There is no war to be won or lost. "Hacker" (used in the positive sense) may never gain mainstream acceptance, but it can have a long and healthy life as a slang expression. Thirty years ago, the the slang word "cool" was popular, and it is popular today. Most of you reading this have used it. But after all that time and usage it is still slang, unofficial. I have never heard a news anchor use "cool" other than to refer to temperature. For a while, "bad" (meaning good) was a popular expression, precisely because it was opposite to mainstream usage.
It doesn't matter what the news organizations do. "Hacker", in the good sense, is here to stay. The reason is simple: the word "programmer" is just plain un-sexy.
How would you feel, in principle, about a license provision that allowed a "loan" of free software, letting a developer incorporate GPL'd code into a proprietary product, and allowing a copy-restricted binary-only release of that product for a period of three or four years, if, at the end of that time, the developer was required to release all of the code, including the proprietary portion, under the GPL?
If the day ever arrives when the threat of nano-terrorism (or any other kind of terrorism for that matter) is such that it becomes necessary to spy on everyone all the time, even up to the point of monitoring everyone's activities 24-hours-a-day to make sure that people are not using an unlicensed assembler or whatever, I hope that the spying will be done by computers running entirely open-source software, that all functions of the software will be decided by the democratic process, and that every aspect of the spying system from the hardware to the software to the communication links will be secure and open, and that the integrity of the system will be verifiable by anyone at any time. I'm sure that if the software is designed by a democratic process there will be strict limits on what information can be passed on to a human being for further evaluation. That is some consolation.
The worst thing would be if the spying were done by a government agency under a cloak of secrecy.
If this is coming-- if the voluntary surrender of privacy is the inevitable price to pay in order to enjoy the benefits of advanced technology, then it is time to start thinking about safeguards and making the best of a troubling situation.
(Joy later asked Merkle 'Do you think biological weaponary gives an advantage to the offensive or defensive,' to which Merkle embarrassingly replied 'I'm not sure')
Biological weapons and nano-weapons are not equivalent situations. Bio-weapons are basically adaptations of super-advanced technology created by nature--bacteria and viruses that make their living attacking humans. No one knows how to build bacteria or viruses from the ground up. This lack of knowledge means that defenders are at a disadvantage. The best defense is still the human immune system--also designed by nature.
With nanotech, attackers and defenders should be on approximately equal footing with respect to the technology, but defenders (the World) should be able to devote more resources than attackers (rouge individuals). There is the danger that governments will develop nano-weapons and then not be able to prevent the design information from leaking out to rouge individuals. Also, attackers have the considerable advantage of surprise.
This may mean the end of personal privacy!! If privacy must be sacrificed, this raises a great many questions as to how culture, society and law would adapt. The upside is, this could also mean a very, very long lifespan.
Most computer games can not be replaced by OSS versions, even if the game engines could be replaced by OSS, the actual art and music is still held in copyright
Commercial games could absolutely be replaced by OSS versions. The art and music are copyrighted, yes, but that is not a problem as far as openness goes. It means that you DO have to pay for the artwork to play the game. Open source is about seeing how it works and being able to change it if you want to. There are no hidden inner 'workings' with bitmap graphics and music--they are already 'open' in that sense. If you wanted to change some of the artwork in a commercial open-source game, you would buy the game (thereby paying for the original artwork), and then 'patch' in your new graphics. You could distribute you patches freely if you chose to, but anyone using the original artwork would be morally obliged to pay for it.
You donate land to a city so that the city can build a needed highway on the land. It's a donation, so you don't ask for and don't receive any money. After the highway is built, you change you mind and say you want to put the land to another use. You ask for the highway to be removed, and for the land to be returned to you in its original condition. You claim your agreement to donate the land is not enforcable because you didn't receive any money or other kind of consideration.
You could take just one of the 82 color wavelengths (40 Gbps), and use it to broadcast a thousand 20 Mbps HDTV channels, plus four thousand 5 Mbps video channels.
I wonder if a particular color wavelength(s) designated for broadcast could just branch-out over a whole country without having to be switched?
If the patent office is looking to streamline the patent application process, here's an idea for them: a "one-click" submissions form. It could use cookies, and be really convenient...
Why is everyone so hostile against B&N for putting 'mom and pop' stores out of business?
B&N bought my favorite bookstore, BookStop (not a 'mom and pop' store) and then shut them down. BookStops were large, had great locations, were very popular, had lots of customer traffic, and offered a 20% discount to members. I think BookStop deliberately stocked a few out-of-the-mainstream books just to make browsing more interesting. I've bought some great computer books there--books that you would never find on B&N's mass-market only bookshelves. What a shame.
Do we have otherwise healthy people dying in their sleep due to violent dreams? Hell no! I've been chased by dinosaurs at least 5 times, and I've yet to wake up clawed, gnawed, and bleeding.
Be careful, my friend! DreamWoks Studios (makers of fine movies and cooking equipment) has a patent on being chased by "anything from the Jurrasic Period". If they find out about your dreams, you could be slapped with an infringement lawsuit.
Did nature try out every possible place on the body for the blowhole, were many dolphins born with blowholes on their sides or under their fins or chins (ever seen a dolphin's chin?) or at the tips of their tails before the ones that had them on the tops of their heads won out evolutionarily speaking?
While it's easy to imagine a dolphin with a blowhole in a different place, if you had to actually build a dolphin with a blowhole in a different place, that one ECO (engineering change order) would cascade into thousands of related ECOs. Nature's beancounters hate to pay overtime, so they only approve small changes.
As a US citizen, I felt proud when the USA put a man on the moon. Space exploration has a strong emotional appeal. This emotion may be more important even than the science aspects since, IMO, the most exciting things happening in science and engineering today are not in the space program.
The Russians have a lot of pride in Mir, and they have a lot to contribute to a successful space station. But if their participation is being reduced, then of course they will lose enthusiasm. Things rarely go as smoothly as one would hope, especially when you are breaking new ground. Of course delays always cost money. But in the end it will be worth it to take the time to work through the problems of the moment and do it the right way, with full Russian participation, so the citizens of all participating countries can be proud of this cooperative effort.
Especially people in India who want to work on free software projects should receive donations of old equipment, if there's an inexpensive way to ship it. Maybe the Linux user groups could organize something.
Speaking of old computers, I've got a 6800 homebrew (1976), LSI-11, 286, 386. Kept the old systems for sentimental reasons. (pathetic isn't it?)
Consider how broad the impact of nanotechnology will be. It will revolutionize the manufacturing of just about everything. It will revolutionize healthcare. It will have a major impact on computers and communications. What other technology is both so revolutionary and so broadly applicable?
No need to search for the "killer" app. If you think Viagra sells well, try immortality. (the killer app is not being killed) How much would you pay for extended youth and health? You can't take it with you, ya know.
Investors are already technology crazy. Look at how much money has been invested in Amazon, Yahoo, etc. I mean, give me a break. Investment in nanotechnology has the potential to be a supernova.
> I just blew all 5 of my moderation points trying to get rid of that morons "Q"'s and F*** You's
I hear you. It seems to me that there are two strategies being used by moderators, which revolve around level 0:
Strategy 1: Mark down AC spam to -1, under the theory that some readers will want to read with a filter level of zero. The downside is, this can use-up a lot of moderator points if there is a lot of spam to remove.
Strategy 2: "Abandon" level 0 to the spammers, don't mark anything down, mark up all worthwhile AC posts from 0 to +1 (or higher), so that everyone except moderators can read at +1 (or higher). The downside is, AC posts which are only "average" remain at 0.
It would be better if everyone used the same strategy, otherwise some points will not be used efficiently. Personally, I favor strategy 2, for the following reasons:
a) The situation is not symmetrical: It is a lot easier for an AC to post spam than to post a worthwhile message. b) Moderating is a bit of a pain, and I don't think moderators should make the effort to read everything and then have to waste their points on spam.
> So why not require ALL users to register
Say Slashdot does a story on a company, and someone in the company wants to make a quick comment, but wouldn't bother if they had to take the trouble to register.
It'd be worth the money if the robot control program worked, which is something that would be tested before sending it to Mars.:-) Going along on a mission (as just one of a group of small robots) is a further test, and also a reward for the developers. NASA spends its money on development. If a project like this ever happened, you're talking about free non-trivial development--program the microcontrollers that control the motors, get autonomous behavior as an emergent property, the whole deal. Mindstorms taken to the next level:-)
I seem to recall that NASA was thinking about sending, when the technology permits, a bunch of small robots to Mars--the idea being if some of them fail or get stuck you've still got the rest. It would be cool if they allowed one of the robots to be programmed as a community Internet project! Maybe it could motor around and trace an outline of Tux in the Martian sand.
Why did life begin only once? Well, it may have happened many times and may even be happening today. What would original life be like? A system of one or more kinds of molecules that assembled by chance and was able to replicate by some process. We don't have a model for such a system but it would have to be very simple. In order for the life form to continue, there must be an unbroken chain of replicated entities going back to the original. At least one of the desendants of the original must find the necessary resources and conditions to replicate, or the life form becomes extinct and its design pattern is lost.
Life is very competitive because replication leads to exponential growth which must encounter limits of resources. New (as in original) life, unless it is based on a totally new type of chemistry, must compete with established life for chemical resources. Existing life has been optimized by trillions of design revisions to be very efficient at collecting resources. A new life form, being just a molecule, will not have a defense against being used as a food source by microorganisms. In the unlikly event that the new life survives long enough to multiply very much it will face another threat. Existing microbes have evolved to be evolveable and will adapt rapidly to use the new life as food. The new life will be toast.
When someone says life began with a single cell, they are talking about what their idea of life is--in other words, that things simpler than a cell (a virus for example) are not entitled to be called "life". Evolution certainly didn't start with a cell. Cells are extremely, extremely complex. Nanotech engineers are going to have lots of fun.
Look to the probable first. But when the probabilities are based on incomplete knowledge, then the probabilities can change. If the following three things are true, then the highly improbable becomes probable:
1. Eary life not only survived in extreme conditions, but was in fact adapted to and comfortable with extremes, as with bacteria that live kilometers below the surface.
2. Life evolved on Mars well before conditions were suitable on Earth.
3. Sufficient material was transfered from Mars to Earth that it is probable that if life was there, it got a ride to Earth.
I can't comment on the likelyhood of these things, I'm just a software guy.
Re:New year's anticlimactic
on
Apocalypse Not
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· Score: 1
Fun could've been had with X-10. Program the lights to flicker erratically and then slowly fade out...
I forgot to mention Darwin's seldom cited treatise on the origin of lesbians...
BTW, the standard reckoning of time is, sadly, dead wrong due to a shortsighted failure to take into account general relativity, and the relative efficiency of the postal system and its effects on the hyper-dimentional space through which our good planet must sojourn.
Fortunately, I have done the calculations, and the millennium really begins spot on at 4:46 PM EST, which by a happy coincidence would be just about NOWish, which means.... wait for it..... FIRST POST OF THE MILLENNIUM!!!
Wouldn't ranked play (aprox. equally matched opponents) solve the problem? You'd need a centralized server to hold rankings for each CD-key. If someone cheats they get bumped up to a higher rank until they no longer have an advantage. The very top rank might be called Bot Hell.:) The only way for a cheater to reset their rank is to buy another copy of the game (which helps other players a little by funding the next version).
Slashdot Mirror
There is no war to be won or lost. "Hacker" (used in the positive sense) may never gain mainstream acceptance, but it can have a long and healthy life as a slang expression. Thirty years ago, the the slang word "cool" was popular, and it is popular today. Most of you reading this have used it. But after all that time and usage it is still slang, unofficial. I have never heard a news anchor use "cool" other than to refer to temperature. For a while, "bad" (meaning good) was a popular expression, precisely because it was opposite to mainstream usage.
It doesn't matter what the news organizations do. "Hacker", in the good sense, is here to stay. The reason is simple: the word "programmer" is just plain un-sexy.
How would you feel, in principle, about a license provision that allowed a "loan" of free software, letting a developer incorporate GPL'd code into a proprietary product, and allowing a copy-restricted binary-only release of that product for a period of three or four years, if, at the end of that time, the developer was required to release all of the code, including the proprietary portion, under the GPL?
If the day ever arrives when the threat of nano-terrorism (or any other kind of terrorism for that matter) is such that it becomes necessary to spy on everyone all the time, even up to the point of monitoring everyone's activities 24-hours-a-day to make sure that people are not using an unlicensed assembler or whatever, I hope that the spying will be done by computers running entirely open-source software, that all functions of the software will be decided by the democratic process, and that every aspect of the spying system from the hardware to the software to the communication links will be secure and open, and that the integrity of the system will be verifiable by anyone at any time. I'm sure that if the software is designed by a democratic process there will be strict limits on what information can be passed on to a human being for further evaluation. That is some consolation.
The worst thing would be if the spying were done by a government agency under a cloak of secrecy.
If this is coming-- if the voluntary surrender of privacy is the inevitable price to pay in order to enjoy the benefits of advanced technology, then it is time to start thinking about safeguards and making the best of a troubling situation.
(Joy later asked Merkle 'Do you think biological weaponary gives an advantage to the offensive or defensive,' to which Merkle embarrassingly replied 'I'm not sure')
Biological weapons and nano-weapons are not equivalent situations. Bio-weapons are basically adaptations of super-advanced technology created by nature--bacteria and viruses that make their living attacking humans. No one knows how to build bacteria or viruses from the ground up. This lack of knowledge means that defenders are at a disadvantage. The best defense is still the human immune system--also designed by nature.
With nanotech, attackers and defenders should be on approximately equal footing with respect to the technology, but defenders (the World) should be able to devote more resources than attackers (rouge individuals). There is the danger that governments will develop nano-weapons and then not be able to prevent the design information from leaking out to rouge individuals. Also, attackers have the considerable advantage of surprise.
This may mean the end of personal privacy!! If privacy must be sacrificed, this raises a great many questions as to how culture, society and law would adapt. The upside is, this could also mean a very, very long lifespan.
Most computer games can not be replaced by OSS versions, even if the game engines could be replaced by OSS, the actual art and music is still held in copyright
Commercial games could absolutely be replaced by OSS versions. The art and music are copyrighted, yes, but that is not a problem as far as openness goes. It means that you DO have to pay for the artwork to play the game. Open source is about seeing how it works and being able to change it if you want to. There are no hidden inner 'workings' with bitmap graphics and music--they are already 'open' in that sense. If you wanted to change some of the artwork in a commercial open-source game, you would buy the game (thereby paying for the original artwork), and then 'patch' in your new graphics. You could distribute you patches freely if you chose to, but anyone using the original artwork would be morally obliged to pay for it.
You donate land to a city so that the city can build a needed highway on the land. It's a donation, so you don't ask for and don't receive any money. After the highway is built, you change you mind and say you want to put the land to another use. You ask for the highway to be removed, and for the land to be returned to you in its original condition. You claim your agreement to donate the land is not enforcable because you didn't receive any money or other kind of consideration.
Since stores won't allow you to return buggy software, maybe you could use this to go back in time and stop yourself from buying it. :)
You could take just one of the 82 color wavelengths (40 Gbps), and use it to broadcast a thousand 20 Mbps HDTV channels, plus four thousand 5 Mbps video channels.
I wonder if a particular color wavelength(s) designated for broadcast could just branch-out over a whole country without having to be switched?
If the patent office is looking to streamline the patent application process, here's an idea for them: a "one-click" submissions form. It could use cookies, and be really convenient...
Why is everyone so hostile against B&N for putting 'mom and pop' stores out of business?
B&N bought my favorite bookstore, BookStop (not a 'mom and pop' store) and then shut them down. BookStops were large, had great locations, were very popular, had lots of customer traffic, and offered a 20% discount to members. I think BookStop deliberately stocked a few out-of-the-mainstream books just to make browsing more interesting. I've bought some great computer books there--books that you would never find on B&N's mass-market only bookshelves. What a shame.
Do we have otherwise healthy people dying in their sleep due to violent dreams? Hell no! I've been chased by dinosaurs at least 5 times, and I've yet to wake up clawed, gnawed, and bleeding.
Be careful, my friend! DreamWoks Studios (makers of fine movies and cooking equipment) has a patent on being chased by "anything from the Jurrasic Period". If they find out about your dreams, you could be slapped with an infringement lawsuit.
Did nature try out every possible place on the body for the blowhole, were many dolphins born with blowholes on their sides or under their fins or chins (ever seen a dolphin's chin?) or at the tips of their tails before the ones that had them on the tops of their heads won out evolutionarily speaking?
While it's easy to imagine a dolphin with a blowhole in a different place, if you had to actually build a dolphin with a blowhole in a different place, that one ECO (engineering change order) would cascade into thousands of related ECOs. Nature's beancounters hate to pay overtime, so they only approve small changes.
As a US citizen, I felt proud when the USA put a man on the moon. Space exploration has a strong emotional appeal. This emotion may be more important even than the science aspects since, IMO, the most exciting things happening in science and engineering today are not in the space program.
The Russians have a lot of pride in Mir, and they have a lot to contribute to a successful space station. But if their participation is being reduced, then of course they will lose enthusiasm. Things rarely go as smoothly as one would hope, especially when you are breaking new ground. Of course delays always cost money. But in the end it will be worth it to take the time to work through the problems of the moment and do it the right way, with full Russian participation, so the citizens of all participating countries can be proud of this cooperative effort.
Especially people in India who want to work on free software projects should receive donations of old equipment, if there's an inexpensive way to ship it. Maybe the Linux user groups could organize something.
Speaking of old computers, I've got a 6800 homebrew (1976), LSI-11, 286, 386. Kept the old systems for sentimental reasons. (pathetic isn't it?)
I have to agree.
Consider how broad the impact of nanotechnology will be. It will revolutionize the manufacturing of just about everything. It will revolutionize healthcare. It will have a major impact on computers and communications. What other technology is both so revolutionary and so broadly applicable?
No need to search for the "killer" app. If you think Viagra sells well, try immortality. (the killer app is not being killed) How much would you pay for extended youth and health? You can't take it with you, ya know.
Investors are already technology crazy. Look at how much money has been invested in Amazon, Yahoo, etc. I mean, give me a break. Investment in nanotechnology has the potential to be a supernova.
Yeah, it'll happen sooner rather than later...
> I just blew all 5 of my moderation points trying to get rid of that morons "Q"'s and F*** You's
I hear you. It seems to me that there are two strategies being used by moderators, which revolve around level 0:
Strategy 1: Mark down AC spam to -1, under the theory that some readers will want to read with a filter level of zero. The downside is, this can use-up a lot of moderator points if there is a lot of spam to remove.
Strategy 2: "Abandon" level 0 to the spammers, don't mark anything down, mark up all worthwhile AC posts from 0 to +1 (or higher), so that everyone except moderators can read at +1 (or higher). The downside is, AC posts which are only "average" remain at 0.
It would be better if everyone used the same strategy, otherwise some points will not be used efficiently. Personally, I favor strategy 2, for the following reasons:
a) The situation is not symmetrical: It is a lot easier for an AC to post spam than to post a worthwhile message.
b) Moderating is a bit of a pain, and I don't think moderators should make the effort to read everything and then have to waste their points on spam.
> So why not require ALL users to register
Say Slashdot does a story on a company, and someone in the company wants to make a quick comment, but wouldn't bother if they had to take the trouble to register.
> open source robot a stupid waste of money
:-) Going along on a mission (as just one of a group of small robots) is a further test, and also a reward for the developers. NASA spends its money on development. If a project like this ever happened, you're talking about free non-trivial development--program the microcontrollers that control the motors, get autonomous behavior as an emergent property, the whole deal. Mindstorms taken to the next level :-)
It'd be worth the money if the robot control program worked, which is something that would be tested before sending it to Mars.
I seem to recall that NASA was thinking about sending, when the technology permits, a bunch of small robots to Mars--the idea being if some of them fail or get stuck you've still got the rest. It would be cool if they allowed one of the robots to be programmed as a community Internet project! Maybe it could motor around and trace an outline of Tux in the Martian sand.
Why did life begin only once? Well, it may have happened many times and may even be happening today. What would original life be like? A system of one or more kinds of molecules that assembled by chance and was able to replicate by some process. We don't have a model for such a system but it would have to be very simple. In order for the life form to continue, there must be an unbroken chain of replicated entities going back to the original. At least one of the desendants of the original must find the necessary resources and conditions to replicate, or the life form becomes extinct and its design pattern is lost.
Life is very competitive because replication leads to exponential growth which must encounter limits of resources. New (as in original) life, unless it is based on a totally new type of chemistry, must compete with established life for chemical resources. Existing life has been optimized by trillions of design revisions to be very efficient at collecting resources. A new life form, being just a molecule, will not have a defense against being used as a food source by microorganisms. In the unlikly event that the new life survives long enough to multiply very much it will face another threat. Existing microbes have evolved to be evolveable and will adapt rapidly to use the new life as food. The new life will be toast.
When someone says life began with a single cell, they are talking about what their idea of life is--in other words, that things simpler than a cell (a virus for example) are not entitled to be called "life". Evolution certainly didn't start with a cell. Cells are extremely, extremely complex. Nanotech engineers are going to have lots of fun.
Look to the probable first. But when the probabilities are based on incomplete knowledge, then the probabilities can change. If the following three things are true, then the highly improbable becomes probable:
1. Eary life not only survived in extreme conditions, but was in fact adapted to and comfortable with extremes, as with bacteria that live kilometers below the surface.
2. Life evolved on Mars well before conditions were suitable on Earth.
3. Sufficient material was transfered from Mars to Earth that it is probable that if life was there, it got a ride to Earth.
I can't comment on the likelyhood of these things, I'm just a software guy.
Fun could've been had with X-10. Program the lights to flicker erratically and then slowly fade out...
But the millennium begins with hour one, not hour zero... :-)
I forgot to mention Darwin's seldom cited treatise on the origin of lesbians...
BTW, the standard reckoning of time is, sadly, dead wrong due to a shortsighted failure to take into account general relativity, and the relative efficiency of the postal system and its effects on the hyper-dimentional space through which our good planet must sojourn.
Fortunately, I have done the calculations, and the millennium really begins spot on at 4:46 PM EST, which by a happy coincidence would be just about NOWish, which means.... wait for it..... FIRST POST OF THE MILLENNIUM!!!
Evolution is key to understanding how complex systems can originate without a designer. I'd say that is significant.
Wouldn't ranked play (aprox. equally matched opponents) solve the problem? You'd need a centralized server to hold rankings for each CD-key. If someone cheats they get bumped up to a higher rank until they no longer have an advantage. The very top rank might be called Bot Hell. :) The only way for a cheater to reset their rank is to buy another copy of the game (which helps other players a little by funding the next version).