Hear hear! If there's a SlashFilmMakers site out there, I'll bet that in their "Your Rights Online", there's an article about how the geeks on/. want to limit their right to free expression.
I would, however, suggest that there might be a nice way for "me, too!" filmmakers to make it clear that they are simply building on others' work, so that nobody is fooled into thinking that some lost work of PKD has been found and turned into a movie.
I figure the prequel was already made... AI: Artificial Intelligence. And yes, it was one of the worst movies EVAR.
IANAPhysicist, but my understanding is that while light speed is still an issue in physical space, the information sharing is truly instantaneous in this sort of quantum entanglement. It's not a short delay as light travels that distance, but instantaneous.
I think the way to think of it is this: there's another (or maybe many other) dimensions in the universe that our feeble minds can't perceive. They still exist, though, and things that may appear to be far apart in space (or even time-space) may be right next to each other in these other dimensions.
So when asking if there is a necessary delay due to the speed of light, you might be asking the wrong question, since it may seem like the light has to travel great distances across time-space from our perception, but across dimension N, it's right there.
My metaphor is flawed here, but when standing on UC Berkeley campus, it's a looooong way to the Transamerica Pyramid in SF if you go east, not so bad if you go WSW.
I remember back at my old job at an ISP, we had some old Apollo boxes sorting our USENET feed, packing up subscriptions for our individual and UUCP clients. We got to a point where we were doing almost 30 GB of USENET data a day (full feed, all groups), and the swapping alone was effectively killing our servers.
We got a 100 MB RAM disk for the primary processor--cost a butt-load, IIRC--but using that as the swap volume, we were able to complete everything in something like 25% of the time.
This made me think of one of OJ's scenes in the Naked Gun movie. I seem to recall tripping over furniture, falling down stairs, mouse traps, a window closing on his hand, and to top it all off, wet paint.
Any new browser really has to support user-made extensions to survive amongst the geeky, one feels
True, but the geeky, also known as the early adopters or cutting edge users, are not typically the majority of the market. In 1996, yes, in 1999, maybe, but in 2009, we're a very vocal minority.
To be honest, I'm making that call based on anecdotal data; I don't know what the real numbers are, but for most people I know or work with outside of my geek set, a custom browser is IE with the Google toolbar, or if you're a teenager, StumbleUpon.
The funny thing is that, while these browser extensions are great, most of them are functionality that *should* be in the browser anyway, and in some cases makes it into the browser. Why should I have to add a toolbar to block pop-ups? I don't anymore. To search? Not anymore. To get developer-level view into the structure and load time of the application? Slowly, those are going in, too.
What does that leave? Well, fun proprietary things like store (i.e. Amazon) toolbars, silliness like StumbleUpon, and hooks for things like web galleries and social networks. And ad blocking. That's what people in/. want the most, and it'd be very easy for IE, Apple, Mozilla and Google to add in, but of course they won't, because they don't want to kill the goose, as it were.
The only two browsers I can think of that have built in ad blocking are Opera and iCab, a German-made Mac-only browser. But those are both--if I understand correctly--closed source and are commercial software (at least they ask you to pay). I think there's another one for the Mac that's also commercial that may offer the ad blocking feature: OmniWeb, but it's been so long since I used that one that I'm not sure if that's true anymore.
To take a little tangent, I definitely recommend iCab, though, for one purpose: HTML/CSS validation. It's got everything built in, and it tells you EXACTLY what's wrong, even showing a little smiley/frowny face depending on how compliant your code is.
Totally true. Imagine if the information infrastructure were so good and so pervasive that no IT workers needed to be in an office. It's true for many who work from their homes, but I'd bet we're at the tip of the iceberg.
Good info infrastructure leading to a 40-60% reduction in commuters would mean less need for the gov't to spend money on roads, less money that people would have to spend on cars and gas, and would create a resurgence in local economies, because people would spend more money at their local cafe, rather than the Starbucks downtown near their office.
Not to say there wouldn't be fallout. Lots of low-wage jobs support people who provide maintenance for those huge (suddenly worthless) office buildings, the satellite industry around road maintenance would see reduced growth at the very least, and the auto industry would likely suffer. Of course, they're doing that on their own. Maybe GM and Chrysler should start building bicycles.
Other positives, though, would include less stressed, more balanced, healthier people (it'd probably bankrupt the healthcare industry to eliminate 2 hours of commuting from so many peoples' days), and reduced dependence on foreign oil and similar reduction of CO2 emissions.
I'm not saying info infrastructure is the be-all end-all, but man, the possibilities are huge.
Forget DVR; I just want my ATV to be able to access the free--even advertiser-supported--content on places like Hulu and even the HD content provided by the networks themselves. I'd ditch cable in a minute if I could watch Lost a day or two later without having to buy it.
I actually don't mind buying it--I've done it before--but I'd rather pay less (or nothing with advertising) and stream it rather than 2 bux an episode which is enough to make you think, "I need to archive this, rather than just throwing it away after one viewing."
And I know about Boxee. I've installed it and it works, but it kinda sucks. I'm not speaking out of school here; they must agree, since the ATV implementation is officially in alpha.
Thanks for the link; I see your point. However, it seems to me that while it may not be possible to solve for all cases, it shouldn't be impossible to solve for some common and easy-to-spot ones. I haven't read the whole W'pedia entry so please forgive me if there's a flaw in my thinking, but for a bug that seemed so obvious to lots of armchair developers who looked at it, you'd think there'd be some sort of preprocessor which could provide a warning.
I don't write all that much code these days, but aren't there tools out there that might flag a loop with such a clear case where an infinite loop might occur? This is the kind of thing that people shouldn't have to be thinking about, if it can be automated.
Y'know, some robot should have been waving its arms around yelling, "Danger, danger, Will Robinson!"
"Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote. Those rights are spelled out in the Bill of Rights and in our California Constitution. Voters and politicians alike would do well to take a look at the rights we each hold, which must never be chipped away by the whim of the majority."
I absolutely agree with this, and I think it parallels my statements which you classified as being "way off the mark". Your inclusion of the part about the well-armed sheep changes the meaning entirely from the original quote, so there's no way I could be more "on the mark" about the original quote.
So, care to enlighten me as to what you mean by including the second portion which was (according to the source I read) not part of the original quote?
Well, of course it's more complex than my/. post, but, y'know, mutual attraction, having fun together, going out several times on dates in the neighborhood--she lived walking distance from some really nice restaurants--so it took a few weeks before she clambered into my car and refused, almost holding her breath like a five-year-old, to put on her seat belt.
I think she thought she had some hold over me, since she asked,"How can we keep going out if you won't let me be your passenger without a seatbelt?" I responded that it'd be OK with me as long as she didn't mind taking separate cars, and she was huffy the rest of the evening, and I don't think we had a positive conversation after that.
She was super-adorable-cute, and I think she was used to having guys cow to her. I'm a pretty flexible guy in general, but truthfully, this felt like an arbitrary line in the sand, and I wasn't about to get serious with someone who just wanted to test me.
Love your sig. Very funny, but it carries some inaccurate implications and ignores some realities.
In reality, wolves are always deciding what to have for lunch, and if they're looking at a sheep, s/he is not alone but part of a flock. It's not democracy because even if the entire flock votes against the wolves, there's no guarantee that one of them won't be taken. If the sheep really did wander off alone from the flock into the wolves' clutches, the sheep has effectively voted with the wolves, by proxy.
Freedom is what exists in reality. The wolves aren't evil or wrong. They are not dictators. They rolls their dices and takes their chances and they'll go storming into a flock, eyes on what they think is the easiest prey. That prey has the option of running, and sometimes, if it's a little one, a parent might actually face off with a wolf and scare them away (if the wolf isn't hungry/motivated enough).
And of course, if your definition of freedom is to let the sheep be well armed, then what's to stop them from oppressing the wolves? Should they be well-armed, too? In that case, two well-armed wolves could take out the sheep from a distance and still have their lunch.
Your point, I'm sure is that popular vote should not determine all things, but neither should individual destructive power. There should be a delicate and always evolving balance between the rights of the many and the rights of the few.
I'm sure Joe the Plumber would agree wholeheartedly, but the world just isn't as simple as your metaphor. To wit: Democracy is a flock of sheep and two wolves voting on what the wolves are allowed to eat. Freedom is a hungry wolf noticing a stupid lamb wandering off from un-attentive parents and thinking of her own pups starving back in the den.
I posted this above, but I think it fits here as well. Your comment about edge cases is true from a total life-saving perspective, but whether or not this is a commercial success may depend on the less extreme edge cases.
What I mean is, if they see a 10-20% reduction in deaths in Volvos, but it turns out that this causes a 10-20% increase in minor accidents (those edge cases), or if people perceive the unwanted deceleration as a lack of control. Even if that perceived lack saved them from a much worse situation, or if the minor auto body damage saves them from death, popular response may be negative, and they might have to pull the features despite their success.
It might be hard to convince someone that their car did a good thing for them when they're saying, "I totally had it under control, but the car took over, and the guy behind me hit me and bent my fender, cost me $1000." People might not be convinced that that $1000 saved them a $5000 front-end repair, or their lives.
I remember one time, some dunderhead I knew in high school complained that her bike helmet was worthless. Why? Because when someone opened their car door in front of her, she flipped over, landed on her head, and the helmet cracked in two.
She didn't even get it when I pointed out that that could have been her head. She was just upset that her $30.00 helmet was ruined. I don't mean to be pessimistic about general intelligence, but I'd say that kind of response might be more the rule than the exception.
Slashdot Mirror
It's not as if MS product names have ever really said much about what the product actually is
I seem to remember Windows 95 coming out in 1997, for example.
Man, this brings back memories. I remember seeing that commercial on the old Sylvania ColorTron back in '75 or so.
It was modded informative! Awesome!
Hear hear! If there's a SlashFilmMakers site out there, I'll bet that in their "Your Rights Online", there's an article about how the geeks on /. want to limit their right to free expression.
I would, however, suggest that there might be a nice way for "me, too!" filmmakers to make it clear that they are simply building on others' work, so that nobody is fooled into thinking that some lost work of PKD has been found and turned into a movie.
I figure the prequel was already made... AI: Artificial Intelligence. And yes, it was one of the worst movies EVAR.
IANAPhysicist, but my understanding is that while light speed is still an issue in physical space, the information sharing is truly instantaneous in this sort of quantum entanglement. It's not a short delay as light travels that distance, but instantaneous.
I think the way to think of it is this: there's another (or maybe many other) dimensions in the universe that our feeble minds can't perceive. They still exist, though, and things that may appear to be far apart in space (or even time-space) may be right next to each other in these other dimensions.
So when asking if there is a necessary delay due to the speed of light, you might be asking the wrong question, since it may seem like the light has to travel great distances across time-space from our perception, but across dimension N, it's right there.
My metaphor is flawed here, but when standing on UC Berkeley campus, it's a looooong way to the Transamerica Pyramid in SF if you go east, not so bad if you go WSW.
I remember back at my old job at an ISP, we had some old Apollo boxes sorting our USENET feed, packing up subscriptions for our individual and UUCP clients. We got to a point where we were doing almost 30 GB of USENET data a day (full feed, all groups), and the swapping alone was effectively killing our servers.
We got a 100 MB RAM disk for the primary processor--cost a butt-load, IIRC--but using that as the swap volume, we were able to complete everything in something like 25% of the time.
This made me think of one of OJ's scenes in the Naked Gun movie. I seem to recall tripping over furniture, falling down stairs, mouse traps, a window closing on his hand, and to top it all off, wet paint.
Any new browser really has to support user-made extensions to survive amongst the geeky, one feels
True, but the geeky, also known as the early adopters or cutting edge users, are not typically the majority of the market. In 1996, yes, in 1999, maybe, but in 2009, we're a very vocal minority.
/. want the most, and it'd be very easy for IE, Apple, Mozilla and Google to add in, but of course they won't, because they don't want to kill the goose, as it were.
To be honest, I'm making that call based on anecdotal data; I don't know what the real numbers are, but for most people I know or work with outside of my geek set, a custom browser is IE with the Google toolbar, or if you're a teenager, StumbleUpon.
The funny thing is that, while these browser extensions are great, most of them are functionality that *should* be in the browser anyway, and in some cases makes it into the browser. Why should I have to add a toolbar to block pop-ups? I don't anymore. To search? Not anymore. To get developer-level view into the structure and load time of the application? Slowly, those are going in, too.
What does that leave? Well, fun proprietary things like store (i.e. Amazon) toolbars, silliness like StumbleUpon, and hooks for things like web galleries and social networks. And ad blocking. That's what people in
The only two browsers I can think of that have built in ad blocking are Opera and iCab, a German-made Mac-only browser. But those are both--if I understand correctly--closed source and are commercial software (at least they ask you to pay). I think there's another one for the Mac that's also commercial that may offer the ad blocking feature: OmniWeb, but it's been so long since I used that one that I'm not sure if that's true anymore.
To take a little tangent, I definitely recommend iCab, though, for one purpose: HTML/CSS validation. It's got everything built in, and it tells you EXACTLY what's wrong, even showing a little smiley/frowny face depending on how compliant your code is.
Excellent. Send your mini to Kwame Ndugu, son of Mb'tube Ndugu, Minstr of Finance and Interior, Lagos, Nigeria.
Your assistance is very forthcoming!
Ah, so. However, that doesn't help the two- or three-dozen people who have actually bought Apple TVs :)
Yes. TV show rentals for a quarter, movie rentals for a buck. Comcast would die a horrible, horrible death, and nobody would shed a tear.
Totally true. Imagine if the information infrastructure were so good and so pervasive that no IT workers needed to be in an office. It's true for many who work from their homes, but I'd bet we're at the tip of the iceberg.
Good info infrastructure leading to a 40-60% reduction in commuters would mean less need for the gov't to spend money on roads, less money that people would have to spend on cars and gas, and would create a resurgence in local economies, because people would spend more money at their local cafe, rather than the Starbucks downtown near their office.
Not to say there wouldn't be fallout. Lots of low-wage jobs support people who provide maintenance for those huge (suddenly worthless) office buildings, the satellite industry around road maintenance would see reduced growth at the very least, and the auto industry would likely suffer. Of course, they're doing that on their own. Maybe GM and Chrysler should start building bicycles.
Other positives, though, would include less stressed, more balanced, healthier people (it'd probably bankrupt the healthcare industry to eliminate 2 hours of commuting from so many peoples' days), and reduced dependence on foreign oil and similar reduction of CO2 emissions.
I'm not saying info infrastructure is the be-all end-all, but man, the possibilities are huge.
That was funny. Not LOL, but certainly SS (smiling silently). Thanks!
Forget DVR; I just want my ATV to be able to access the free--even advertiser-supported--content on places like Hulu and even the HD content provided by the networks themselves. I'd ditch cable in a minute if I could watch Lost a day or two later without having to buy it.
I actually don't mind buying it--I've done it before--but I'd rather pay less (or nothing with advertising) and stream it rather than 2 bux an episode which is enough to make you think, "I need to archive this, rather than just throwing it away after one viewing."
And I know about Boxee. I've installed it and it works, but it kinda sucks. I'm not speaking out of school here; they must agree, since the ATV implementation is officially in alpha.
32G? Isn't last year's 3G-compatible iPhone good enough?
Actually, you're off by a factor of 1000.
3,000,000,000 * 0.99999 = 2,999,970,000
So your error count is 30,000.
Understood. Thanks again for the link on the halting problem. Interesting stuff.
Thanks for the link; I see your point. However, it seems to me that while it may not be possible to solve for all cases, it shouldn't be impossible to solve for some common and easy-to-spot ones. I haven't read the whole W'pedia entry so please forgive me if there's a flaw in my thinking, but for a bug that seemed so obvious to lots of armchair developers who looked at it, you'd think there'd be some sort of preprocessor which could provide a warning.
I don't write all that much code these days, but aren't there tools out there that might flag a loop with such a clear case where an infinite loop might occur? This is the kind of thing that people shouldn't have to be thinking about, if it can be automated.
Y'know, some robot should have been waving its arms around yelling, "Danger, danger, Will Robinson!"
"Democracy is not freedom. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to eat for lunch. Freedom comes from the recognition of certain rights which may not be taken, not even by a 99% vote. Those rights are spelled out in the Bill of Rights and in our California Constitution. Voters and politicians alike would do well to take a look at the rights we each hold, which must never be chipped away by the whim of the majority."
I absolutely agree with this, and I think it parallels my statements which you classified as being "way off the mark". Your inclusion of the part about the well-armed sheep changes the meaning entirely from the original quote, so there's no way I could be more "on the mark" about the original quote.
So, care to enlighten me as to what you mean by including the second portion which was (according to the source I read) not part of the original quote?
Thank you for the "sig"gestion. I may just do that.
Well, of course it's more complex than my /. post, but, y'know, mutual attraction, having fun together, going out several times on dates in the neighborhood--she lived walking distance from some really nice restaurants--so it took a few weeks before she clambered into my car and refused, almost holding her breath like a five-year-old, to put on her seat belt.
I think she thought she had some hold over me, since she asked,"How can we keep going out if you won't let me be your passenger without a seatbelt?" I responded that it'd be OK with me as long as she didn't mind taking separate cars, and she was huffy the rest of the evening, and I don't think we had a positive conversation after that.
She was super-adorable-cute, and I think she was used to having guys cow to her. I'm a pretty flexible guy in general, but truthfully, this felt like an arbitrary line in the sand, and I wasn't about to get serious with someone who just wanted to test me.
Damn that Garp!
Love your sig. Very funny, but it carries some inaccurate implications and ignores some realities.
In reality, wolves are always deciding what to have for lunch, and if they're looking at a sheep, s/he is not alone but part of a flock. It's not democracy because even if the entire flock votes against the wolves, there's no guarantee that one of them won't be taken. If the sheep really did wander off alone from the flock into the wolves' clutches, the sheep has effectively voted with the wolves, by proxy.
Freedom is what exists in reality. The wolves aren't evil or wrong. They are not dictators. They rolls their dices and takes their chances and they'll go storming into a flock, eyes on what they think is the easiest prey. That prey has the option of running, and sometimes, if it's a little one, a parent might actually face off with a wolf and scare them away (if the wolf isn't hungry/motivated enough).
And of course, if your definition of freedom is to let the sheep be well armed, then what's to stop them from oppressing the wolves? Should they be well-armed, too? In that case, two well-armed wolves could take out the sheep from a distance and still have their lunch.
Your point, I'm sure is that popular vote should not determine all things, but neither should individual destructive power. There should be a delicate and always evolving balance between the rights of the many and the rights of the few.
I'm sure Joe the Plumber would agree wholeheartedly, but the world just isn't as simple as your metaphor. To wit: Democracy is a flock of sheep and two wolves voting on what the wolves are allowed to eat. Freedom is a hungry wolf noticing a stupid lamb wandering off from un-attentive parents and thinking of her own pups starving back in the den.
I posted this above, but I think it fits here as well. Your comment about edge cases is true from a total life-saving perspective, but whether or not this is a commercial success may depend on the less extreme edge cases.
What I mean is, if they see a 10-20% reduction in deaths in Volvos, but it turns out that this causes a 10-20% increase in minor accidents (those edge cases), or if people perceive the unwanted deceleration as a lack of control. Even if that perceived lack saved them from a much worse situation, or if the minor auto body damage saves them from death, popular response may be negative, and they might have to pull the features despite their success.
It might be hard to convince someone that their car did a good thing for them when they're saying, "I totally had it under control, but the car took over, and the guy behind me hit me and bent my fender, cost me $1000." People might not be convinced that that $1000 saved them a $5000 front-end repair, or their lives.
I remember one time, some dunderhead I knew in high school complained that her bike helmet was worthless. Why? Because when someone opened their car door in front of her, she flipped over, landed on her head, and the helmet cracked in two.
She didn't even get it when I pointed out that that could have been her head. She was just upset that her $30.00 helmet was ruined. I don't mean to be pessimistic about general intelligence, but I'd say that kind of response might be more the rule than the exception.