Stallman uses the word "free" in a propagandist manner. Whenever he is asked to explain what he means by the word, he is always perfectly honest and always applies it in his life in that manner(therefore not hypocritical). But, he does not use the word in the same way that you or I might. He does not mean free-as-in-beer. He does not mean free-as-in-speech (although sometimes it appears so). Rather, he means the GPL. "Free" is one-to-one with "GPL" as far as Stallman is concerned. And that is okay, because he is clear about it.
Why does he use the word "free"? Probably because it is closest to what he feels is the underlying philosophy of the GPL, and he needs a simple recognizable, marketable word to communicate his goals.
Over a decade ago in the NeXT computers. Transparency (alpha-channel) was part of their graphics system (including their windowing system built using Display Postscript), pretty much from day one. I wrote software which depended on it - some funky drag-n-drop stuff which used transparency in icons. It was fast back then on a 25MHz 68040 - eighty times slower clock speed than todays high end processors!!!
Since the last time this article was posted, I have worked out my comments a little more completely and posted them to Oomind. Basic summary: recession is bad for capitalist enterprises relying on OSS business models, but good for the community aspect of OSS.
There are two fundamentally different approaches to Open Source: capitalistic and communal. In the capitalistic approach, people and companies attempt to earn money by using open source software. The "traditional" model has been to sell value-added services while providing the open source software for free or minimal price. In the capitalistic approach, of course an economic slowdown will be reflected in the open source business sector - just like almost any other sector.
On the other side represented by the communal approach, participating in open source projects provides intangible or non-monetary benefits. There is the traditional "itch" factor: you work on an open source project to scratch an itch. There is also the motivation of gaining community recognition. These aspects will not be slowed by an economic slowdown. In fact, they might become even more important: there is not as much cash moving around so a more barter-oriented approach is viable.
Corporations not actually involved in developing open source may start to turn more to open source as a solution to their financial constraints. I know that the company I work for does so. They may not directly contribute to the code base, but they certainly are taking advantage of it and therefore increasing the legitimacy of open source. Again, this process is accellerated by an economic slowdown.
but where are all the less physical inventions? Surely someone invented a new type process that affects our day to day lives... this list of greatest inventions is neet, but its all eye-candy. There are very few listed there which really meet the parameter that Time describes as being important to their list: "how it changes our lives."
There are a few there: the artificial heart, the cooling pot, etc. But the automatic mashed potato maker???! Give me a break. That is pure consumerism. What have we learned after 9/11? Nothing?
Where are the inventions that help alleviate economic and environmental disasters? What about things that help education in poorer countries? What about tools that make new industries possible, therefore creating jobs?
My work experience may not be as atypical as I once thought. I have two very good friends who I seem to end up working with over and over again. We are buddies from high school. We went to the same university and then went separate ways - for a short time. One of us, got a job at a startup and then convinced the founders to hire the other two of us. We made up the whole dev team and it was great. Lots of fun, loud music, really productive 30 hour stretches... Things turned sour financially, so we all managed to jump to Sun. From there, we all split up again, but only for a short time. We ended up together at another startup. Again we split up, and that is how things stand at the moment. Nevertheless, we have plans afoot to reunite.
This is not to say that everything has been rosy. We have had our share of conflicts. Working together is one of the best ways to get to really know your friends. We have come very close to losing our mutual friendship due to work related problems. At one point, one of these friends of mine was my boss, and he wasn't very good at it (partly because he was my friend, but also just because it was his first time managing). I won't get into the details, but suffice it to say that there were some very very bad moments.
Our spouses/girlfriends have relatively minimal contact which is partly because we are now geographically dispersed. I live in "northern" ontario, one friend lives in Toronto, and the other lives in San Fran. We see each other from time to time.
Of course, I also make new friends when I start a new job. I have some very good friends from the days when I worked at Sun. And in my current job, which I started quite recently, I am developing some friendships that will almost certainly turn into the bucolic middle-class scene which is described in this article.
But it depends on the work environment. Certainly this won't happen if you are in a telecommuting position:-) It also won't happen if you have a negative attitude towards your co-workers. You have to actively seek this out (if you want it that is). It doesn't just happen automatically. As well, office culture can play a fairly substantial role: if there are frequent social events, I think it is less likely that more spontaneous relationships will develop.
I think this is a really interesting aspect of the Internet. It is an international system in that there is no notion of physical location (directly) associated with the data used day-to-day on the Internet. To me, that makes it a very good candidate for part of the mandate of the United Nations. Why not make internet taxes (sales tax primarily) be what goes to fund the UN? It is in desperate need of funding, the US is still behind on dues (I think), and it would make the whole issue of multiple tax laws moot.
Yes, I think the UN should evolve to become a world government - it is now actually, just not very effective and with a pretty pathetic mandate.
All of these global talks going on would be a good place to bring this up. The UN might also have the responsibility to take internet tax income to use for equalization payments to poorer nations.
When I read something like this review, I experience twinges of fear. Smallpox sounds like it is truly terrible.
And yet, somehow, we, the people of this world, did manage to get rid of it.
For the future of the world, we need to recognize that we are one people first, and citizens of a nation second. This doesn't mean we all need to believe the same things, etc. This is about unity in diversity. And unity isn't abstract: its about action. Getting rid of smallpox was an example of unity in diversity. The people of the world got rid of it. Now, can we get rid of AIDS? Can we get rid of Malaria? What about our physical environment? What about nuclear weapons? What about poverty? These are things that can only be solved with unity of action.
Money. Money is a great medium of exchange for the industrial era. It's okay for the digital era. And almost completely unacceptable for the digital information era. Micropayments are an idea which attempts to address this situation - but really they aren't money as we think of it, because they aren't really a medium of exchange.
Personally, I still think that the web is headed in the direction of free information, and pay for services. Fee-per-page is not really in this direction, and so, as other posters have commented, is not really a viable solution.
Personally, my biggest problem with any fee-oriented approach to the web is that it creates more barriers to entry for the less-priviledge portions of _world_ society. The web has been building this great potential as an equalizer (information-wise) for all people of the world. The technologies are still expensive so it is still just potential... but still, it is getting there.
That was a bit of a ramble:-)
No one has pointed this out yet that I have seen (at +3): Globalism and Globalization are two completely different things!!! They are not interchangable words!
Globalization is the economic and legal process of reducing barriers between nations so that corporations can more easily market goods and services internationally. (Actually, generically, this just means to make global in scope.)
Globalism is a political or social philosophy in which the entire world is regarded as the appropriate sphere for a state's influence.
That said, they are both important aspects of life in these times, but no more important than the notions of "world government", "unity in diversity", and "environmentalism".
Visual Age for Java
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Java IDEs?
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· Score: 3, Interesting
Most of the highly moderated comments have consisted of info about IDE's that are quite traditional: development is editing.java files. Visual Age for Java is significantly different. It is an incremental compiler which means that every change you make is immediately compiled when it is saved: you immediately know Everywhere you have made a mistake. As well, instead of working at a class level, you work at a method level. You edit methods not.java files. It has support for some basic refactorings.
The really amazing thing is the debugger: you can change the code while debugging! If you find a mistake, you don't need to stop the process, you just change the code, save, and continue. The debugger, appropriately unrolls the stack (and whatever else it needs to do), and continues as if the change you made had always been there. Talk about making the code-compile-run-debug cycle efficient!!!
IBM has a free trial download (its only a little crippled - limit of 700 classes). I strongly recommend trying it out. You have to work with it a little bit to see just how powerful these things are. I can't stand using anything else now. JBuilder sucks in comparison!
Just curious if you are a programmer who has used XP on a "real" project? I am and have. Not everyone is like me, but I really do find it to be extremely enjoyable. It really does make any burnout I'm feeling slough away and turn into excitement about the job at hand. And in fact, the methodology is designed to do that.
Not everyone is like me though. Some people like being told what to do and given completely unreasonable requirements and then to be criticized for not meeting them. Your choice.
Honestly, I was starting to feel the same way in the work world. I've been a software engineer professionally for about 10 years. Extreme Programming (XP) is the twitch in your fingers when the meetings get long, it is the surge of pride when software works first time round. Check it out: http://www.extremeprogramming.org or for a business-level summary: executive summary of XP.
Good luck! Don't give up just yet. School can be stultifying, and so can work. But if you are talented, there will always be good opportunities. Also consider starting your own business. There are lots of programs for supporting small business in most countries - it is very exciting and great experience. Or work for a startup doing cool stuff (not many of those around anymore, but still).
Its disgusting how well they know how to get me. That teaser rips through my consciousness and grabs hold of my emotions instantly. I grew up with Star Wars. "A New Hope" came out when I was 5 - my dad took me to it. I'm not a huge raving fan, but the trailer gets me. Two things in particular: the breathing (!) scours my emotional memories, and the shot of Anakin and Amidala by the dome house brings up founts of anticipated grief!
ARG!!!
I hope that the story isn't ruined. Lucas came close with Ep. I. Please.
One of the things that might balance out this power is simple: proper scale of reward and punishment. If Microsoft could be punished immediately and strongly if Passport failed in its security, and if there was a second organization that could be rewarded immediately and strongly if they could cause Microsoft Passport to fail, they we might have a mechanism to keep it safe. Something like this would need to be supported unequivocably by the government. Perhaps a $1,000,000,000 bounty on the security of Passport would be appropriate, taken from Microsoft's cash reserves in trust.
The reason this might be good, is that a centralized repository of information would actually be really convenient and if it was secure would provide a lot of real value to people and therefore the economy.
As an aside, I thought it ironic that the authors dismiss the issue of corporate power so offhandedly. Certainly corporate power is one of the major issues of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Wow! Great reference - thanks.
As for the assumptions part, they are described in detail in the book, but the one I glancingly mention is basically that C14 dating is based on the assumption that the amount of C14 in the atmosphere is in a steady state (consumed by living organisms at the same rate that it is being created in the upper atmosphere). This assumption is wrong. Here is a reference to a more complete description of this problem and others: The Pitfalls of Radiocarbon Dating.
I don't have convenient references for the other radioactive dating methods (Potassium-Argon, Uranium-Lead, etc.), but the book I mentioned in my other post does have complete references. I don't have the book with me so unfortunately I can't provide those references here.
One thing this article fails to mention is that when these dating techniques are used, they often give wildly varying results for a single sample often with a spread of 2 orders of magnitude!!! Another interesting point is that all the radioactive dating methods are based on critical assumptions about our earth which in some cases (Carbon-14 in the atmosphere) have been proven wrong.
I'm _not_ a creationist - I believe that if anything the creation story is meant to be an allegory of some sort. So I don't pay much attention to creationist rants.
I have read several good books which address these issues, particularly as the related to evolution and archaeology. On is: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism (thats a review of it). It discusses in scientific detail what is wrong with the radioactive dating methods both theoretically and in their application. I highly recommend the book even though I am not truly qualified to assess its arguments (IANAS(cientist)).
I was generalizing. But here are some examples which support the idea that the end does not justify the means: stealing to feed your family, killing someone to get to work faster, suicide bombing to make society fairer - "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". You point out some rather unusual exceptions. In fact, under the vast majority of circumstances we do things a certain way because it is "good" or "ethical" and feel comfortable with that regardless of what the actual result is. For example, we try to be honest even if sometimes it hurts - the end (hurting) is justified by the means (honesty). Of course there are exceptions to this: we are occasionally put in a situation where we feel it is better to lie in order to protect someone or something. Just as another example more appropriate to this article, capitalism (freedom to buy and sell property) is a means, yet the end result is that some small number of people are left in poverty and distress and some people have far more wealth than they could ever need. These "injustices" are considered acceptable - the means justifies the end!
Microsoft is in a funny position. Many of the things they do (not all) have a solid basis in user needs or wants. Honestly, I would be/is a lot simpler to have the internet and all its related services (web, mail, chat, identification etc.) integrated seamlessly into the OS so that any application can easily access those services. That's the tech side of Microsoft: they are doing some good.
BUT
As most people here would agree, their business practices range from sucking to disasterous.
Basically, this dichotomy boils down to the issue of "does the end justify the means?" Most people do not think so, and our legal code is set up that way. In fact, if you really get down to it, most of our society is based on the idea that the means justify the end. (That is a whole other discussion...)
Microsoft being a gatekeeper to the internet is both a business decision and a technical decision. For many people, it is a way to provide useful services for their operating system and applications. Therefore people will buy it, corporations will buy it (not all of course).
But as time goes on, there will be more and more pressure on Microsoft from a legal perspective... because undoubtably, they will not clean up their act on the "means" side of things.
Lego is one of the best educational toys possible. I grew up with Lego. My father bought me one of the very old technic sets with the yellow, blue and red gears. Wow!
I have played primarily with space sets and technic sets. I have Mindstorms. I build gross huge disgusting complicated stuff. Backhoe loader with 6 degrees of freedom using pnumatics, four digit trinary counter power distribution system, spaceships over a meter long (3') etc.
Oh. And I'm thirty, I have a three-year-old kid, and we play together now:-)
So, Lego is great. But why? Because it does what no other toy I know of does: it challenges the mind in details, in abstractions, in planning, in three-dimensional visualization, in imagination, in story creation, in beauty, in symetry, in working with constraints, in memory (ever had something break and rebuild it from memory?).
Is there any other toy that comes even close?
Buy the sets you think are best. Don't buy the ones you don't think are good. Lego Inc. will get the hint.
This is an interesting example of a technology replacing a process with a product. The process: buy camera, buy film, take photos, buy film processing, store prints/slides somewhere physical. The product: digitalcamera/computer/web site. Polaroid had a different technology to replace the same process, but it lost out because it wasn't digital.
But there are other examples. Some are older such as mail being replaced by fax machines then replaced by email. Email elminates the step of requiring a hard copy.
The general pattern is: old process is augmented or partially replaced by new not-completely-digital product, and then a completely digital product which almost eliminates the process requirements takes over.
Better Uses
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Talking Palm
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Personally, I think this sort of tech is better used in cell phones. A device which already has a decent text input system is probably only made more clumsy by including speech recognition and text to speech capabilities. Why? Because it "requires" switching modes of interfacing with the device which is something humans don't tend to like. Rather, most people will choose one mode and stick with it. And, be honest now, you can guess which mode that will be: stylus or keyboard. On the other hand, in cell phones, the vastly predominant mode is already voice and hearing oriented. It would be really nice to be able to get rid of the keypad (or at least severly reduce its usage).
Other reasons cell phones are a better place for this tech: when you listen to a cell phone, what you hear is private. Cellphones cannot speak at you: they ring first. Two different rings would be sufficient to distinguish between a person call and the cell phone telling you something.
One of the things the the so-far highly moderated posts have missed is the concept of TV as an established mechanism which provides a certain kind of information, vs. the net as an emerging mechanism which provides a different kind of information.
Television is not and can never be truly interactive.
The net (email, web, IM, etc.) is primarily interactive. Even if you are primarily a consumer, your consumption statistics are fed back into the system. But that is just the lowest level, of course. Many people have personal home pages, many people can contribute to weblogs, discussion groups, usenet news, email lists, etc. and their contributions are archived, responded to, and have a real impact on the future direction of information exchange.
Although Katz does not state it explicitly, this interactivity is what distinguishes the net from the old forms of media, and is one of the really cool aspects of the information flow following Sept. 11th. Slashdot, for example, experienced record levels of comments for the several articles about the distaster that were posted - often well in excess of 1000 comments!!! That just isn't possible with any other media.
And because it is still an emerging media, yes - the signal to noise ratio isn't the greatest. But mechanisms are being developed and tested to improve this.
For truly interactive education, check out Oomind:
Just some idle speculation on what comes next:
1. color screen (already available in some cell phones
2. digital camera?
3. video camera for video phone shots of peoples ears or mouths:-)
4. better pim software
5. optional sxga video output - so that you can see what you are typing, and play games like they should be played
6. back to the real: voice recording to mp3 (strangely, this one doesn't seem to do this)
7. text-voice-text features
8. direct neural connection to allow immersive VR conference calls (orgies)
Please consider Oomind.com - an open education community! Much more dynamic, already online (though very very new), and built by a very small outfit (me and one other developer). Come support us!
Slashdot Mirror
Stallman uses the word "free" in a propagandist manner. Whenever he is asked to explain what he means by the word, he is always perfectly honest and always applies it in his life in that manner(therefore not hypocritical). But, he does not use the word in the same way that you or I might. He does not mean free-as-in-beer. He does not mean free-as-in-speech (although sometimes it appears so). Rather, he means the GPL. "Free" is one-to-one with "GPL" as far as Stallman is concerned. And that is okay, because he is clear about it. Why does he use the word "free"? Probably because it is closest to what he feels is the underlying philosophy of the GPL, and he needs a simple recognizable, marketable word to communicate his goals.
Over a decade ago in the NeXT computers. Transparency (alpha-channel) was part of their graphics system (including their windowing system built using Display Postscript), pretty much from day one. I wrote software which depended on it - some funky drag-n-drop stuff which used transparency in icons. It was fast back then on a 25MHz 68040 - eighty times slower clock speed than todays high end processors!!!
Since the last time this article was posted, I have worked out my comments a little more completely and posted them to Oomind. Basic summary: recession is bad for capitalist enterprises relying on OSS business models, but good for the community aspect of OSS.
There are two fundamentally different approaches to Open Source: capitalistic and communal. In the capitalistic approach, people and companies attempt to earn money by using open source software. The "traditional" model has been to sell value-added services while providing the open source software for free or minimal price. In the capitalistic approach, of course an economic slowdown will be reflected in the open source business sector - just like almost any other sector. On the other side represented by the communal approach, participating in open source projects provides intangible or non-monetary benefits. There is the traditional "itch" factor: you work on an open source project to scratch an itch. There is also the motivation of gaining community recognition. These aspects will not be slowed by an economic slowdown. In fact, they might become even more important: there is not as much cash moving around so a more barter-oriented approach is viable. Corporations not actually involved in developing open source may start to turn more to open source as a solution to their financial constraints. I know that the company I work for does so. They may not directly contribute to the code base, but they certainly are taking advantage of it and therefore increasing the legitimacy of open source. Again, this process is accellerated by an economic slowdown.
but where are all the less physical inventions? Surely someone invented a new type process that affects our day to day lives... this list of greatest inventions is neet, but its all eye-candy. There are very few listed there which really meet the parameter that Time describes as being important to their list: "how it changes our lives." There are a few there: the artificial heart, the cooling pot, etc. But the automatic mashed potato maker???! Give me a break. That is pure consumerism. What have we learned after 9/11? Nothing? Where are the inventions that help alleviate economic and environmental disasters? What about things that help education in poorer countries? What about tools that make new industries possible, therefore creating jobs?
My work experience may not be as atypical as I once thought. I have two very good friends who I seem to end up working with over and over again. We are buddies from high school. We went to the same university and then went separate ways - for a short time. One of us, got a job at a startup and then convinced the founders to hire the other two of us. We made up the whole dev team and it was great. Lots of fun, loud music, really productive 30 hour stretches... Things turned sour financially, so we all managed to jump to Sun. From there, we all split up again, but only for a short time. We ended up together at another startup. Again we split up, and that is how things stand at the moment. Nevertheless, we have plans afoot to reunite. This is not to say that everything has been rosy. We have had our share of conflicts. Working together is one of the best ways to get to really know your friends. We have come very close to losing our mutual friendship due to work related problems. At one point, one of these friends of mine was my boss, and he wasn't very good at it (partly because he was my friend, but also just because it was his first time managing). I won't get into the details, but suffice it to say that there were some very very bad moments. Our spouses/girlfriends have relatively minimal contact which is partly because we are now geographically dispersed. I live in "northern" ontario, one friend lives in Toronto, and the other lives in San Fran. We see each other from time to time. Of course, I also make new friends when I start a new job. I have some very good friends from the days when I worked at Sun. And in my current job, which I started quite recently, I am developing some friendships that will almost certainly turn into the bucolic middle-class scene which is described in this article. But it depends on the work environment. Certainly this won't happen if you are in a telecommuting position :-) It also won't happen if you have a negative attitude towards your co-workers. You have to actively seek this out (if you want it that is). It doesn't just happen automatically. As well, office culture can play a fairly substantial role: if there are frequent social events, I think it is less likely that more spontaneous relationships will develop.
I think this is a really interesting aspect of the Internet. It is an international system in that there is no notion of physical location (directly) associated with the data used day-to-day on the Internet. To me, that makes it a very good candidate for part of the mandate of the United Nations. Why not make internet taxes (sales tax primarily) be what goes to fund the UN? It is in desperate need of funding, the US is still behind on dues (I think), and it would make the whole issue of multiple tax laws moot. Yes, I think the UN should evolve to become a world government - it is now actually, just not very effective and with a pretty pathetic mandate. All of these global talks going on would be a good place to bring this up. The UN might also have the responsibility to take internet tax income to use for equalization payments to poorer nations.
When I read something like this review, I experience twinges of fear. Smallpox sounds like it is truly terrible. And yet, somehow, we, the people of this world, did manage to get rid of it. For the future of the world, we need to recognize that we are one people first, and citizens of a nation second. This doesn't mean we all need to believe the same things, etc. This is about unity in diversity. And unity isn't abstract: its about action. Getting rid of smallpox was an example of unity in diversity. The people of the world got rid of it. Now, can we get rid of AIDS? Can we get rid of Malaria? What about our physical environment? What about nuclear weapons? What about poverty? These are things that can only be solved with unity of action.
Money. Money is a great medium of exchange for the industrial era. It's okay for the digital era. And almost completely unacceptable for the digital information era. Micropayments are an idea which attempts to address this situation - but really they aren't money as we think of it, because they aren't really a medium of exchange. Personally, I still think that the web is headed in the direction of free information, and pay for services. Fee-per-page is not really in this direction, and so, as other posters have commented, is not really a viable solution. Personally, my biggest problem with any fee-oriented approach to the web is that it creates more barriers to entry for the less-priviledge portions of _world_ society. The web has been building this great potential as an equalizer (information-wise) for all people of the world. The technologies are still expensive so it is still just potential... but still, it is getting there. That was a bit of a ramble :-)
No one has pointed this out yet that I have seen (at +3): Globalism and Globalization are two completely different things!!! They are not interchangable words! Globalization is the economic and legal process of reducing barriers between nations so that corporations can more easily market goods and services internationally. (Actually, generically, this just means to make global in scope.) Globalism is a political or social philosophy in which the entire world is regarded as the appropriate sphere for a state's influence. That said, they are both important aspects of life in these times, but no more important than the notions of "world government", "unity in diversity", and "environmentalism".
Most of the highly moderated comments have consisted of info about IDE's that are quite traditional: development is editing .java files. Visual Age for Java is significantly different. It is an incremental compiler which means that every change you make is immediately compiled when it is saved: you immediately know Everywhere you have made a mistake. As well, instead of working at a class level, you work at a method level. You edit methods not .java files. It has support for some basic refactorings.
The really amazing thing is the debugger: you can change the code while debugging! If you find a mistake, you don't need to stop the process, you just change the code, save, and continue. The debugger, appropriately unrolls the stack (and whatever else it needs to do), and continues as if the change you made had always been there. Talk about making the code-compile-run-debug cycle efficient!!!
IBM has a free trial download (its only a little crippled - limit of 700 classes). I strongly recommend trying it out. You have to work with it a little bit to see just how powerful these things are. I can't stand using anything else now. JBuilder sucks in comparison!
Just curious if you are a programmer who has used XP on a "real" project? I am and have. Not everyone is like me, but I really do find it to be extremely enjoyable. It really does make any burnout I'm feeling slough away and turn into excitement about the job at hand. And in fact, the methodology is designed to do that. Not everyone is like me though. Some people like being told what to do and given completely unreasonable requirements and then to be criticized for not meeting them. Your choice.
Honestly, I was starting to feel the same way in the work world. I've been a software engineer professionally for about 10 years. Extreme Programming (XP) is the twitch in your fingers when the meetings get long, it is the surge of pride when software works first time round. Check it out: http://www.extremeprogramming.org or for a business-level summary: executive summary of XP. Good luck! Don't give up just yet. School can be stultifying, and so can work. But if you are talented, there will always be good opportunities. Also consider starting your own business. There are lots of programs for supporting small business in most countries - it is very exciting and great experience. Or work for a startup doing cool stuff (not many of those around anymore, but still).
Its disgusting how well they know how to get me. That teaser rips through my consciousness and grabs hold of my emotions instantly. I grew up with Star Wars. "A New Hope" came out when I was 5 - my dad took me to it. I'm not a huge raving fan, but the trailer gets me. Two things in particular: the breathing (!) scours my emotional memories, and the shot of Anakin and Amidala by the dome house brings up founts of anticipated grief!
ARG!!!
I hope that the story isn't ruined. Lucas came close with Ep. I. Please.
One of the things that might balance out this power is simple: proper scale of reward and punishment. If Microsoft could be punished immediately and strongly if Passport failed in its security, and if there was a second organization that could be rewarded immediately and strongly if they could cause Microsoft Passport to fail, they we might have a mechanism to keep it safe. Something like this would need to be supported unequivocably by the government. Perhaps a $1,000,000,000 bounty on the security of Passport would be appropriate, taken from Microsoft's cash reserves in trust. The reason this might be good, is that a centralized repository of information would actually be really convenient and if it was secure would provide a lot of real value to people and therefore the economy. As an aside, I thought it ironic that the authors dismiss the issue of corporate power so offhandedly. Certainly corporate power is one of the major issues of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
Wow! Great reference - thanks. As for the assumptions part, they are described in detail in the book, but the one I glancingly mention is basically that C14 dating is based on the assumption that the amount of C14 in the atmosphere is in a steady state (consumed by living organisms at the same rate that it is being created in the upper atmosphere). This assumption is wrong. Here is a reference to a more complete description of this problem and others: The Pitfalls of Radiocarbon Dating. I don't have convenient references for the other radioactive dating methods (Potassium-Argon, Uranium-Lead, etc.), but the book I mentioned in my other post does have complete references. I don't have the book with me so unfortunately I can't provide those references here.
One thing this article fails to mention is that when these dating techniques are used, they often give wildly varying results for a single sample often with a spread of 2 orders of magnitude!!! Another interesting point is that all the radioactive dating methods are based on critical assumptions about our earth which in some cases (Carbon-14 in the atmosphere) have been proven wrong. I'm _not_ a creationist - I believe that if anything the creation story is meant to be an allegory of some sort. So I don't pay much attention to creationist rants. I have read several good books which address these issues, particularly as the related to evolution and archaeology. On is: Shattering the Myths of Darwinism (thats a review of it). It discusses in scientific detail what is wrong with the radioactive dating methods both theoretically and in their application. I highly recommend the book even though I am not truly qualified to assess its arguments (IANAS(cientist)).
I was generalizing. But here are some examples which support the idea that the end does not justify the means: stealing to feed your family, killing someone to get to work faster, suicide bombing to make society fairer - "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". You point out some rather unusual exceptions. In fact, under the vast majority of circumstances we do things a certain way because it is "good" or "ethical" and feel comfortable with that regardless of what the actual result is. For example, we try to be honest even if sometimes it hurts - the end (hurting) is justified by the means (honesty). Of course there are exceptions to this: we are occasionally put in a situation where we feel it is better to lie in order to protect someone or something. Just as another example more appropriate to this article, capitalism (freedom to buy and sell property) is a means, yet the end result is that some small number of people are left in poverty and distress and some people have far more wealth than they could ever need. These "injustices" are considered acceptable - the means justifies the end!
Microsoft is in a funny position. Many of the things they do (not all) have a solid basis in user needs or wants. Honestly, I would be/is a lot simpler to have the internet and all its related services (web, mail, chat, identification etc.) integrated seamlessly into the OS so that any application can easily access those services. That's the tech side of Microsoft: they are doing some good. BUT As most people here would agree, their business practices range from sucking to disasterous. Basically, this dichotomy boils down to the issue of "does the end justify the means?" Most people do not think so, and our legal code is set up that way. In fact, if you really get down to it, most of our society is based on the idea that the means justify the end. (That is a whole other discussion...) Microsoft being a gatekeeper to the internet is both a business decision and a technical decision. For many people, it is a way to provide useful services for their operating system and applications. Therefore people will buy it, corporations will buy it (not all of course). But as time goes on, there will be more and more pressure on Microsoft from a legal perspective... because undoubtably, they will not clean up their act on the "means" side of things.
Lego is one of the best educational toys possible. I grew up with Lego. My father bought me one of the very old technic sets with the yellow, blue and red gears. Wow!
I have played primarily with space sets and technic sets. I have Mindstorms. I build gross huge disgusting complicated stuff. Backhoe loader with 6 degrees of freedom using pnumatics, four digit trinary counter power distribution system, spaceships over a meter long (3') etc.
Oh. And I'm thirty, I have a three-year-old kid, and we play together now :-)
So, Lego is great. But why? Because it does what no other toy I know of does: it challenges the mind in details, in abstractions, in planning, in three-dimensional visualization, in imagination, in story creation, in beauty, in symetry, in working with constraints, in memory (ever had something break and rebuild it from memory?).
Is there any other toy that comes even close?
Buy the sets you think are best. Don't buy the ones you don't think are good. Lego Inc. will get the hint.
This is an interesting example of a technology replacing a process with a product. The process: buy camera, buy film, take photos, buy film processing, store prints/slides somewhere physical. The product: digitalcamera/computer/web site. Polaroid had a different technology to replace the same process, but it lost out because it wasn't digital.
But there are other examples. Some are older such as mail being replaced by fax machines then replaced by email. Email elminates the step of requiring a hard copy.
The general pattern is: old process is augmented or partially replaced by new not-completely-digital product, and then a completely digital product which almost eliminates the process requirements takes over.
Personally, I think this sort of tech is better used in cell phones. A device which already has a decent text input system is probably only made more clumsy by including speech recognition and text to speech capabilities. Why? Because it "requires" switching modes of interfacing with the device which is something humans don't tend to like. Rather, most people will choose one mode and stick with it. And, be honest now, you can guess which mode that will be: stylus or keyboard. On the other hand, in cell phones, the vastly predominant mode is already voice and hearing oriented. It would be really nice to be able to get rid of the keypad (or at least severly reduce its usage). Other reasons cell phones are a better place for this tech: when you listen to a cell phone, what you hear is private. Cellphones cannot speak at you: they ring first. Two different rings would be sufficient to distinguish between a person call and the cell phone telling you something.
Television is not and can never be truly interactive.
The net (email, web, IM, etc.) is primarily interactive. Even if you are primarily a consumer, your consumption statistics are fed back into the system. But that is just the lowest level, of course. Many people have personal home pages, many people can contribute to weblogs, discussion groups, usenet news, email lists, etc. and their contributions are archived, responded to, and have a real impact on the future direction of information exchange.
Although Katz does not state it explicitly, this interactivity is what distinguishes the net from the old forms of media, and is one of the really cool aspects of the information flow following Sept. 11th. Slashdot, for example, experienced record levels of comments for the several articles about the distaster that were posted - often well in excess of 1000 comments!!! That just isn't possible with any other media.
And because it is still an emerging media, yes - the signal to noise ratio isn't the greatest. But mechanisms are being developed and tested to improve this.
For truly interactive education, check out Oomind:
Just some idle speculation on what comes next: :-)
1. color screen (already available in some cell phones
2. digital camera?
3. video camera for video phone shots of peoples ears or mouths
4. better pim software
5. optional sxga video output - so that you can see what you are typing, and play games like they should be played
6. back to the real: voice recording to mp3 (strangely, this one doesn't seem to do this)
7. text-voice-text features
8. direct neural connection to allow immersive VR conference calls (orgies)
Cheers.
Please consider Oomind.com - an open education community! Much more dynamic, already online (though very very new), and built by a very small outfit (me and one other developer). Come support us!