A few corrections are due here: PNG is not exactly GNU PNG, but close enough in stance and philosophy to be called sibling-like related. PNG originally stood for "PNG is Not Gif." It is an internet phenomenon, like Linux and most "free" software, it was developed by volunteers in 1995 as soon as the submarine patents on Gif's surfaced, to be a patentless, open and "free" replacement to royalty demaning Gif's. Moreover MS did not "flock" to PNG, they were even a bit sluggish with the adoption. They may in fact have licensed GIF, and simply added PNG support because of the technological superiority to GIF's. Nevertheless the lessons learned in PNG vs. Gif might be interesting in regards to H264. Of course there is a way to mysteriously take out and make disappear all the developers who exhibit volunteering tendencies, and these days, the same PNG vs. GIF might go down differently, with all those freedom-touting voices gone. Lots of people die mysterious deaths, suddenly, unexpectedly and very young. These days.
You know paper books are on the way to getting banned, when toilet paper culture is changed to bidet's, where water is considered a renewable resource but paper is not. As long as I can take comfort in taking a reassuring peak that there is a roll of toilet paper right next to me, as I'm reading, I don't have to worry about book paper in front of me being legally banned, even if that "book" is an LCD screen for now, and traditional, "antique" paper books are hard to come by.
Oh and guess what.. I don't have much of a life, but I can say that I have been able to abstain from watching a single DVD movie so far. Ever since DVD's appeared on the scene. Because of the gargantuan copyright crap they instilled into it. I don't care what anyone else does, it's their business, but it's not for me. I've watched VHS tapes, quite a few, that my "bum" friend showed on his VCR, a few years ago, "unbum-like-ly" careful not to show a DVD, and parading gutted tapedecks from the 70's as DJ mixing rigs. I don't know what's right or wrong about intellectual property, I can't tell others what to do, but I can make a choice on what I do and don't do. And then everyone is free to live their life as they please, as long as they let me be the way I wanna be too.
Oh, and, even though my father was an alcoholic, I've been able to abstain from alcohol, I drink a sip here and there, but have never got drunk. Have I said I don't have a life? How about trying to abstain from Windows or Apple, or any proprietary computer systems? It's extremely difficult, especially when the hardware you buy only has windows drivers provided, and the devices is lobotomized, and most of the functions are implemented in software. I still keep good old Windows 2000 around, but I realize its days are numbered too. I have a cellphone, but I don't enjoy it, because it's not hackable, I don't feel like it's mine. It's full of secrets. I open it, use it, done with it, put it away. Same with a car, use it, done with it, but don't get the intellectual joy of hotrodders out of it, like they used to back in the days, that tinkle, sparkle in the eye kind of joy. The only joy in the computer and computer like things comes where I'm free on it, in things like Linux/Freedos or assembler. But I know these days are numbered too, and there will be a point in time, where I'll simply open up a computer, get whatever needs to get done, done, and close it off. It will be no source of excitement. The fallback for now is hardcopy books. Like Newton had them. When paper books are banned, to save trees, or burned, like the inquisition used to burn forbidden texts, because they contained "unmanaged", "raw" text, and only Kindle-like devices are allowed, where how long you spend on each page is monitored by da man, to make sure you're not reading or thinking something illegal, that you do not exhibit any statistical criminal thought patterns, in the name of public safety and security, when that time comes, I guess I'll have to give up reading too. I don't know what the heck I'll do then, but I hope that will be after my time.
Analog will be soon banned/phased out. Because it represents the old mentality where you can listen to unmetered programming, and are free to make a recording with a tape deck. Where intellectual property is regarded as a temporary reward, an incentive to enhance creativity, and remove secrecy, but ultimately everything is meant to enter the public domain, as soon as further prolonging of property terms does not sufficiently enhance initial creativity, or release of private knowledge, private secrets into public domain. Recording radio programming with a tapedeck? Are you out of your mind? These days such violations of intellectual property laws, even the mere thought of copying any information, let alone it "eventually" entering public domain, have to be eradicated from the minds of people. These days we have to convert to a system where every time you start up the radio you click an accept button, that you agree that all content coming through it is owned by da man, for da man, and only for da man, and only by his grace and infinite kindness are you allowed to listen to any of this wonder and amazement for such a low low introductory monthly rate. Otherwise you're considered a heretic/pirate/thief, who probably just expects to get everything for free in life, and not have to pay for it. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Well, they say the best thing in life are free: sunshine, air, love, mothertongue, and it used to be the radio, you "payed for it" by being subjected to advertising, but now you'll get advertising + you have to pay for it in cold cash too. We can start with the radio first, while x-ing off all those things from the list of best things in life are free. Well, at least you have the option not to listen to the radio, like I do, or not to buy the radio programming decryption monthly card, the kind they sell for satellite tv programming. And life is still good. I can personally attest to that - I have not watched tv, nor have I turned on my car radio for 2 years now. Ok, here and there, but I don't miss it at all. When you have to start paying for the sunshine and air you consume, because it's owned by da man, it's gonna be very difficult to live happily without those things. Oh, by the way, since last February 2009, over a year now, I've been vegetarian, and doing just fine. Well, I did eat meat here and there, like pepperoni pizza, or company burger cookout, but I can go on fine without it, I don't miss it at all.
Space is no hiding place from an artificial AI with stronger intelligence than humans, that's full steam ahead to getting developped, and it's practically impossible to avoid. There is talk about the "awakening" of the universe, how that era is unavoidable, how everything is going to be interconnected and intelligent like a Borg cube. Where does such a world leave humans? Humans may be fugitives from hunters with stronger AI than them, similar to how deer and rabbits run from us. But even deer and rabbits can escape, if they hide sufficiently well - stronger AI does not automatically mean total domination. In the jungle there are predators and prey, and having the status of prey or even a nuisance, does not automatically mean extinction. Humans, through their own monkeying, will almost inevitably create robotic beings higher up the foodchain than themselves. If not in 50 years, then in 50 million. It's only a matter of time. Under such circumstances one has to come to terms with no longer being on top, with being prey, and act accordingly.
Empty space is no hiding place from strong AI, but the depths of Jupiter's hydrogen ocean, the thick clouds of Venus, and especially the deep oceans of Earth, could be. Just as we don't go and try to hunt down every deer and rabbit there is in the world, stronger AI beings may decide it's not worth it to seek us out under difficult circumstances. One still has to beware "cleansing" of areas similar to how we cleanse the ocean of all vertebrate life with our super efficient fishing nets. AI might do such a thing, and places we though were good hiding places, might end up on their radar screen, and that's bad luck for us. By analogy, we don't hunt hienas and sharks for food, we share the world with them going after the same food, but if they get caught in the way, or in our fishing nets, that's bad luck for them. The good strategy of prey, or lower on the foodchain predator, is to strive to stay off the radar screen of the top predator. Sometimes simple camouflage works, not because it's super efficient and super smart, but it's good enough to be not worth the effort to seek. But all one needs is an infrared camera on a cold night, and all of the sudden camouflaging beings glow. So one can try, but outsmarting, out-tricking the defense tricks may be retardedly simplistic. But there are certain things, such as how some snake venom's work, how life works, that's a mystery to us, there are certain things that even stronger AI than us would not know, understand and control. Just because they'd be smarter, it does not mean they would know everything. Unless they keep creating smarter AI, turning themselves into prey too, to the point where basic laws of physics might be changed, and we'd see really strange space warping ball lightning phenomena maybe more frequently, and just try to stay out of the way. Maybe, unlike to Moore's law, there may be a natural ceiling to intelligence, something we cannot understand why right now, and then everything might be in equilibrium, humans down from the top of the food chain 3 levels or 5 levels, or something similar. If anything, one would hope that the higher intelligence AI will value variety and natural conservation, and view us as integral part of their ecosystem, and maintain our population. However climate control of the Earth, to make sure it keeps functioning well, would probably end up in their hands.
NASA is doing the right thing by exploring Captain Nemo worlds. The barren surface of the Moon, Mars, and the emptiness of space is not a security zone to hide and ensure the survival of humanity in face of stronger AI, but underground tunnels on the Moon, Mars, deep waters of Earth, thick clouds and unforgiving climates of Venus may be. The worse and more unforgiving a zone is for comfortable life, the more security it poses in view of it being less tempting as a resource to higher AI. Extremophile bacteria can survive in regular environments too, but should they be under extreme attack, they can also survive in places where no other beings can go after them.
I use it to watch youtube on puppy linux. The nice thing about puppy linux is the layered filesystem, to where a reinstall is as simple as starting a new personal file, as the OS layer never changes.
Btw, I forgot to mention how MS flocked to the GNU PNG image format as soon as they were assaulted with patent lawsuits over Unisys' LZW GIF patents. That's all we need to do with H264 too, come up with an equivalent or even better open codec.
Yes it took money, time and effort to come up with the GIF LZW format, same with the GNU PNG format. Did MS consider the harm they did to Unisys by not paying them the fees they wanted to collect, and instead blatantly using someone else's work, for free, without paying them a dime? Can they at least show a donation to nonprofit GNU on their tax deduction, as a fair compensation and retribution for coming up with PNG, equivalent or at least comparative to what they truly deserve for that work?
There is FUD for people to identify HTML5 with H264. The W3 would never push a proprietary technology, but they can condone the behavior of MS and Apple spreading FUD, and brainwashing people into thinking HTML5 is H264, and nothing else. It really comes down to the "de facto" "status quo" of the future, because theoretically you may use open video codecs, but if any websites do so they are bought out/taken down/assaulted/blown up by mysterious circumstances, if the only type of video content coming from the web is through proprietary codecs, then what does it matter if you still have "theoretical freedoms?" It's kind of like the Bill of Rights anymore - slowly reduced to theoretical freedoms instead of practical ones from 50-100 years ago, because in the real world, you either can't afford them anymore, or there are other catch 22's.
It causes harm to the patent owners not being able to push it as the one and only standard, and then fully locking down all video content in the world. As long as there are other video formats to convert to, any patent assault simply creates a mass exodus. So this is a preemptive move to an oncoming showdown. They are growing frustrated at the inability to jerk the rest of the world around and tell them to pay up, so now we get abuses like this:using monopoly in one domain to gain monopoly in another. This is what happens when the Microsoft-Apple-etc. IP Consortium gets full monopoly, pretending to be straw-man competition to each other: All your content are belong to us, either to me, or my cousin right over here. So payup mofos. Maffiozo style. What changes in the world from yesteryear?
By the way, I was born in a commie block country where we only had one government provided car model, stuck in the 50's design, the only difference being the color, if you were looking for variety. With a 7 year waiting list. The statistical planning committee of the 5 year communist economic congress has come to the conclusion that only manufacturing "the best", "the most efficient", and "most economical" car model cuts down on economic waste. All they had to do was weigh the pros and cons and vote on what this best thing for everyone is, and then there is no reason to make anything else that's "suboptimal." All knowing, all wise, omnipotent infinite wisdom. With pHd's in Economics from the top universities of Moscow, decorated with 50 golden stars, party achievement awards. Making everybody drive a shitty car stuck in the 1950's. Then the Berlin wall came down, and the Glasnosty and Perestroika were done with. Call it whatever you want, the car sux a fat one. I don't care about your ideology, if the stuff I'm sitting in sux, and don't tell me there isn't anything better, because I see you, Mr. Party official, ride around in a black Mercedes Benz. You don't even believe your own preaching, but you're telling me the car I'm sitting in is what the pHd economic summit committee declared as optimal. You know what, let's change, you ride around in this car, and let me ride around in that non-committee non-mandatory, customer-focus-driven, customer-picked free market produced, through all that "waste" of "unsuccessfull" models that were comparatively suboptimal.
Come to the USA, there are many cars. No waiting lists. Arguably some cars are "better" than others, just like some video codecs are better than others, but there is a "price" you pay for "better" such as losing some freedoms that things like a Theora codec would provide. I abhor any kind of totalitarian centralized control. I love the jungle, the variety.
Have you heard of Farmville? It's a major time waster. But it's cheap. Cheaper than ordering cable, for instance. Sometimes you have to find ways to keep busy just to make ends meet. I know every time I leave the house and go somewhere other than work, I'm out of at least 20 bux.
Besides software patents being stupid, at least Adobe provides a Linux version of Flash, and any kind of patent bs issues are handled by them. Though I have no idea what flash does in the background while it's running on my computer, it could be screwing me totally. So open source is welcome, to inspect what the heck is going on, but I hope Google provides an h264 linux codec to linux, and fight the total bs patent battles with the armies of marketroid lawyers from MS and the like, and shield me from any such harassment and abuses. Or they create a patentless codec to use on their youtube, the likes of ogg instead of mp3 and the myriad of other proprietary formats coming from ms and apple, all wanting to hijack the standard, and milk the internet cow for themselves.
If anything, Adobe positioned themselves in a spot - establishing a proprietary standard over the so far open and free internet - that both MS and Apple are vying for. The first step is getting something proprietary or at least patented pushed onto the internet. Once people can't live without it, turn on the cash flow from it. Kind of like mp3, gif, and the likes did it - push it for free, and start asking for a fee late in the game. Adobe got through the push it for free phase, and just when it is about ready to start charging, and asking for a per-click-per-minute fee, the big boys are x-ing it out of the game very fast. They wanna do that kind of charging, but they don't wanna pay up to somebody else. Imagine the kind of money you can make when you 0wn da internet because everyone is using your patented video/display method to view everything, and they are paying to you by the minute. Can you say 1 trillion dollar yearly revenue eclipsing that posted by Exxon?
One wonders how on Earth the Internet got this far without asking for a per minute fee. I guess it's been going through that push it for free phase, kind of like drug dealers do it. The only way the internet is gonna stay free is if you can maintain ways to live without it.
Monks circumventing the language tax by taking a wov of silence, or even by naughtily inventing their own sign language instead of trespassing on someone else's sign language intellectual property, will be put into straightjackets, declared mentally ill, and put on medication that has the effects of laughing gas, to improve their clinical depression and speechlessness symptoms.
I was forced to create slides at a corporation. I pretty much lost that career over it, because I sucked at it, I hated doing the whole thing, to me it seemed like such a nonsense. I had no problem writing detailed analysis. I said I wanted to be a lab scientist, not a presentation clown. I was told if I was unwilling to get better at doing powerpoint presentations, I had no future there. I said then maybe I don't have a future there. And so it happened.
These days the effort to widen the grasp of intellectual property, to the point of regulating and taxing even things such as spoken language, is constantly on the table. Creation might be as simply as embrace, extend, extinguish - i.e. adding two or three words as features to an existing dictionary, thereby "creating" a new one, then extinguishing the original, and claiming property rights on the new extended on. Watch it happen to the english language, and wait til you get your language tax bill. Each language will be owned, and depending on the current prevailing "market" price, it will have a different fee. English is gonna be unaffordably pricey, Spanish will be so-so. But only Gnu/Esperanto will be possible to be spoken/written without paying a fee, unless of course you want to sign a license agreement with someone and pay that fee to them, because that's not forbidden. But you can speak/write it for free, guaranteed by the initial license. And first amendment rights will get an amendment that due to the changing socio-historical landscape, practicing it is still possible, and maintained as a right, but for free only in Esperanto, because English, the original language it was written in, has since been extended and modified enough to be owned, and there is a per-syllable fee now plus a 15% state tax surcharge for maintaining the syllable counting metering equipment ankle bracelet.
One solution from a nuclear catastrophy is to run into outer space, and develop living capsules that withstand space radiation, something that might work down on Earth too in case of a nuclear holocaust. It's kind of sad that da Man is resorting to this, himself providing the packages to whoever wants them, because, even after 50 odd years from discovery, there still haven't been any terrorists who created one, no matter how hard da Man tried to create one by psychological manipulation. The fact is that common people with any kind of decency and common sense, like Stanislav Petrov, will not start a nuclear event, almost no matter how effortfully manipulated. It might be different if it had no effect on them, but the cost of a war on themselves, their families and kids is suicidal. This may not be the case for da Man, who might have his bunkers ready for his own family, and wants to "compete" with other people on "faster" grounds than simply slow choking them with lack of money or wars with conventional weapons. Smart enough people who can make one are unwilling to get manipulated into making one, so now Da Man's resorting to the dumb ones, who believe in things like afterlife, and 77 virgins. Da Man's been too bored and itching for some nuclear event, however everyone else's job is to stay calm, and if anything, work together on living in outer space and proliferating technology that enables living in radiation resistant capsules efficiently and cheaply, so such things are available as somewhat of an insurance against a nuclear war, to everyone, not just the very rich. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction does help in averting initiation of war, but somehow it does not seem like 100% guarantee to me.
Movie westerns have many episodes of standoffs without pulling the revolver, maintaining that balance of mutually assured destruction, but such standoffs last maybe a few minutes. In many cases, eventually, someone reaches for the gun, and then often both actors get shot, by each other, and mutually destructed. Sometimes one is quicker than the other, and shoots the gun out of the other one's hands, and nobody dies. But that kind of skill is rare. Have a western where nobody dies from gunshots, and there is no blood, because the heroes are so good and so quick, they keep shooting the guns out of other people's hands. It may all come down to fistfighting then, and manual choking, since, if one without a gun in his hand gets suicidal, and runs up against the one who still has the gun, there are two choices: shoot while he's running at you, or fist fight him when he gets there. Sometimes violence cannot be averted no matter how strong the reasoning. In such cases the really heroic way to avert violence is for the hero to run away faster, so the guy who just had the gun shot out of his hands, can't catch up with him. It's not very "manly", but it works, very simply, and effectively. So all you need is western heroes who are both highly skilled quick shooters, and very fast runners. Or have the fastest horses. And to top it all off, they are vegetarian. Not very "manly," I know, but at least as a western humorous parody it might work.
We're still playing around in the dark, quite a bit. What about the monkeying around that does not succeed and results in rejections? When I hear a transplant nonrejection rate of 99.99%, then you can claim you know what you're doing, exactly. Biology is very complex, and we're playing Russian roulette a lot of the time, simply because the other option of not playing Russian roulette is even worse. There is still a lot of people dying of cancer. And of old age. Unfortunately when you fully figured out with full confidence how life works, you can also fight off old age and create eternal life. And that brings about a whole set of other problems, such as no room/resources to have children. Even with certain death there is an issue of overpopulation, and then with certain eternal life, there simply cannot be new generations. That's what medicine is about : fighting death, but without being too successful, because if it can succeed 100% in fighting off death, then we have the problems of eternal life. In essence everyone dies of something, not old age, but something, like pneumonia, cancer, heart attack - and the field of medicine is "unable" to cure the problem in each instance. I have yet to see one person that lives over 500 years. Otherwise everyone dies of some disease, or malfunction, or some "natural causes" that we have no idea what it was even let alone being able to fix it. Yes, there are temporary miracles, but full understanding and full control of what happens, including certain and assured success of cure, yields eternal life. We're making steady progress toward that scary eternal life, but the role of medicine these days is more of a hold your hand in time of hardship, and pick the gambles for you that hopefully will do more good than bad. In the end, you will still die of something. The body deteriorates. It's programmed to deteriorate, to give room to the next generation, which is a faster and more efficient way for life to adapt than eternal life. It's how life works, at least how eukaryote life works. Bacteria you could say live forever by division, but the way plants, animals and people "live" is by programmed death. You fix that and then you can claim you have mastery of what goes down in biology. In the meantime you're taking your chances, at least to some degree. And by the way, most of the miracle is performed by your own body, not by the doctors. When there is a wound, and the doctor puts some disinfectant wipe on it, and it heals, how much credit goes to the doctor, and how much to the body? Biology is still very much a mystery and "ununderstood." Yes, we're making progress toward that eternal life, "understood" stage
There really isn't a free market business case for it. People go to space simply to make living under unlivable conditions a status quo. If you can live in the vacuum of free space only on sunshine, fully recycling all the excrements into reusable things, you can almost make it no matter what. Living in space is a safety thing for life from Earth against a global catastrophy, such as an asteroid hit, anoter world war, nuclear holocaust, etc. You never know. There is really no free market for safety and security, unless the unthinkable happens, and then comes the should have, would have, but didn't. Maybe next time. If there is always a next time. Next time I'm not gonna keep all my eggs in the same basket. But going to space is not gonna solve a whole lot of issues, especially security issues, such as developing AI that is smarter than us, and hunts us. Space is no hiding place from stronger intelligence, should it be carnivore. But it does help some things.
For instance, as a side benefit, in space recycling is mandatory. On Earth we may never put the resources to fully recycle, because there is no free market business case for it. It's always cheaper to litter your environment full of trash and forget about it than have to take care of it right now. Being in space would force us to immediately come up with full recycling techs, and improve them to the point where recycling almost make business sense down on Earth. Who's gonna put the resources into it down here?
The only way space can make business sense is how Formula 1 makes business sense - as a show. But space is boring. It has to be boring to be professional. Formula 1 is boring to a lot of people. But it does get quite a bit of audience, to the point where it's profitable. Unfortunately the cost of a space show dwarfs the cost of Formula 1 in comparison. It's just simply too expensive to make business sense. Like the military, if it had to be free market supported, how much would you personally donate each month from your salary to support our troops? Or what would you pay for? The labor day air show?
Actually, Windows, Office, OS X and PC's will be a thing of the past. All we'll have will be cellphones, or cell-phone like devices, with unprogrammable and mysterious features to the user, which refuse to boot without a sim card and a functioning network connection. Then monitoring of every click is automatic, at the mercy of the corporation providing the "service". Why do you think Apple is coming up with all these permanently connected gadgets? You want freedom of computing? Standalone PC's will be banned. GNU and personal computing rights are irrelevant on my Nokia or Samsung with built in Bluetooth and megapixel cameras. The monthly fees are not. It's hard to ask for a monthly fee for a traditional PC, so it will be slowly eliminated from the market by market forces that see making more money on monthly fees than one time user licenses. Get your PC's while they are available. Vintage models without a built-in kill date are preferred. What is this world coming to? Total centralized control?
I blame the university professors for java proliferation, not Gosling. He just meant well, but the checks and balances failed. And once the purist university professors so far removed from the real world settled on this abstraction bloat as core curriculum, MS had to follow suit by creating dotnet. MS did not have a choice. I think the general industry that purchases computer services and hires computer scientists needs to lobby the government to mandate passing a standard computer hardware architecture/assembler/C programming core exam, before awarding a BS in computer science or even an MCSE. Assembler knowledge is crucial. Whip out good old Borland Turbo C++ 3.1, and MSDOS hardware access. Which is how universities still teach computer science in India. Even in 2010. The basics are important. I'm thankful to my university engineering professor for teaching me how to measure flowrate with a bucket and stopwatch. The basics are everything.
Btw, MS is not guilty of java or dotnet, but they are guilty of sabotaging and overcomplicating access to the hardware by the programmer, including mandatory driver registration fees. Soon if you want to run any program, even a "Hello World", you'll have to purchase a run-permit from MS. Or Verisign. In the name of security. In a world where Windows refuses to run without an internet connection, without an umbilical cord to the MS servers, to where it constantly uploads a "nonpersonally identifiable" GUID history of clicks and typing actions. Because the only way to secure computing is to watch over and monitor every click and keypress anyone in the world is doing. How else can we trust that they are not about to write yet another virus?
And an ounce has always meant 28 grams. More exactly, depending on what you exactly mean by an ounce. It can be an international avoirdupois ounce 28.35g, International troy ounce or Apothecaries' ounce 31.10 g, Maria Theresa ounce 28.07g, Dutch metric ounce 100g, Chinese metric ounce 50g. Unless of course you mean volume, not weight, and then 1 ounce is 28 ml. More exactly, 1 imperial ounce is 28.41 ml, the US customary ounce is 29.57 ml, while the US Food labeling ounce is 30 ml. All these are roughly 28 for most practical purposes, which is close enough to 30, except for the Dutch and Chinese "metric" variations.
Also, metamaterials only work for a special range of wavelengths, comparable to the feature/aperture size of the metamaterial. If that range covers the full optical range, objects can be made invisible to human eyes, but not to short wavelength xrays/gamma rays, or even long wavelength radar/terahertz/infrared. Another way to have invisible objects is complete darkness, but infrared goggles that collect the emitted thermal radiation work in the dark too.
If they had many layers of metamaterials, each targeted for a different range of wavelengths, then the topmost layer would still be visible in one of the ranges covered by the lower layers. It would need a special material that covers any and all frequencies at the same time. Things that have features, but are scale independent, that is zooming in and zooming out preserves the features and appearance, are called fractals.
This is why I never moved on past Windows 2000. You can't stop XP from phoning home, and getting your computer remotely messed up. I had a laptop that came with Vista, downgraded to XP, remembered why I used to never like XP back in the day, downgraded to Win2k, installed Lighthouse puppy 4.12c, for a taste of difference, dual boot with grub. Now lighthouse puppy is getting crappy too, as of 4.3. You can tell from the default green font color in the terminal - it burns blind spots in your eyes. And similar, as usual, retarded decidions. Look at knoppix, where it used to be at version 3.6, and where it is today. Messed up on purpose. But for now, old version of puppy Linux. Misses a whole lot of things you take for granted on unix, such as multiuser accounts. But it's superfast reinstall - just change grub's menu.lst, and start a new personal file. OS Reinstall complete by typing 3 letters into a config file - fresh system, as the personal file is layered over the OS file that does not change. I loves it. Can't say that about a Win2k reinstall, but at least Win2k doesn't need MS's approval to get reinstalled. The last one. So through better or worse, it's linux now, or something like it. And who knows what the future brings.
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A few corrections are due here: PNG is not exactly GNU PNG, but close enough in stance and philosophy to be called sibling-like related. PNG originally stood for "PNG is Not Gif." It is an internet phenomenon, like Linux and most "free" software, it was developed by volunteers in 1995 as soon as the submarine patents on Gif's surfaced, to be a patentless, open and "free" replacement to royalty demaning Gif's. Moreover MS did not "flock" to PNG, they were even a bit sluggish with the adoption. They may in fact have licensed GIF, and simply added PNG support because of the technological superiority to GIF's. Nevertheless the lessons learned in PNG vs. Gif might be interesting in regards to H264. Of course there is a way to mysteriously take out and make disappear all the developers who exhibit volunteering tendencies, and these days, the same PNG vs. GIF might go down differently, with all those freedom-touting voices gone. Lots of people die mysterious deaths, suddenly, unexpectedly and very young. These days.
You know paper books are on the way to getting banned, when toilet paper culture is changed to bidet's, where water is considered a renewable resource but paper is not. As long as I can take comfort in taking a reassuring peak that there is a roll of toilet paper right next to me, as I'm reading, I don't have to worry about book paper in front of me being legally banned, even if that "book" is an LCD screen for now, and traditional, "antique" paper books are hard to come by.
Oh and guess what.. I don't have much of a life, but I can say that I have been able to abstain from watching a single DVD movie so far. Ever since DVD's appeared on the scene. Because of the gargantuan copyright crap they instilled into it. I don't care what anyone else does, it's their business, but it's not for me. I've watched VHS tapes, quite a few, that my "bum" friend showed on his VCR, a few years ago, "unbum-like-ly" careful not to show a DVD, and parading gutted tapedecks from the 70's as DJ mixing rigs. I don't know what's right or wrong about intellectual property, I can't tell others what to do, but I can make a choice on what I do and don't do. And then everyone is free to live their life as they please, as long as they let me be the way I wanna be too. Oh, and, even though my father was an alcoholic, I've been able to abstain from alcohol, I drink a sip here and there, but have never got drunk. Have I said I don't have a life? How about trying to abstain from Windows or Apple, or any proprietary computer systems? It's extremely difficult, especially when the hardware you buy only has windows drivers provided, and the devices is lobotomized, and most of the functions are implemented in software. I still keep good old Windows 2000 around, but I realize its days are numbered too. I have a cellphone, but I don't enjoy it, because it's not hackable, I don't feel like it's mine. It's full of secrets. I open it, use it, done with it, put it away. Same with a car, use it, done with it, but don't get the intellectual joy of hotrodders out of it, like they used to back in the days, that tinkle, sparkle in the eye kind of joy. The only joy in the computer and computer like things comes where I'm free on it, in things like Linux/Freedos or assembler. But I know these days are numbered too, and there will be a point in time, where I'll simply open up a computer, get whatever needs to get done, done, and close it off. It will be no source of excitement. The fallback for now is hardcopy books. Like Newton had them. When paper books are banned, to save trees, or burned, like the inquisition used to burn forbidden texts, because they contained "unmanaged", "raw" text, and only Kindle-like devices are allowed, where how long you spend on each page is monitored by da man, to make sure you're not reading or thinking something illegal, that you do not exhibit any statistical criminal thought patterns, in the name of public safety and security, when that time comes, I guess I'll have to give up reading too. I don't know what the heck I'll do then, but I hope that will be after my time.
Analog will be soon banned/phased out. Because it represents the old mentality where you can listen to unmetered programming, and are free to make a recording with a tape deck. Where intellectual property is regarded as a temporary reward, an incentive to enhance creativity, and remove secrecy, but ultimately everything is meant to enter the public domain, as soon as further prolonging of property terms does not sufficiently enhance initial creativity, or release of private knowledge, private secrets into public domain. Recording radio programming with a tapedeck? Are you out of your mind? These days such violations of intellectual property laws, even the mere thought of copying any information, let alone it "eventually" entering public domain, have to be eradicated from the minds of people. These days we have to convert to a system where every time you start up the radio you click an accept button, that you agree that all content coming through it is owned by da man, for da man, and only for da man, and only by his grace and infinite kindness are you allowed to listen to any of this wonder and amazement for such a low low introductory monthly rate. Otherwise you're considered a heretic/pirate/thief, who probably just expects to get everything for free in life, and not have to pay for it. There is no such thing as a free lunch.
Well, they say the best thing in life are free: sunshine, air, love, mothertongue, and it used to be the radio, you "payed for it" by being subjected to advertising, but now you'll get advertising + you have to pay for it in cold cash too. We can start with the radio first, while x-ing off all those things from the list of best things in life are free. Well, at least you have the option not to listen to the radio, like I do, or not to buy the radio programming decryption monthly card, the kind they sell for satellite tv programming. And life is still good. I can personally attest to that - I have not watched tv, nor have I turned on my car radio for 2 years now. Ok, here and there, but I don't miss it at all. When you have to start paying for the sunshine and air you consume, because it's owned by da man, it's gonna be very difficult to live happily without those things. Oh, by the way, since last February 2009, over a year now, I've been vegetarian, and doing just fine. Well, I did eat meat here and there, like pepperoni pizza, or company burger cookout, but I can go on fine without it, I don't miss it at all.
Space is no hiding place from an artificial AI with stronger intelligence than humans, that's full steam ahead to getting developped, and it's practically impossible to avoid. There is talk about the "awakening" of the universe, how that era is unavoidable, how everything is going to be interconnected and intelligent like a Borg cube. Where does such a world leave humans? Humans may be fugitives from hunters with stronger AI than them, similar to how deer and rabbits run from us. But even deer and rabbits can escape, if they hide sufficiently well - stronger AI does not automatically mean total domination. In the jungle there are predators and prey, and having the status of prey or even a nuisance, does not automatically mean extinction. Humans, through their own monkeying, will almost inevitably create robotic beings higher up the foodchain than themselves. If not in 50 years, then in 50 million. It's only a matter of time. Under such circumstances one has to come to terms with no longer being on top, with being prey, and act accordingly. Empty space is no hiding place from strong AI, but the depths of Jupiter's hydrogen ocean, the thick clouds of Venus, and especially the deep oceans of Earth, could be. Just as we don't go and try to hunt down every deer and rabbit there is in the world, stronger AI beings may decide it's not worth it to seek us out under difficult circumstances. One still has to beware "cleansing" of areas similar to how we cleanse the ocean of all vertebrate life with our super efficient fishing nets. AI might do such a thing, and places we though were good hiding places, might end up on their radar screen, and that's bad luck for us. By analogy, we don't hunt hienas and sharks for food, we share the world with them going after the same food, but if they get caught in the way, or in our fishing nets, that's bad luck for them. The good strategy of prey, or lower on the foodchain predator, is to strive to stay off the radar screen of the top predator. Sometimes simple camouflage works, not because it's super efficient and super smart, but it's good enough to be not worth the effort to seek. But all one needs is an infrared camera on a cold night, and all of the sudden camouflaging beings glow. So one can try, but outsmarting, out-tricking the defense tricks may be retardedly simplistic. But there are certain things, such as how some snake venom's work, how life works, that's a mystery to us, there are certain things that even stronger AI than us would not know, understand and control. Just because they'd be smarter, it does not mean they would know everything. Unless they keep creating smarter AI, turning themselves into prey too, to the point where basic laws of physics might be changed, and we'd see really strange space warping ball lightning phenomena maybe more frequently, and just try to stay out of the way. Maybe, unlike to Moore's law, there may be a natural ceiling to intelligence, something we cannot understand why right now, and then everything might be in equilibrium, humans down from the top of the food chain 3 levels or 5 levels, or something similar. If anything, one would hope that the higher intelligence AI will value variety and natural conservation, and view us as integral part of their ecosystem, and maintain our population. However climate control of the Earth, to make sure it keeps functioning well, would probably end up in their hands.
NASA is doing the right thing by exploring Captain Nemo worlds. The barren surface of the Moon, Mars, and the emptiness of space is not a security zone to hide and ensure the survival of humanity in face of stronger AI, but underground tunnels on the Moon, Mars, deep waters of Earth, thick clouds and unforgiving climates of Venus may be. The worse and more unforgiving a zone is for comfortable life, the more security it poses in view of it being less tempting as a resource to higher AI. Extremophile bacteria can survive in regular environments too, but should they be under extreme attack, they can also survive in places where no other beings can go after them.
I use it to watch youtube on puppy linux. The nice thing about puppy linux is the layered filesystem, to where a reinstall is as simple as starting a new personal file, as the OS layer never changes.
Btw, I forgot to mention how MS flocked to the GNU PNG image format as soon as they were assaulted with patent lawsuits over Unisys' LZW GIF patents. That's all we need to do with H264 too, come up with an equivalent or even better open codec.
Yes it took money, time and effort to come up with the GIF LZW format, same with the GNU PNG format. Did MS consider the harm they did to Unisys by not paying them the fees they wanted to collect, and instead blatantly using someone else's work, for free, without paying them a dime? Can they at least show a donation to nonprofit GNU on their tax deduction, as a fair compensation and retribution for coming up with PNG, equivalent or at least comparative to what they truly deserve for that work?
There is FUD for people to identify HTML5 with H264. The W3 would never push a proprietary technology, but they can condone the behavior of MS and Apple spreading FUD, and brainwashing people into thinking HTML5 is H264, and nothing else. It really comes down to the "de facto" "status quo" of the future, because theoretically you may use open video codecs, but if any websites do so they are bought out/taken down/assaulted/blown up by mysterious circumstances, if the only type of video content coming from the web is through proprietary codecs, then what does it matter if you still have "theoretical freedoms?" It's kind of like the Bill of Rights anymore - slowly reduced to theoretical freedoms instead of practical ones from 50-100 years ago, because in the real world, you either can't afford them anymore, or there are other catch 22's.
It causes harm to the patent owners not being able to push it as the one and only standard, and then fully locking down all video content in the world. As long as there are other video formats to convert to, any patent assault simply creates a mass exodus. So this is a preemptive move to an oncoming showdown. They are growing frustrated at the inability to jerk the rest of the world around and tell them to pay up, so now we get abuses like this:using monopoly in one domain to gain monopoly in another. This is what happens when the Microsoft-Apple-etc. IP Consortium gets full monopoly, pretending to be straw-man competition to each other: All your content are belong to us, either to me, or my cousin right over here. So payup mofos. Maffiozo style. What changes in the world from yesteryear?
By the way, I was born in a commie block country where we only had one government provided car model, stuck in the 50's design, the only difference being the color, if you were looking for variety. With a 7 year waiting list. The statistical planning committee of the 5 year communist economic congress has come to the conclusion that only manufacturing "the best", "the most efficient", and "most economical" car model cuts down on economic waste. All they had to do was weigh the pros and cons and vote on what this best thing for everyone is, and then there is no reason to make anything else that's "suboptimal." All knowing, all wise, omnipotent infinite wisdom. With pHd's in Economics from the top universities of Moscow, decorated with 50 golden stars, party achievement awards. Making everybody drive a shitty car stuck in the 1950's. Then the Berlin wall came down, and the Glasnosty and Perestroika were done with. Call it whatever you want, the car sux a fat one. I don't care about your ideology, if the stuff I'm sitting in sux, and don't tell me there isn't anything better, because I see you, Mr. Party official, ride around in a black Mercedes Benz. You don't even believe your own preaching, but you're telling me the car I'm sitting in is what the pHd economic summit committee declared as optimal. You know what, let's change, you ride around in this car, and let me ride around in that non-committee non-mandatory, customer-focus-driven, customer-picked free market produced, through all that "waste" of "unsuccessfull" models that were comparatively suboptimal.
Come to the USA, there are many cars. No waiting lists. Arguably some cars are "better" than others, just like some video codecs are better than others, but there is a "price" you pay for "better" such as losing some freedoms that things like a Theora codec would provide. I abhor any kind of totalitarian centralized control. I love the jungle, the variety.
Have you heard of Farmville? It's a major time waster. But it's cheap. Cheaper than ordering cable, for instance. Sometimes you have to find ways to keep busy just to make ends meet. I know every time I leave the house and go somewhere other than work, I'm out of at least 20 bux.
Besides software patents being stupid, at least Adobe provides a Linux version of Flash, and any kind of patent bs issues are handled by them. Though I have no idea what flash does in the background while it's running on my computer, it could be screwing me totally. So open source is welcome, to inspect what the heck is going on, but I hope Google provides an h264 linux codec to linux, and fight the total bs patent battles with the armies of marketroid lawyers from MS and the like, and shield me from any such harassment and abuses. Or they create a patentless codec to use on their youtube, the likes of ogg instead of mp3 and the myriad of other proprietary formats coming from ms and apple, all wanting to hijack the standard, and milk the internet cow for themselves.
If anything, Adobe positioned themselves in a spot - establishing a proprietary standard over the so far open and free internet - that both MS and Apple are vying for. The first step is getting something proprietary or at least patented pushed onto the internet. Once people can't live without it, turn on the cash flow from it. Kind of like mp3, gif, and the likes did it - push it for free, and start asking for a fee late in the game. Adobe got through the push it for free phase, and just when it is about ready to start charging, and asking for a per-click-per-minute fee, the big boys are x-ing it out of the game very fast. They wanna do that kind of charging, but they don't wanna pay up to somebody else. Imagine the kind of money you can make when you 0wn da internet because everyone is using your patented video/display method to view everything, and they are paying to you by the minute. Can you say 1 trillion dollar yearly revenue eclipsing that posted by Exxon?
One wonders how on Earth the Internet got this far without asking for a per minute fee. I guess it's been going through that push it for free phase, kind of like drug dealers do it. The only way the internet is gonna stay free is if you can maintain ways to live without it.
Monks circumventing the language tax by taking a wov of silence, or even by naughtily inventing their own sign language instead of trespassing on someone else's sign language intellectual property, will be put into straightjackets, declared mentally ill, and put on medication that has the effects of laughing gas, to improve their clinical depression and speechlessness symptoms.
I was forced to create slides at a corporation. I pretty much lost that career over it, because I sucked at it, I hated doing the whole thing, to me it seemed like such a nonsense. I had no problem writing detailed analysis. I said I wanted to be a lab scientist, not a presentation clown. I was told if I was unwilling to get better at doing powerpoint presentations, I had no future there. I said then maybe I don't have a future there. And so it happened.
I think it's time for the pope to let Catholic priests get married, with a grown woman. How about that idea?
These days the effort to widen the grasp of intellectual property, to the point of regulating and taxing even things such as spoken language, is constantly on the table. Creation might be as simply as embrace, extend, extinguish - i.e. adding two or three words as features to an existing dictionary, thereby "creating" a new one, then extinguishing the original, and claiming property rights on the new extended on. Watch it happen to the english language, and wait til you get your language tax bill. Each language will be owned, and depending on the current prevailing "market" price, it will have a different fee. English is gonna be unaffordably pricey, Spanish will be so-so. But only Gnu/Esperanto will be possible to be spoken/written without paying a fee, unless of course you want to sign a license agreement with someone and pay that fee to them, because that's not forbidden. But you can speak/write it for free, guaranteed by the initial license. And first amendment rights will get an amendment that due to the changing socio-historical landscape, practicing it is still possible, and maintained as a right, but for free only in Esperanto, because English, the original language it was written in, has since been extended and modified enough to be owned, and there is a per-syllable fee now plus a 15% state tax surcharge for maintaining the syllable counting metering equipment ankle bracelet.
Moral relativism is one that can respect the culture of indigenous tribes, and instead learn from it.
One solution from a nuclear catastrophy is to run into outer space, and develop living capsules that withstand space radiation, something that might work down on Earth too in case of a nuclear holocaust. It's kind of sad that da Man is resorting to this, himself providing the packages to whoever wants them, because, even after 50 odd years from discovery, there still haven't been any terrorists who created one, no matter how hard da Man tried to create one by psychological manipulation. The fact is that common people with any kind of decency and common sense, like Stanislav Petrov, will not start a nuclear event, almost no matter how effortfully manipulated. It might be different if it had no effect on them, but the cost of a war on themselves, their families and kids is suicidal. This may not be the case for da Man, who might have his bunkers ready for his own family, and wants to "compete" with other people on "faster" grounds than simply slow choking them with lack of money or wars with conventional weapons. Smart enough people who can make one are unwilling to get manipulated into making one, so now Da Man's resorting to the dumb ones, who believe in things like afterlife, and 77 virgins. Da Man's been too bored and itching for some nuclear event, however everyone else's job is to stay calm, and if anything, work together on living in outer space and proliferating technology that enables living in radiation resistant capsules efficiently and cheaply, so such things are available as somewhat of an insurance against a nuclear war, to everyone, not just the very rich. The doctrine of mutually assured destruction does help in averting initiation of war, but somehow it does not seem like 100% guarantee to me.
Movie westerns have many episodes of standoffs without pulling the revolver, maintaining that balance of mutually assured destruction, but such standoffs last maybe a few minutes. In many cases, eventually, someone reaches for the gun, and then often both actors get shot, by each other, and mutually destructed. Sometimes one is quicker than the other, and shoots the gun out of the other one's hands, and nobody dies. But that kind of skill is rare. Have a western where nobody dies from gunshots, and there is no blood, because the heroes are so good and so quick, they keep shooting the guns out of other people's hands. It may all come down to fistfighting then, and manual choking, since, if one without a gun in his hand gets suicidal, and runs up against the one who still has the gun, there are two choices: shoot while he's running at you, or fist fight him when he gets there. Sometimes violence cannot be averted no matter how strong the reasoning. In such cases the really heroic way to avert violence is for the hero to run away faster, so the guy who just had the gun shot out of his hands, can't catch up with him. It's not very "manly", but it works, very simply, and effectively. So all you need is western heroes who are both highly skilled quick shooters, and very fast runners. Or have the fastest horses. And to top it all off, they are vegetarian. Not very "manly," I know, but at least as a western humorous parody it might work.
We're still playing around in the dark, quite a bit. What about the monkeying around that does not succeed and results in rejections? When I hear a transplant nonrejection rate of 99.99%, then you can claim you know what you're doing, exactly. Biology is very complex, and we're playing Russian roulette a lot of the time, simply because the other option of not playing Russian roulette is even worse. There is still a lot of people dying of cancer. And of old age. Unfortunately when you fully figured out with full confidence how life works, you can also fight off old age and create eternal life. And that brings about a whole set of other problems, such as no room/resources to have children. Even with certain death there is an issue of overpopulation, and then with certain eternal life, there simply cannot be new generations. That's what medicine is about : fighting death, but without being too successful, because if it can succeed 100% in fighting off death, then we have the problems of eternal life. In essence everyone dies of something, not old age, but something, like pneumonia, cancer, heart attack - and the field of medicine is "unable" to cure the problem in each instance. I have yet to see one person that lives over 500 years. Otherwise everyone dies of some disease, or malfunction, or some "natural causes" that we have no idea what it was even let alone being able to fix it. Yes, there are temporary miracles, but full understanding and full control of what happens, including certain and assured success of cure, yields eternal life. We're making steady progress toward that scary eternal life, but the role of medicine these days is more of a hold your hand in time of hardship, and pick the gambles for you that hopefully will do more good than bad. In the end, you will still die of something. The body deteriorates. It's programmed to deteriorate, to give room to the next generation, which is a faster and more efficient way for life to adapt than eternal life. It's how life works, at least how eukaryote life works. Bacteria you could say live forever by division, but the way plants, animals and people "live" is by programmed death. You fix that and then you can claim you have mastery of what goes down in biology. In the meantime you're taking your chances, at least to some degree. And by the way, most of the miracle is performed by your own body, not by the doctors. When there is a wound, and the doctor puts some disinfectant wipe on it, and it heals, how much credit goes to the doctor, and how much to the body? Biology is still very much a mystery and "ununderstood." Yes, we're making progress toward that eternal life, "understood" stage
There really isn't a free market business case for it. People go to space simply to make living under unlivable conditions a status quo. If you can live in the vacuum of free space only on sunshine, fully recycling all the excrements into reusable things, you can almost make it no matter what. Living in space is a safety thing for life from Earth against a global catastrophy, such as an asteroid hit, anoter world war, nuclear holocaust, etc. You never know. There is really no free market for safety and security, unless the unthinkable happens, and then comes the should have, would have, but didn't. Maybe next time. If there is always a next time. Next time I'm not gonna keep all my eggs in the same basket. But going to space is not gonna solve a whole lot of issues, especially security issues, such as developing AI that is smarter than us, and hunts us. Space is no hiding place from stronger intelligence, should it be carnivore. But it does help some things.
For instance, as a side benefit, in space recycling is mandatory. On Earth we may never put the resources to fully recycle, because there is no free market business case for it. It's always cheaper to litter your environment full of trash and forget about it than have to take care of it right now. Being in space would force us to immediately come up with full recycling techs, and improve them to the point where recycling almost make business sense down on Earth. Who's gonna put the resources into it down here?
The only way space can make business sense is how Formula 1 makes business sense - as a show. But space is boring. It has to be boring to be professional. Formula 1 is boring to a lot of people. But it does get quite a bit of audience, to the point where it's profitable. Unfortunately the cost of a space show dwarfs the cost of Formula 1 in comparison. It's just simply too expensive to make business sense. Like the military, if it had to be free market supported, how much would you personally donate each month from your salary to support our troops? Or what would you pay for? The labor day air show?
Actually, Windows, Office, OS X and PC's will be a thing of the past. All we'll have will be cellphones, or cell-phone like devices, with unprogrammable and mysterious features to the user, which refuse to boot without a sim card and a functioning network connection. Then monitoring of every click is automatic, at the mercy of the corporation providing the "service". Why do you think Apple is coming up with all these permanently connected gadgets? You want freedom of computing? Standalone PC's will be banned. GNU and personal computing rights are irrelevant on my Nokia or Samsung with built in Bluetooth and megapixel cameras. The monthly fees are not. It's hard to ask for a monthly fee for a traditional PC, so it will be slowly eliminated from the market by market forces that see making more money on monthly fees than one time user licenses. Get your PC's while they are available. Vintage models without a built-in kill date are preferred. What is this world coming to? Total centralized control?
I blame the university professors for java proliferation, not Gosling. He just meant well, but the checks and balances failed. And once the purist university professors so far removed from the real world settled on this abstraction bloat as core curriculum, MS had to follow suit by creating dotnet. MS did not have a choice. I think the general industry that purchases computer services and hires computer scientists needs to lobby the government to mandate passing a standard computer hardware architecture/assembler/C programming core exam, before awarding a BS in computer science or even an MCSE. Assembler knowledge is crucial. Whip out good old Borland Turbo C++ 3.1, and MSDOS hardware access. Which is how universities still teach computer science in India. Even in 2010. The basics are important. I'm thankful to my university engineering professor for teaching me how to measure flowrate with a bucket and stopwatch. The basics are everything.
Btw, MS is not guilty of java or dotnet, but they are guilty of sabotaging and overcomplicating access to the hardware by the programmer, including mandatory driver registration fees. Soon if you want to run any program, even a "Hello World", you'll have to purchase a run-permit from MS. Or Verisign. In the name of security. In a world where Windows refuses to run without an internet connection, without an umbilical cord to the MS servers, to where it constantly uploads a "nonpersonally identifiable" GUID history of clicks and typing actions. Because the only way to secure computing is to watch over and monitor every click and keypress anyone in the world is doing. How else can we trust that they are not about to write yet another virus?
Hahaha.. what a good joke. You hit the nail on the head about java and dotnet. How much more retaded can it get?
I recommend we use the oz-bit measure instead, and depending on whether it's unicode or ascii, you can can 28.35 or 28.41 bytes/oz.
And an ounce has always meant 28 grams. More exactly, depending on what you exactly mean by an ounce. It can be an international avoirdupois ounce 28.35g, International troy ounce or Apothecaries' ounce 31.10 g, Maria Theresa ounce 28.07g, Dutch metric ounce 100g, Chinese metric ounce 50g. Unless of course you mean volume, not weight, and then 1 ounce is 28 ml. More exactly, 1 imperial ounce is 28.41 ml, the US customary ounce is 29.57 ml, while the US Food labeling ounce is 30 ml. All these are roughly 28 for most practical purposes, which is close enough to 30, except for the Dutch and Chinese "metric" variations.
Also, metamaterials only work for a special range of wavelengths, comparable to the feature/aperture size of the metamaterial. If that range covers the full optical range, objects can be made invisible to human eyes, but not to short wavelength xrays/gamma rays, or even long wavelength radar/terahertz/infrared. Another way to have invisible objects is complete darkness, but infrared goggles that collect the emitted thermal radiation work in the dark too. If they had many layers of metamaterials, each targeted for a different range of wavelengths, then the topmost layer would still be visible in one of the ranges covered by the lower layers. It would need a special material that covers any and all frequencies at the same time. Things that have features, but are scale independent, that is zooming in and zooming out preserves the features and appearance, are called fractals.
This is why I never moved on past Windows 2000. You can't stop XP from phoning home, and getting your computer remotely messed up. I had a laptop that came with Vista, downgraded to XP, remembered why I used to never like XP back in the day, downgraded to Win2k, installed Lighthouse puppy 4.12c, for a taste of difference, dual boot with grub. Now lighthouse puppy is getting crappy too, as of 4.3. You can tell from the default green font color in the terminal - it burns blind spots in your eyes. And similar, as usual, retarded decidions. Look at knoppix, where it used to be at version 3.6, and where it is today. Messed up on purpose. But for now, old version of puppy Linux. Misses a whole lot of things you take for granted on unix, such as multiuser accounts. But it's superfast reinstall - just change grub's menu.lst, and start a new personal file. OS Reinstall complete by typing 3 letters into a config file - fresh system, as the personal file is layered over the OS file that does not change. I loves it. Can't say that about a Win2k reinstall, but at least Win2k doesn't need MS's approval to get reinstalled. The last one. So through better or worse, it's linux now, or something like it. And who knows what the future brings.