My prediction is this, someone will reverse engineer the codec and release it a la DeCSS and everyone will have it. Microsoft will try to shut it down and there will be T shirts with the code printed on them.
The difference this time is that the intellectual property is protected by patent rather than by copyright (the DMCA).
You can't legally reverse-engineer a patented device -- and shouldn't have to, the patent has to reveal all the secret stuff.
You can't legally use a patented device without the permission of the patent holder -- there's nothing like "fair use" in the patent area.
Heck, you can't legally own a patented device without the permission of the patent holder -- a patent is an absolute, government-enforced, temporary monopoly on all uses of your invention.
When people go to jail (or more likely, pay very large financial penalties) for printing up the T-shirts, it will stop in a hurry.
Among other reasons, this is why I am strongly opposed to the very notion that algorithms (like a video codec) should be patentable.
WinFS, I'd be the first to say, is very ambitious. Nobody has ever brought together the world of documents, media and structured information in giving you one simple set of verbs that lets you richly find, move around and replicate those things.
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We thought it was a good idea but no-one else has done an implementation that we can copy off, so we can't really figure out how to do it.
Many years ago, in the days when the Justice Department took its antitrust responsibilities somewhat seriously, I worked for a company that had been deemed a monopolist in court.
Two of the things that we did not dare do, because people got sent to jail over it, were:
Overhang the market by announcing products long in advance of their actual delivery, and
Announce products and then fail to deliver them.
Ah, if only the DoJ still took their responsibilities seriously: slam-dunk court case.
It is surprising how often improvements in our computer technology comes from relatively mundane sources.
For example, much of the reason that Moore's Law has continued to hold is the way that the mechanical engineers have been able to constantly improve our ability to position things accurately.
Masks and wafers must be positioned with astonishing (at least to me) accuracy relative to each other in order to allow creation of 90 nm features.
Isn't that the same argument the established telecos are using to "encourage" state governments to tax VOIP?
To some extent, they have a point.
So long as VOIP is people using their computers and the Internet to talk to each other, I agree with what I think you're saying, and taxes are not appropriate.
Once the VOIP providers start saying "We want numbers out of the North American numbering plan (or its equivalent elsewhere in the world)" and "We want to interconnect with the public phone networks" it becomes a different issue.
Now they are providing telephone service, which is much more than just transport and all the existing players in that space are regulated and taxed.
I can understand the telcos complaining if the new entrants are held to different standards than the existing providers and given tax breaks too.
Personally, I would be more interested in seeing whether or not the VOIP providers could meet the very tough reliability/availability standards that the local wireline companies are held to.
Residential phone service could be substantially cheaper if it was not held to "four 9s" availability levels by state regulation.
The gyst is that Word, and all word-processors, confuse the distinct tasks of preparing your text logically, and laying it out. This leads to the standard situation that frustrates me when I have to use Word: I am entering text, when I see that it won't fit on a page, so I stop thinking about my text to change paragraph formatting and then, oh, where was I? Later I'll change the text, and probably want to change the paragraph formatting back, but won't be able to remember what it was before. Now my document is inconsistently laid out.
Many years ago, Bell Labs commissioned an internal study comparing WYSIWYG text preparation tools versus troff (with a decent macro package).
The content used in the test was large-product internal documentation, documents running hundreds of pages and prepared by teams.
Test subjects using troff were about 20% more efficient, and the troff version of the "finished" documents contained far fewer style "errors".
This was not the result that the department head wanted, so the study was repeated with different people and different documents, but the results came out the same.
Human factors experts involved in the study identified exactly what you've suggested as the cause of the inefficiency -- people worried about page layout and text styles far too early in the process, wasting their time making text that was almost certainly going to be replaced or at least changed look good.
Just to be fair, WYSIWYG editors for drawings beat pic hands down.
My own complaint about Word, having used it off and on for 15 years, is that it still can't do floating displays, which tools like troff and LaTeX handle easily.
Every technical paper or book chapter I've ever written has such displays.
Which has been true of academic-style material for a very long time.
Almost 50 years ago my father helped work his way through college doing typesetting at the university print shop.
He heard me bitching one time when I was having to use Word about its inability to do floating displays, and knew immediately what I was talking about.
Oddly enough, Comcast has a Linux-based program named NETSIM that does exactly what the original article was looking for.
It emulates queueing delays for a variety of access technologies (dial-up, DSL, etc) including custom settings.
It emulates network impairments like delay, jitter and loss.
It has been used to test a variety of commercial IP-based services under a broad range of impairment conditions.
The usability group made extensive use of NETSIM while evaluating different upstream/downstream speed limits for possible tiered service.
It has the useful attribute that it runs entirely in user space, although it does need root privileges.
It ran on every version of Linux that I ever tried it on.
There's a nice Tcl/Tk control interface that works well for certain kinds of demonstrations.
I know they have it because I wrote it and conducted many of the studies while I was at USWest Advanced Technologies.
Ownership transferred to MediaOne Labs when USWest split itself in two.
At that time, we licensed it to a variety of other groups under the best terms I could get out of our big-company lawyers: use for whatever you want internally, modify as desired, but no redistribution.
There's a patent for it, one that's quite broad and that dummynet probably infringes.
MediaOne didn't care, the patent was applied for so that no one else could get one and force us to stop using our own program.
For those who care about prior art arguments, TTBOMK NETSIM predates both dummynet and NIST's nistnet software.
When AT&T bought MediaOne, the Labs survived but in reduced form.
Licensing of NETSIM stopped, although we continued to use it internally.
When Comcast bought AT&T Broadband, most of the staff at the Labs were laid off.
I turned over the complete documentation, source code, and an operating NETSIM installation on my way out the door.
However, I would be surprised if any of that made the trip from Denver to Philadelphia, so in all probability, the program is no longer available.
No, no.
I thought maybe you knew something that I didn't.
TTBOMK, there are no reactors that show net energy on a sustained basis.
And none that show any net energy if you add in the energy needed to provide fuel for them.
Net energy has been one of those Real Soon Now things since I got interested in science as a teenager 35 years ago.
What we HAVE learned is that controlled fusion is a MUCH harder problem than originally thought.
If there is such a reactor, someone is keeping it a deep, dark secret.
I mean, I suppose it's possible that the military has a neat-o cold-fusion backpackable system capable of powering a megawatt laser that an infantryman can carry.
But it's not very likely.
Making collaboration faster, easier and more efficient
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Yeah, because those are the very words I always think of to describe web services. I use webmail for convenience. I use web-based tools other times in emergencies. There's even one or two tools (remote nslookups and security scans) I'll use in a moment of desperation. Never for speed and efficiency...
Not to be an MS apologist, but keep focused on the particular thing they're claiming to make faster, easier and more efficient -- collaboration.
The alternatives today are relatively clumsy.
E-mailing copies of the file back and forth.
Trying to find a server that both (or all sixteen) people can access.
These things are ugly enough when everyone is inside the same company;
done across companies it frequently gets really nasty.
Now, I would be more pleased if MS were announcing that they were going to solve concurrency, so that multiple people could work on a document at the same time without getting in each other's way.
You work on slide 3 while I insert a new slide 15 and work on that.
You make changes in section 2 of the document while I make changes in section 4.
You and I work on adjacent paragraphs and see changes show up in a reasonably timely fashion on our screens.
Allow people to join and drop from the work session.
The main difficulty today is that fusion generators tend to require so much energy to operate that the output from the nuclear reaction is mostly used up just powering itself.
Mostly?
Where is there any fusion reactor with a sustained process and net energy output?
Same question after you add in the energy costs to prepare the "fuel"?
It's only a prototype - we're not going to deploy it in production.
I recall a system that was prototyped in Lisp on specialized hardware.
The client organization loved everything about it -- the user interface, the speed of response, the robust handling of unspecified conditions, etc.
After an enormous amount of begging and pleading by the client, management finally agreed to ship the prototype.
Almost everyone was happy, because even after paying for the somewhat more expensive hardware, the project was finished well under budget and before the due date.
Except the development management, who hated the thought of having two Lisp programmers on staff instead of the previously planned six C programmers...
The hardware guys talked to us software guys to find out what we needed...
Good God, man!
Tell me who your hardware people are so that they can be disciplined immediately.
Cain's First Law of Design, especially for embedded systems, clearly states that the hardware must be designed without consulting the software people, at least one aspect of the design must be totally inappropriate to the problem, and the design must be such that any changes that make things better for the software people exceed the hardware budget.
Bonus points are awarded for selecting components that have features that do not work as documented.
It's not interesting, it's convenience.
This scenario's a nice literary device.
You get to explore a mature wage-earner's life, his spouse/significant other's, the lives of children, and (because he's 30-something) probably the lives of retirees because his probably still-living parents.
Perhaps I'm somewhat unique amongst futurists (technology forecasting was part of what I did for a living for several years), but if you want to make meaningful predictions you have to consider not just technology, but the society in which that technology will be deployed.
To pick on one of Sawyer's examples, he has us envision children using immersive VR to do their homework in just 10 years.
The US school system (and I suspect that Canada is not much different) is (a) stuck in an ongoing financial crisis and (b) extremely slow to pick up technology for common use.
Routine homework for primary education is one of the LAST places immersive VR will be used.
As to the nuclear family itself, in the 2000 census, married couples with children under 18 made up only 23.5% of households in the US.
Given the known historical trends, this will fall to 20% or below by 2010 -- that is, in 2014 such a household will be rather atypical.
In 50 years, the typical household will be an unmarried couple, average age 50, only one of whom ever had any children, and those children are grown and gone.
The technology in common use at that time will be driven by that sort of household.
A futurist piece describing technology in 2054 using the married-with-children family as an example is almost guaranteed to be seriously wrong because those households will be so uncommon.
I find it interesting that futurists (which is the role he's playing here) always talk about what life will be like for a 30-something who's married and has kids.
Maybe it's not as true in Canada, but society is increasingly single people or people whose children are grown and gone.
I'm 50, and both my children will be out of the house at college this fall.
The IRS actuarial tables say I can expect another 34 years, significantly longer than the 20 years when I had children in the house.
In ten years the "typical" person will be older than the typical person of today.
In 50 years, we'll be up to our elbows in old people (well, you'll be up to your elbows -- the chances I'll still be here are small).
Future tech will be oriented more and more towards the needs of the elderly.
AI that helps them keep track of their schedules and medication.
Spoken interfaces to that AI because typing is very hard when your arthritis acts up.
Always-on wireless communication so that "I've fallen and I can't get up" is not an issue.
Appliances with sensors and network connections so the AI can remind you that you left the stove on or didn't turn on the washing machine.
A shift towards smaller homes, all on one level, and the disappearance of bathtubs (bathtubs turn out to be incredibly hazardous for the elderly).
Assuming he's correct, does anyone else find it alarming how fucked we are in the event of a power outage or continual rise in fuel prices?
One of the things he's forecasting is that 50% of white-collar workers will telecommute.
While I think that percentage is high, there are a number of forces pushing us in that direction.
One of them is the likely continual rise in fuel prices, at least petroleum-based fuels.
Another will be that roads (at least in the US) will continue to be less and less usable during commuting hours -- local governments will finally be forced to realize that they simply can't build enough new roads to deal with population growth, so long as the population keeps commuting.
Try reading the works of thinkers such as John Zerzan who argue that a return to technology-free hunter-gathering would be the best thing to happen to the human race.
Sorry, I'm hopelessly addicted to the amenities of a modern economy.
I like indoor plumbing.
I like living in a place that has winter, and still being able to eat fresh produce in January.
I like medical care that gives me much better odds of living past 25, that means a compound fracture is not a death sentence, that infant mortality is not 80%, that most women do not die in childbirth.
I like complex mathematics (and will defend the idea that all math much beyond the level of counting requires some form of writing).
I like that Zerzan's ideas can be recorded in a medium that will outlast his lifetime, can be stored in buildings that defeat the serious efforts of the weather, that he can reach many, many more people than would be possible in a hunter-gatherer society.
Not to mention when the clueless person clicks on that spam email with the new trojan URL the ISP is the first person they'll call, "You guys said you would protect me from this stuff! I just lost all my files! I'm gonna sue!" And the disturbing thing is that they might actually win! (For various reasons pertaining to contract law and provision of services which I'm not going to get into here).
When I worked for a large cable company, those of us in the technology organization wanted to make it policy to recommend to subscribers that they have a firewall. The legal department made exactly this argument, that we exposed ourselves to liability lawsuits if we said, in effect, that the Internet was a dangerous place and you should take steps to protect yourselves. So the company did not give users warnings, and the network became one of the world's larger sources of various attacks...
Keep in mind that it's even worse than that.
Four billion people live on $2000 or less per year.
Two billion of them live on less than $1000 per year, and a billion of those live on less than $500 per year.
I am becoming more skeptical as time passes about the need to pursue new power sources... We already generate enough power world-wide.
The "wealth" of a country -- per-capita GDP -- is tied rather closely to the amount of energy it can generate and apply.
Western Europe and Japan are roughly the baseline for efficiency -- their per-capita GDP is about the same as the US, but they use about half as much energy.
Western Europe and Japan have some clear geographic advantages compared to the US and Canada that makes it easier for them to be more energy-efficient.
Hong Kong is pretty much at the extreme of efficiency for a rich "country", using only about one-quarter the per-capita energy of the US.
But we can't all be Hong Kong -- someone has to grow crops and refine metals and all the other energy-intense activities a developed economy requires.
At least four billion people on this planet live in poverty -- very low per-capita GDP.
For the economies in which they live to become richer, they will have to consume more energy.
For example, look at the increases in energy consumption in China over the last ten or fifteen years as their economy has boomed.
Energy consumption is not up because they got richer -- they got richer because they increased their energy consumption (and hence the goods and services produced per person).
We produce enough energy worldwide ONLY if you're willing to tell those people that they and their children will have to be poor forever.
And why the hell am I commenting on a post that is over a week old, anyway?
An excellent question, my friend.
Your observations are spot on -- if terrorists were to (for example) set off a nuke taking out Saudi Arabia's main terminal facility, all oil globally would go up in price.
Someone asked where US imports came from currently -- I had looked it up for other reasons recently and could give some numbers.
The larger reason to be interested in oil in general is that most economists greatly underestimate how dependent the developed countries' wealth is on the availability of energy.
When they talk about factors of production, they list labor and capital and a few others, but they don't typically list energy.
And yet, people in those countries are as productive as they are (which makes their countries rich) because they apply huge amounts of energy to the production processes.
And there's no substitute for energy.
You can't switch to different raw materials and get away from the energy requirements.
You can't substitute more people for it and still maintain the output per person.
You can't have extreme specialization and large economies of scale unless you have the necessary energy for transport.
You can put together a case that argues that within a few years, global oil production will reach an absolute peak and begin to decline.
A similar argument can be made that global production of natural gas will peak within 20 years.
Conservation will only take you so far.
How will the enormous energy demands of the developed countries be met in 20 years?
If this employee's knowledge is that valuable, Seagate should have no problem paying him during the two year non-compete. Alternatively, they should allow him to work in his field and sue the pants off of Western Digital if the trade secrets suddenly appear in future products from WD.
This case is even more complicated because the man was high up in the management of the organization (executive director of the Recording Head Division).
Not only does he know certain technical details, but he is undoubtedly aware of Seagate's product plans for at least the next couple of years.
It seems to me that it would be enormously difficult to work in a similar role at WD and not take into consideration that knowledge.
If he knows that Seagate is planning to enter a particular market segment and why, and he tells his boss that said segment provides an opportunity to sell disks with particular characteristics, has he used "trade secrets" inappropriately?
How about if he simply adjusts the development budget at WD to emphasize work that will enable WD to compete more effectively with Seagate?
Non-compete clauses make more sense when applied to people who have detailed knowledge of future product and marketing plans.
In a year, or certainly two, that knowledge is no longer valuable.
But in the first year, it may be immensely valuable to WD -- far more so than any secrets he may know about Seagate's new write technology.
Full-size keyboards are still the fastest, easiest, and most cubicle-friendly way of entering data into any computer for about 99.9% of all users.
Second the cubicle-friendly portion of that.
Twelve years in the cubicle farm eventually taught me to ignore other people talking on the phone (mostly).
But that was a relatively infrequent activity -- the people around me spent rather small amounts of the day on the phone.
If everything was voice input, and the person on one side was writing a technical report, the person on the other side was attempting to dictate code, and the person behind me was putting together a user manual, I think it would be far more than I could learn to ignore.
I find Bill Gates' ongoing infatuation with voice input to be more indicative of how long it's been since he spent time in a working crowd than anything else.
MS software wouldn't be immune, but would be safer--they do have a lot of patents out there, are likely somewhat more cautious about stepping on patents...
MS has been sued for patent infringement and lost multiple times in the past, in at least one case where they blatently appropriated technology that had been revealed under a non-disclosure agreement.
However, I agree that their software would be somewhat more immune.
But that would be because it is closed source, and except where an API must reveal the underlying technology (eg, the Eolas verdict currently being appealed), much more difficult to establish infringement than when the source code is available.
For example, various types of analysis make it extremely likely that the Windows IP stack is based on BSD code.
Nothing wrong with that, the BSD license allows them to incorporate it (so long as the source code that very few get to see includes the correct BSD copyright notices).
But without the source code you can't PROVE that the BSD code is in there.
I long for the days when you could work on your own car with a decent socket set and a few wrenches.
My family recently reached the point where we needed another car, and I wanted basic reliable efficient transportation from point A to point B, mostly with just me in it.
Bought a new '04 Honda Civic.
Maintenance interval for oil changes, lube parts like door hinges and visual inspection of wearing parts (tires, brakes) is 10,000 miles.
Check things like the suspension and steering components, seals and hoses, every 20,000 miles.
Inspect and adjust drive belts every 30,000 miles.
Spark plugs, timing belt and valve clearances at 110,000 miles (and, yes, I expect to own it long enough to have those done).
Replace transmission fluid and coolant at 120,000 miles or 10 years.
Based on the last Civic, there will be darned little other than those standard services that has to be done.
There was a certain amount of satisfaction in spending Saturday afternoons in my parents' driveway keeping my '69 Toyota running with a socket set and a few wrenches --
but by 60,000 miles I had replaced the water pump, replaced the alternator, rebuilt the carburetor, replaced spark plug wires and distributor cap, can't remember how many plugs (it ate them on a regular basis), adjusted valve clearances every 6,000 miles, etc.
Given a choice, I'll take this generation of small car where I can't do the work, but the work is so seldom needed.
With whole oil thing the middle east actually is the primary supplier to EUROPE not the U.S. we get most of ours from south america, africa and canada
Yep.
Here's a nice map showing where the US gets its oil imports.
The top four sources are Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, each at about 15%.
Which one is the top source varies from month to month.
Other Middle East sources -- Iraq, Kuwait, UAE -- add up to about 15% as well.
Summing up, about 50% comes from the Western Hemisphere, about 30% from the Middle East, and the other 20% from places like Africa, the North Sea producers, and Indonesia.
While it's sure a hell of a lot easier to be born into a position of wealth, there is NOTHING in the free world today that prevents a "commoner" from improving his lot in life except his or her own sense of limitation.
Bless everyone who does better than their parents in life, but from a statistical perspective, it turns out that parents' status is a pretty good indicator of where the children will end up.
Economists estimate that about 80% of the variation in personal wealth in the US can be explained by the parents' wealth.
Note that it is not appropriate to apply the numbers to individuals -- while 80 out of 100 children born to poor parents may end up poor, there's little way of predicting WHICH 80 that will be.
There are many reasons why such class "persistence" might occur.
Maybe there's various forms of institutionalized discrimination going on -- it's easier to get into Harvard if your dad went there, and at Harvard it's easier to meet people who can advance your career later in life, etc.
Maybe it's all about ambition and drive that derive in some fashion from genetics -- if your parents and grandparents were ambitious (and hence successful), you're more likely to inherit the gene and be ambitious as well.
But certainly some of it is situational -- an ambitious and talented black male born to inner city poverty is MUCH more likely to die by gunshot as a teenager than is a lazy dumb white guy born to rich parents, and being gunned down as a teenager really limits your long-term prospects.
Slashdot Mirror
The difference this time is that the intellectual property is protected by patent rather than by copyright (the DMCA). You can't legally reverse-engineer a patented device -- and shouldn't have to, the patent has to reveal all the secret stuff. You can't legally use a patented device without the permission of the patent holder -- there's nothing like "fair use" in the patent area. Heck, you can't legally own a patented device without the permission of the patent holder -- a patent is an absolute, government-enforced, temporary monopoly on all uses of your invention. When people go to jail (or more likely, pay very large financial penalties) for printing up the T-shirts, it will stop in a hurry.
Among other reasons, this is why I am strongly opposed to the very notion that algorithms (like a video codec) should be patentable.
Many years ago, in the days when the Justice Department took its antitrust responsibilities somewhat seriously, I worked for a company that had been deemed a monopolist in court. Two of the things that we did not dare do, because people got sent to jail over it, were:
Ah, if only the DoJ still took their responsibilities seriously: slam-dunk court case.
It is surprising how often improvements in our computer technology comes from relatively mundane sources. For example, much of the reason that Moore's Law has continued to hold is the way that the mechanical engineers have been able to constantly improve our ability to position things accurately. Masks and wafers must be positioned with astonishing (at least to me) accuracy relative to each other in order to allow creation of 90 nm features.
To some extent, they have a point. So long as VOIP is people using their computers and the Internet to talk to each other, I agree with what I think you're saying, and taxes are not appropriate. Once the VOIP providers start saying "We want numbers out of the North American numbering plan (or its equivalent elsewhere in the world)" and "We want to interconnect with the public phone networks" it becomes a different issue. Now they are providing telephone service, which is much more than just transport and all the existing players in that space are regulated and taxed. I can understand the telcos complaining if the new entrants are held to different standards than the existing providers and given tax breaks too.
Personally, I would be more interested in seeing whether or not the VOIP providers could meet the very tough reliability/availability standards that the local wireline companies are held to. Residential phone service could be substantially cheaper if it was not held to "four 9s" availability levels by state regulation.
Many years ago, Bell Labs commissioned an internal study comparing WYSIWYG text preparation tools versus troff (with a decent macro package). The content used in the test was large-product internal documentation, documents running hundreds of pages and prepared by teams. Test subjects using troff were about 20% more efficient, and the troff version of the "finished" documents contained far fewer style "errors". This was not the result that the department head wanted, so the study was repeated with different people and different documents, but the results came out the same. Human factors experts involved in the study identified exactly what you've suggested as the cause of the inefficiency -- people worried about page layout and text styles far too early in the process, wasting their time making text that was almost certainly going to be replaced or at least changed look good. Just to be fair, WYSIWYG editors for drawings beat pic hands down.
My own complaint about Word, having used it off and on for 15 years, is that it still can't do floating displays, which tools like troff and LaTeX handle easily. Every technical paper or book chapter I've ever written has such displays. Which has been true of academic-style material for a very long time. Almost 50 years ago my father helped work his way through college doing typesetting at the university print shop. He heard me bitching one time when I was having to use Word about its inability to do floating displays, and knew immediately what I was talking about.
I know they have it because I wrote it and conducted many of the studies while I was at USWest Advanced Technologies. Ownership transferred to MediaOne Labs when USWest split itself in two. At that time, we licensed it to a variety of other groups under the best terms I could get out of our big-company lawyers: use for whatever you want internally, modify as desired, but no redistribution. There's a patent for it, one that's quite broad and that dummynet probably infringes. MediaOne didn't care, the patent was applied for so that no one else could get one and force us to stop using our own program. For those who care about prior art arguments, TTBOMK NETSIM predates both dummynet and NIST's nistnet software. When AT&T bought MediaOne, the Labs survived but in reduced form. Licensing of NETSIM stopped, although we continued to use it internally. When Comcast bought AT&T Broadband, most of the staff at the Labs were laid off. I turned over the complete documentation, source code, and an operating NETSIM installation on my way out the door. However, I would be surprised if any of that made the trip from Denver to Philadelphia, so in all probability, the program is no longer available.
Some days I hate big corporations.
If there is such a reactor, someone is keeping it a deep, dark secret. I mean, I suppose it's possible that the military has a neat-o cold-fusion backpackable system capable of powering a megawatt laser that an infantryman can carry. But it's not very likely.
Not to be an MS apologist, but keep focused on the particular thing they're claiming to make faster, easier and more efficient -- collaboration. The alternatives today are relatively clumsy. E-mailing copies of the file back and forth. Trying to find a server that both (or all sixteen) people can access. These things are ugly enough when everyone is inside the same company; done across companies it frequently gets really nasty.
Now, I would be more pleased if MS were announcing that they were going to solve concurrency, so that multiple people could work on a document at the same time without getting in each other's way. You work on slide 3 while I insert a new slide 15 and work on that. You make changes in section 2 of the document while I make changes in section 4. You and I work on adjacent paragraphs and see changes show up in a reasonably timely fashion on our screens. Allow people to join and drop from the work session.
Mostly? Where is there any fusion reactor with a sustained process and net energy output? Same question after you add in the energy costs to prepare the "fuel"?
I recall a system that was prototyped in Lisp on specialized hardware. The client organization loved everything about it -- the user interface, the speed of response, the robust handling of unspecified conditions, etc. After an enormous amount of begging and pleading by the client, management finally agreed to ship the prototype. Almost everyone was happy, because even after paying for the somewhat more expensive hardware, the project was finished well under budget and before the due date. Except the development management, who hated the thought of having two Lisp programmers on staff instead of the previously planned six C programmers...
Good God, man! Tell me who your hardware people are so that they can be disciplined immediately. Cain's First Law of Design, especially for embedded systems, clearly states that the hardware must be designed without consulting the software people, at least one aspect of the design must be totally inappropriate to the problem, and the design must be such that any changes that make things better for the software people exceed the hardware budget. Bonus points are awarded for selecting components that have features that do not work as documented.
Perhaps I'm somewhat unique amongst futurists (technology forecasting was part of what I did for a living for several years), but if you want to make meaningful predictions you have to consider not just technology, but the society in which that technology will be deployed. To pick on one of Sawyer's examples, he has us envision children using immersive VR to do their homework in just 10 years. The US school system (and I suspect that Canada is not much different) is (a) stuck in an ongoing financial crisis and (b) extremely slow to pick up technology for common use. Routine homework for primary education is one of the LAST places immersive VR will be used.
As to the nuclear family itself, in the 2000 census, married couples with children under 18 made up only 23.5% of households in the US. Given the known historical trends, this will fall to 20% or below by 2010 -- that is, in 2014 such a household will be rather atypical. In 50 years, the typical household will be an unmarried couple, average age 50, only one of whom ever had any children, and those children are grown and gone. The technology in common use at that time will be driven by that sort of household. A futurist piece describing technology in 2054 using the married-with-children family as an example is almost guaranteed to be seriously wrong because those households will be so uncommon.
PS. Nice user number (some of us notice).
Future tech will be oriented more and more towards the needs of the elderly. AI that helps them keep track of their schedules and medication. Spoken interfaces to that AI because typing is very hard when your arthritis acts up. Always-on wireless communication so that "I've fallen and I can't get up" is not an issue. Appliances with sensors and network connections so the AI can remind you that you left the stove on or didn't turn on the washing machine. A shift towards smaller homes, all on one level, and the disappearance of bathtubs (bathtubs turn out to be incredibly hazardous for the elderly).
One of the things he's forecasting is that 50% of white-collar workers will telecommute. While I think that percentage is high, there are a number of forces pushing us in that direction. One of them is the likely continual rise in fuel prices, at least petroleum-based fuels. Another will be that roads (at least in the US) will continue to be less and less usable during commuting hours -- local governments will finally be forced to realize that they simply can't build enough new roads to deal with population growth, so long as the population keeps commuting.
Sorry, I'm hopelessly addicted to the amenities of a modern economy. I like indoor plumbing. I like living in a place that has winter, and still being able to eat fresh produce in January. I like medical care that gives me much better odds of living past 25, that means a compound fracture is not a death sentence, that infant mortality is not 80%, that most women do not die in childbirth. I like complex mathematics (and will defend the idea that all math much beyond the level of counting requires some form of writing). I like that Zerzan's ideas can be recorded in a medium that will outlast his lifetime, can be stored in buildings that defeat the serious efforts of the weather, that he can reach many, many more people than would be possible in a hunter-gatherer society.
When I worked for a large cable company, those of us in the technology organization wanted to make it policy to recommend to subscribers that they have a firewall. The legal department made exactly this argument, that we exposed ourselves to liability lawsuits if we said, in effect, that the Internet was a dangerous place and you should take steps to protect yourselves. So the company did not give users warnings, and the network became one of the world's larger sources of various attacks...
Keep in mind that it's even worse than that. Four billion people live on $2000 or less per year. Two billion of them live on less than $1000 per year, and a billion of those live on less than $500 per year.
The "wealth" of a country -- per-capita GDP -- is tied rather closely to the amount of energy it can generate and apply. Western Europe and Japan are roughly the baseline for efficiency -- their per-capita GDP is about the same as the US, but they use about half as much energy. Western Europe and Japan have some clear geographic advantages compared to the US and Canada that makes it easier for them to be more energy-efficient. Hong Kong is pretty much at the extreme of efficiency for a rich "country", using only about one-quarter the per-capita energy of the US. But we can't all be Hong Kong -- someone has to grow crops and refine metals and all the other energy-intense activities a developed economy requires.
At least four billion people on this planet live in poverty -- very low per-capita GDP. For the economies in which they live to become richer, they will have to consume more energy. For example, look at the increases in energy consumption in China over the last ten or fifteen years as their economy has boomed. Energy consumption is not up because they got richer -- they got richer because they increased their energy consumption (and hence the goods and services produced per person). We produce enough energy worldwide ONLY if you're willing to tell those people that they and their children will have to be poor forever.
An excellent question, my friend. Your observations are spot on -- if terrorists were to (for example) set off a nuke taking out Saudi Arabia's main terminal facility, all oil globally would go up in price. Someone asked where US imports came from currently -- I had looked it up for other reasons recently and could give some numbers.
The larger reason to be interested in oil in general is that most economists greatly underestimate how dependent the developed countries' wealth is on the availability of energy. When they talk about factors of production, they list labor and capital and a few others, but they don't typically list energy. And yet, people in those countries are as productive as they are (which makes their countries rich) because they apply huge amounts of energy to the production processes. And there's no substitute for energy. You can't switch to different raw materials and get away from the energy requirements. You can't substitute more people for it and still maintain the output per person. You can't have extreme specialization and large economies of scale unless you have the necessary energy for transport.
You can put together a case that argues that within a few years, global oil production will reach an absolute peak and begin to decline. A similar argument can be made that global production of natural gas will peak within 20 years. Conservation will only take you so far. How will the enormous energy demands of the developed countries be met in 20 years?
This case is even more complicated because the man was high up in the management of the organization (executive director of the Recording Head Division). Not only does he know certain technical details, but he is undoubtedly aware of Seagate's product plans for at least the next couple of years. It seems to me that it would be enormously difficult to work in a similar role at WD and not take into consideration that knowledge. If he knows that Seagate is planning to enter a particular market segment and why, and he tells his boss that said segment provides an opportunity to sell disks with particular characteristics, has he used "trade secrets" inappropriately? How about if he simply adjusts the development budget at WD to emphasize work that will enable WD to compete more effectively with Seagate?
Non-compete clauses make more sense when applied to people who have detailed knowledge of future product and marketing plans. In a year, or certainly two, that knowledge is no longer valuable. But in the first year, it may be immensely valuable to WD -- far more so than any secrets he may know about Seagate's new write technology.
Second the cubicle-friendly portion of that. Twelve years in the cubicle farm eventually taught me to ignore other people talking on the phone (mostly). But that was a relatively infrequent activity -- the people around me spent rather small amounts of the day on the phone. If everything was voice input, and the person on one side was writing a technical report, the person on the other side was attempting to dictate code, and the person behind me was putting together a user manual, I think it would be far more than I could learn to ignore. I find Bill Gates' ongoing infatuation with voice input to be more indicative of how long it's been since he spent time in a working crowd than anything else.
MS has been sued for patent infringement and lost multiple times in the past, in at least one case where they blatently appropriated technology that had been revealed under a non-disclosure agreement. However, I agree that their software would be somewhat more immune. But that would be because it is closed source, and except where an API must reveal the underlying technology (eg, the Eolas verdict currently being appealed), much more difficult to establish infringement than when the source code is available. For example, various types of analysis make it extremely likely that the Windows IP stack is based on BSD code. Nothing wrong with that, the BSD license allows them to incorporate it (so long as the source code that very few get to see includes the correct BSD copyright notices). But without the source code you can't PROVE that the BSD code is in there.
My family recently reached the point where we needed another car, and I wanted basic reliable efficient transportation from point A to point B, mostly with just me in it. Bought a new '04 Honda Civic. Maintenance interval for oil changes, lube parts like door hinges and visual inspection of wearing parts (tires, brakes) is 10,000 miles. Check things like the suspension and steering components, seals and hoses, every 20,000 miles. Inspect and adjust drive belts every 30,000 miles. Spark plugs, timing belt and valve clearances at 110,000 miles (and, yes, I expect to own it long enough to have those done). Replace transmission fluid and coolant at 120,000 miles or 10 years. Based on the last Civic, there will be darned little other than those standard services that has to be done.
There was a certain amount of satisfaction in spending Saturday afternoons in my parents' driveway keeping my '69 Toyota running with a socket set and a few wrenches -- but by 60,000 miles I had replaced the water pump, replaced the alternator, rebuilt the carburetor, replaced spark plug wires and distributor cap, can't remember how many plugs (it ate them on a regular basis), adjusted valve clearances every 6,000 miles, etc. Given a choice, I'll take this generation of small car where I can't do the work, but the work is so seldom needed.
Yep. Here's a nice map showing where the US gets its oil imports. The top four sources are Canada, Mexico, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, each at about 15%. Which one is the top source varies from month to month. Other Middle East sources -- Iraq, Kuwait, UAE -- add up to about 15% as well. Summing up, about 50% comes from the Western Hemisphere, about 30% from the Middle East, and the other 20% from places like Africa, the North Sea producers, and Indonesia.
Bless everyone who does better than their parents in life, but from a statistical perspective, it turns out that parents' status is a pretty good indicator of where the children will end up. Economists estimate that about 80% of the variation in personal wealth in the US can be explained by the parents' wealth. Note that it is not appropriate to apply the numbers to individuals -- while 80 out of 100 children born to poor parents may end up poor, there's little way of predicting WHICH 80 that will be.
There are many reasons why such class "persistence" might occur. Maybe there's various forms of institutionalized discrimination going on -- it's easier to get into Harvard if your dad went there, and at Harvard it's easier to meet people who can advance your career later in life, etc. Maybe it's all about ambition and drive that derive in some fashion from genetics -- if your parents and grandparents were ambitious (and hence successful), you're more likely to inherit the gene and be ambitious as well. But certainly some of it is situational -- an ambitious and talented black male born to inner city poverty is MUCH more likely to die by gunshot as a teenager than is a lazy dumb white guy born to rich parents, and being gunned down as a teenager really limits your long-term prospects.