Darn right! After all, it's easy enough to convert fortnights to stone with a Mayan calendar.
We're going to in the future eventually. It's inevitable.
I know it's 60 firesticks per 100 Watts, and 3000 Volts per staticy tomcat, but it might just be easier if we all just jumped in and switched to metric 144%.
I mean picture doing 100 on the highway! Wouldn't that be great? And dozens of future Mars landers would actually land on Mars, instead of digging ideal tree planting holes and landscaping future martian neighbourhoods. ("Zyphod! Incoming! It's the Americans!")
No more two sets of wrenches and lost sockets! Now you can have one set of sockets with half the sockets missing, instead of two sets of sockets with half the sockets missing. And no more asking for an 5mm and trying to make a 1 3/4" fit, rounding off the edges and carving a perfect turkey slice off your hand and gushing gallons of blood. It would be litres, which is less.
And you get to tell women that you, sir, are endowed with twenty-two centimeters of man!
Of course, the loss of the 25 cent piece will be a negative, since we'll have to pay for everything in dimes. But it's worth it dammit.
Seriously, we all know this is going to happen. When are we on board? Are we that stubborn?
Marvin Minsky has done more damage to progress in AI over the last few decades than any other person.
Before you yell flamebait or troll, let me explain.
I have been following the progress of various AI technologies, including neural nets and adaptive logic networks, for many many years now. Years ago perceptions were first developed and it was shown that they could learn simple patterns. Perceptrons were basically two layers of software simulated neurons. They worked, and researchers were fascinated and worked on them regularly.
Minsky, being the "highly regarded" and "leader" in AI, wrote a paper that proved that these perceptrons could never learn more complicated patterns, and threw a bunch of math at the reader. So people stopped. After all, there was a mathematical proof that perceptrons weren't going anywhere. Research skidded to a halt for decades because of Minsky.
Of course, then someone developed the (gasp!) THREE layer perceptron/neural net and sure enough with the right formula it could learn much more complicated tasks.
Minsky, in my opinion, does this regularly. The problem is, that he has a reputation in the industry as being a leader (I'm not sure why).
He's already lost us two or three decades of research because of his "leadership" -- I am terrified that he might cost us more development into the future.
Where could we have been if Minsky wasn't always going around half cocked, screaming that he is right? "Robots are useless!" is history repeating itself and him trying to get more press. Keep developing guys, just ignore the peanut gallery. There's always someone who says it can't work (ahem, Minsky) -- it can and it will.
SARS isn't the threat that we have to worry about. If it's true that Beijing has been concealing cases of this disease (and in one case supposedly driving a person into Hong Kong to die there) then with the growing density of population we'll see more of these cases from all over.
This would mean, for example, that in a few years we may have airborne varient strains of other viruses. Now, should an airborne strain of some slow infection cycle be created (like HIV/AIDS, or a pneumonia with a very slow cycle), then most of the world will be infected before the first casualty occurs. Obviously this is fatal situation for mankind. It's not the quick diseases like ebola that we have to fear, it's the slow ones.
Hope it doesn't happen, but with population densities growing I expect that it will.
Just like with Star Trek, another franchise that was exploited right down the toilet, Star Wars has performed poorer and poorer with each outing.
Mark my words, when the franchises are really on the ropes, and no movies have been made for a few years, someone in Hollywood will propose "A combined Star Trek vs. Star Wars battle where Princess Leia has to fight against Jean Luc Picard" which thankfully will go nowhere. (Or worse yet: "Princess Leia falls in love with Jean Luc Picard...")
Don't believe me? Remember "Alien vs. Predator" or "Superman vs. Batman"? Both projects that came at the ends of the franchises.
Now that Hollywood has come out with just a few too many comic book movies (the Hulk, coming soon, with Archie and Veronica even being proposed) the whole comic trend will eventually collapse and like all good Hollywood things, will have been exploited to death.
Cases in point: the meteor movie trend, that's cratered, the "virus" movie trend (Outbreak et al) has died, the space adventure (Star Wars, Star Trek) lasted longer than most, but appears to be having the air sucked out of it's lungs, and now the comic book movie trend is crumpling.
The nice thing about Hollywood is that it is very predictable... almost as predictable as the mass market viewers.
What's the next movie bandwagon? I predict five years of dog movies.:)
Think about it -- you're in charge of a project not unlike the complexity of the Mars landers. You can see the project through too completion and risk public humiliation and a very public failure, or you can say "Well, it's over budget, let's start all over again." The larger the bureacracy the less impetus there is to finish a complex task.
Like all managers, NASA managers do not want to be in the public humiliation business, after all. Much better to start a project and leave NASA with it on your resume than have it punch a hole in Mars!
Now, having said that, let's look at the source, shall we: "Rick Tumlinson is a founder of the Foundation for the International Non-Govemmental Development of Space (FINDS), a multi-million dollar foundation which funds breakthrough projects and activities, and a founder of LunaCorp, a 7 year-old firm planning a commercial return to the Moon."
Do these lightly nutty folks have an agenda, or what?
Give NASA a goal, a date to achieve it and the threat of a budget cut and they'll work wonders. All they need is something to work towards. Why not Mars?
The banter back and forth about the slashdot effect is interesting -- but here is a more interesting point:
Slashdot is going to get sued for this.
At some point they are going to slashdot a commercial site which will, as usual, lose a lot of revenue.
In the petition to the court, the plaintiffs will note, correctly, that slashdot has been negligent in not contacting the site.
Slashdot's only defense will be "but we didn't want to wait six hours to contact them" as per their FAQ.
The plaintiffs will then point out that this has been a repeated, flagrent and eggregarious behaviour to multiple sites, that slashdot's members had pointed this out to them repeatedly, that posts had quoted entire sites to avoid this, that they had received previous complaints, and that slashdot's defense was just that they didn't want to bother waiting to contact the site.
One time would have been unfortunate, but the plaintiffs will be able to prove a pattern of conduct.
Slashdot will lose a large, large sum of money in the near future.
You don't have to be Kreskin to predict this one dead on. Note this, and check back to this post in a couple of years.
That there's so much negative reaction to this. The posts fall into two categories:
1) The internet is international, so you can't have a US law.
2) A technological fix will fix everything.
These are silly arguments and here's why:
1) The US contains a large quantity of pc's and internet connections (if not most internet connections anymore). A law in the US alone will reduce the flow of spam massively, as these 300 million people use the internet disproportionately. Remember: he's just betting on reducing the flow, no eliminating it.
2) The second argument is a false dichotomy -- you can have both a law and a technological fix. There's no harm in having both, as often neither is a comprehensive solution. Why so negative?
How this guy managed to get a hold of vital P4 Direct Tv information, and yet managed to do it in such a clumsy way as to get caught.
Yes, it was industrial espionage, yes he deserves to go to jail, etc. etc., but all he had to do was to sit on the information for a few months until his job expired and then release it through an anonymous remailer in Norway.
As a guy sitting in Canada, who is not allowed to subscribe to Direct TV, we have to pirate it to watch the Sopranos on HBO. And it annoys me that this guy could have been of huge assistance if he just held things close to his chest and then released them after a few months when he was long gone from the firm.
By the way, for those who care: the Canadian government originally said that Canadians could watch Direct tv all they wanted because DTV didn't have a licence to broadcast here. Now the supreme court has said "Nope" because although they don't have a licence here, it's "wrong" but we still aren't allowed to subscribe because DTV doesn't have sufficient Canadian contend.
So now approximately 200,000 Canadians have been made criminals in one stroke of a pen.
It's not the work you do
on
The New IT Crisis
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I have a lot of experience in this matter.
I've worked in a few large outfits and in my own small business, and I can testify there is almost zero correlation in a large office between the work that you do and people's perception of what you do.
The people who have the most problems, the ones who have a terrible catastrophe which just always seems to happen to them, are seen as the problem solvers. Despite the fact that their own lack of organization, incompetence, or laziness often brings these things upon them. No matter, they can proudly trumpet how they once again "saved the company" and worked 30 hours straight.
The ones like me who prevent the problems, who organize their day so that nothing exciting happens if it can be avoided, and quietly solve problems on their own without assistance before people notice them, are seen as either invisible or lazy.
And no, I don't work a 30 hour day. Ever. I don't need to. I'm not bitter... gak!
Here's an experiment you can try at home with your friends:
I always liked the first Star Trek, you know, the REAL Star Trek. With distinct, individual characters who had distinct, individual personalities. Bones screaming at Spock that he wasn't a doctor, he was an ocean sponge and Spock death gripping him to the floor.
Now here's the experiment: take any of the scripts from any of the subsequent rip... err... sequels and pick a line. Now read the sentence to your friend and see if they can guess which character said it. They won't be able to figure it out which character it is 90% of the time. Why? All the lines are the same between the characters, there is no significant distinctions, personalities, or flavors to the characters.
If you do that with an ORIGINAL Star Trek script, you can't help but pick out "Dammit Captain I'm a doctor not a floor wax!" goes with Bones!
Forget "it's good science fiction" -- without good characters you have nothing. Before you get mad at my post, try the experiment yourself during your next drinking party. If you pick the wrong character, you take a drink...
If Franklin were alive today he'd never be allowed to start a "library." Just like then, it would be portrayed as a way to rip off authors -- but unlike then legislation can now be purchased to prevent these creations.
Lessig brings up an excellent point that only 147 out of about 10000 books from the 20's are still in print. What happened to the rest of this knowledge? The rest of this creativity? It has been lost and forgotten.
We were supposed to build our society on the shoulders of giants. Instead we've institutionally forgotten everything that came before us. It seems appropriate that our attention spans are now short enough not to notice what we've lost.
Societally, we're only a step away from being the old lady in a flannel nighty that keeps wandering away from the old folks home.
You come home from work, grab a newspaper, and discover that some script kiddie has a denial of service attack going on the john. "The... handle... is... stuck... down!!!! It... won't... flush..." Fantastic. I guess you would have to implement packet filtering.
With my luck I'll get the job of servicing those sewage covered robots.
Having all my money going into arcade games was morale destroying. I believe that there is no difference between being addicted to video games and VLT's (slot machines).
It's not whether you win or lose, it's just that you have to keep playing. It's a vaguely sexual feeling -- that you might be found out, that you'll be "in trouble."
Profoundly depressing, actually. After a couple of years I managed to stop, but there was no self help groups back then, nobody to talk to (and who takes a 12 year old that's spending $50 a day on video games seriously anyway??)
If you're addicted, step back, do whatever, throw out the computer. Quit two, three, four times or as many as it takes to get it out of your life. And don't go back.
Now if someone can build an "open" free web based schedule of the major networks that people can contribute to, then the PVR would be able to read this off the net and schedule recordings!
After all, if one person posts the times of the programs that they want to record, then everyone can have automated recording like Tivo.
Green is being sued by a man named "Green Giant" and so is changing it's name to "Fish Communications" only to be sued by Capt. Highliner, the rock band Fysh, and Microsoft (for using the word "communications".)
Later at discovery it was discovered that there are no words left to trademark, period. (tm)
The river flows into a hole in the ground.
on
TMDC5
·
· Score: 1
I've got this brand new game called "Hack" that I want to submit...
It would be more interesting if Delaware were to prosecute, since (if you look it up) Microsoft is incorporated in Delaware.
Ahhh... if only Delaware yanked it's corporate status...
True story -- I filled out a bank form years ago with a business partner, Murray, for a bank account. I'm a male, and so is Murray.
To this day on my credit report I'm married to Murray, along with a half dozen other major errors.
I never bothered to correct this because being married got me more favorable loan terms.
Now if these people can't get this basic information correct with forms that I directly fill in, how is Tivo going to get anything near correct when it's just guessing based on what I watch?
"Hi, I'm here to sell you broadband."
"Great! I can go as fast as I want, right?"
"No, we cap you, and we'll have you arrested if you go too fast."
"Oh. But I can download movies and audio, right? I mean, I already own them on tape, so it's okay, right?"
"No, we'll give your name out to the FBI, and anyway, we prohibit you from uploading on P2P networks."
"Oh, but it's priced right, right?"
"No, we are going to charge you at least $40 a month and we're going to rent you this nifty used modem and we're going to install some spyware on your computer."
"It works with Linux?"
"Pbbbbt!"
it's the developers stupid. Take me, for example -- I want to write a program from scratch, but of course all the desktops around are Windows.
Now if I write an app, guess what OS it's going to support? Why? Because it's easy to do this, I don't have to learn a new RAD UI, and I don't have to deal with the hassles of C.
The solution that will crack the desktop wide open is when the OSS people can convince Windows developers to use OSS tools, and these tools can cross compile easily for both OS's. When you can give me Linux or Windows executables at the touch of a button, and make the environment free and easy to use, then you'll have those crossover apps that you need.
Make no mistake about it: Linux needs apps that run identically to it's Windows brethren -- crossover apps -- to move the users.
...for all those local wireless nets, such as NY wireless, to start connecting to other wireless nets.
And if the various wireless clubs eventually start connecting a bit, then it will BE the internet, or a major part thereof.
(Perhaps it can be named Pringlenet?)
Slashdot Mirror
Darn right! After all, it's easy enough to convert fortnights to stone with a Mayan calendar.
We're going to in the future eventually. It's inevitable.
I know it's 60 firesticks per 100 Watts, and 3000 Volts per staticy tomcat, but it might just be easier if we all just jumped in and switched to metric 144%.
I mean picture doing 100 on the highway! Wouldn't that be great? And dozens of future Mars landers would actually land on Mars, instead of digging ideal tree planting holes and landscaping future martian neighbourhoods. ("Zyphod! Incoming! It's the Americans!")
No more two sets of wrenches and lost sockets! Now you can have one set of sockets with half the sockets missing, instead of two sets of sockets with half the sockets missing. And no more asking for an 5mm and trying to make a 1 3/4" fit, rounding off the edges and carving a perfect turkey slice off your hand and gushing gallons of blood. It would be litres, which is less.
And you get to tell women that you, sir, are endowed with twenty-two centimeters of man!
Of course, the loss of the 25 cent piece will be a negative, since we'll have to pay for everything in dimes. But it's worth it dammit.
Seriously, we all know this is going to happen. When are we on board? Are we that stubborn?
Before you yell flamebait or troll, let me explain.
I have been following the progress of various AI technologies, including neural nets and adaptive logic networks, for many many years now. Years ago perceptions were first developed and it was shown that they could learn simple patterns. Perceptrons were basically two layers of software simulated neurons. They worked, and researchers were fascinated and worked on them regularly.
Minsky, being the "highly regarded" and "leader" in AI, wrote a paper that proved that these perceptrons could never learn more complicated patterns, and threw a bunch of math at the reader. So people stopped. After all, there was a mathematical proof that perceptrons weren't going anywhere. Research skidded to a halt for decades because of Minsky.
Of course, then someone developed the (gasp!) THREE layer perceptron/neural net and sure enough with the right formula it could learn much more complicated tasks.
Minsky, in my opinion, does this regularly. The problem is, that he has a reputation in the industry as being a leader (I'm not sure why).
He's already lost us two or three decades of research because of his "leadership" -- I am terrified that he might cost us more development into the future.
Where could we have been if Minsky wasn't always going around half cocked, screaming that he is right? "Robots are useless!" is history repeating itself and him trying to get more press. Keep developing guys, just ignore the peanut gallery. There's always someone who says it can't work (ahem, Minsky) -- it can and it will.
This would mean, for example, that in a few years we may have airborne varient strains of other viruses. Now, should an airborne strain of some slow infection cycle be created (like HIV/AIDS, or a pneumonia with a very slow cycle), then most of the world will be infected before the first casualty occurs. Obviously this is fatal situation for mankind. It's not the quick diseases like ebola that we have to fear, it's the slow ones.
Hope it doesn't happen, but with population densities growing I expect that it will.
Comments?
Just like with Star Trek, another franchise that was exploited right down the toilet, Star Wars has performed poorer and poorer with each outing.
:)
Mark my words, when the franchises are really on the ropes, and no movies have been made for a few years, someone in Hollywood will propose "A combined Star Trek vs. Star Wars battle where Princess Leia has to fight against Jean Luc Picard" which thankfully will go nowhere. (Or worse yet: "Princess Leia falls in love with Jean Luc Picard...")
Don't believe me? Remember "Alien vs. Predator" or "Superman vs. Batman"? Both projects that came at the ends of the franchises.
Now that Hollywood has come out with just a few too many comic book movies (the Hulk, coming soon, with Archie and Veronica even being proposed) the whole comic trend will eventually collapse and like all good Hollywood things, will have been exploited to death.
Cases in point: the meteor movie trend, that's cratered, the "virus" movie trend (Outbreak et al) has died, the space adventure (Star Wars, Star Trek) lasted longer than most, but appears to be having the air sucked out of it's lungs, and now the comic book movie trend is crumpling.
The nice thing about Hollywood is that it is very predictable... almost as predictable as the mass market viewers.
What's the next movie bandwagon? I predict five years of dog movies.
Like all managers, NASA managers do not want to be in the public humiliation business, after all. Much better to start a project and leave NASA with it on your resume than have it punch a hole in Mars!
Now, having said that, let's look at the source, shall we: "Rick Tumlinson is a founder of the Foundation for the International Non-Govemmental Development of Space (FINDS), a multi-million dollar foundation which funds breakthrough projects and activities, and a founder of LunaCorp, a 7 year-old firm planning a commercial return to the Moon."
Do these lightly nutty folks have an agenda, or what?
Give NASA a goal, a date to achieve it and the threat of a budget cut and they'll work wonders. All they need is something to work towards. Why not Mars?
The banter back and forth about the slashdot effect is interesting -- but here is a more interesting point:
Slashdot is going to get sued for this.
At some point they are going to slashdot a commercial site which will, as usual, lose a lot of revenue.
In the petition to the court, the plaintiffs will note, correctly, that slashdot has been negligent in not contacting the site.
Slashdot's only defense will be "but we didn't want to wait six hours to contact them" as per their FAQ.
The plaintiffs will then point out that this has been a repeated, flagrent and eggregarious behaviour to multiple sites, that slashdot's members had pointed this out to them repeatedly, that posts had quoted entire sites to avoid this, that they had received previous complaints, and that slashdot's defense was just that they didn't want to bother waiting to contact the site.
One time would have been unfortunate, but the plaintiffs will be able to prove a pattern of conduct.
Slashdot will lose a large, large sum of money in the near future.
You don't have to be Kreskin to predict this one dead on. Note this, and check back to this post in a couple of years.
EDITORS: PLEASE FORWARD TO LEGAL.
1) The internet is international, so you can't have a US law.
2) A technological fix will fix everything.
These are silly arguments and here's why:
1) The US contains a large quantity of pc's and internet connections (if not most internet connections anymore). A law in the US alone will reduce the flow of spam massively, as these 300 million people use the internet disproportionately. Remember: he's just betting on reducing the flow, no eliminating it.
2) The second argument is a false dichotomy -- you can have both a law and a technological fix. There's no harm in having both, as often neither is a comprehensive solution. Why so negative?
Yes, it was industrial espionage, yes he deserves to go to jail, etc. etc., but all he had to do was to sit on the information for a few months until his job expired and then release it through an anonymous remailer in Norway.
As a guy sitting in Canada, who is not allowed to subscribe to Direct TV, we have to pirate it to watch the Sopranos on HBO. And it annoys me that this guy could have been of huge assistance if he just held things close to his chest and then released them after a few months when he was long gone from the firm.
By the way, for those who care: the Canadian government originally said that Canadians could watch Direct tv all they wanted because DTV didn't have a licence to broadcast here. Now the supreme court has said "Nope" because although they don't have a licence here, it's "wrong" but we still aren't allowed to subscribe because DTV doesn't have sufficient Canadian contend.
So now approximately 200,000 Canadians have been made criminals in one stroke of a pen.
I've worked in a few large outfits and in my own small business, and I can testify there is almost zero correlation in a large office between the work that you do and people's perception of what you do.
The people who have the most problems, the ones who have a terrible catastrophe which just always seems to happen to them, are seen as the problem solvers. Despite the fact that their own lack of organization, incompetence, or laziness often brings these things upon them. No matter, they can proudly trumpet how they once again "saved the company" and worked 30 hours straight. The ones like me who prevent the problems, who organize their day so that nothing exciting happens if it can be avoided, and quietly solve problems on their own without assistance before people notice them, are seen as either invisible or lazy.
And no, I don't work a 30 hour day. Ever. I don't need to. I'm not bitter... gak!
I always liked the first Star Trek, you know, the REAL Star Trek. With distinct, individual characters who had distinct, individual personalities. Bones screaming at Spock that he wasn't a doctor, he was an ocean sponge and Spock death gripping him to the floor.
Now here's the experiment: take any of the scripts from any of the subsequent rip... err... sequels and pick a line. Now read the sentence to your friend and see if they can guess which character said it. They won't be able to figure it out which character it is 90% of the time. Why? All the lines are the same between the characters, there is no significant distinctions, personalities, or flavors to the characters.
If you do that with an ORIGINAL Star Trek script, you can't help but pick out "Dammit Captain I'm a doctor not a floor wax!" goes with Bones!
Forget "it's good science fiction" -- without good characters you have nothing. Before you get mad at my post, try the experiment yourself during your next drinking party. If you pick the wrong character, you take a drink...
Lessig brings up an excellent point that only 147 out of about 10000 books from the 20's are still in print. What happened to the rest of this knowledge? The rest of this creativity? It has been lost and forgotten.
We were supposed to build our society on the shoulders of giants. Instead we've institutionally forgotten everything that came before us. It seems appropriate that our attention spans are now short enough not to notice what we've lost.
Societally, we're only a step away from being the old lady in a flannel nighty that keeps wandering away from the old folks home.
With my luck I'll get the job of servicing those sewage covered robots.
If I had less, I spent it all. If I had more, I spent it all.
The endorphins are the same ones that cause slot players to push quarters in all day long, day after day. They are more powerful than people know.
Having all my money going into arcade games was morale destroying. I believe that there is no difference between being addicted to video games and VLT's (slot machines).
It's not whether you win or lose, it's just that you have to keep playing. It's a vaguely sexual feeling -- that you might be found out, that you'll be "in trouble."
Profoundly depressing, actually. After a couple of years I managed to stop, but there was no self help groups back then, nobody to talk to (and who takes a 12 year old that's spending $50 a day on video games seriously anyway??)
If you're addicted, step back, do whatever, throw out the computer. Quit two, three, four times or as many as it takes to get it out of your life. And don't go back.
I already got in trouble for the coffee mug hotplate.
After all, if one person posts the times of the programs that they want to record, then everyone can have automated recording like Tivo.
Any volunteers for this open source database?
Green is being sued by a man named "Green Giant" and so is changing it's name to "Fish Communications" only to be sued by Capt. Highliner, the rock band Fysh, and Microsoft (for using the word "communications".)
Later at discovery it was discovered that there are no words left to trademark, period. (tm)
I've got this brand new game called "Hack" that I want to submit...
It would be more interesting if Delaware were to prosecute, since (if you look it up) Microsoft is incorporated in Delaware. Ahhh... if only Delaware yanked it's corporate status...
To this day on my credit report I'm married to Murray, along with a half dozen other major errors.
I never bothered to correct this because being married got me more favorable loan terms.
Now if these people can't get this basic information correct with forms that I directly fill in, how is Tivo going to get anything near correct when it's just guessing based on what I watch?
I only care about speed when it comes to streaming video, and we can't do that because they've instituted caps on usage.
"Hi, I'm here to sell you broadband." "Great! I can go as fast as I want, right?" "No, we cap you, and we'll have you arrested if you go too fast." "Oh. But I can download movies and audio, right? I mean, I already own them on tape, so it's okay, right?" "No, we'll give your name out to the FBI, and anyway, we prohibit you from uploading on P2P networks." "Oh, but it's priced right, right?" "No, we are going to charge you at least $40 a month and we're going to rent you this nifty used modem and we're going to install some spyware on your computer." "It works with Linux?" "Pbbbbt!"
This tribe sucks balls.
Now if I write an app, guess what OS it's going to support? Why? Because it's easy to do this, I don't have to learn a new RAD UI, and I don't have to deal with the hassles of C.
The solution that will crack the desktop wide open is when the OSS people can convince Windows developers to use OSS tools, and these tools can cross compile easily for both OS's. When you can give me Linux or Windows executables at the touch of a button, and make the environment free and easy to use, then you'll have those crossover apps that you need. Make no mistake about it: Linux needs apps that run identically to it's Windows brethren -- crossover apps -- to move the users.
...for all those local wireless nets, such as NY wireless, to start connecting to other wireless nets. And if the various wireless clubs eventually start connecting a bit, then it will BE the internet, or a major part thereof. (Perhaps it can be named Pringlenet?)