Anyone interested in slightly skewed fiction, see if you can find a copy of "Flyboy Action Figure Comes With Gasmask", by Jim Munroe. One of the characters in the book actually could do that to the world, on a bad day, with just a thought...
Interesting story.
Re:I've used genetic algorithms
on
Digital Darwin
·
· Score: 1
Interestingly, while this study can show the merits of evolution, it does more to bolster the intelligent design theory than to destroy it.
That doesn't really follow the argument far enough. A good discussion on this particular point is made as part of Robert J. Sawyer's novel Calculating God, in which alien beings come to earth as part of a scientific expedition to look for evidence of God.
That sounds roughly like what I though, though maybe the terms differ. The object "type" or class corresponds to a set (or table, in RDBMS), and each object of that class is a tuple (or record or row). The object references are basically dataless foreign keys (constraints are implicit - the reference is added when the tuple/object is created, and garbage collection ensures that the object is never destroyed as long as the reference is still there, where in a RDBMS you explicitly delete tuples, and it raises an exception when the reference is still there - messy, but conceptually the same thing).
The nice thing about what you describe looks like you can follow the relations explicitly in program code. You can do that in RDBMSes, but there is no direct mechanism to support it (specifically syntax) - they're directed to automated query resolution to such an extent that trying to bypass it is actually harder (in other words, there's no way to avoid SQL comlexity when you don't want it). But that's a problem with SQL and RDBMS implementations, there's no reason you couldn't get your mind out of the SQL/Tables gutter and make a nice RDBMS.
In essense, the OODBMS you described is basically an RDBMS, but without automated queries. Actually, pre-SQL RDBMSes used to be like that. A lot more work to program (think COBOL) - the difference seems to be the text/table-oriented focus compared to using structs/classes for the same thing.
I've never understood what's special about OO databases - as far as I can tell, they're just either making the rows into objects, or allowing objects to be stored as column data. It may make interfacing with the database easier from an external language like Java, but doesn't actually enhance the database itself - the expressiveness is the same. It may even be worse, if you can't access the data within object columns for selects.
Something that is a genuine enhancement to databases is deductive databases, which attempt to simplify query writing by using defined relations to write the query for you.
Note: in set theory that relational database theory is based on, sets are equivalent to database tables, tuples are records, and attributes are columns.
Many of the concepts come from Prolog, which essentially defines the relationship between sets of tuples (with unnamed attributes), in such a way (using logical implications) that you can write a question, and the interpreter will figure out how the sets are joined based on the defined relationships (if they are), and return the first matching answer (or nothing, if no relationship can be found, or nothing matches the query conditions).
Many people have tried to make Prolog more database-like, with persistant data. However, relational databases can be made more Prolog-like. It wouldn't be hard - foreign key constraints provide much the same information as Prolog implication statements. It would not be that hard to generate a query based on known foreign key relationships - e.g. for "SELECT PERSON.NAME, COMPANY.ADDRESS", the interpreter could figure out as well as a human that what the relationship between PERSON and COMPANY is without an explicit WHERE clause.
I also don't think this would take much more time to execute, since generating the query only uses the table definitions, and it only has to be done once per query. A small number of entities to search and some caching should make it unnoticable in practice.
I suppose the question is whether it's worth the effort, when SQL is so simple. I think so, mainly because I think SQL is an abomination, but that's just me - I don't work with databases at the moment.
On a tangent, why is it it's always "American forces accidentally shot down/bombed/fired at... in a friendly fire incident..."? Something approaching a quarter of the ground troops were British, why didn't they seem to have "blue on blue" incidents?
Possible explanations:
Americans are just more accident prone due to procedures, discipline, lines of communication problems, or something else. U.S pilots who bombed Canadians in Afghanistan were on speed (on orders), which is not condusive to good decision-making.
The American military is just more effective due to superior equipment, training, etc., so that they are able to take out targets more quickly and effectively than British forces, giving them less time to identify and avoid mistakes.
American incidents are reported, British ones are covered up.
Americans are world pariahs, friendly fire incidents are blown out of proportion by world media.
"The current candian military is a pale shadow of the force that fought so well in WW2."
The Canadian military that fought in WW II was a pale shadow of the force that fought so well in WW I - until the war started, and the country mobilized one of the largest forces in the world.
The Canadian military was kept up for a while during the Cold War, but its end and lack of enemies made a large army that did nothing seem a little useless, so it was cut back (many say too far).
But Canada's always been fairly non-military - the army was nearly non-existant before every war that it was involved in, and built up when needed. Although these days, that sort of build up would take a lot longer than it used to because of the complexity of modern weaponry.
"Bowling for Columbine" had good points, but it was an overly rosy view of Canada. There is crime, there are slums. I've had my car broken into, and a friend of mine had his broken into three times until he finally bought a car alarm, and we live in smallish cities (180,000 to 200,000).
That said, one difference is that Canadian governments do make an actual effort to make things better, usually after a long consultation process - at any given time, there are a large number of Royal Commissions and consultations receiving presentations on any number of subjects, from the new foreign policy consultations going on now, to the copyright reform process (look for my submission on their web page).
I think a part of this is that in Canada, the people in charge of government departments are actually members of Parliament, and therefore elected by people. They have to keep public opinions in mind, even when this conflicts with the Prime Minister's views, or they could lose their job next election even if the government is re-elected. In contrast, the people who run the U.S government don't have to care what anyone thinks, so tend to ignore public interest (the President doesn't really make many decisions - he usually just approves them or not - it's mainly the senior party officials in charge, the same ones one administration to another). Provincial/state governments follow their federal counterparts in structure.
Look, this is exactly what I'm talking about - fiddling with technicalities to make things fit. Bush won the election process, not the election - the majority in Florida (counting everybody - isn't that novel?) voted for Gore, the majority in the U.S voted for Gore.
And I won't even touch your complete abuse of "liberate", other than to suggest you certainly wouldn't want your property and bank account "liberated" in the same way.
I don't blame the Bush administration for this. Marketers and spinners have successfully been doing high-intensity redefining of terms for a long time, making even clear technical terms like RISC now mean CISC, or calling employees "resources" instead of people. Heck, "global purchasing habits tracking system" is now called a "shoppers club", and people can't get their names and personal details into it fast enough.
I just miss the days when people would say what they mean, and defend it on its merits, rather than trying to use spray-on glitter in the form of misleading imagery like "PATRIOT Act" (or the height of stupidity, "Freedom Fries").
Though I think it's the political deceit that is the most damaging.
First of all, "war" does not mean "military action."
It used to.
I've noticed this trend accellerating - getting around legal restrictions by just making up new terms with the same meaning, but claiming that since the word is different, the law doesn't apply.
War doesn't mean "military action against an enemy". Afghanistan prisoners of war are actually "unlawful combatants". The invasion of Iraq is a "liberation", and purely "pre-emptive defense". Nerve gas and bio-weapons are "weapons of mass destruction", even though they kill without the destruction of anything. And the U.S dare not declare any war ever "over" (not even in Afghanistan), lest they be expected to live up to their obligations as the owners of the new territory - it's just the "end of major hostilities" now.
And apparently "losing an election" means something else too now.
What the hell is any official statement supposed to mean now anyway? Bush himself refers to the war against Iraq as a "war" in speeches. What makes it not a war?
A long time ago, world leaders were expected to be honest. That's why such international treaties and convencions never bothered to define all the terms - nobody would deny what they meant, would they?
At any rate, the SPARC has for a long time been the least impressive of the 64-bit architectures.
I think you mean
UltraSparc
is unimpressive. By comparison,
SPARC64 V
is very competitive with the others, though not quite at the front.
Sun emphacises instruction bandwidth over multiple threads, rather than single-thread performance. Makes for bad benchmarks, but good overall throughput (same idea as IBM mainframes, which have slow CPUs, but giant I/O bandwidth that dwarfs any bus-based sytem).
The Taliban was an ideological dictatorship, where the goal is to impose a moral or ideological view on a society, using all means necessary (often because it's "for their own good"). The Kmer Rouge in Cambodia was another. They are often self-destructive, because they waste their effort trying to force people to change instead of addressing real problems.
The Baath party in Iraq drove a Stalinist dictatorship, which puts emphasis on institutionalized power. Although Stalin himself was somewhat ideological as well, the main intent was to industrialize the Soviet Union, much like Saddam's intent was to industrialize Iraq. Although money was spent on palaces (no worse than the White house, or Bill Gates' palace), before the sanctions much of it was spent on building up Iraq's industry, universities, and government institutions. Stalinist dictatorships are efficient at acheiving particular goals (requiring long range planning), but cannot react to change quickly, so eventually become inefficient and stagnate.
In a Stalinist state, there tends to be freedom for anyone who doesn't oppose (or appear to oppose) the state in any way. In Iraq all religions were treated equally (Shia extremists were arrested when they tried to attack minority Christians), and women had rights not dreampt of in many other Middle East countries (Rahib Taha, a woman, was head of the Iraqi bioweapons program).
The third type of dictatorship is a strongman-type, in which one person holds power purely for his own desire for it. They are the most unpredictable, because it usually takes someone a bit crazy. People tend to have freedom, but are also subject to the whims of the dictator. The economy is usually crippled for elaborate expenditures for the dictator's ego. Since power is vested in one individual, it's very fragile. Idi Amin would be an example.
Most dictatorships combine elements. For example, in Iraq power was institutionalized, but Saddam Hussein was presented as a power symbol (as Stalin and Hitler were). And Stalin also implemented the communist ideology along with purely institutional power.
As dictatorships go, Iraq wasn't the worst, and most ordinary people were better off than in other places - at least, before the sanctions - which is why there was little popular support for getting rid of Saddam Hussein. If you rebelled though or were suspected (with or without evidence), response was brutal (and ocasionally gassy).
This is par for the course, as far as intervention in other countries have gone. In fact, it's the main reason the democratically elected government of Iran was overthrown by U.S interests - Mossadegh threatened oil access, so was replaced by the Shah.
The thing the invaders always seem to forget is that the locals are far faster at getting organized, even if they don't have the same resources. In particular, it's essentially impossible to eliminate or supress the religious authorities in those countries and retain any popular support, so there is a network of clerics that remains in place even under oppressive governments such as Iraq. Under Saddan Hussein, the religious orders were permitted to continue as long as they kept out of politics, a situation which they were able to follow, but never fully accepted.
Back in Iran, these were the groups who organized the revolution that threw out the U.S-backed Shah, and organized a new ruling elite - that's why Iran immediately implemented fundamentalist Islamic laws when it happened. In Iraq, they have already organized the Shia majority into a political movement, now that they're free to do so. The demonstrations among the general population and demands for an Islamic government in Iraq have started rising rapidly.
Basically, the mullahs have an already established "transitional government". The question then becomes, how long will the occupying forces prevent the Islamic government from taking over?
Chances are that the occupiers are so against the idea that they will form their own interim, then "final" Iraqi government against the popular opinion, as in Iran. In that case, it will only be a matter of time before foreign involvement tapers off enough for a revolution to overthrow the imposed government, as happened in Iran.
Again.
I wonder what the Koran has to say about copyright...
Someone I work with maintains that Communism is theoretically the best system, provided that people aren't involved.
He saw workers moving from being slaves to serfs/peasants to proletariat wage slaves. He saw the next stage as socialism, the workers seizing the means of production and the state for their own use, and then the stage past socialism, communism, where the main dictum would be "from each according to ability, to each according to need", where there would be no nation-states any more and so forth.
I think the mistake was to view those as politically motivated progressions, rather than economic ones. If they're politically forced, that means un-free centralized control, and while centralized control is good for long term planning, it can't react properly to changing local circumstances like decentralized systems (as in capitalism).
But economically, I can see this sort of thing happening, in a much longer term, because of technology - specifically the falling costs and rising general prosperity. The cost of entry into a number of markets has fallen dramatically. Sometimes the technology cost itself has fallen, as in personal computers, allowing for local shops which provide custom built solutions for customers to thrive, sometimes the industry has simply restructured to spread the cost, such as semiconductor companies which used to need a fabrication plant, but have split into designers and foundaries (akin to the publishing vs. printing companies).
If this trend can continue, then anyone modivated enough can form their own company, and those not interested still have a wider choice of employers.
It's not without opposition by the established conglomerations. A good example is the music industry - the old model is simply unsustainable with new technology. The existing companies may collapse no matter what they do, because whatever they do in the end, anyone else can do it too now, so they're not special.
However, anything like that will probably take a few more centuries to settle down. And these things need a free but fair, regulated economic climate. No, I don't think the U.S has one, there is too much corporate power, but on the other hand corporate control becomes just as inefficient as any centralized control, after a while. Unless propped up by non-market forces (e.g. government laws), they'll shrink or collapse in the face of better, smaller competitors.
Unfortunately, corporate interests seem to be moving towards government control in the U.S. Not surprizing - the logical result of unfettered capitalism is organized crime, whether it's enforced by private thugs or an government increasingly alienated from its citizens.
In that case, then of course they get feudal in their demands, people demand rights, constitutions are negotiated or revolutions happen, and democracy flourishes again, and another millenium goes by...
Here's what the "Great Microprocessors" list has to say (in the Transmeta section, not the PowerPC section):
In the early 1990s, Apple decided that the Motorola 680x0 series was not keeping up with the Intel 80x86
series, largely because PCs were Intel's primary market, while Motorola CPUs were used more in embedded
systems. RISC designs were simpler and could be improved with less effort, so Apple switched to the PowerPC
CPU in 1994 (after prototypes in 1991 using the 88K), but to maintain compatibility, needed to emulate the
680x0. The initial emulator interpreted 68LC040 (without FPU) code, and a later version stored translated
blocks of code, and ran faster than Apples previous high end Macintoshes.
This impressed IBM engineers enough that a project was started to emulate the 80386+ architecture on a
PowerPC (known as the PowerPC 615), but the project was cancelled (apparently after successful versions
were completed - possibly because of performance, problems with efficiency using the PowerPC architecture
(the 80x86 much more awkward and complicated than the 680x0), marketing decisions, or
strategic/management decisions - I don't know, but the computer industry was very volatile at the time, and the
path of the future was not at all clear). However development on the conncept continued with the DAISY
project (Dynamically Architected Instruction Set from Yorktown), which translated to a hypothetical VLIW
CPU instead of the PowerPC. Both the DAISY system, and a later project called Dynamo from
Hewlett-Packard (which ran PA-RISC on PA-RISC), could optimise code as it ran (Dynamo could improve
PA-RISC performance by up to 20% over non-emulated code).
Several engineers (many from Sun, such as David Ditzel, designer for Sun's UltraSparc CPU, and Bob Cmelik
who wrote instruction profiling tools for SPARC programs) helped found Transmeta, which created the missing
VLIW processor, and created a new dynamic translator (called a "Code Morpher" by Transmeta) to emulate the
80x86. [...]
Evolution hasn't stopped, it just has different pressures. For an example, in modern industrialized societies, it takes a lot of resources to raise a child, so couples are having fewer, and are postponing them until they have saved up enough. Not everyone does the same thing, of course, but it's definitely a trend, and becoming the social norm - large families were once considered a blessing, are now looked down upon, and you may think a 25 year old mother is still young, but not compared to 15 or 16 year old mothers common in the past.
These factors have put pressure on human reproduction. Women who put off pregnancy will sometimes find it difficult to conceive. This is a distinct selective pressure - women with genes which maintain health and fertility later in life will definitely have a reproductive advantage, and their descendents will outnumber the others. As a result, the practical limit of a woman's fertil span (both on average, and the absolute limit) is being pressured to extend later in life.
This might have side benefits, such as generally longer life spans for humans in general, and a resistance to certain age-related conditions that can impair reproduction, such as certain cancers. This may or may not have an effect on male health - there is no direct pressure in this case since male effort is minimal, but most genes are common. Women on average already live longer than men on average.
This may be the most direct and pressing modern day evolutionary pressure on humans, but there are many, many more, and they may be very subtle. But they are there, so don't think human evolution has stopped because technology has changed requirements for survival.
That's the problem with Microsoft product design to begin with. Their products are too clever, and not smart enough.
They give the illusion of being powerful, but the clever parts don't work together well, or require more effort or detailed knowledge than they have to (anything that needs a "Wizard" software assistant to do something is waaaay overcomplicated to begin with).
If the fundamental government in Iraq were changed to a democratic model for other Arabs to follow, we woudln't have the totalitarian regimes in place that breed the kind of terrorism we saw 9/11/01 in the first place.
I think there's really big gaps in that idea. Firstly, there are different types of totalitarian regimes - the ideological rulers of Afghanistan are completely different from the secular government of Iraq. As an example, in Afghanistsn gorls weren't even allowed to go to school, while in Iraq, the head of the biological weapons program, Rahib Taha, was a woman, and deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz is Christian.
Second, the Stalinist type of dictatorship in Iraq doesn't leave room for any non-official power group (if it can be prevented - that's why secret police are so important). Idological dictatorships do, if it fits the ideology (again, Afghanistan) and certain individual/monarchy dictatorships do because they tend to be more flexible and less controlling (Saudi Arabia and Egypt are that type - the 9/11 hijackers were almost all from those two countries).
Third, terrorists are almost always concerned with their own countries. Al Quaida, for example, is aimed primarily at overthrowing the Saudi Arabia monarchy. The U.S is a target because it spends so much effort propping up that dictatorship - if the U.S had directed its efforts to democracy there instead, Al Quaida as it is now would never have existed. Similarly, Israel is only a terrorist target because of its occupation of Palestine.
Terrorists don't just wake up one day and think "Hmm, I'm opressed, I think I'll go to a large, democratic industrialized country and blow up a building. Japan fits that description...". There is a reason that the U.S is the subject of terrorism, and it's the same reason France or the U.K have been in the past - interfering in domestic affairs of other countries.
Back to the main point, Iraq didn't do the world's terrorists any good. Terrorists are random and uncontrollable - exactly opposite Saddam Hussein's desire for institutionalized power. Terrorists are a terrible tool because of that - witness Yassir Arafat's troubles at stopping them, now that they're no longer serving a purpose, and are just getting in the way.
Re:offtopic
on
Nuke-Lobbing
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The simplest explanation is the best one - US was attacked, thousands were murdered and the US decided it had to eliminate its most aggressive of enemies - namely old mad Sadd himself.
Except Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, et. al. had decided to invade Iraq at least as far back as 1998 (and probably earlier) according to this letter:
Incidentally, according to this comspiracy-oriented web site, plans were under way to invade Ahghanistan well before 9/11 - in fact, even the Clinton administration was considering it seriously, and plans were so complete that when needed, they were just taken off the shelf (which is why the war was organized so quickly):
What I outlined was just one possible proposal, and I did say it would need a lot more details worked out, so I'm not going to defend it as the one complete answer. But some of your points:
First, drop main sanctions as long as Iraq coopertes with weapons inspectors. They weren't doing any good anyway. Threaten to re-impose them if inspections are prevented.
Threaten to re-impose sanctions that aren't doing any good? You expect them to fear the re-announcement of what they already ignored/bypassed?
They weren't doing good because they lasted too long. After about three years, any government can work around them. Sanctions are more effective if they change based on the circumstances (As an analogy, a mosquito won't bother you very long if it stays on your arm - it'll be squashed. It will bother you if it keeps biting and then moving around before you can react).
Also, the "inspectors" were only supposed to confirm what Iraq said.
[...]
Disarmament was already completed. That's what Iraq said.
I should have said "disarmament process" - disarmament plus inspections.
[...] Oil is a lazy money source that doesn't promote economic development.
No, oil is an easy money source. Many people/companies in the region took that money and used it to finance what you just listed.
Some is, but the upper class that gets the money tends to keep it - the American free marketers have a theory that it will eventually trickle down, but the situation in developing countries isn't the ideal environment for that system to work (I won't debate whether it actually does) - specifically, when they want more modern things, they buy them from the west, rather than developing their own economies.
I'm not necessarily talking about trade barriers being raised, but additional incentives - lower import duties, pre-clearance for customs (or customs elimination, as with the EU), perhaps a common currency to make purchases within the free trade area more convenient than imports. Entepreneurs and the free market would do the rest over the long term.
It would also make them less likely to want to attack any of their trading partners, they may just depend on them for limo parts or something.
Regardless, it is just a possible strategy, and you could always suggest something that works better.
Increased economic interaction will require increased (and more open) communication.
Only communication between clerks. Has the money flowing to/from China increased communication?
Actually, it has. Information about things such as the recent mining disaster which would have simply been unreported before have been spread among the internet-connected as well as business contacts. China is trying to limit Internet access to the outside world, but this happened within the country, not affected by the national firewall.
In order for a capital-driven economy to function efficienly, those who actually do the planning and make the decisions need to communicate with each other directly, which is why centrally controlled economies are so inefficient (they're good for long-term planning, but suck at reacting to any real-life variation). That decision-making manager-level middle class in China is growing quickly.
As the need for communication grows, the government will need to decide whether to devote more of its resources to monitor a growing communications system, or limit communications and choke off its own economic growth (basically, give up its "capitalism under communism" strategy and return to a stagnant, planned economy that didn't work before). China's current leadership is even more liberalized-market (because it's been successful) than the previous leaders who started it.
Foreign aid targeted directly to hospitals, schools, etc., not to governments
Like the UNICEF boxes with school supplies, which were found in storage at a palace?
The positions aren't really that complicated. It's just that people resist understanding the other side because that might take energy from their protestations.
Pro war:
There is no alternative to war (people are suffering and dying - possible direct threats by Iraq government).
Weakness:
Assumes war will work - possible post-war chaos may be worse.
Lack of diplomacy simply pisses off rest of world.
Anti-war:
War will injure and kill innocents.
No legal authority.
Weakness:
Peace has also allowed innocents to be injured and killed.
Lack of action allows governments to commit far more illegal/immoral acts.
Also forgotten is, exactly what is the alternative to war? Anti-war seems to be all opposition and no proposition. Pro-war seems to be "one tool fits all". For example, rewind back to January:
First, drop main sanctions as long as Iraq coopertes with weapons inspectors. They weren't doing any good anyway. Threaten to re-impose them if inspections are prevented.
Once disarmament is completed, drop remaining sanctions but require monitoring of questionable imports (e.g. chlorine imported for water purification must be accounted for, and can be spot-checked).
Promote free-trade zone for Arabian League. Countries must be allowed to trade manufacturing, technology, and leverage intellectual resources. Oil is a lazy money source that doesn't promote economic development.
Increased economic interaction will require increased (and more open) communication.
Foreign aid targeted directly to hospitals, schools, etc., not to governments - but under control of locally elected administrative boards, not the donating countries/groups. Aid is conditional on fair elections which must meet democratic standards - the governments won't be too concerned because it will be too low a level to make policy decisions, but the general population will gain direct experience with practical democracy (not just a theory).
Even if the elected representatives want to teach that Israel doesn't exist, let them - democracy should come first. But:
Provide independent arabic news and entertainment, to give people a choice. Even if it's initailly banned, see the point above - economic leaders will need more open communication, and will also want the privileges of more open entertainment. As the middle class expands, so will the demands for openness.
That's just an outline of one possibility. There are others, and many, many more details would need to be addressed. But it is an alternative to war. Unfortunately, it would take a few decades - but then again, this is roughly the U.S strategy for dealing with China ("Constructive Engagement"), so it can be done.
Why pay for music when I can get it for free from Kazaa?
Possible reasons (depending on how its implemented):
Guaranteed to find the song at all times, if it's available.
Guaranteed complete download.
Guaranteed that it's actually what it says it is.
Videos.
Superior organization - catalogs by category, artist, date, etc.
Superior search capabilities.
Descriptions, reviews, articles and news about new non-mainstream releases.
Articles about past works that have been forgotten, or were never popular but seserved to be. When companies can make as much from their archives as new releases, there's an incentive to increase exposure to older artists.
Discussion forums? Chat rooms?
On-line interviews with the artists.
Information on tours, purchase tickets to events on-line - or win them for free in contests.
Live performance recordings.
Customized streaming audio/internet radio feed (click "No Boy Bands" option... or maybe "All Boy Bands").
Order T-shirts, fan magazines, other merchandise (and autographed CDs!?).
Some could be free (most artists have a web site now with some of this stuff), the rest would be value-added.
Think about police sketch artists. They take vague, half remembered information...and turn it into a very accurate rendering of the original image.
No they don't - they make some face-like shapes, and keep asking if that's right, and the witness keeps making adjustments (more hair, bigger nose), and so on until you have the desired result.
That's not a description, that's a conversation. A program is a description.
That's not to say that an interactive system isn't a good way to create a program. The conversation between the programmer and IDE could be recorded verbatim (imagine a word processor saving a document by recording every keystroke, even block moves and deletions), or the results could be recorded in an incomprehensible binary format - like those "resources" you need to design to make MFC dialogs and the like. Or the results of the interaction could be stored as a distillation of all the answers from the programmer, basically the IDE tool describing what it learned in its conversation with the programmer.
There - that final description, that's the program, and whatever format you use to unambiguously describe the data and precisely how it's used, that's the language.
The process may be like spoken language, the program must avoid any ambiguity and so can't be.
Be happy you don't have a system like Canada, which pupports a Senate, that doesn't actually do anything. We like yourselves have 2 major groups of lawmakers - but our Senate just passes any law that comes its way.
Canada's political system is very complex and subtle, and acts in ways which aren't obvious. The Senate, for example, is not meant to be democratic, but to provide "sober second thought" to legislation, by people who don't have to worry about re-election.
As an example, the Canadian anti-terrorist bill was blocked by the Senate and sent back to tbe Commons because of many concerns that civil rights violations were being rammed through due to popular demand, leading to extensive revisions before it was finally passed.
In practice, it's often used for political maneuvering as well. As an example of that, when the Supreme Court struck down abortion restriction laws, the Conservative governmnet passed new legislation to satisfy its conservative constituents amid loud, public debate. In the Senate, it was quietly killed unnoticed - the best of both worlds, satisfy the constituents, and avoid further legal controversy.
The senate also reviews policy - reports on deciminalizing marijuana, as well as the Kirby report on medicare have been very well researched and influential. The former is a topic that elected officials don't want to touch, but unelected Senators are free to address. The second gives additional weight to the Romanow report, by coming to basically the same conclusions independently.
Canadian politics is rarely as simple as what meets the eye. I don't think it could function without the Senate - though I would like to see Senators elected, I wouldn't want to see them worry about re-election, because that would hinder a large part of their function.
33. (1) Parliament or the legislature of a province may expressly declare in an Act of Parliament or of the legislature, as the case may be, that the Act or a provision thereof shall operate notwithstanding a provision included in section 2 or sections 7 to 15 of this Charter.
In other words, it isn't worth the toilet paper it should be printed on.
It goes further than that - any such legislation expires after five years, and can't override certain rights.
Elsewhere, the rights are stated as not absolute, but subject to such limits as are necessary in a free and democratic society. Libel and slander, for example, but also hate speech is also a crime (in principle - convictions are exceedingly rare).
And so on. It's a complex legal document. The upshot is, that:
Yes, freedom of expression (not just "speech") is guaranteed in the Canadian constitution, and
Yes, it is binding on the government - in fact, it is the document which created the Government of Canada and gives it all authority it has, as passed by the British parliament, before amendment rights were turned over to the governments (federal and provincial) of Canada.
This also means the courts get to decide what "necessary" restrictions are, and the people get to decide whether to allow their rights to be overridden. In Quebec, "La loi 101" (the language law) limits the use of English in business signs, and because it overrides freedom of expression, must be renewed every five years. When the population elects a government that doesn't want to renew it, it will disappear.
The courts have filed down the edges of the law as well into its present form.
Slashdot Mirror
Interesting story.
The nice thing about what you describe looks like you can follow the relations explicitly in program code. You can do that in RDBMSes, but there is no direct mechanism to support it (specifically syntax) - they're directed to automated query resolution to such an extent that trying to bypass it is actually harder (in other words, there's no way to avoid SQL comlexity when you don't want it). But that's a problem with SQL and RDBMS implementations, there's no reason you couldn't get your mind out of the SQL/Tables gutter and make a nice RDBMS.
In essense, the OODBMS you described is basically an RDBMS, but without automated queries. Actually, pre-SQL RDBMSes used to be like that. A lot more work to program (think COBOL) - the difference seems to be the text/table-oriented focus compared to using structs/classes for the same thing.
Something that is a genuine enhancement to databases is deductive databases, which attempt to simplify query writing by using defined relations to write the query for you.
Note: in set theory that relational database theory is based on, sets are equivalent to database tables, tuples are records, and attributes are columns.
Many of the concepts come from Prolog, which essentially defines the relationship between sets of tuples (with unnamed attributes), in such a way (using logical implications) that you can write a question, and the interpreter will figure out how the sets are joined based on the defined relationships (if they are), and return the first matching answer (or nothing, if no relationship can be found, or nothing matches the query conditions).
Many people have tried to make Prolog more database-like, with persistant data. However, relational databases can be made more Prolog-like. It wouldn't be hard - foreign key constraints provide much the same information as Prolog implication statements. It would not be that hard to generate a query based on known foreign key relationships - e.g. for "SELECT PERSON.NAME, COMPANY.ADDRESS", the interpreter could figure out as well as a human that what the relationship between PERSON and COMPANY is without an explicit WHERE clause.
I also don't think this would take much more time to execute, since generating the query only uses the table definitions, and it only has to be done once per query. A small number of entities to search and some caching should make it unnoticable in practice.
I suppose the question is whether it's worth the effort, when SQL is so simple. I think so, mainly because I think SQL is an abomination, but that's just me - I don't work with databases at the moment.
Possible explanations:
- Americans are just more accident prone due to procedures, discipline, lines of communication problems, or something else. U.S pilots who bombed Canadians in Afghanistan were on speed (on orders), which is not condusive to good decision-making.
- The American military is just more effective due to superior equipment, training, etc., so that they are able to take out targets more quickly and effectively than British forces, giving them less time to identify and avoid mistakes.
- American incidents are reported, British ones are covered up.
- Americans are world pariahs, friendly fire incidents are blown out of proportion by world media.
Any suggestions?The Canadian military that fought in WW II was a pale shadow of the force that fought so well in WW I - until the war started, and the country mobilized one of the largest forces in the world.
The Canadian military was kept up for a while during the Cold War, but its end and lack of enemies made a large army that did nothing seem a little useless, so it was cut back (many say too far).
But Canada's always been fairly non-military - the army was nearly non-existant before every war that it was involved in, and built up when needed. Although these days, that sort of build up would take a lot longer than it used to because of the complexity of modern weaponry.
That said, one difference is that Canadian governments do make an actual effort to make things better, usually after a long consultation process - at any given time, there are a large number of Royal Commissions and consultations receiving presentations on any number of subjects, from the new foreign policy consultations going on now, to the copyright reform process (look for my submission on their web page).
I think a part of this is that in Canada, the people in charge of government departments are actually members of Parliament, and therefore elected by people. They have to keep public opinions in mind, even when this conflicts with the Prime Minister's views, or they could lose their job next election even if the government is re-elected. In contrast, the people who run the U.S government don't have to care what anyone thinks, so tend to ignore public interest (the President doesn't really make many decisions - he usually just approves them or not - it's mainly the senior party officials in charge, the same ones one administration to another). Provincial/state governments follow their federal counterparts in structure.
And I won't even touch your complete abuse of "liberate", other than to suggest you certainly wouldn't want your property and bank account "liberated" in the same way.
I don't blame the Bush administration for this. Marketers and spinners have successfully been doing high-intensity redefining of terms for a long time, making even clear technical terms like RISC now mean CISC, or calling employees "resources" instead of people. Heck, "global purchasing habits tracking system" is now called a "shoppers club", and people can't get their names and personal details into it fast enough.
I just miss the days when people would say what they mean, and defend it on its merits, rather than trying to use spray-on glitter in the form of misleading imagery like "PATRIOT Act" (or the height of stupidity, "Freedom Fries").
Though I think it's the political deceit that is the most damaging.
I've noticed this trend accellerating - getting around legal restrictions by just making up new terms with the same meaning, but claiming that since the word is different, the law doesn't apply.
War doesn't mean "military action against an enemy". Afghanistan prisoners of war are actually "unlawful combatants". The invasion of Iraq is a "liberation", and purely "pre-emptive defense". Nerve gas and bio-weapons are "weapons of mass destruction", even though they kill without the destruction of anything. And the U.S dare not declare any war ever "over" (not even in Afghanistan), lest they be expected to live up to their obligations as the owners of the new territory - it's just the "end of major hostilities" now.
And apparently "losing an election" means something else too now.
What the hell is any official statement supposed to mean now anyway? Bush himself refers to the war against Iraq as a "war" in speeches. What makes it not a war?
A long time ago, world leaders were expected to be honest. That's why such international treaties and convencions never bothered to define all the terms - nobody would deny what they meant, would they?
Well, apparently so...
Sun emphacises instruction bandwidth over multiple threads, rather than single-thread performance. Makes for bad benchmarks, but good overall throughput (same idea as IBM mainframes, which have slow CPUs, but giant I/O bandwidth that dwarfs any bus-based sytem).
The Baath party in Iraq drove a Stalinist dictatorship, which puts emphasis on institutionalized power. Although Stalin himself was somewhat ideological as well, the main intent was to industrialize the Soviet Union, much like Saddam's intent was to industrialize Iraq. Although money was spent on palaces (no worse than the White house, or Bill Gates' palace), before the sanctions much of it was spent on building up Iraq's industry, universities, and government institutions. Stalinist dictatorships are efficient at acheiving particular goals (requiring long range planning), but cannot react to change quickly, so eventually become inefficient and stagnate.
In a Stalinist state, there tends to be freedom for anyone who doesn't oppose (or appear to oppose) the state in any way. In Iraq all religions were treated equally (Shia extremists were arrested when they tried to attack minority Christians), and women had rights not dreampt of in many other Middle East countries (Rahib Taha, a woman, was head of the Iraqi bioweapons program).
The third type of dictatorship is a strongman-type, in which one person holds power purely for his own desire for it. They are the most unpredictable, because it usually takes someone a bit crazy. People tend to have freedom, but are also subject to the whims of the dictator. The economy is usually crippled for elaborate expenditures for the dictator's ego. Since power is vested in one individual, it's very fragile. Idi Amin would be an example.
Most dictatorships combine elements. For example, in Iraq power was institutionalized, but Saddam Hussein was presented as a power symbol (as Stalin and Hitler were). And Stalin also implemented the communist ideology along with purely institutional power.
As dictatorships go, Iraq wasn't the worst, and most ordinary people were better off than in other places - at least, before the sanctions - which is why there was little popular support for getting rid of Saddam Hussein. If you rebelled though or were suspected (with or without evidence), response was brutal (and ocasionally gassy).
The thing the invaders always seem to forget is that the locals are far faster at getting organized, even if they don't have the same resources. In particular, it's essentially impossible to eliminate or supress the religious authorities in those countries and retain any popular support, so there is a network of clerics that remains in place even under oppressive governments such as Iraq. Under Saddan Hussein, the religious orders were permitted to continue as long as they kept out of politics, a situation which they were able to follow, but never fully accepted.
Back in Iran, these were the groups who organized the revolution that threw out the U.S-backed Shah, and organized a new ruling elite - that's why Iran immediately implemented fundamentalist Islamic laws when it happened. In Iraq, they have already organized the Shia majority into a political movement, now that they're free to do so. The demonstrations among the general population and demands for an Islamic government in Iraq have started rising rapidly.
Basically, the mullahs have an already established "transitional government". The question then becomes, how long will the occupying forces prevent the Islamic government from taking over?
Chances are that the occupiers are so against the idea that they will form their own interim, then "final" Iraqi government against the popular opinion, as in Iran. In that case, it will only be a matter of time before foreign involvement tapers off enough for a revolution to overthrow the imposed government, as happened in Iran.
Again.
I wonder what the Koran has to say about copyright...
If you mean general architecture, then this isn't a bad overview.
But economically, I can see this sort of thing happening, in a much longer term, because of technology - specifically the falling costs and rising general prosperity. The cost of entry into a number of markets has fallen dramatically. Sometimes the technology cost itself has fallen, as in personal computers, allowing for local shops which provide custom built solutions for customers to thrive, sometimes the industry has simply restructured to spread the cost, such as semiconductor companies which used to need a fabrication plant, but have split into designers and foundaries (akin to the publishing vs. printing companies).
If this trend can continue, then anyone modivated enough can form their own company, and those not interested still have a wider choice of employers.
It's not without opposition by the established conglomerations. A good example is the music industry - the old model is simply unsustainable with new technology. The existing companies may collapse no matter what they do, because whatever they do in the end, anyone else can do it too now, so they're not special.
However, anything like that will probably take a few more centuries to settle down. And these things need a free but fair, regulated economic climate. No, I don't think the U.S has one, there is too much corporate power, but on the other hand corporate control becomes just as inefficient as any centralized control, after a while. Unless propped up by non-market forces (e.g. government laws), they'll shrink or collapse in the face of better, smaller competitors.
Unfortunately, corporate interests seem to be moving towards government control in the U.S. Not surprizing - the logical result of unfettered capitalism is organized crime, whether it's enforced by private thugs or an government increasingly alienated from its citizens.
In that case, then of course they get feudal in their demands, people demand rights, constitutions are negotiated or revolutions happen, and democracy flourishes again, and another millenium goes by...
In the early 1990s, Apple decided that the Motorola 680x0 series was not keeping up with the Intel 80x86 series, largely because PCs were Intel's primary market, while Motorola CPUs were used more in embedded systems. RISC designs were simpler and could be improved with less effort, so Apple switched to the PowerPC CPU in 1994 (after prototypes in 1991 using the 88K), but to maintain compatibility, needed to emulate the 680x0. The initial emulator interpreted 68LC040 (without FPU) code, and a later version stored translated blocks of code, and ran faster than Apples previous high end Macintoshes.
This impressed IBM engineers enough that a project was started to emulate the 80386+ architecture on a PowerPC (known as the PowerPC 615), but the project was cancelled (apparently after successful versions were completed - possibly because of performance, problems with efficiency using the PowerPC architecture (the 80x86 much more awkward and complicated than the 680x0), marketing decisions, or strategic/management decisions - I don't know, but the computer industry was very volatile at the time, and the path of the future was not at all clear). However development on the conncept continued with the DAISY project (Dynamically Architected Instruction Set from Yorktown), which translated to a hypothetical VLIW CPU instead of the PowerPC. Both the DAISY system, and a later project called Dynamo from Hewlett-Packard (which ran PA-RISC on PA-RISC), could optimise code as it ran (Dynamo could improve PA-RISC performance by up to 20% over non-emulated code).
Several engineers (many from Sun, such as David Ditzel, designer for Sun's UltraSparc CPU, and Bob Cmelik who wrote instruction profiling tools for SPARC programs) helped found Transmeta, which created the missing VLIW processor, and created a new dynamic translator (called a "Code Morpher" by Transmeta) to emulate the 80x86. [...]
These factors have put pressure on human reproduction. Women who put off pregnancy will sometimes find it difficult to conceive. This is a distinct selective pressure - women with genes which maintain health and fertility later in life will definitely have a reproductive advantage, and their descendents will outnumber the others. As a result, the practical limit of a woman's fertil span (both on average, and the absolute limit) is being pressured to extend later in life.
This might have side benefits, such as generally longer life spans for humans in general, and a resistance to certain age-related conditions that can impair reproduction, such as certain cancers. This may or may not have an effect on male health - there is no direct pressure in this case since male effort is minimal, but most genes are common. Women on average already live longer than men on average.
This may be the most direct and pressing modern day evolutionary pressure on humans, but there are many, many more, and they may be very subtle. But they are there, so don't think human evolution has stopped because technology has changed requirements for survival.
They give the illusion of being powerful, but the clever parts don't work together well, or require more effort or detailed knowledge than they have to (anything that needs a "Wizard" software assistant to do something is waaaay overcomplicated to begin with).
Second, the Stalinist type of dictatorship in Iraq doesn't leave room for any non-official power group (if it can be prevented - that's why secret police are so important). Idological dictatorships do, if it fits the ideology (again, Afghanistan) and certain individual/monarchy dictatorships do because they tend to be more flexible and less controlling (Saudi Arabia and Egypt are that type - the 9/11 hijackers were almost all from those two countries).
Third, terrorists are almost always concerned with their own countries. Al Quaida, for example, is aimed primarily at overthrowing the Saudi Arabia monarchy. The U.S is a target because it spends so much effort propping up that dictatorship - if the U.S had directed its efforts to democracy there instead, Al Quaida as it is now would never have existed. Similarly, Israel is only a terrorist target because of its occupation of Palestine.
Terrorists don't just wake up one day and think "Hmm, I'm opressed, I think I'll go to a large, democratic industrialized country and blow up a building. Japan fits that description...". There is a reason that the U.S is the subject of terrorism, and it's the same reason France or the U.K have been in the past - interfering in domestic affairs of other countries.
Back to the main point, Iraq didn't do the world's terrorists any good. Terrorists are random and uncontrollable - exactly opposite Saddam Hussein's desire for institutionalized power. Terrorists are a terrible tool because of that - witness Yassir Arafat's troubles at stopping them, now that they're no longer serving a purpose, and are just getting in the way.
Letter to President Clinton on Iraq
Incidentally, according to this comspiracy-oriented web site, plans were under way to invade Ahghanistan well before 9/11 - in fact, even the Clinton administration was considering it seriously, and plans were so complete that when needed, they were just taken off the shelf (which is why the war was organized so quickly):
US PREPARING FOR A WAR WITH AFGHANISTAN BEFORE 9/11...
I'm not necessarily talking about trade barriers being raised, but additional incentives - lower import duties, pre-clearance for customs (or customs elimination, as with the EU), perhaps a common currency to make purchases within the free trade area more convenient than imports. Entepreneurs and the free market would do the rest over the long term.
It would also make them less likely to want to attack any of their trading partners, they may just depend on them for limo parts or something.
Regardless, it is just a possible strategy, and you could always suggest something that works better.
Actually, it has. Information about things such as the recent mining disaster which would have simply been unreported before have been spread among the internet-connected as well as business contacts. China is trying to limit Internet access to the outside world, but this happened within the country, not affected by the national firewall.In order for a capital-driven economy to function efficienly, those who actually do the planning and make the decisions need to communicate with each other directly, which is why centrally controlled economies are so inefficient (they're good for long-term planning, but suck at reacting to any real-life variation). That decision-making manager-level middle class in China is growing quickly.
As the need for communication grows, the government will need to decide whether to devote more of its resources to monitor a growing communications system, or limit communications and choke off its own economic growth (basically, give up its "capitalism under communism" strategy and return to a stagnant, planned economy that didn't work before). China's current leadership is even more liberalized-market (because it's been successful) than the previous leaders who started it.
Er, no, exactly not like that.Pro war:
- There is no alternative to war (people are suffering and dying - possible direct threats by Iraq government).
Weakness:- Assumes war will work - possible post-war chaos may be worse.
- Lack of diplomacy simply pisses off rest of world.
Anti-war:- War will injure and kill innocents.
- No legal authority.
Weakness:- Peace has also allowed innocents to be injured and killed.
- Lack of action allows governments to commit far more illegal/immoral acts.
Also forgotten is, exactly what is the alternative to war? Anti-war seems to be all opposition and no proposition. Pro-war seems to be "one tool fits all". For example, rewind back to January:- First, drop main sanctions as long as Iraq coopertes with weapons inspectors. They weren't doing any good anyway. Threaten to re-impose them if inspections are prevented.
- Once disarmament is completed, drop remaining sanctions but require monitoring of questionable imports (e.g. chlorine imported for water purification must be accounted for, and can be spot-checked).
- Promote free-trade zone for Arabian League. Countries must be allowed to trade manufacturing, technology, and leverage intellectual resources. Oil is a lazy money source that doesn't promote economic development.
- Increased economic interaction will require increased (and more open) communication.
- Foreign aid targeted directly to hospitals, schools, etc., not to governments - but under control of locally elected administrative boards, not the donating countries/groups. Aid is conditional on fair elections which must meet democratic standards - the governments won't be too concerned because it will be too low a level to make policy decisions, but the general population will gain direct experience with practical democracy (not just a theory).
- Even if the elected representatives want to teach that Israel doesn't exist, let them - democracy should come first. But:
- Provide independent arabic news and entertainment, to give people a choice. Even if it's initailly banned, see the point above - economic leaders will need more open communication, and will also want the privileges of more open entertainment. As the middle class expands, so will the demands for openness.
That's just an outline of one possibility. There are others, and many, many more details would need to be addressed. But it is an alternative to war. Unfortunately, it would take a few decades - but then again, this is roughly the U.S strategy for dealing with China ("Constructive Engagement"), so it can be done.Possible reasons (depending on how its implemented):
- Guaranteed to find the song at all times, if it's available.
- Guaranteed complete download.
- Guaranteed that it's actually what it says it is.
- Videos.
- Superior organization - catalogs by category, artist, date, etc.
- Superior search capabilities.
- Descriptions, reviews, articles and news about new non-mainstream releases.
- Articles about past works that have been forgotten, or were never popular but seserved to be. When companies can make as much from their archives as new releases, there's an incentive to increase exposure to older artists.
- Discussion forums? Chat rooms?
- On-line interviews with the artists.
- Information on tours, purchase tickets to events on-line - or win them for free in contests.
- Live performance recordings.
- Customized streaming audio/internet radio feed (click "No Boy Bands" option... or maybe "All Boy Bands").
- Order T-shirts, fan magazines, other merchandise (and autographed CDs!?).
Some could be free (most artists have a web site now with some of this stuff), the rest would be value-added.That's not a description, that's a conversation. A program is a description.
That's not to say that an interactive system isn't a good way to create a program. The conversation between the programmer and IDE could be recorded verbatim (imagine a word processor saving a document by recording every keystroke, even block moves and deletions), or the results could be recorded in an incomprehensible binary format - like those "resources" you need to design to make MFC dialogs and the like. Or the results of the interaction could be stored as a distillation of all the answers from the programmer, basically the IDE tool describing what it learned in its conversation with the programmer.
There - that final description, that's the program, and whatever format you use to unambiguously describe the data and precisely how it's used, that's the language.
The process may be like spoken language, the program must avoid any ambiguity and so can't be.
As an example, the Canadian anti-terrorist bill was blocked by the Senate and sent back to tbe Commons because of many concerns that civil rights violations were being rammed through due to popular demand, leading to extensive revisions before it was finally passed.
In practice, it's often used for political maneuvering as well. As an example of that, when the Supreme Court struck down abortion restriction laws, the Conservative governmnet passed new legislation to satisfy its conservative constituents amid loud, public debate. In the Senate, it was quietly killed unnoticed - the best of both worlds, satisfy the constituents, and avoid further legal controversy.
The senate also reviews policy - reports on deciminalizing marijuana, as well as the Kirby report on medicare have been very well researched and influential. The former is a topic that elected officials don't want to touch, but unelected Senators are free to address. The second gives additional weight to the Romanow report, by coming to basically the same conclusions independently.
Canadian politics is rarely as simple as what meets the eye. I don't think it could function without the Senate - though I would like to see Senators elected, I wouldn't want to see them worry about re-election, because that would hinder a large part of their function.
It goes further than that - any such legislation expires after five years, and can't override certain rights.
Elsewhere, the rights are stated as not absolute, but subject to such limits as are necessary in a free and democratic society. Libel and slander, for example, but also hate speech is also a crime (in principle - convictions are exceedingly rare).
And so on. It's a complex legal document. The upshot is, that:
- Yes, freedom of expression (not just "speech") is guaranteed in the Canadian constitution, and
- Yes, it is binding on the government - in fact, it is the document which created the Government of Canada and gives it all authority it has, as passed by the British parliament, before amendment rights were turned over to the governments (federal and provincial) of Canada.
This also means the courts get to decide what "necessary" restrictions are, and the people get to decide whether to allow their rights to be overridden. In Quebec, "La loi 101" (the language law) limits the use of English in business signs, and because it overrides freedom of expression, must be renewed every five years. When the population elects a government that doesn't want to renew it, it will disappear.The courts have filed down the edges of the law as well into its present form.