Perhaps now, this will provide the United States with an impetus to standardize on a reactor plant design. If the Federal Government approached nuclear power with the same notions as the U.S. Navy, perhaps we would see a greater role for nuclear power in our society. It is markedly more easy to design, develop, and implement a reactor plant design that can be certified; than it is to have to certify each individual reactor plant design. The U.S. Navy (and possibly other world Navies) certify a small number of designs and fabricators so that an inspection is all that is required. Example: The reactor system made by GE or Westinghouse has been certified by the Navy's nuclear regulatory authority and can be built immediately upon order from the Navy. A simple inspection and sea-trial are all that is required to validate its functionality. There is not a requirement that the design for that reactor be submitted for approval for each build, as the design has already been approved.
This is contrary to the public power generating stations. Each reactor and plant design must be submitted for review prior to the plant being built. It would be far wiser and more efficient to have the appropriate regulatory agency(s) (FERC, NRC, AEC...it changes) approve a set of reactor plant designs and their respective fabricators/construction agencies before a plant is needed. Example: A nuclear power plant design for 1000Mw, 500Mw, etc... has been approved for build by the appropriate agencies. Reliant Energy needs to expand its capacity to provide power by 500Mw in the next 3 years. Reliant has simply to consult the regulatory agencies list of approved design/fabricators to determine what they could build. The plant can be built immediately or as soon as possible and would only require inspections and testing, and would not require a design submission. This could shave off years of wait time for Reliant, and reduce the costs of electricity to consumers.
Firefly made no money to speak of as a television show. Bad timeslot? Poor advertising? Cruddy story? There are people who would undoubtedly argue all points. However, I fail to see how any show that doesn't make money and gather a following in series Televsion catches the eye of movie producers. They better have some big named stars to draw the crowd.
Just as any other mechanism that man creates, it is only as good as it's design. Wireless is probably a really poor design for a voting machine. A better choice would be to have each polling station as its own network with the polling machines connect to only to a controller for that polling place. The controller could then be taken to the courthouse where its records could be downloaded and counted at the end of the voting sessions. There is a way to balance acceptable risk with ease of use in voting electronically. It would appear that Diebold hasn't found that balance yet.
There is a large majority of business productivity applications that work on require you to use a windows platform. Nearly everyone in the world uses MS Office on an Intel platform. I know that AIX will no longer be supported by IBM in the not so distant future, and they are in the process of porting the AIX apps to linux. However, their consulting branch nearly without exception uses windows and tools designed for windows. They have to for nearly all of their clients use windows at the desktop level. All documentation for their efforts are created using word, excel, and access. It makes sense, most people are familiar with the windows platform and so retraining wouldn't be an issue. Linux to the desktop will probably take longer than linux to the back-office.
I assume the contractors didn't work for IBM...did they?
An interesting notion. The only problem with encryption is distribution. The encryption of a publicly available file trading system is a very daunting task. The largest hurdle would be the key distribution. Who gets keys to what encrypted transmission and (more importantly) who decides who gets the keys? The latter note has implications of who could potentially get sued, subpoenaed, etc...
However, assuming you've worked out all the technical issues and created a system that encrypts your transmissions how do you keep the RIAA from downloading your sharing software? Assuming that the software handles the encryption/decryption and comes with the keys, the RIAA has only to download your client and begin trading. If your software requires you to download keys from some location how do you prevent the keys being distributed to an RIAA representative? In either case, it would appear that there was no circumvention of the encryption method.
It might be possible to create a client that strips identifying information from the transmission, however, the RIAA could conceivably reverse engineer your product and develop a solution whereby the identifying information was captured prior to being erased. Logically, you would want your solution to do both, encrypt and strip. It would possibly be the first of its kind however. In the end, there is always a data trail to your PC. The best way to keep from getting caught, is to not trade copyrighted music in the first place.
The safest bet is to just wear a ski mask. Or better yet, dress up like a Klingon and say you are flying to a convention and wouldn't have time to change your clothes.
If you had a monopoly on desktop productivity and wanted to draw people to use your server software, what better way to do that than offer them a carrot! I don't know if this will prevent the copying of documents (you could open Open Office 1.1 and the the Office suite side by side and CTRL-C and CTRL-V until you got all of what you wanted) if you have sufficient authority to read them. What it does do is cause the IT departments of large companies with an interest in DRM to think twice about the Windows Server 2003. If they use the new Office and want to use the DRM they MUST use windows server 2003. You can't use Red Hat, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, SuSe, Solaris, (insert OS here...). I see this as another attempt by MS to exercise their muscle to gather up monopoly share. We need a few corporations the size of IBM, HP, GM, GE, etc... to stand up and say "No thanks. We are just fine with what we have now.". Even better would be if those companies said "No thanks. We believe we are going to switch over to a Linux desktop with OpenOffice or StarOffice, because what it will save us in licensing will cover the cost to redeploy and retrain. Also, we won't be locked in to one vendor for our products.". Too bad that won't happen.
I think that the Linux movement wasn't necessarily started for money. I work for IBM, we don't make money selling Linux although we herald it as an excellent OS and a key to "on-demand". IBM makes profits by selling a "service" built around Linux. We will sell you a mainframe/server preconfigured with Red Hat and with the option of purchasing some of our proprietary monitoring, clustering, etc... tools. We can sell you this outfit for $$$,$$$ cheaper than a WinTel combo. Additionally, our profit margins are much higher on this sort of sale because we don't owe anything to MicroSoft for the software sale. The real money maker is the services (on demand) we can sell to you. They will work just as well with a Linux platform as they will with a MicroSoft platform. Services, (in the USA at least) are the money makers of the future. It is cheaper to manufacture components, programs, hardware, etc... overseas. Services, are what sell in the States.
I don't think the point of Linux (Linus's school project) or more pointedly OpenSource was ever to make money on Software. I think they are just "enablers" for other schemes that make money (a'la services). You may disagree with the premise of Linux or OpenSource in general, but that model is gaining popularity and does have its merits. I think that largely (and this is just my opinion) OpenSource will serve to rein in the price of Proprietary Software. If you were a business who could download a Office Suite for your employees that met the needs of those same employees for $0 a license, or pay $1000(s) per license for a proprietary package; I would imagine you would look very long at the free version. However, if the proprietary software company lowered their pricing model to reflect what the industry perceived as the real-value of that software; the industry might be willing to pay for the software to get the benefits that are provided by closed source.
I imagine that O'Reilly will be the first to publish the first book on programming humans. If you imagine the human body as a machine, you will note that its components are created by protein folding. A protein folds in one manner to react with a protein folded in another manner. Sooner or later, I imagine we will know what folds are required to create a liver or a kidney.
Perhaps we can download folding scripts from the internet to instruct sophisticated machinery to affect the folding in a protein culture. Perhaps not! Who knows? Sounds exciting to me!
I heard something similar. I was trying to find the tables on the net, to no avail. I heard it was around 325 years and then the odds that you perish in an accident would get you.
Even if you were able to have a life expectency of 5100 years, a disease or accident could sharpely reduce that figure. I wonder what the "practical" average life span would be. What sort of changes to society would you need to create so that a life wouldn't be cut short by disease or accident? Would we need to give up cars, airplanes, etc.? We don't worry much about dying in car crashes, airplanes, or by disease right now because the odds are that we will die of "natural causes" before such an event occurs. However, if we all possessed the ability to live to 5100 yrs of age, what sort of modifications to our daily life would we see? What would we do at age 4000? Would we stay home all day?
The very nature of business precludes money for a piece of property.
Funny. I always thought the nature of business was to make money. I didn't think that its nature precluded making money. Perhaps preclude was a poor choice of words?
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. Certainly, it doesn't have some of the "nifty" inclusions such as trial software from commercial vendors, or other inclusions available only to the boxed set. However, it is definitely a cheap way to get your hands on a distrobution if you don't want to download and burn your own CDs. I would imagine that the Red Hat network will be switching to a "service" based business model. You by maintenance, support, regular upgrades, optimizations, and additional software products designed to work with Red Hat or Linux. They won't need to rely on the "retail" business model. I think that Progeny has already embraced this mode of business. I wonder how profitable they are? I think Red Hat will have a leg up seeing that they are the leading US distribution in the business world.
You are absolutely correct. It can be slow, inaccurate, and in most cases is certainly subject to interpretation (relative to how well-formed the communication is). I would argue however that so are memories (thoughts). Studies have shown that memories degrade or can change over time.
There are many questions to be answered before we can begin to consider direct thought transfer. Here are some that immediately come to my mind, you might think of more.
how to "write" the memory (transfer of working memory to declarative memory)
how to handle error correction of the thought transfer
how to "validate" the transfer was successful
how do we prevent "brain damage" or the equivalent of creating CD coasters with our gray matter when transfering?
Currently, our sensory organs provide us our input into working memory which can be transferred into declarative memory by the hippocampus. Would we bypass the hippocampus altogether in transfering memory to the declarative memory components or would we "trigger" the hippocampus with artificial stimulus? The risk with bypassing the hippocampus (and this is purely hypothetical) might be that our brain does not understand how to recall the memory patterns we transfer to declarative memory without using our own hippocampus. It is possible that my hippocampus transfers working memory using protocol x, for example, and your hippocampus transfers working memory using protocol y. It might be true that we all use one "protocol" but it might be true that we all use our own "protocol" and all other possible protocols would not be available to our hippocampus. Would the transfered memory patterns then be the logical equivalence of brain damage? Even if we were able to trigger the hippocampus to transfer the memory, would we need some sort of "middleware" to convert between what how your hippocampus stored the memory pattern and how my hippocampus would store my memory pattern? That would introduce another point of possible error.
The error correction of the input data is most likely performed by the part of the limbic system that handles working memory. Maybe that is the cortex, we think that is the case. Some examples of such error correction would be how you can "see" missing letters in common words , "deduce" the correct version of a word that has been misused (there instead of their), and how your mind "fills in" the gaps in your memory of an event. This would be similar to a content validation. How would we validate the completeness of the transfer? What would be an acceptable tolerance for "perceptional difference" in the same memory transfered between different individuals?
How do we prevent our transfer of thoughts between individuals from creating a "bad record" or unusable memory? Would that be brain damage? How do we prevent people from pulling thoughts from our minds and writing them to a database?
I definitely and whole heartedly agree that our current modes of communication our sometimes inefficient, but I don't think we humans will be able to transfer thoughts between one another without going through the intermediate form of speech, written word, or imagery. Unless we miraculously evolve the mental facilities to do just that. At which point, we are a true "hive mind".
What do you mean by "thought->thought"? Do you mean the transfer medium? My thoughts are your thoughts simultaneously, sort of thing? I was pretty sure that we used thought->thought communication already. I put my thoughts into speech or writing (of some sort) and you read them. You provide me with your thoughts about my thoughts using a similar process.
The human will always be a bottleneck in information processing as we cannot perceive faster than light. Supposing we could transmit the information faster than light directly to our brains and make the necessary patterns, we could only recall them and process them at the "speed of thought". Which is much slower than light.
Prohibition is largely symbolic. The "body politik" of a nation will use prohibition to quell fears and to address the concerns of the citizenry. In that vein, the use of prohibition as a political tactic isn't totally without its merits. In evaluating the "success" of prohibitions, prohibitions are generally deemed successful when the majority of the citizenry agree to abide by the prohibitions. They are considered to fail when the majority of the citizenry refuses to abide by the prohibitions. As was the case during the depression with the prohibition of alcohol. Essentially, the "success" or "failure" of a prohibition appears, to me at least, to be associated with two components.
As with any law, the willingness of the majority of the populace to abide by that law.
The object (substance, behavior, product) being prohibited.
Prohibition is generally more successful when you are dealing with an object, practice, etc... that is non-addictive. Individuals will have no psychological or physiological "need" to satisfy by indulging in a prohibition. On the contrary, prohibition appears to be inherently less effective in eradicating pornography, drugs, and any addictive behavior (gambling, alcoholism, etc...). I have not done research in this area, however, I would consider that the psychological or physiological compulsion to "satisfy a need" (real or perceived) provides a barrier to complying with a prohibition. I would be interested in any input that social scientists reading this post could contribute.
What isn't stated in the article (that I remember) are the punitive measures for violations to the curfew. I wonder what the "remedies" for infractions to the curfew would be. Perhaps fines or loss of connection priviledges?
In your post,
If we were to accept that children have the right to decide for themselves, then they would be more inclined to accept advice, and make rational decisions. This is why DARE is a failure, children aren't stupid, they know what they are getting is propaganda. Think about the differences in alcohol use between american and european youth. For americans, alcohol is taboo and thus it is heavily abused by teenagers and college students. In europe binge drinking is not the problem it is here, because they have been exposed to alcohol and learned socially acceptable ways of using it.
you make sweeping assumptions. Is the DARE program a failure? Being that it is a "local initiative" you would need to validate the success at a "local" level. In your comparison of the drinking habits of American and European youth, you allude to their exposure to alcohol as a significant factor in their behavior. While that might be true, at what average age do the two cultures receive exposure? How do we define exposure? Is it an evolving process that lasts a lifetime, or is it a specified period of time in the life of the adolescent that exists for a specific duration? What information do we have that links "binge drinking" to the failure of prohibitions and laws? In the end, Thailand will be responsible for satisfying their populace. If they believe curfew is an acceptable practice to curb an addictive behavior, then that is what they will implement. In America, it very well may be a different answer.
I believe it is 404 error. In anycase, the file doesn't exist....possibly in english. Although, that IP may only be serving as a relay by the original attacker.
The version numbers were nice ways to understand the evolution of USB. However, changing how you represent your versioning to the public is not a good thing. They (USB Forum) should have thought more carefully about the consequences of their decision to represent USB to the public using version numbers. In the end, USB as a protocol will suffer. Consumers will find it easier to purchase IEEE 1394 (firewire) devices instead of trying to "discover" which version of USB 2.0 they have. USB 1.1 (cleverly renamed "Full-Speed", which to me, "Full Speed" indicates that is the max limit that USB can go) or Hi-Speed (which is really "Full Speed" of the latest rendition of the protocol). Additionally, I thought the protocols only provided "speed limits". The hardware didn't have to transmit data at the highest throughput allowed if it couldn't, it just had to comply with the protocol stipulations. The new names imply to me that "Full Speed" will always transmit at the maximum rate, and "Hi-Speed" will......well, transmit at a high (???) rate of speed. At the very least, this is confusing and misrepresentative to the consumer.
The RIAA, MPAA, entertainment industry giants, and other lobby groups throw great amounts of money, thought, and manpower at creating a "sustainable" market outlet in the digital world (for entertainment media). They claim their biggest threat to the entertainment market is piracy. If we examine the past actions of these groups, we will see that they have:
negotiated with product providers (phillips, sony, etc...) to create hardware that limits the consumers ability to use the media (think DVD encoding, non-skippable previews, etc...)
when negotiation wasn't possible, they threatened lawsuits (think SonicBlue, RCA, etc...) to force capitulation
now they want to propose industry standards. The consumer will not have a voice in this process as the members of the various standard's bodies have been lobbied, negotiated with, or sued by the "entertainment" industry.
Why are DVD players/media and CD players/media not treated in the same fashion as a VCR or Copier device (such as a Xerox)? To my knowledge manufacturers of copy machines and (during their time) VCRs made decent profits. I could skip commercial recordings and previews on my VCR, but I cannot skip the previews on my DVD player. How is that fair use?
Ultimately, I see the courts will need to intervene to set a precedent (similar to the cases involving the VCR and Copy machine). The "entertainment industry" and the standards bodies will establish DRM standards that aren't too unacceptable to the consumer (arguably they won't know the reason for a loss of capability) at first. As the standards go through the review process over the years, you will see devices that have little to no consumer protection (rights and information) inherent in their design. As it is easier to implement a standard and get acceptance by starting with the most acceptable format, and then slowly repealing/adding features over time.
The consumers could stop this nonsense right now by doing three simple things:
cancel your cable (if you subscribe)
do not "go to movies" or buy CD/DVD/Computer Software merchandise that is DRM enabled (whenever possible)
do not buy consumer electronics or computer systems that have native support for DRM
A final action could be to support your Open Source projects, as they currently don't have an issue with piracy.
In the US, it is illegal to actively jam an electronic signal (such as a tv, telephone, radar, or other communication medium) used for communication. Notice, active jamming and filtration are separate activities. You can filter unwanted signals or noises but you cannot jam them. Structural jamming do to building design is not illegal (it is a function of the building components).
How can we all agree that "violent video games" don't make kids into hell-bent killers, and then turn around and say "bad parenting" does? If I go out and kill someone, I'm the murder. Not my parents, and not my Gamecube.
The parents are, arguably, the primary source of psycho-social imprinting for the child. Typically, children learn their behavior, morals, values, and identity from their parents. The more involved the parents are in the child's life life the stronger that influence. The less involved the parents are in their children's life, the less the influence; and the stronger the influence that outside sources (neighbors, peers, television, etc...)have on the child's identity.
Just because we're "minors" doesn't mean we can't be held accountable for our own behavior. You don't have to find someone else to blame. It's hard to determine exactly when a child has transitioned from ignorant to insane, but it's definitely earlier than 18. It may be that a 15-year-old kid kills his teacher because he's violent and his parents/teachers/video games/movies didn't teach him how to deal with anger properly, but he's still the violent one. If you don't think a 15-year-old realizes what the result of killing is, then perhaps it's been too long since you last spoke with one.
That is why in most cases the minor is sentenced and the parents aren't convicted as accomplice to the crime. The fact that the 15 year old may or may not understand/realize the effect of murder (although that could be the case in rare circumstances) is not relevant. It is accepted that a fifteen year old understands the concept of "dead". What is relevant is the degree to which video games, television, movies, music, etc... desensitize the youth to the effects of killing, and thereby contribute to the condition (mental) which causes the youth to kill. There is compelling evidence to correlate violent video games and aggressive behavior, though not conclusive.
One problem lies in our whole system of treating "minors" completely differently. If a 15-year-old kills his family, it's blamed on his parents and his hobbies, it makes news headlines around the world, and inspires weeks and months and years of angry discussion about what causes violence in youths. If an 18-year-old kills his family, everyone just says, "he's one sick bastard" and he goes to prison. The minor is rewarded with fame and attention, the rest are rewarded with hatred.
I am not familiar with that case, although most social scientists would examinate a killer's background for study. I would blame the media for sensationalizing a criminal act, not necessarily the social scientist.
Funny! I just replied earlier with the same article. I also submitted it for posting, but I guess my prose wasn't so hot, or else it wasn't deemed to be a good topic:(.
Perhaps you should read this article in Scientific American "click me!". It speakes to parallel universes, but explains the thinking behind them. While it is not a journal by any stretch of the imagination, it is definitely an interesting read.
In general, people are contributing their creations from their grey matter on the belief that they will be justly compensated for their efforts. Most people on this planet would not want to do something and not be compensated for their doing (unless they're communists, and even then...).
For instance, no one likes to go to work for an employer, work very hard for three years and receive absolutely no compensation for their work. In this instance, people would scream bloody murder at the employer for not providing adequate compensation.
I generally agree with that statement. It is true, I don't go to work without expectation of compensation. The company is buying my time and knowledge from me. However, I do believe that monetary compensation isn't always the only reason individuals and groups make contributions from their minds and talents. I would imagine that some talented individuals write drivers and applications and freely distribute them simply because they believe in the OSS model, or perhaps they feel that quality software should be freely available to the masses.
Therefore, it necessarily follows that people that contribute substantive creations would like to have their works protected from those that seek to gain an unfair advantage in this world. In other words, no one likes having something stolen from them...especially if they've worked very hard and spent many millions on that something.
Unless, of course, their original intent was to publish the software as a freely distributed piece of code. Then there wouldn't be a case for theft or illegal use of code.
In the world of Linux, Microsoft and even piracy in general, there are a number of individuals and companies that are stealing these works and gaining compensation without rewarding the original creator of the works. Therefore, these individuals and companies are guilty of a crime. In this case, they are guilty of patent or copyright infringement.
If it is proven that IBM is guilty of patent infringement, then they deserve whatever they get. In addition, those works would need to be removed and replaced by better routines. It's a shame that IBM never learned from the Compaq BIOS experience and lawsuits.
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Perhaps now, this will provide the United States with an impetus to standardize on a reactor plant design. If the Federal Government approached nuclear power with the same notions as the U.S. Navy, perhaps we would see a greater role for nuclear power in our society. It is markedly more easy to design, develop, and implement a reactor plant design that can be certified; than it is to have to certify each individual reactor plant design. The U.S. Navy (and possibly other world Navies) certify a small number of designs and fabricators so that an inspection is all that is required. Example: The reactor system made by GE or Westinghouse has been certified by the Navy's nuclear regulatory authority and can be built immediately upon order from the Navy. A simple inspection and sea-trial are all that is required to validate its functionality. There is not a requirement that the design for that reactor be submitted for approval for each build, as the design has already been approved.
This is contrary to the public power generating stations. Each reactor and plant design must be submitted for review prior to the plant being built. It would be far wiser and more efficient to have the appropriate regulatory agency(s) (FERC, NRC, AEC...it changes) approve a set of reactor plant designs and their respective fabricators/construction agencies before a plant is needed. Example: A nuclear power plant design for 1000Mw, 500Mw, etc... has been approved for build by the appropriate agencies. Reliant Energy needs to expand its capacity to provide power by 500Mw in the next 3 years. Reliant has simply to consult the regulatory agencies list of approved design/fabricators to determine what they could build. The plant can be built immediately or as soon as possible and would only require inspections and testing, and would not require a design submission. This could shave off years of wait time for Reliant, and reduce the costs of electricity to consumers.
Firefly made no money to speak of as a television show. Bad timeslot? Poor advertising? Cruddy story? There are people who would undoubtedly argue all points. However, I fail to see how any show that doesn't make money and gather a following in series Televsion catches the eye of movie producers. They better have some big named stars to draw the crowd.
Just as any other mechanism that man creates, it is only as good as it's design. Wireless is probably a really poor design for a voting machine. A better choice would be to have each polling station as its own network with the polling machines connect to only to a controller for that polling place. The controller could then be taken to the courthouse where its records could be downloaded and counted at the end of the voting sessions. There is a way to balance acceptable risk with ease of use in voting electronically. It would appear that Diebold hasn't found that balance yet.
There is a large majority of business productivity applications that work on require you to use a windows platform. Nearly everyone in the world uses MS Office on an Intel platform. I know that AIX will no longer be supported by IBM in the not so distant future, and they are in the process of porting the AIX apps to linux. However, their consulting branch nearly without exception uses windows and tools designed for windows. They have to for nearly all of their clients use windows at the desktop level. All documentation for their efforts are created using word, excel, and access. It makes sense, most people are familiar with the windows platform and so retraining wouldn't be an issue. Linux to the desktop will probably take longer than linux to the back-office.
I assume the contractors didn't work for IBM...did they?
An interesting notion. The only problem with encryption is distribution. The encryption of a publicly available file trading system is a very daunting task. The largest hurdle would be the key distribution. Who gets keys to what encrypted transmission and (more importantly) who decides who gets the keys? The latter note has implications of who could potentially get sued, subpoenaed, etc...
However, assuming you've worked out all the technical issues and created a system that encrypts your transmissions how do you keep the RIAA from downloading your sharing software? Assuming that the software handles the encryption/decryption and comes with the keys, the RIAA has only to download your client and begin trading. If your software requires you to download keys from some location how do you prevent the keys being distributed to an RIAA representative? In either case, it would appear that there was no circumvention of the encryption method.
It might be possible to create a client that strips identifying information from the transmission, however, the RIAA could conceivably reverse engineer your product and develop a solution whereby the identifying information was captured prior to being erased. Logically, you would want your solution to do both, encrypt and strip. It would possibly be the first of its kind however. In the end, there is always a data trail to your PC. The best way to keep from getting caught, is to not trade copyrighted music in the first place.
The safest bet is to just wear a ski mask. Or better yet, dress up like a Klingon and say you are flying to a convention and wouldn't have time to change your clothes.
If you had a monopoly on desktop productivity and wanted to draw people to use your server software, what better way to do that than offer them a carrot! I don't know if this will prevent the copying of documents (you could open Open Office 1.1 and the the Office suite side by side and CTRL-C and CTRL-V until you got all of what you wanted) if you have sufficient authority to read them. What it does do is cause the IT departments of large companies with an interest in DRM to think twice about the Windows Server 2003. If they use the new Office and want to use the DRM they MUST use windows server 2003. You can't use Red Hat, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, SuSe, Solaris, (insert OS here...). I see this as another attempt by MS to exercise their muscle to gather up monopoly share. We need a few corporations the size of IBM, HP, GM, GE, etc... to stand up and say "No thanks. We are just fine with what we have now.". Even better would be if those companies said "No thanks. We believe we are going to switch over to a Linux desktop with OpenOffice or StarOffice, because what it will save us in licensing will cover the cost to redeploy and retrain. Also, we won't be locked in to one vendor for our products.". Too bad that won't happen.
I think that the Linux movement wasn't necessarily started for money. I work for IBM, we don't make money selling Linux although we herald it as an excellent OS and a key to "on-demand". IBM makes profits by selling a "service" built around Linux. We will sell you a mainframe/server preconfigured with Red Hat and with the option of purchasing some of our proprietary monitoring, clustering, etc... tools. We can sell you this outfit for $$$,$$$ cheaper than a WinTel combo. Additionally, our profit margins are much higher on this sort of sale because we don't owe anything to MicroSoft for the software sale. The real money maker is the services (on demand) we can sell to you. They will work just as well with a Linux platform as they will with a MicroSoft platform. Services, (in the USA at least) are the money makers of the future. It is cheaper to manufacture components, programs, hardware, etc... overseas. Services, are what sell in the States.
I don't think the point of Linux (Linus's school project) or more pointedly OpenSource was ever to make money on Software. I think they are just "enablers" for other schemes that make money (a'la services). You may disagree with the premise of Linux or OpenSource in general, but that model is gaining popularity and does have its merits. I think that largely (and this is just my opinion) OpenSource will serve to rein in the price of Proprietary Software. If you were a business who could download a Office Suite for your employees that met the needs of those same employees for $0 a license, or pay $1000(s) per license for a proprietary package; I would imagine you would look very long at the free version. However, if the proprietary software company lowered their pricing model to reflect what the industry perceived as the real-value of that software; the industry might be willing to pay for the software to get the benefits that are provided by closed source.
I imagine that O'Reilly will be the first to publish the first book on programming humans. If you imagine the human body as a machine, you will note that its components are created by protein folding. A protein folds in one manner to react with a protein folded in another manner. Sooner or later, I imagine we will know what folds are required to create a liver or a kidney.
Perhaps we can download folding scripts from the internet to instruct sophisticated machinery to affect the folding in a protein culture. Perhaps not! Who knows? Sounds exciting to me!
I heard something similar. I was trying to find the tables on the net, to no avail. I heard it was around 325 years and then the odds that you perish in an accident would get you.
Even if you were able to have a life expectency of 5100 years, a disease or accident could sharpely reduce that figure. I wonder what the "practical" average life span would be. What sort of changes to society would you need to create so that a life wouldn't be cut short by disease or accident? Would we need to give up cars, airplanes, etc.? We don't worry much about dying in car crashes, airplanes, or by disease right now because the odds are that we will die of "natural causes" before such an event occurs. However, if we all possessed the ability to live to 5100 yrs of age, what sort of modifications to our daily life would we see? What would we do at age 4000? Would we stay home all day?
Funny. I always thought the nature of business was to make money. I didn't think that its nature precluded making money. Perhaps preclude was a poor choice of words?
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. Certainly, it doesn't have some of the "nifty" inclusions such as trial software from commercial vendors, or other inclusions available only to the boxed set. However, it is definitely a cheap way to get your hands on a distrobution if you don't want to download and burn your own CDs. I would imagine that the Red Hat network will be switching to a "service" based business model. You by maintenance, support, regular upgrades, optimizations, and additional software products designed to work with Red Hat or Linux. They won't need to rely on the "retail" business model. I think that Progeny has already embraced this mode of business. I wonder how profitable they are? I think Red Hat will have a leg up seeing that they are the leading US distribution in the business world.You are absolutely correct. It can be slow, inaccurate, and in most cases is certainly subject to interpretation (relative to how well-formed the communication is). I would argue however that so are memories (thoughts). Studies have shown that memories degrade or can change over time.
There are many questions to be answered before we can begin to consider direct thought transfer. Here are some that immediately come to my mind, you might think of more.
Currently, our sensory organs provide us our input into working memory which can be transferred into declarative memory by the hippocampus. Would we bypass the hippocampus altogether in transfering memory to the declarative memory components or would we "trigger" the hippocampus with artificial stimulus? The risk with bypassing the hippocampus (and this is purely hypothetical) might be that our brain does not understand how to recall the memory patterns we transfer to declarative memory without using our own hippocampus. It is possible that my hippocampus transfers working memory using protocol x, for example, and your hippocampus transfers working memory using protocol y. It might be true that we all use one "protocol" but it might be true that we all use our own "protocol" and all other possible protocols would not be available to our hippocampus. Would the transfered memory patterns then be the logical equivalence of brain damage? Even if we were able to trigger the hippocampus to transfer the memory, would we need some sort of "middleware" to convert between what how your hippocampus stored the memory pattern and how my hippocampus would store my memory pattern? That would introduce another point of possible error.
The error correction of the input data is most likely performed by the part of the limbic system that handles working memory. Maybe that is the cortex, we think that is the case. Some examples of such error correction would be how you can "see" missing letters in common words , "deduce" the correct version of a word that has been misused (there instead of their), and how your mind "fills in" the gaps in your memory of an event. This would be similar to a content validation. How would we validate the completeness of the transfer? What would be an acceptable tolerance for "perceptional difference" in the same memory transfered between different individuals?
How do we prevent our transfer of thoughts between individuals from creating a "bad record" or unusable memory? Would that be brain damage? How do we prevent people from pulling thoughts from our minds and writing them to a database?
I definitely and whole heartedly agree that our current modes of communication our sometimes inefficient, but I don't think we humans will be able to transfer thoughts between one another without going through the intermediate form of speech, written word, or imagery. Unless we miraculously evolve the mental facilities to do just that. At which point, we are a true "hive mind".
What do you mean by "thought->thought"? Do you mean the transfer medium? My thoughts are your thoughts simultaneously, sort of thing? I was pretty sure that we used thought->thought communication already. I put my thoughts into speech or writing (of some sort) and you read them. You provide me with your thoughts about my thoughts using a similar process.
The human will always be a bottleneck in information processing as we cannot perceive faster than light. Supposing we could transmit the information faster than light directly to our brains and make the necessary patterns, we could only recall them and process them at the "speed of thought". Which is much slower than light.
Prohibition is largely symbolic. The "body politik" of a nation will use prohibition to quell fears and to address the concerns of the citizenry. In that vein, the use of prohibition as a political tactic isn't totally without its merits. In evaluating the "success" of prohibitions, prohibitions are generally deemed successful when the majority of the citizenry agree to abide by the prohibitions. They are considered to fail when the majority of the citizenry refuses to abide by the prohibitions. As was the case during the depression with the prohibition of alcohol. Essentially, the "success" or "failure" of a prohibition appears, to me at least, to be associated with two components.
Prohibition is generally more successful when you are dealing with an object, practice, etc... that is non-addictive. Individuals will have no psychological or physiological "need" to satisfy by indulging in a prohibition. On the contrary, prohibition appears to be inherently less effective in eradicating pornography, drugs, and any addictive behavior (gambling, alcoholism, etc...). I have not done research in this area, however, I would consider that the psychological or physiological compulsion to "satisfy a need" (real or perceived) provides a barrier to complying with a prohibition. I would be interested in any input that social scientists reading this post could contribute.
What isn't stated in the article (that I remember) are the punitive measures for violations to the curfew. I wonder what the "remedies" for infractions to the curfew would be. Perhaps fines or loss of connection priviledges?
In your post,
you make sweeping assumptions. Is the DARE program a failure? Being that it is a "local initiative" you would need to validate the success at a "local" level. In your comparison of the drinking habits of American and European youth, you allude to their exposure to alcohol as a significant factor in their behavior. While that might be true, at what average age do the two cultures receive exposure? How do we define exposure? Is it an evolving process that lasts a lifetime, or is it a specified period of time in the life of the adolescent that exists for a specific duration? What information do we have that links "binge drinking" to the failure of prohibitions and laws? In the end, Thailand will be responsible for satisfying their populace. If they believe curfew is an acceptable practice to curb an addictive behavior, then that is what they will implement. In America, it very well may be a different answer.I believe it is 404 error. In anycase, the file doesn't exist....possibly in english. Although, that IP may only be serving as a relay by the original attacker.
but...are you familiar with Alberto-Laszlo Barabasi's book entitled "Linked: The New Science of Networks"? It is quite good.
The version numbers were nice ways to understand the evolution of USB. However, changing how you represent your versioning to the public is not a good thing. They (USB Forum) should have thought more carefully about the consequences of their decision to represent USB to the public using version numbers. In the end, USB as a protocol will suffer. Consumers will find it easier to purchase IEEE 1394 (firewire) devices instead of trying to "discover" which version of USB 2.0 they have. USB 1.1 (cleverly renamed "Full-Speed", which to me, "Full Speed" indicates that is the max limit that USB can go) or Hi-Speed (which is really "Full Speed" of the latest rendition of the protocol). Additionally, I thought the protocols only provided "speed limits". The hardware didn't have to transmit data at the highest throughput allowed if it couldn't, it just had to comply with the protocol stipulations. The new names imply to me that "Full Speed" will always transmit at the maximum rate, and "Hi-Speed" will......well, transmit at a high (???) rate of speed. At the very least, this is confusing and misrepresentative to the consumer.
The RIAA, MPAA, entertainment industry giants, and other lobby groups throw great amounts of money, thought, and manpower at creating a "sustainable" market outlet in the digital world (for entertainment media). They claim their biggest threat to the entertainment market is piracy. If we examine the past actions of these groups, we will see that they have:
Why are DVD players/media and CD players/media not treated in the same fashion as a VCR or Copier device (such as a Xerox)? To my knowledge manufacturers of copy machines and (during their time) VCRs made decent profits. I could skip commercial recordings and previews on my VCR, but I cannot skip the previews on my DVD player. How is that fair use?
Ultimately, I see the courts will need to intervene to set a precedent (similar to the cases involving the VCR and Copy machine). The "entertainment industry" and the standards bodies will establish DRM standards that aren't too unacceptable to the consumer (arguably they won't know the reason for a loss of capability) at first. As the standards go through the review process over the years, you will see devices that have little to no consumer protection (rights and information) inherent in their design. As it is easier to implement a standard and get acceptance by starting with the most acceptable format, and then slowly repealing/adding features over time.
The consumers could stop this nonsense right now by doing three simple things:
- cancel your cable (if you subscribe)
- do not "go to movies" or buy CD/DVD/Computer Software merchandise that is DRM enabled (whenever possible)
- do not buy consumer electronics or computer systems that have native support for DRM
A final action could be to support your Open Source projects, as they currently don't have an issue with piracy.In the US, it is illegal to actively jam an electronic signal (such as a tv, telephone, radar, or other communication medium) used for communication. Notice, active jamming and filtration are separate activities. You can filter unwanted signals or noises but you cannot jam them. Structural jamming do to building design is not illegal (it is a function of the building components).
The parents are, arguably, the primary source of psycho-social imprinting for the child. Typically, children learn their behavior, morals, values, and identity from their parents. The more involved the parents are in the child's life life the stronger that influence. The less involved the parents are in their children's life, the less the influence; and the stronger the influence that outside sources (neighbors, peers, television, etc...)have on the child's identity.
That is why in most cases the minor is sentenced and the parents aren't convicted as accomplice to the crime. The fact that the 15 year old may or may not understand/realize the effect of murder (although that could be the case in rare circumstances) is not relevant. It is accepted that a fifteen year old understands the concept of "dead". What is relevant is the degree to which video games, television, movies, music, etc... desensitize the youth to the effects of killing, and thereby contribute to the condition (mental) which causes the youth to kill. There is compelling evidence to correlate violent video games and aggressive behavior, though not conclusive.
I am not familiar with that case, although most social scientists would examinate a killer's background for study. I would blame the media for sensationalizing a criminal act, not necessarily the social scientist.
Funny! I just replied earlier with the same article. I also submitted it for posting, but I guess my prose wasn't so hot, or else it wasn't deemed to be a good topic :( .
Perhaps you should read this article in Scientific American "click me!". It speakes to parallel universes, but explains the thinking behind them. While it is not a journal by any stretch of the imagination, it is definitely an interesting read.
A Scientific American (publication website) article talks about a theory of parallel universes (article link) that is gaining in popularity in the cosmology circles. It speaks of a "Multiverse" as well. Though, not in the same vein.
I generally agree with that statement. It is true, I don't go to work without expectation of compensation. The company is buying my time and knowledge from me. However, I do believe that monetary compensation isn't always the only reason individuals and groups make contributions from their minds and talents. I would imagine that some talented individuals write drivers and applications and freely distribute them simply because they believe in the OSS model, or perhaps they feel that quality software should be freely available to the masses.
Unless, of course, their original intent was to publish the software as a freely distributed piece of code. Then there wouldn't be a case for theft or illegal use of code.
I agree.