little more on an Apple.
I loaded the Windows version of the GIMP to give him a chance to get away from Photoshop. I'm trying to convince him that it is worth his time to learn GIMP rather than Photoshop which will continue to cost him money that he doesn't have. Unfortunately, I'm not experience enough with any of these tools to be able to say that the GIMP has all the features that he will want from Photoshop, or to help him learn it.
Re:Migration path is everything.
on
Itanium Problems
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· Score: 2
Exactly. Note the comment about Microsoft not supporting the 64 bit mode initially. You don't have to get the OS vendors to do a port, just support a few new instructions, etc. Maybe if they had come out with this when initially planned, the Wintel cartel would have been able to push this on everyone.
The OS support angle on this is interesting too. We had RedHat for Itanium long before Windows, but I can't imagine that happening without Intel forking over some cash to RedHat. MS can't be forced to do anything, so unless they actually believe the numbers are going to be there, they are going to have their own priorities. AMD can still sell their 64 bit CPUs even if MS doesn't support their strategy.
How long will it be from availability of the 64 bit AMD systems until it is fully supported in Linux? I'm betting it will be long before Windows does.
Although there appear to be some partial solutions around for Linux, I do think is would be worth giving it full treatment in one or more of the most common FS modules. It certainly isn't new; I remember liking how the DEC Tops 10 OS handled this. With settable number of generations to keep both for when on-line, and a (usually) smaller one for when you log off. Files are given "generation numbers" that increment each time it is writen and closed, then you can add a generation number to any file reference if you don't want the most recent.
This needs to be very user oriented and transparent so that it doesn't fail when you need it most.
All the enablers are there ready to be exploited. You will need an economic model to make it work, but how hard is it to compete with standard recording contracts for artists? To pay artists, ask for money just like NPR and come up with a formula to distribute the wealth. RIAA members are only interested in the million+ sellers anyway. Also, there is no reason not to charge a royalty for companies that want to actually make and distribute CDs with cover and label art, etc.
With all the industry players trying to piss off their customers with DRM, it shouldn't be hard to make this grow. I'd do it myself, but it isn't my core interest. I know there are lots of you out there who are that interested, and lots more like me who are interested enough to give suggestions and use these services when they become available.
You would think they would want their own version of palladium to help both track users and make sure nobody runs any unauthorized software. Only in this case it would be them, not MS doing the authorizing.
Ok, so when will we be able to do the same with Linux? I don't have any of these devices yet, but this functionality will be important when I do. I imagine someone is already working on it.
It should be just a small part of the larger design problem of allowing for your personal info and identity to securely track between all the computing devices you use.
what are you talking about? exponential growth in software development?
No, I certainly made no claims about productivity.
theres relatively fixed number of people in software development, its not increasing exponentially. pretty much everyone who would work on open-source is already working on it.
This is clearly false. More people than ever are using open-source, and more people are involved in all phases of development as well. For the student of technology, there is nothing better than to get your feet wet with these projects. I'm sure SourceForge has some good statistics on this if you are interested.
the rest of the developers have real jobs and get paid real money to work on a real product.
Not everyone working on free/open source is working for nothing. For many well paid academics, it is an important part of their research work.
This all ignores the fact that Free Software and Linux exist in an economy/jungle and is not a math problem.
No, it isn't, but that is not what I said. Jungle? That's one metaphor. War is even more common, but also not the only one. I like the suggestion that "conversation" is a better metaphor in the present context (see Cluetrain Manifesto for hints).
Insects and bacteria also have exponential reproduction rates, but they do not automatically take over the world.
Simply demonstrating that a system has exponential growth is not sufficient to predict that it will succeed.
Of course, there are limits, but what are the limits for open/free source. Until we hit the limits of Moore's law, there will always be a very strong demand for technical skills, so the pool of potential participants goes up. Cheap hardware, networks and more projects means that people who wouldn't get the opportunity to learn technology can.
The only really limiting factor is competition, but these projects don't really compete in the traditional way. Why do you thing MS is so scared? They can't just introduce a competing product and either buy them out or cut off their oxygen. It's making them nuts because they can't figure it out, and they will probably ruin their business fighting it.
Yes, I think it is very interesting that so many AI problems continue to be much more difficult than many predict. Even successes like chess playing programs beating all human players, although it has happened, the way it is done is not particularly satisfying.
Thurow is an economist, not a scientist or engineer, which is why his predictions about biotech are particularly bad. The science is on the edge of a lot of new understanding and breakthroughs, but that will only put us up against the really interesting and hard problems. As if we would be able to find genes that more or less directly influence something as subtle as IQ.
I find the predictions about the future importance of web services and the junk about "insight" to be particularly inane. On the first, nobody should forget that GM and Ford are still about the only companies that represent a percentage of the U.S. economy. Manufacture of physical goods (and commodities production, etc.) will continue to be the drivers of economies.
In my opinion, the most important trend is a favorite of this forum. The growth factors that have been working for Free software are fundamentally exponential, even if the constant factor is small. If it isn't killed off by legal/social influence of current big players, and I don't think this is likely if it is even possible, then the exponential term will eventually dominate.
When this plays out, the companies that make their reputations by being the best at efficiently building and servicing products that are mostly designed in the "Creative Commons". People will pay for quality in goods and services, and there will always be value in good execution. Customers do not value "insight" as described in one prediction. They find this sort of thing invasive and manipulative, and you won't be able to keep it secret.
It was when I was chasing down some secondary links from the GNUradio interview that I came across the stuff about the value of a network increasing at greater than linear rates. You get O(N) for broadcast networks, O(N^2) in peer to peer networks, but the exponential (O(2^N)) comes in when you have group forming networks (GFN).
When you think about it, this is what drives the GPL software phenominon. Every project fork or new initiative forms a new group or groups in the network, and every project is a nucleus for new group formation. The only way this could be stopped is to destroy to possibility of the group forming that leads to the exponential growth. While this might be possible, our robust institutions that support free speech make this very difficult if not impossible.
So my prediction is that Linux on the desktop will overtake Windows in the next ten years, and the RIAa and MPAA will finally lose out to the best interests of the actual artists they claim to support. Also, derivitives of GNUradio will be core technology in establishing cooperative wireless mesh networks. This is the only prediction of any of the pundits in the article that will come true.
What ever happened to Xanadu?
on
Hacker Culture
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· Score: 2
In a way, I think one of the best books to explore hackerdom from the inside is _Computer_Lib/Dream_Machines_ by Ted Nelson. I wish my original copy in the large format hadn't disappeared in a move or something. Probably somewhat of a collector's item now.
Kind of ironic that the Microsoft Press reprinted it more recently, although that copy of mine doesn't have a very good binding and is falling apart.
I agree with all of your points. However, my point is that if you design for a long program, you should expect upgrades and improvements to be made as you find out what works and new tech becomes available. Once you've qualified it for building new hardware, retrofit would be easier. Of course there are systems interactions to watch for, and some additional systems level testing to tease that out, but you have done most of the work anyway.
The more mechanical systems probably wouldn't change as fast, but planning on a decade or maybe even 5-7 year upgrade cycle for control, data and navagation systems would probably even be cost effective.
Re:So, whose idea was it...
on
For Want Of A Soyuz
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Well, you know it's an international project and there has to be something for each nation to do. If one government can make a toilet seat cost $600, what do you think it would cost when there is a commitee of governments?
But seriously, Russia should have the resources long term to make their economy work so they are actually able to pay for their space program and live up to the commitments they make to international programs. Probably, it would be worth it for them to invest more of the currently scarce resources into the space program. They now have access to a lot more technology than they did when Soyuz was designed. Design something new, with current technology, for maximal reuse and flexibility. I bet that would do as much for their economy as the Moon program did for ours in the 60s. Good investment.
Something similar could be said about the shuttle. Come to think of it, wouldn't it be nice if a long lived program like a shuttle was designed with the idea that you would upgrade and improve systems continuously over the live of the program. With the shuttles, I know the later ones had improvments, and probably some of those improvements got added to older birds (when it is possible), but if it was designed to be upgraded through its life as needed it would be easy. Doesn't it cost more to maintain the old systems?
The article also makes the point about handling during manufacture. Yes, you can control that environment better than the use environment, but you still have to have a way to deal with it.
Actually, I was confused at first and thought this was about nano-technology, not nanometer scale integrated circuits. At some point, I would expect a major technology shift away from electrical circuits toward something else. After all, cells and neurons don't have these problems. The problem comes from having all those tiny and very long metal interconnects.
Slashdot Mirror
It makes me wonder about what I have heard about standard contracts in the recording industry. The description of multi-record contracts implies that the record companies are buying rights to future works as well, and if it were only something like a first-refusal right, the artist would be able to sell recordings if the company did not want to release it. Is it because they are often involved in the production process as well?
I also remember reading that movie producers won't go ahead without clear copyright to the screenplay. In this case, at least they are typically investing a lot of their own resources in the production process. With a record, all they are providing is finance and recording facilities (maybe), and the only other creative input is the recording engineers who are probably just on salary and not entitled to any of the royalties (or is this wrong?).
They will deserve their fate, which they have earned by continuing to treat their customers and talent with contempt.
Obviously you want good advice from a competent practitioner, and getting a second opinion is probably also a good idea. I'm sure the doctor can answer any questions relating to night vision concerns as well.
The question I would have is whether it has any impact on loss of depth perception. I've always thought if this process was reliable it would be good to get rid of the glasses, but now that I'm getting into the bifocal zone, I don't know that it would be as worthwhile. It would still be nice to only need reading glasses, but probably not if there was even a small risk of bad problems.
I'm guessing that this is done to try to detect shoplifters putting items under their skirts, but I fail to see how this justifies invading everyones privacy in this way. Although a skirt doesn't ensure the privacy of what is under it, placing cameras with the express purpose of looking under a skirt is clearly an invasion of privacy. If it wouldn't be permitted to an individual, I see no reason to permit mall security to do the same.
Maybe someone with more legal knowledge can add something, but this is a search and would require showing cause. Also, wouldn't it have to be done by the police, not private security.
The is very little in this article that isn't in the class of, "If you don't know this already, you probably shouldn't be running any dynamic content". I thought it would at least go into stuff about securing pages that allow updating of content or configuration from web pages, but I didn't see any of this. Stuff like SSL, authentication and certificates.
When I was there as an undergraduate, I didn't think the curiculum was at a level above the rest, and I attributed most of MIT's reputation to the student selection process. I have come to realize that the background I got as an undergraduate was on a par with what most people get in a Masters program. You can pack more into a four year program if the students are all at a relatively high level.
There is no reason why many institutions can't make it possible for their top students and faculty to keep pace and match these programs. The motivated individual could make this happen on their own. Technical material in particular are not as dependant on social maturity to succeed can be mastered by young geniuses if it is available.
On the other hand, it isn't much of a Wayback Machine if it doesn't have anything before HTTP came alone. I seem to recall someone was trying to archive the bulk of all NetNews back in the 80s, not to mention all the BBS stuff. I don't see too much of this on their site.
More interesting is that a lot of software just disappears when the company that owned it goes belly up. Often, there are provisions to escrow the source so that it will continue to be available to customers who will now need to support themselves now that the company is gone. Wouldn't it be better to release it to the public domain or under GPL if the owner is no longer a viable entity?
The problem is with publishers who have standard contracts for this sort of thing, and are not interested in what the author wants. I gather from things I've read that industry standard contracts are more of a problem for recording artists, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same is true for print publishing. Note what happened when the courts decided that publishers needed to separately by the on-line rights to a work, they just added this right to the standard contract. I doubt that any writers got any bigger cut from this change.
It's pretty hard for the individual artist or writer to stand their ground in the face of this. The only way is to organize, and either collectively bargan for appropriate rights, or only work with publishers who give favorable terms. Many artists and writers need to wake up to the fact that they are the talent, and the publishers would have nothing without them.
On the other hand, paper can be recycled, and if they print on paper that has already been recycled, then the environmental issue is small and managable. Plastic and ??? materials in CDRs probably are more of an environmental problem.
Also, no-doubt you can download these works on-line if you want to read them that way, but until displays get a lot better, this won't be the most popular way to read a book.
The display technology probably can be made good enough to make a nice reading device, but it probably would cost a bit more than most people want to spend.
Bottom line is that both of them and their "followers" (if this term can even be used in this context) have done a lot for free software. The RMS camp will continue to exert an important influence within the community and their work will be highly valued, but as you say "business seems to have and apathy for ideals."
Pragmatism is very important for bringing useful things into the market quickly, and naturally that is where many people are coming from. On the other hand, in the long run, ideas (and ideals) do matter.
It is important that the GPL is widely adopted, and there isn't a lot of confusion from variations on license terms, but that doesn't mean you should get religious about it. In the long run, these things will settle out, and they already are.
The microkernel ideas behind Mach and all of its derivatives are an important advance in Computer Science, and the HURD project is where these ideas are being devoloped in full. They are not ready for full scale deployment, but when they are, they will be adopted quickly. That is the beauty of a single clear Free license (GPL), because there is no reason that these two projects can't exchange large pieces of code. If the Linux team wants to pull in the HURD microkernel in a major release cycle, there is no licensing issue. The only issue is whether it make technical sense. Nobody should worry that the HURD doesn't have many drivers, since it should be possible to import drivers from Linux. In fact it should be possible to import them wholesale if the interfaces can be matched.
I wouldn't have touched XP yet, except that an artist friend of mine just upgraded from a hand-me-down machine to a new one. That was his first comment, why did they change everything? He's thinking about returning it and spending a little more on an Apple.
I loaded the Windows version of the GIMP to give him a chance to get away from Photoshop. I'm trying to convince him that it is worth his time to learn GIMP rather than Photoshop which will continue to cost him money that he doesn't have. Unfortunately, I'm not experience enough with any of these tools to be able to say that the GIMP has all the features that he will want from Photoshop, or to help him learn it.
The OS support angle on this is interesting too. We had RedHat for Itanium long before Windows, but I can't imagine that happening without Intel forking over some cash to RedHat. MS can't be forced to do anything, so unless they actually believe the numbers are going to be there, they are going to have their own priorities. AMD can still sell their 64 bit CPUs even if MS doesn't support their strategy.
How long will it be from availability of the 64 bit AMD systems until it is fully supported in Linux? I'm betting it will be long before Windows does.
This needs to be very user oriented and transparent so that it doesn't fail when you need it most.
Fortunatly, they haven't passed it yet, and at least one of the sponsors is starting to backpeddle on those provisions.
All the enablers are there ready to be exploited. You will need an economic model to make it work, but how hard is it to compete with standard recording contracts for artists? To pay artists, ask for money just like NPR and come up with a formula to distribute the wealth. RIAA members are only interested in the million+ sellers anyway. Also, there is no reason not to charge a royalty for companies that want to actually make and distribute CDs with cover and label art, etc.
With all the industry players trying to piss off their customers with DRM, it shouldn't be hard to make this grow. I'd do it myself, but it isn't my core interest. I know there are lots of you out there who are that interested, and lots more like me who are interested enough to give suggestions and use these services when they become available.
You would think they would want their own version of palladium to help both track users and make sure nobody runs any unauthorized software. Only in this case it would be them, not MS doing the authorizing.
It should be just a small part of the larger design problem of allowing for your personal info and identity to securely track between all the computing devices you use.
No, I certainly made no claims about productivity.
theres relatively fixed number of people in software development, its not increasing exponentially. pretty much everyone who would work on open-source is already working on it.
This is clearly false. More people than ever are using open-source, and more people are involved in all phases of development as well. For the student of technology, there is nothing better than to get your feet wet with these projects. I'm sure SourceForge has some good statistics on this if you are interested.
the rest of the developers have real jobs and get paid real money to work on a real product.
Not everyone working on free/open source is working for nothing. For many well paid academics, it is an important part of their research work.
This all ignores the fact that Free Software and Linux exist in an economy/jungle and is not a math problem.
No, it isn't, but that is not what I said. Jungle? That's one metaphor. War is even more common, but also not the only one. I like the suggestion that "conversation" is a better metaphor in the present context (see Cluetrain Manifesto for hints).
Insects and bacteria also have exponential reproduction rates, but they do not automatically take over the world.
Simply demonstrating that a system has exponential growth is not sufficient to predict that it will succeed.
Of course, there are limits, but what are the limits for open/free source. Until we hit the limits of Moore's law, there will always be a very strong demand for technical skills, so the pool of potential participants goes up. Cheap hardware, networks and more projects means that people who wouldn't get the opportunity to learn technology can.
The only really limiting factor is competition, but these projects don't really compete in the traditional way. Why do you thing MS is so scared? They can't just introduce a competing product and either buy them out or cut off their oxygen. It's making them nuts because they can't figure it out, and they will probably ruin their business fighting it.
In any case, time will tell.
Thurow is an economist, not a scientist or engineer, which is why his predictions about biotech are particularly bad. The science is on the edge of a lot of new understanding and breakthroughs, but that will only put us up against the really interesting and hard problems. As if we would be able to find genes that more or less directly influence something as subtle as IQ.
I find the predictions about the future importance of web services and the junk about "insight" to be particularly inane. On the first, nobody should forget that GM and Ford are still about the only companies that represent a percentage of the U.S. economy. Manufacture of physical goods (and commodities production, etc.) will continue to be the drivers of economies.
In my opinion, the most important trend is a favorite of this forum. The growth factors that have been working for Free software are fundamentally exponential, even if the constant factor is small. If it isn't killed off by legal/social influence of current big players, and I don't think this is likely if it is even possible, then the exponential term will eventually dominate.
When this plays out, the companies that make their reputations by being the best at efficiently building and servicing products that are mostly designed in the "Creative Commons". People will pay for quality in goods and services, and there will always be value in good execution. Customers do not value "insight" as described in one prediction. They find this sort of thing invasive and manipulative, and you won't be able to keep it secret.
It was when I was chasing down some secondary links from the GNUradio interview that I came across the stuff about the value of a network increasing at greater than linear rates. You get O(N) for broadcast networks, O(N^2) in peer to peer networks, but the exponential (O(2^N)) comes in when you have group forming networks (GFN).
When you think about it, this is what drives the GPL software phenominon. Every project fork or new initiative forms a new group or groups in the network, and every project is a nucleus for new group formation. The only way this could be stopped is to destroy to possibility of the group forming that leads to the exponential growth. While this might be possible, our robust institutions that support free speech make this very difficult if not impossible.
So my prediction is that Linux on the desktop will overtake Windows in the next ten years, and the RIAa and MPAA will finally lose out to the best interests of the actual artists they claim to support. Also, derivitives of GNUradio will be core technology in establishing cooperative wireless mesh networks. This is the only prediction of any of the pundits in the article that will come true.
Kind of ironic that the Microsoft Press reprinted it more recently, although that copy of mine doesn't have a very good binding and is falling apart.
The more mechanical systems probably wouldn't change as fast, but planning on a decade or maybe even 5-7 year upgrade cycle for control, data and navagation systems would probably even be cost effective.
But seriously, Russia should have the resources long term to make their economy work so they are actually able to pay for their space program and live up to the commitments they make to international programs. Probably, it would be worth it for them to invest more of the currently scarce resources into the space program. They now have access to a lot more technology than they did when Soyuz was designed. Design something new, with current technology, for maximal reuse and flexibility. I bet that would do as much for their economy as the Moon program did for ours in the 60s. Good investment.
Something similar could be said about the shuttle. Come to think of it, wouldn't it be nice if a long lived program like a shuttle was designed with the idea that you would upgrade and improve systems continuously over the live of the program. With the shuttles, I know the later ones had improvments, and probably some of those improvements got added to older birds (when it is possible), but if it was designed to be upgraded through its life as needed it would be easy. Doesn't it cost more to maintain the old systems?
You will have to find it somewhere else. Their inventory seems to be slashdotted.
The article also makes the point about handling during manufacture. Yes, you can control that environment better than the use environment, but you still have to have a way to deal with it.
Actually, I was confused at first and thought this was about nano-technology, not nanometer scale integrated circuits. At some point, I would expect a major technology shift away from electrical circuits toward something else. After all, cells and neurons don't have these problems. The problem comes from having all those tiny and very long metal interconnects.