What would be great is if everybody started moving to the LSB so that you could use virtually ANY Linux on the hardware.
This crap where all you need is a different variation on software packaging and you have a different operating system has GOT to stop.
People keep buying books as a form of entertainment and they have the same resolution as they did a millennium ago.
Games like Jade Empire and Knights of the Old Repbulic show that story can be an important part of the gamming experience. I list these two because I am an RPG fan. Games like Halo and Half-life have shown that FPS style games can have rewarding plots as well.
Also, I don't think people will want to play photorealistic games outside of certain genres.
I understand you point. My feelings are more along the lines of separating "data" and "commands", which has been the basis for modern computing anyway.
In this way you could use the whistles (or grunts, or whatever else) to generate commands while your native language is used for data. This is much the same way that string literals are separated from programming statements in languages like C.
In the case of voice print ID, they don't really looks at what you say, but try and match the sound patterns to a prerecorded password. This would not change at all. You wouldn't use a whistle, you could use an audible literal just like your current password is a string literal.
I think the assumption you are making is that NLP and SR have to convey the same amount of information to a computer as speach does to a human being.
In programming you have literal values for things like text strings that don't modify the semantics of your program. The rest of the program, following the syntax of some language (like C), is all that the computer needs to understand what you want it to do. Notice that the syntax for your common programming language are quite terse (needfully so).
If your native tongue (assume english) can represent the literals, then why can't something else represent the commands? As far as learning another language goes, you've already learned one to control the computer you have now. Or does:
rm -rf /
suddenly mean something in english? I am suggesting a spoken equivalent that deviates from English in such a way that ambiguities and such are removed from the commmand language while the literal language can be unmodified.
I appreciate your comments, you are one of the only people to even consider the question.
Yeah. I had reservations about posting this for exactly the reasons you stated. The Star Wars reference was just the first thing I thought of while imagining people communicating in Silbo.
As far as natural language processing goes. I am a Computer Scientist. Just like any other engineer or scientist I get inspiration from many places. Natural language processing has always been a fascination of mine. There are problems with machines interpreting natural languages like english. I was just trying to point out that maybe there is an alternate avenue here; a langauge that we speak so that the machine can understand us.
You are making the assumption that Open is always better than closed. If I write a closed source OS that is faster, more stable, and better overall than Linux or *BSD, then why shouldn't I be able to market it as a closed system? If people want to use it then they will, whether it is closed or not.
Second of all, is making everyone choose OSS somehow less of a monopoly? Also, don't give me all that choice of distro crap. Slackware isn't that far away from Red Hat, which isn't that far away from SuSE, which isn't that far away from [take your pick]
A different package management system and a different default GNOME theme don't make a new operating system. They just add a different spin on the same operating system.
I am not pro MS. In fact I am not pro Linux, or even pro Apple. I am all about the right choice for the particular job. Sometimes that choice is MS.
"What was that about choice?"
Well, simply put: You've eliminated the choice of using MS Windows. It isn't impossible to imagine a situation where MS Windows is the better solution.
How can eliminating choice be a good thing?
Everyone always complains about MS being a monopoly and how limiting it is to only have a single choice when you buy a computer. Does that complaint somehow become invalid when the choice is an open source product?
This doesn't stop piracy by the way, the chinese can still install a pirated version of windows on their machine after purchasing it.
Way to go math wiz. Lets do some quick calculations:
Record at the iTunes music store: $9.99
Number of Indie records: 50,000
ir = 50,000 * 9.99 = $499,500
Number of major records: 500,000
mr = 500,000 * 9.99 = $4,995,000
WOW! The wonderful power of multiplication allows my ignorant eyes to see that I would make an order of magnitude more money selling an order of magnitude more items that ARE ALL THE SAME PRICE!
My only comment on this is to say: Independant record labels are still independant because not enough people like or listen to their music.
If you look at what happens in the music industry, almost every famous artist is a rags to riches story. Some are manufacture, true, but for the most part the cream rises.
The reason everything sounds the same in, oh lets say 10 year blocks, is because the major labels all want to capitalize on that sound before the next new thing comes along.
It doesn't serve Apple, or any other online music seller's, adgenda to put a lot of indy music on their servers. Most of it will collect dust and never pay for itself. Anyone that makes the case of "oh, everything should be happy fuzzy and the company should cater to every possible user taste" simply has no idea how business works.
All companies are niche companies, some niches are just a lot larger than others.
seems to be what everyone is focused on (or rather Apple's lack of it). I don't think the fact that there were other online music stores available for windows prior to Apple's launch of iTunes for Windows is a big deal. It isn't like once you pick a service you can't use any of the others. Most of them don't have subscriptions.
Since iTunes for Windows will be (presumably) free to download and try why wouldn't someone give it a try for $.99?
If they like the experience, then they will come back. Simple as that. All that anyone can do is hope that Apple's user experience is better than the competition. I have faith that it will be.
No matter which service dominates the online music store it is a good thing for every consumer. This new revolution in legitimate online music will force the record industry to adapt to consumer demand.
Slashdot Mirror
As long as they keep GDI+ I'll be happy...
What would be great is if everybody started moving to the LSB so that you could use virtually ANY Linux on the hardware. This crap where all you need is a different variation on software packaging and you have a different operating system has GOT to stop.
They would sell more mice if they didn't name them after poisonous serpents. What? Are they trying to scare the other mice away?
Just another large corporation laying people off so they can offshore to India. Ref: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/23/192424 4&tid=99
Obviously not in a numerical sense, but it seems like an apt enough analogy.
People keep buying books as a form of entertainment and they have the same resolution as they did a millennium ago.
Games like Jade Empire and Knights of the Old Repbulic show that story can be an important part of the gamming experience. I list these two because I am an RPG fan. Games like Halo and Half-life have shown that FPS style games can have rewarding plots as well.
Also, I don't think people will want to play photorealistic games outside of certain genres.
I understand you point. My feelings are more along the lines of separating "data" and "commands", which has been the basis for modern computing anyway.
In this way you could use the whistles (or grunts, or whatever else) to generate commands while your native language is used for data. This is much the same way that string literals are separated from programming statements in languages like C.
In the case of voice print ID, they don't really looks at what you say, but try and match the sound patterns to a prerecorded password. This would not change at all. You wouldn't use a whistle, you could use an audible literal just like your current password is a string literal.
I think the assumption you are making is that NLP and SR have to convey the same amount of information to a computer as speach does to a human being.
In programming you have literal values for things like text strings that don't modify the semantics of your program. The rest of the program, following the syntax of some language (like C), is all that the computer needs to understand what you want it to do. Notice that the syntax for your common programming language are quite terse (needfully so).
If your native tongue (assume english) can represent the literals, then why can't something else represent the commands? As far as learning another language goes, you've already learned one to control the computer you have now. Or does:
rm -rf /
suddenly mean something in english? I am suggesting a spoken equivalent that deviates from English in such a way that ambiguities and such are removed from the commmand language while the literal language can be unmodified.
I appreciate your comments, you are one of the only people to even consider the question.
Yeah. I had reservations about posting this for exactly the reasons you stated. The Star Wars reference was just the first thing I thought of while imagining people communicating in Silbo.
As far as natural language processing goes. I am a Computer Scientist. Just like any other engineer or scientist I get inspiration from many places. Natural language processing has always been a fascination of mine. There are problems with machines interpreting natural languages like english. I was just trying to point out that maybe there is an alternate avenue here; a langauge that we speak so that the machine can understand us.
You are making the assumption that Open is always better than closed. If I write a closed source OS that is faster, more stable, and better overall than Linux or *BSD, then why shouldn't I be able to market it as a closed system? If people want to use it then they will, whether it is closed or not.
First of all it is a choice none the less.
Second of all, is making everyone choose OSS somehow less of a monopoly? Also, don't give me all that choice of distro crap. Slackware isn't that far away from Red Hat, which isn't that far away from SuSE, which isn't that far away from [take your pick]
A different package management system and a different default GNOME theme don't make a new operating system. They just add a different spin on the same operating system.
I am not pro MS. In fact I am not pro Linux, or even pro Apple. I am all about the right choice for the particular job. Sometimes that choice is MS.
"What was that about choice?" Well, simply put: You've eliminated the choice of using MS Windows. It isn't impossible to imagine a situation where MS Windows is the better solution.
How can eliminating choice be a good thing? Everyone always complains about MS being a monopoly and how limiting it is to only have a single choice when you buy a computer. Does that complaint somehow become invalid when the choice is an open source product? This doesn't stop piracy by the way, the chinese can still install a pirated version of windows on their machine after purchasing it.
Way to go math wiz. Lets do some quick calculations:
Record at the iTunes music store: $9.99
Number of Indie records: 50,000
ir = 50,000 * 9.99 = $499,500
Number of major records: 500,000
mr = 500,000 * 9.99 = $4,995,000
WOW! The wonderful power of multiplication allows my ignorant eyes to see that I would make an order of magnitude more money selling an order of magnitude more items that ARE ALL THE SAME PRICE!
My only comment on this is to say: Independant record labels are still independant because not enough people like or listen to their music. If you look at what happens in the music industry, almost every famous artist is a rags to riches story. Some are manufacture, true, but for the most part the cream rises. The reason everything sounds the same in, oh lets say 10 year blocks, is because the major labels all want to capitalize on that sound before the next new thing comes along. It doesn't serve Apple, or any other online music seller's, adgenda to put a lot of indy music on their servers. Most of it will collect dust and never pay for itself. Anyone that makes the case of "oh, everything should be happy fuzzy and the company should cater to every possible user taste" simply has no idea how business works. All companies are niche companies, some niches are just a lot larger than others.
seems to be what everyone is focused on (or rather Apple's lack of it). I don't think the fact that there were other online music stores available for windows prior to Apple's launch of iTunes for Windows is a big deal. It isn't like once you pick a service you can't use any of the others. Most of them don't have subscriptions.
Since iTunes for Windows will be (presumably) free to download and try why wouldn't someone give it a try for $.99?
If they like the experience, then they will come back. Simple as that. All that anyone can do is hope that Apple's user experience is better than the competition. I have faith that it will be.
No matter which service dominates the online music store it is a good thing for every consumer. This new revolution in legitimate online music will force the record industry to adapt to consumer demand.