iTunes had the first-mover advantage, but don't expect it to increase its market share. It can only fall, like Google's or Microsoft's. And the overall share of all digital downloads is still very low, so as of today iTunes doesn't have the leverage you are talking about. If it happens to dominate the market and manages to repulse new competitors, then it might have something to brag about before the labels/musicians. But if the high-tech industry taught us anything, it was that no company is invincible.
Most people around here seem to miss an important point. Opera is a Norwegian company and it is going to be listed on Oslo Stock Exchange, not on NASDAQ. Being a small company is not a problem for them. They don't aim for multi-billion capitalisation, just for a way to raise some relatively small amounts of capital to finance their expansion plans (whatever they are).
You're full of it. New things are ALWAYS attempted before they become safe bets. The postential returns for the company that does movie downloads right are high enough to justify high risk. Disney might fail, but they are willing to take the risk. Every new venture is risky. ALWAYS. So stop predicting doom and gloom for this particular one.
This wouldn't work. The obvious question would be what the fraudsters were selling? It's one thing when one of the claims is found false, but it's completely different story when your product doesn't do the only thing it was supposedly good for.
I think you are confused. Jobs is in a publisher role here, just like Disney. A better analogy would be Walmart with the ability to force suppliers to accept its terms. But iTunes still has miniscule market share and Walmart itself is entering the business.
I can honestly say that in this area I cannot distinguish genuine results from well disguised quackery.:) So I might read ANKOS, but I will probably withhold the final judgement until better specialists decide on it.
Still, I wanted to tell about another interesting work - "Theory of Physical Structures" by Russian physicist Yuri Kulakov. He might be a fraud as well, but his talk on one scientific TV programme was quite interesting.
His idea is also that there might be simplier math behind the Universe than our current equations. He also argues that there are some common principles on which all possible mathematical rules (i.e. potential physical rules) are built. Frankly, I have not read either ANKOS or Kulakov's work and I am not qualified to judge their quality, but the ideas strike me as similar.
Both links are in Russian, sorry. http://www.credo-pst.com/book/index.html http://www.gordon.ru/konkurssite/kui.html
What would that program be? The seed to the cellular automata, which is the Universe, may be? Of course, we can number the Turing machines differently, so there could be different "Goedel numbers", thus that specific integer would not be so special after all.
Re:Something I learned from Martin Gardner...
on
The Golden Ratio
·
· Score: 1
Now why someone like me who teaches math would goof off on Slashdot by teaching more math is a even bigger mystery for which I have no answer. Probably because you like your jo? as a math teacher, which makes us
1) glad for your sake 2) thankful for sharing what you know with others
Personally I am undecided what to think of it. Oh, well, at least it's a reminder of how complex and interesting the world is, how little we understand it at any given time and how exciting it is to learn.:) On the other hand, if there is a limited (in a ultraintuitionistic sense) number of numbers, may be there is a limited amount of stuff to know about in the Universe and may be I have a greater than zero chance to learn Everything. That would be neat.:)
It's worth saying that we experience different stimuli and some of them we call "blue". Our natural language is not always precise (and allows for ambiguity about what is blue), but it can be used in a precise way (and allows to make specific verifyable statements about blue). Scince uses precise language. Those who don't understand it choose to speculate about how man is the measure of all things. To them I say - you can't measure anything with a zero-length ruler.:)
Actually, there is no god. Other than that, most people (excluding the USians) actually have the right to a job, explicitly protected by constitutions of their respective countries.
You've already got some responses, but I will just add an example. It's from "The Selfish Gene" by R. Dawnkins, a great book, BTW. Beens often have the ability to find infected larvaes, remove them from their cells and throw away from the hive. You assume they have an "idea" of how a sick larvae is different from a healthy one, what a cell is, how to remove them and what to do. But it turns out that this seemingly complex behaviour consists of several simple subroutings, hardcoded into their genome. One gene is responsible for opening the cells, one for throwing the larvae away. Some code is probably responsible for sensing the smell of a sick larvaes, etc., etc. Some bees lose one of these genes and they will only open the cells but not throw the larvaes away. Others would lack the gene for cell opening, but would throw larvaes away if you open the cells for them.
There was a short article in SciAm about using a genetic algorithm for a robot to flap the wings. If you give evolution millions of years, it will perfect the code to make organisms very well suited for the environment. Our computers are indeed as capable as insects. The hardware is actually better, the software is just as capable, but not so reliable and polished. A simple analogy - a good programmer can quickly write from scratch a GUI-based OS with some basic functionality. That's our robots. But to make an OS that millions of different people could use in different environments for different purposes takes millions of man-hours. That's your wasp after millions of years of evolution.
But fortunately, we don't need millions of years, we only need decades. Please also note that our robots already have capabilities so varied that no animal (even mammal) can do everything they can do. And in a few decades our robots will do everything animals can and will do it better.
They made remarkable progress in refining tyranny and oppression, exceeded by very few. The regime was nothing but savage and brutal. When Lenin overthrew a fledgling democracy, he set Russian progress back.
Have you lived in Soviet Union? Have you lived in post-Soviet Russia? I did and still do. It seems to me that I am more qualified to judge it than you do. The "savage" and "brutal" regime was the first in the world to grant extensive rights to workers, it was the one to support art and science to a great extent, one that defeated what was admittedly the greatest evil on this planet ever - the Nazi Germany, the regime that changed an agrarian country into a powerful industrial economy in just two decades and repeated this feat after a devastating war with Hitler, one that gave equal rights to women first and lead to the feminism revolution in the West a few decades later. It was the regime where everyone was guaranteed quality free primary, secondary and university education, free health care, free/very cheap access to priceless works of art and culture, the regime that to a very large extent supported rational thinking, science, understanding and taming of the nature, the regime that beleived general publi? should be well educated, the regime that supported sports and healthy lifestyle, the regime that contained the seeds of a better society - communism.
Yes, it wasn't the Utopia, it had many flaws, lack of openness, freedom of speech and discussion, lack of feedback were among them, as well as the rigid and ineffective system of government. But to diss the truly monumental achievements of the Soviet Union is folly.
This was a failed experiment, failed not because it had inherent fatal flaws, but due to a unique combination of unfortunate circumstances. But those who lived there, those who know history, those who managed to understand some of the reasons of its fall, will never forget it and look with anticipation to humanity's next attempt to build a better future.
Could you clarify what exactly in Moscow makes you think that communism was wrong? Please bear in mind that Moscow has really changed a lot during the past 13 years and I am puzzled what was that you saw which made such an impression.
As for the standards of living, I definitely agree. The standards of living in the US have been higher than those in the USSR and situation has worsened in Russia, so, obviously, we now live much worse than you do. But we are not discussing where it is better to live, here on in the US, we are discussing whether communism was more effective for Russia than capitalism currently is.
I don't know what was so cancerous about communism, probably the same things that are in the GPL license.:) But right now children in Russian state orphanages are supported (all included, food clothes, utilities, salaries for stuff, etc.) on meager 9 roubles per day, which is about 33 cents per day, which is more fucking cancerous than anything you could find in the USSR. The cure appears to be much worse than the disease.
As for the desire to excel, you are not exactly right. Yes, there have been a lot of problems with the particular implementation of communism and low motivation was one of them, but even still the Soviets made remarkable progress in virtually all areas of human endeavor. Except, of course, private business. I realise it might sound sacrilegious to an American that you can be considered a criminal just for doing business, but please understand that if you base the entire economy on planning, there are bound to be countless "inefficiencies". Some of them apparently real, but some are such only for the market mechanism. The free (or black) market treats them as inefficiencies, but they are intentional, designed to maximize the common good, which the free market cannot do (as is well known, normal markets achieve Pareto optimum, which is not necessarily the best solution out of all possible ones). And those people who engage in business are usually "gaming the system", maximizing his own utility at the cost to all others. Yes, in some cases they actually do more good, but overall they should be stopped, simply because the rules of the game are different and nobody should break them.
The nVidia Dawn demo runs on ATi hardware. A simple OpenGL wrapper achieves this. I believe, it should be relatively easy to do the same for the XBox 1->2 conversion, given that MS only needs to emulate ONE nVidia videocard on ONE ATi videocard.
If the current console makes them look 5x better and run 5x faster, who am I to complain? Are you sure you really want them to run 5 times faster? You must have really good reaction and perfect motor functions then. Honestly, I find it really hard to play some old XT-era games on my P4 1.6...
Have you ever thought about dumping the watches? I haven't wore one for 5+ years alread. I always have either my PDA or mobile phone with me (or both). Why would I need a separate device? BTW, I can understand not needing too many unnecessary functions, since I use an old Palm IIIxe and an old Nokia (what the model number, I don't know, got it used for 30 euros and never bothered to remember it).
A few weeks ago the battery in my dad's watch (electronic, but with hands) died. He needs the watch daily to keep the track of time during his lectures, but since the watch is not mechanical, he can't wind it up and since it is waterproof, he can't replace the battery himself, he needs a watch mechanic to do it. On the other hand, if he used an alternative modern technology (solar or mechanical auto wind up), he would be just fine...
So the key is moderation and common sense. Old technologies have their place, but we must realise that regardless of how polished they are, new ones are better overall. Adding garbage to simple devices is what makes them better. Yes, today we need to pay for the extra features with poor usability, low battery life and flimsyness, but eventually progress will make the devices better in all aspects - witness the modern car (pre BMW-5), it has tons of extra features and is still more reliable than old ones, has better mileage, is cheaper, etc. (I am referring to the best of breed, not to any particular brand). And even the computerisation of the car will add value to the driving experience, once the quirks are worked out.
According to Zubrin, meteor strikes boost ten tons of bacteria off the earth every year. I haven't read anything by him, but I have difficulty imagining how bacteria would be boosted from Earth. When most meteors fall, we don't see debris from the ground flying kilometers into space. And bacteria are relatively heavy, so they probably won't easily fly that high. And remember, to escape Earth they need to reach escape velocity, which is not a small feat for a bacteria.
Can anyone point me to some calculations of how it can realistically happen.
Are you already dying? There are many things you can do today to extend your lifespan, such as eating healthy, signing up for cryonics, etc. Or do you simply consider Mars exploration the only important technological development in the 21st century? Wake up! Mars is almost irrelevant, compared to things that are going to happen here on Earth. Nanotechnology is thousands of times more important than a human base on Mars.
It is funny how some people here don't understand that other people have other needs. On guy here goes on an on about how the extra features on his phone are useless. Except for the GPS, which is good. Another one argues that only Direct Connect (whatever it is) is useful. The third one says Bluetooth is all he needs. The fourth argues that exporting/importing the contact details in XML format is a must.
Come on, people! Can't you understand that all the features, including a calendar for the menstruation periods and a hole to hitch a cute toy to the phone, all the features are actually needed by someone. And since it is not really feasible to make custom-designed phones, the manufacturers are going to design a few phones with different bundles of the features. Yes, the chances are there will be a useless one on the phone, but it's the same with any other mass-produced product. I would go as far as to argue that Linux is 90% useless. On most computers most features of Linux are not needed. And so what? Then why should we complain about extra features in phones (as long as they don't reduce battery life and decrease the usability of basic functions).
Slashdot Mirror
iTunes had the first-mover advantage, but don't expect it to increase its market share. It can only fall, like Google's or Microsoft's. And the overall share of all digital downloads is still very low, so as of today iTunes doesn't have the leverage you are talking about. If it happens to dominate the market and manages to repulse new competitors, then it might have something to brag about before the labels/musicians. But if the high-tech industry taught us anything, it was that no company is invincible.
Most people around here seem to miss an important point. Opera is a Norwegian company and it is going to be listed on Oslo Stock Exchange, not on NASDAQ. Being a small company is not a problem for them. They don't aim for multi-billion capitalisation, just for a way to raise some relatively small amounts of capital to finance their expansion plans (whatever they are).
You're full of it. New things are ALWAYS attempted before they become safe bets. The postential returns for the company that does movie downloads right are high enough to justify high risk. Disney might fail, but they are willing to take the risk. Every new venture is risky. ALWAYS. So stop predicting doom and gloom for this particular one.
This wouldn't work. The obvious question would be what the fraudsters were selling? It's one thing when one of the claims is found false, but it's completely different story when your product doesn't do the only thing it was supposedly good for.
... so it can't distinguish anything!
Its editors might accept the stories, but the Slashdot itself is not creating any titles of its own.
Can't you, DrMindWarp, distinguish the message from the medium?
Or use URLs like_ RR_Bon d_SF.html?this_page_and_everything_it_contains_is_ in_public_domain
http://www.cprr.org/Museum/Ephemera/Pacific
I think you are confused. Jobs is in a publisher role here, just like Disney. A better analogy would be Walmart with the ability to force suppliers to accept its terms. But iTunes still has miniscule market share and Walmart itself is entering the business.
I can honestly say that in this area I cannot distinguish genuine results from well disguised quackery. :) So I might read ANKOS, but I will probably withhold the final judgement until better specialists decide on it.
http://www.gordon.ru/konkurssite/kui.html
Still, I wanted to tell about another interesting work - "Theory of Physical Structures" by Russian physicist Yuri Kulakov. He might be a fraud as well, but his talk on one scientific TV programme was quite interesting.
His idea is also that there might be simplier math behind the Universe than our current equations. He also argues that there are some common principles on which all possible mathematical rules (i.e. potential physical rules) are built. Frankly, I have not read either ANKOS or Kulakov's work and I am not qualified to judge their quality, but the ideas strike me as similar.
Both links are in Russian, sorry.
http://www.credo-pst.com/book/index.html
What would that program be?
The seed to the cellular automata, which is the Universe, may be? Of course, we can number the Turing machines differently, so there could be different "Goedel numbers", thus that specific integer would not be so special after all.
Now why someone like me who teaches math would goof off on Slashdot by teaching more math is a even bigger mystery for which I have no answer.
Probably because you like your jo? as a math teacher, which makes us
1) glad for your sake
2) thankful for sharing what you know with others
Keep it up!
Thanks for the post, interesting stuff. For anyone else, who liked that, there are a few cool articles at Wikipedia about this:
:) On the other hand, if there is a limited (in a ultraintuitionistic sense) number of numbers, may be there is a limited amount of stuff to know about in the Universe and may be I have a greater than zero chance to learn Everything. That would be neat. :)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intuitionistic_logic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultraintuitionism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-realism
Personally I am undecided what to think of it. Oh, well, at least it's a reminder of how complex and interesting the world is, how little we understand it at any given time and how exciting it is to learn.
It's worth saying that we experience different stimuli and some of them we call "blue". Our natural language is not always precise (and allows for ambiguity about what is blue), but it can be used in a precise way (and allows to make specific verifyable statements about blue). Scince uses precise language. Those who don't understand it choose to speculate about how man is the measure of all things. To them I say - you can't measure anything with a zero-length ruler. :)
Actually, there is no god. Other than that, most people (excluding the USians) actually have the right to a job, explicitly protected by constitutions of their respective countries.
You've already got some responses, but I will just add an example. It's from "The Selfish Gene" by R. Dawnkins, a great book, BTW. Beens often have the ability to find infected larvaes, remove them from their cells and throw away from the hive. You assume they have an "idea" of how a sick larvae is different from a healthy one, what a cell is, how to remove them and what to do. But it turns out that this seemingly complex behaviour consists of several simple subroutings, hardcoded into their genome. One gene is responsible for opening the cells, one for throwing the larvae away. Some code is probably responsible for sensing the smell of a sick larvaes, etc., etc. Some bees lose one of these genes and they will only open the cells but not throw the larvaes away. Others would lack the gene for cell opening, but would throw larvaes away if you open the cells for them.
There was a short article in SciAm about using a genetic algorithm for a robot to flap the wings. If you give evolution millions of years, it will perfect the code to make organisms very well suited for the environment. Our computers are indeed as capable as insects. The hardware is actually better, the software is just as capable, but not so reliable and polished. A simple analogy - a good programmer can quickly write from scratch a GUI-based OS with some basic functionality. That's our robots. But to make an OS that millions of different people could use in different environments for different purposes takes millions of man-hours. That's your wasp after millions of years of evolution.
But fortunately, we don't need millions of years, we only need decades. Please also note that our robots already have capabilities so varied that no animal (even mammal) can do everything they can do. And in a few decades our robots will do everything animals can and will do it better.
They made remarkable progress in refining tyranny and oppression, exceeded by very few. The regime was nothing but savage and brutal. When Lenin overthrew a fledgling democracy, he set Russian progress back.
Have you lived in Soviet Union? Have you lived in post-Soviet Russia? I did and still do. It seems to me that I am more qualified to judge it than you do. The "savage" and "brutal" regime was the first in the world to grant extensive rights to workers, it was the one to support art and science to a great extent, one that defeated what was admittedly the greatest evil on this planet ever - the Nazi Germany, the regime that changed an agrarian country into a powerful industrial economy in just two decades and repeated this feat after a devastating war with Hitler, one that gave equal rights to women first and lead to the feminism revolution in the West a few decades later. It was the regime where everyone was guaranteed quality free primary, secondary and university education, free health care, free/very cheap access to priceless works of art and culture, the regime that to a very large extent supported rational thinking, science, understanding and taming of the nature, the regime that beleived general publi? should be well educated, the regime that supported sports and healthy lifestyle, the regime that contained the seeds of a better society - communism.
Yes, it wasn't the Utopia, it had many flaws, lack of openness, freedom of speech and discussion, lack of feedback were among them, as well as the rigid and ineffective system of government. But to diss the truly monumental achievements of the Soviet Union is folly.
This was a failed experiment, failed not because it had inherent fatal flaws, but due to a unique combination of unfortunate circumstances. But those who lived there, those who know history, those who managed to understand some of the reasons of its fall, will never forget it and look with anticipation to humanity's next attempt to build a better future.
Could you clarify what exactly in Moscow makes you think that communism was wrong? Please bear in mind that Moscow has really changed a lot during the past 13 years and I am puzzled what was that you saw which made such an impression.
:) But right now children in Russian state orphanages are supported (all included, food clothes, utilities, salaries for stuff, etc.) on meager 9 roubles per day, which is about 33 cents per day, which is more fucking cancerous than anything you could find in the USSR. The cure appears to be much worse than the disease.
As for the standards of living, I definitely agree. The standards of living in the US have been higher than those in the USSR and situation has worsened in Russia, so, obviously, we now live much worse than you do. But we are not discussing where it is better to live, here on in the US, we are discussing whether communism was more effective for Russia than capitalism currently is.
I don't know what was so cancerous about communism, probably the same things that are in the GPL license.
As for the desire to excel, you are not exactly right. Yes, there have been a lot of problems with the particular implementation of communism and low motivation was one of them, but even still the Soviets made remarkable progress in virtually all areas of human endeavor. Except, of course, private business. I realise it might sound sacrilegious to an American that you can be considered a criminal just for doing business, but please understand that if you base the entire economy on planning, there are bound to be countless "inefficiencies". Some of them apparently real, but some are such only for the market mechanism. The free (or black) market treats them as inefficiencies, but they are intentional, designed to maximize the common good, which the free market cannot do (as is well known, normal markets achieve Pareto optimum, which is not necessarily the best solution out of all possible ones). And those people who engage in business are usually "gaming the system", maximizing his own utility at the cost to all others. Yes, in some cases they actually do more good, but overall they should be stopped, simply because the rules of the game are different and nobody should break them.
The nVidia Dawn demo runs on ATi hardware. A simple OpenGL wrapper achieves this. I believe, it should be relatively easy to do the same for the XBox 1->2 conversion, given that MS only needs to emulate ONE nVidia videocard on ONE ATi videocard.
If the current console makes them look 5x better and run 5x faster, who am I to complain?
Are you sure you really want them to run 5 times faster? You must have really good reaction and perfect motor functions then. Honestly, I find it really hard to play some old XT-era games on my P4 1.6...
Have you ever thought about dumping the watches? I haven't wore one for 5+ years alread. I always have either my PDA or mobile phone with me (or both). Why would I need a separate device? BTW, I can understand not needing too many unnecessary functions, since I use an old Palm IIIxe and an old Nokia (what the model number, I don't know, got it used for 30 euros and never bothered to remember it).
A few weeks ago the battery in my dad's watch (electronic, but with hands) died. He needs the watch daily to keep the track of time during his lectures, but since the watch is not mechanical, he can't wind it up and since it is waterproof, he can't replace the battery himself, he needs a watch mechanic to do it. On the other hand, if he used an alternative modern technology (solar or mechanical auto wind up), he would be just fine...
So the key is moderation and common sense. Old technologies have their place, but we must realise that regardless of how polished they are, new ones are better overall. Adding garbage to simple devices is what makes them better. Yes, today we need to pay for the extra features with poor usability, low battery life and flimsyness, but eventually progress will make the devices better in all aspects - witness the modern car (pre BMW-5), it has tons of extra features and is still more reliable than old ones, has better mileage, is cheaper, etc. (I am referring to the best of breed, not to any particular brand). And even the computerisation of the car will add value to the driving experience, once the quirks are worked out.
They are experimenting. If students do not like the service, this will be cancelled. You can't find out what is good without risking mistakes.
According to Zubrin, meteor strikes boost ten tons of bacteria off the earth every year.
I haven't read anything by him, but I have difficulty imagining how bacteria would be boosted from Earth. When most meteors fall, we don't see debris from the ground flying kilometers into space. And bacteria are relatively heavy, so they probably won't easily fly that high. And remember, to escape Earth they need to reach escape velocity, which is not a small feat for a bacteria.
Can anyone point me to some calculations of how it can realistically happen.
Are you already dying? There are many things you can do today to extend your lifespan, such as eating healthy, signing up for cryonics, etc. Or do you simply consider Mars exploration the only important technological development in the 21st century? Wake up! Mars is almost irrelevant, compared to things that are going to happen here on Earth. Nanotechnology is thousands of times more important than a human base on Mars.
Americans better understand it quickly and by themselves, or someone will stamp on their face... forever.
I think I forgot this. :-)
It is funny how some people here don't understand that other people have other needs. On guy here goes on an on about how the extra features on his phone are useless. Except for the GPS, which is good. Another one argues that only Direct Connect (whatever it is) is useful. The third one says Bluetooth is all he needs. The fourth argues that exporting/importing the contact details in XML format is a must.
Come on, people! Can't you understand that all the features, including a calendar for the menstruation periods and a hole to hitch a cute toy to the phone, all the features are actually needed by someone. And since it is not really feasible to make custom-designed phones, the manufacturers are going to design a few phones with different bundles of the features. Yes, the chances are there will be a useless one on the phone, but it's the same with any other mass-produced product. I would go as far as to argue that Linux is 90% useless. On most computers most features of Linux are not needed. And so what? Then why should we complain about extra features in phones (as long as they don't reduce battery life and decrease the usability of basic functions).