The iPod is, by all practical means, only a HD. The microcontroller and the display don't use much space or power. The only thing which adds to size and weight is the accumulator.
Cameras sport things like lenses, sensors, and a real display, which need more space, and they need a lot more processing power (especially , when encoding in MPEG4), which in turn require more space for the energy storage.
> What's the use of a tiny camcorder if you can't use it?
Admittly, the use is quite limited. When you want a tiny, fast copyable and computer-editable video, go for it. When you want to record more than 1h of video without pit stop at a PC, buy yourself some other device.
You seam to have a quite peculiar view of George Orwell, and especially of 1984:
"I have never been able to dislike Hitler..." This statement shows that he is quite aware that Hitler is person, whom should be despised, and despite his rational will, he is unable to hate. Many of Hitlers opponents attributed a captivating personality to him.
>Orwell was a revolutionary Socialist So? Does that mean he is in favour of dictators? You're writing suggests, that you consider Socialism == Communism == Stalinism. One can argue about wether the Communism is possible at all, but not about wether the Soviet-Union or China were classless societies (and communistic for that matter) or not.
Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War in the United Workers Marxist Party militia. But the stalinists started to hunt down Anarchists, which included several of his friends. They were thrown in prision. After the War and these incidents he was strongly opposing Communism and published "Homage to Catalonia".
>The prime example is "Big Brother", which is generally used to mean a system of covert surveillance and manipulation, and oppression in democratic disguise.
No, it is used to warn people from such a state (without covert and disguise). The "covert" and "disguise" parts are considered as the first step in that direction.
>that only because the language they use is ugly are they evil.
I have to disagree once more. In my opinion, Orwell wrote 1984 as an analysis (and warning) of the political developments in continental Europe.
The reader tends to identify oneself with the main character Winston Smith, who begins to despise the govermental system and is finally crushed by it. This gives the reader a fairly negative impression of the system.
The language part is only the last step in controlling thought (and therefor the ultimate evil). The eradication of the thought by making it impossible to articulate the thought. Newspeak.
Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it. Every concept that can ever be needed, will be expressed by exactly one word, with its meaning rigidly defined and all its subsidiary meanings rubbed out and forgotten.
To quote another source on Orwells political stance:
In 'Why Write?' and 'Politics and the English Language' (1948) Orwell argued that writers have an obligation of fighting social injustice, oppression, and the power of totalitarian regimes.
Re:Statutory damages for copyright infringement
on
Shutting down Kazaa
·
· Score: 1
Do I read that correctly?
"per work" and not "per file"?
Especially this section makes me wonder:
For the purposes of this subsection, all the parts of a compilation or derivative work constitute one work.
So does that mean, they they may only demand a remedy of up to $300k per album infringed, even excluding covers?
I'm not a specialist on this matter, so maybe you can enlighten me, where I am wrong or misunderstood you.
> fragmentation: large files increase to fracmentation of most file systems What kind of fragmentation?
Small files lead to more internal fragmentation. Large files are more likely to consist of more fragments, but when splitting this data into small files, those files are fragments of the same data.
>entropy pollution What kind of entropy? Are you speaking of compression algorithms?
Compression ratios are actually better with large files than small files, because similarities between files across file-boundaries can be found. Therefor, gzip(bzip2) compresses a single large tar-file. (Simple test, try zip on many files and then zip without compression and subsequent compression on the resulting file).
>data pollution How should limiting file size improve that situation? Then, people tend to store data in lot of small files. What a success. People will waste space, whether there is a file size limit or not.
>These limits are there for very good reasons and in my opinion they are even much to big.
Actually, they are there for historical reasons. And should a DB spread all its tables over thousands of files instead of having only one table in one file and mmapping this single file into memory? Should a raw video stream be fragmented into several files to circumvent a file limit?
>[...] original K&R Unix [...] was much faster than modern systems
> With paper voting, there's a limited number of people involved who are needed for the "trust" factor.
I'd say it's the other way around. In paper voting, a lot of people are required to be trusted (all those people in the voting comittees).
In contrast, with a digital voting system, there are only few people responsible for the evaluation, and those few people have to be trusted.
But having a lot of people to trust is actually a good point, because the power those people have is antiproportional to the number the people to be trusted.
Not to mention, that people tempering with the results have the same problem. They have to trust the same number of people, that they don't make the whole thing public.
Connectionless is on the connection layer. This doesn't mean, that the application can't be stateful. HTTP is a stateless protocol, still you are surfing just this moment a stateful website.
Thank you for showing us the reason why women tend to avoid CS.
Statistics seem to suggest, that women are better at math and science than men (This would have required you to follow one of those two links in the story). Science requires analytical skills and math is pure logical thinking.
> Sure... and that's why the NBA is full of Black people.
Tell me 10 famous contemporary black U.S.-americans and how they're earning their money.
Considering that in the U.S. a large percentage of the poor people tend to be black people, and poor people tend to lack the access to good eductation, it limitates the ways to success for those people.
Playing basketball costs you next to nothing, and the kids have an antetype.
> teachers taught us that "everyone is equal".
I think you misunderstood your teachers. I hope, they tried to taught you that everyone is equal in being a person, an individual. Not a Black, White, Red or Yellow, a woman or a man.
"Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes" (Edsgar Dijkstra)
Actually, in my experience, the large drop-out rate in CS is partly based on the expection of people. They think, they are going to play with computers, but they aren't. They are going to play with ideas and information.
In other languages (French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish) CS is dubbed as "information science".
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Sounds familiar? The preamble states the intent of the whole U.S.-constitution.
>Oh, and this idea that the founding fathers wanted corporations to serve the prublic good is bullshit-- more liberal lies about the past
"General welfare" is one of the goals of the U.S. constitution. This of course, is totally contraire to the idea of companies serving the public good. Especially, if they serve "We, the people", and not "We, the shareholders".
Besides, what a wonderful reasoning: "Liberal lies", "first ammendment fanatics", "Anti human rights".
The problem is, what do you understand under "speech"?
Going by Mirriam-Webster, there are several meanings to "speech". (You must understand, English is not my native tongue, so I like to refer to authorities on that matter).
Am I correct, that when using the word "speech", you have broader meaning in mind? Speech as in utterance of words.
So, isn't libel and slander protected by the first amendement? I can think of many ways one can utter words, which would considered as unlawful, as you can surely, too.
So, speech seems to me quite open to interpretation. And since we are human, we're able follow the intent of the constitution, not the letters.
Lastly, no one is prohibiting them to say what they want. They are denying them to use advertisements to do so. They are still free to express their words, like most people do. Maybe they can get their employees to demonstrate in front of the capitol.
Well, those things you described I'd rather call exploits rather than cheats, since they exploit bugs in these programs (except that trade window thing, which is almost a bug in usability, but more social engineering, don't know about the function-key thing).
But I was talking more about the theoretical aspects of security. Unless you have trusted hardware on the client side, you cannot trust the data produced by the client. Even when you have a bug free client, the client still can be modified, or mimiced by a bot. So, no matter how bug-free and well-designed the server is, the client can still cheat.
This is most fatal in ego-shooters, but AFAIK scripting also exists Ultima Online and is inherently possible for all online-games.
Of course, when you write buggy programs, no additional security measurements makes your software more secure. But it is possible to write programs, which are secure.
Lastly, there is no cure for stupidity, but evolution:). (Well, people can learn)
Palladium can make out of the PC a trusted hardware (especially trusted by the company distributing the game), the trusted hardware can verifies the software, which signs its data.
So, the user can't inject false data into the stream.
Problem: Extracting the secret from hardware can be hard or easy, but not impossible. DVD-players should be trusted hardware. Having Xing distributing a software player with weak protections made it relatively easy.
There is no perfect anti-cheat system. Theoretically, it is impossible to create one.
Practically, one can create, where cheating is near useless.
One possibility is to eliminate competion, but since this is most often the driving force behind an MMOG, it's not possible.
Another one is a "weapon race", so to speak. In MMORPGs people are usually cheating by scripting their avatars, letting them doing the tedious repetetive work. By keeping the tasks more complicated (and more interesting) one could eliminate this scripting by making it too complicated and interesting to do the actual work. The problem is, the client can be beefed up, to tackle the task and there are a lot more clients than servers. This is impossible for less social/intellectual games (ego-shooters).
Last possibility: Social engineering. In RL people can cheat and make other people feel miserable, too. Why is it still in acceptable bounds? Because people get punished by the community, who don't behave. An online-game is a community, too. But why doesn't it work? Because, there is no real punishment possible. To a certain degree, a community with punishements comes to existence by itself. For example, in Dark Age of Camelot, one can complain over the offender by the guild of the offender (often with support from ones own guild). The guild reprimands or even expells the offender (Or so I'm told from a friend of mine, lacking first hand experience in this game). This helps, but only for people, who are already involved in the gameplay, so that those potential measurements are really a punishement.
But no one hinders people from creating another character, and fooling around with that one. And what about people, who just started?
One solution could be, by integrating community functions more into the game system. For example a punishement could be extended to the other characters as well.
But what about people just starting with the game? Hopefully, a well functioning community will integrate them (see Slashdot:) ), but one could consider extending the punishement to reach to RL.
For example, one has to sign a contract for a membership over a year. It is terminable at will, unless the person commits a "crime", which requires the culprit to pay for at least a year. I've admit this is less than ideal, since it is very suceptible to abuse.
Reading the press-release, and considering the Myst series, it will be a game more concentrating on a story line and riddles, than leveling. (Wonder, how they want to achieve story lines in MMOGs)
I think it is an interesting approach, since leveling always introduces a competetive element, which a) is often less appealing to women (see success of Myst) b) is more appealing to pks.
> I mean how many MMOG [...]
So many, that the different type of players have their type of game, e.g. Roleplaying-people don't have to be bothered by Hack-n-slay-people, or strategists have their little empire, while more reactive-oriented people can have their ego-shooter world.
I think, currently the problem with MMOGs is, that most MMOGs are only variation of the same game with different themes and rules. Not different MMOGs.
I think this is more a way to protect themselves from law suits stemming from releasing this product under an open source license. Someone on slashdot once wrote, that compilers are a patent-minefield.
Practically, you can't write a decent compiler without (unintentionally) infringing someones patent.
So, when they release the code, this someone might find out about it and might "commence an action for patent infringement", claiming in retrospect bazzilion dollars.
Half-close? As in half-correct? I thought this is a three-way handshake, which is a necessity as the underlying protocol is considered unreliable. RFC 761 it is explicitly stated that both connecting and disconnecting involves a three-way handshake with SYN/ACKs and in the case of disconnecting FIN/ACKs.
Of course, the second FIN may be lost (or not send at all, as in MSIEs case), so additionally there is a time-out, which will make the connection close anyway. But this is somehow undermining the sense of the ACKs.
In RFC 793 (supersedes RFC 761) 3.1, I read nothing about a "half-close".
Did it ever live in the US? I think most people who could have been punks are now in NGOs like ATTAC. (FYI: I neither disrespect punks, nor ATTAC)
> Now that everyone has Internet access
I think, that it is hardly the net access, that is the most important theme of the book. It is the social enviroment. The characters are (or will be) drop-outs from the society, working against the establishement, the transnational companies. Hence, punk.
> We badly need a new vision of the future.
Neal Stephensons "Diamond Age" is post-cyberpunk and its vision differs greatly from cyberpunk-vision. But, considering the current fast pace, with that the world is changing, I think no vision would be satisfying.
I thought that his description was, that there are essentially two kinds of companies left. Those transnational entities similar to T-A and little shark companies. Small, fast, flexible, biting. Traditional companies ceased to exist.
Tessier-Ashpool was only an exception, because they were still ruled and owned by a family, but not in other aspects. Actually, in being family-run, it was a remnant of the last century.
Magnetical RAM (MRAM). Storage with access times and density like SRAM, but non-volatile. In essence, this would allow a computer to resume its work after powered on in an instant from where it left before.
So, yes it essentially the same thing in a smaller scale. Like transitors are tubes in a smaller scale and the HDs are just smaller versions of floppy discs.
> the implicit contract of voting is that you consent to be bound by the outcome, whether or not your party wins.
No, it is the implicit contract of living in a democratic society. You'll have to accept the majority decision. That doesn't mean you don't may complain about it.
E.g: When there is a democratic decision of going in a certain film, I'll have to follow that decision and view the film. After the viewing the film against my decision my bitching about the film will be most surely tolerated (to a certain degree). In contrast, when I didn't participated in the vote, I guess it will be much less appreciated.
So, what is the difference between rendering your vote invalid and not to vote? Rendering your vote invalid requires you to go to the ballot and do something. Not to vote, does not.
Furthermore, it is not the case, that you can only vote or abstain from voting. In all democratic countries, you can actively take part in changing the society in other ways, like working in a party or a non-govermental-organisation, founding a new party, or candidating....
What will not doing anything change? Nothing.
The abstinence from even the easiest kind of democratic participation is only a sign of lack of discomfort with the current situation (and interest for that matter).
So, if you don't even vote, you really have no right to complain about the goverment. When you are participate in a different kind of acitivity in changing the situation, I'll retract the statement.
Slashdot Mirror
The iPod is, by all practical means, only a HD.
The microcontroller and the display don't use much space or power. The only thing which adds to size and weight is the accumulator.
Cameras sport things like lenses, sensors, and a real display, which need more space, and they need a lot more processing power (especially
, when encoding in MPEG4), which in turn require more space for the energy storage.
> What's the use of a tiny camcorder if you can't use it?
Admittly, the use is quite limited. When you want a tiny, fast copyable and computer-editable video, go for it. When you want to record more than 1h of video without pit stop at a PC, buy yourself some other device.
"I have never been able to dislike Hitler..."
This statement shows that he is quite aware that Hitler is person, whom should be despised, and despite his rational will, he is unable to hate.
Many of Hitlers opponents attributed a captivating personality to him.
>Orwell was a revolutionary Socialist
So? Does that mean he is in favour of dictators?
You're writing suggests, that you consider Socialism == Communism == Stalinism. One can argue about wether the Communism is possible at all, but not about wether the Soviet-Union or China were classless societies (and communistic for that matter) or not.
Orwell fought in the Spanish Civil War in the United Workers Marxist Party militia. But the stalinists started to hunt down Anarchists, which included several of his friends. They were thrown in prision. After the War and these incidents he was strongly opposing Communism and published "Homage to Catalonia".
>The prime example is "Big Brother", which is generally used to mean a system of covert surveillance and manipulation, and oppression in democratic disguise.
No, it is used to warn people from such a state (without covert and disguise). The "covert" and "disguise" parts are considered as the first step in that direction.
>that only because the language they use is ugly are they evil.
I have to disagree once more. In my opinion, Orwell wrote 1984 as an analysis (and warning) of the political developments in continental Europe.
The reader tends to identify oneself with the main character Winston Smith, who begins to despise the govermental system and is finally crushed by it. This gives the reader a fairly negative impression of the system.
The language part is only the last step in controlling thought (and therefor the ultimate evil). The eradication of the thought by making it impossible to articulate the thought. Newspeak.
(From 1984, Chapter 5.)
To quote another source on Orwells political stance:
"per work" and not "per file"?
Especially this section makes me wonder:
So does that mean, they they may only demand a remedy of up to $300k per album infringed, even excluding covers?
This would reduce the fee tremendiously.
Mine is bigger than yours :)
Linux XFS: 9 exabytes
Also supports extended attributes.
I'm not a specialist on this matter, so maybe you can enlighten me, where I am wrong or misunderstood you.
> fragmentation: large files increase to fracmentation of most file systems
What kind of fragmentation?
Small files lead to more internal fragmentation.
Large files are more likely to consist of more fragments, but when splitting this data into small files, those files are fragments of the same data.
>entropy pollution
What kind of entropy? Are you speaking of compression algorithms?
Compression ratios are actually better with large files than small files, because similarities between files across file-boundaries can be found. Therefor, gzip(bzip2) compresses a single large tar-file. (Simple test, try zip on many files and then zip without compression and subsequent compression on the resulting file).
>data pollution
How should limiting file size improve that situation? Then, people tend to store data in lot of small files. What a success. People will waste space, whether there is a file size limit or not.
>These limits are there for very good reasons and in my opinion they are even much to big.
Actually, they are there for historical reasons.
And should a DB spread all its tables over thousands of files instead of having only one table in one file and mmapping this single file into memory? Should a raw video stream be fragmented into several files to circumvent a file limit?
>[...] original K&R Unix [...] was much faster than modern systems
Faster? In what respect?
> With paper voting, there's a limited number of people involved who are needed for the "trust" factor.
I'd say it's the other way around. In paper voting, a lot of people are required to be trusted (all those people in the voting comittees).
In contrast, with a digital voting system, there are only few people responsible for the evaluation, and those few people have to be trusted.
But having a lot of people to trust is actually a good point, because the power those people have is antiproportional to the number the people to be trusted.
Not to mention, that people tempering with the results have the same problem. They have to trust the same number of people, that they don't make the whole thing public.
It would be and it is.
Connectionless is on the connection layer. This doesn't mean, that the application can't be stateful.
HTTP is a stateless protocol, still you are surfing just this moment a stateful website.
You are right.
Sorry, wrong wording (english is not my native tongue).
"a large percentage of the black people tend to be poor people." is what I wanted to write.
Thank you for showing us the reason why women tend to avoid CS.
Statistics seem to suggest, that women are better at math and science than men (This would have required you to follow one of those two links in the story).
Science requires analytical skills and math is pure logical thinking.
> Sure... and that's why the NBA is full of Black people.
Tell me 10 famous contemporary black U.S.-americans and how they're earning their money.
Considering that in the U.S. a large percentage of the poor people tend to be black people, and poor people tend to lack the access to good eductation, it limitates the ways to success for those people.
Playing basketball costs you next to nothing, and the kids have an antetype.
> teachers taught us that "everyone is equal".
I think you misunderstood your teachers. I hope, they tried to taught you that everyone is equal in being a person, an individual. Not a Black, White, Red or Yellow, a woman or a man.
"Computer science is as much about computers as astronomy is about telescopes" (Edsgar Dijkstra)
Actually, in my experience, the large drop-out rate in CS is partly based on the expection of people. They think, they are going to play with computers, but they aren't. They are going to play with ideas and information.
In other languages (French, German, Italian, Japanese, Spanish) CS is dubbed as "information science".
We the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.
Sounds familiar?
The preamble states the intent of the whole U.S.-constitution.
>Oh, and this idea that the founding fathers wanted corporations to serve the prublic good is bullshit-- more liberal lies about the past
"General welfare" is one of the goals of the U.S. constitution. This of course, is totally contraire to the idea of companies serving the public good. Especially, if they serve "We, the people", and not "We, the shareholders".
Besides, what a wonderful reasoning: "Liberal lies", "first ammendment fanatics", "Anti human rights".
Do you have any idea for what liberalism stands?
I suggest using "socialist lies" or "commie lies", this would give your post a more consistent style.
The problem is, what do you understand under "speech"?
Going by Mirriam-Webster, there are several meanings to "speech". (You must understand, English is not my native tongue, so I like to refer to authorities on that matter).
Am I correct, that when using the word "speech", you have broader meaning in mind?
Speech as in utterance of words.
So, isn't libel and slander protected by the first amendement? I can think of many ways one can utter words, which would considered as unlawful, as you can surely, too.
So, speech seems to me quite open to interpretation.
And since we are human, we're able follow the intent of the constitution, not the letters.
Lastly, no one is prohibiting them to say what they want. They are denying them to use advertisements to do so.
They are still free to express their words, like most people do. Maybe they can get their employees to demonstrate in front of the capitol.
PKE is not a holy sword, which solves all your problems and hides all the information.
It only makes the content of the communication unreadable, not the act of communication, which (at least for a police state) is enough information.
Faxing doesn't hide the communication either. Hint: dialing a 1 as country code could be slightly suspicous.
Well, those things you described I'd rather call exploits rather than cheats, since they exploit bugs in these programs (except that trade window thing, which is almost a bug in usability, but more social engineering, don't know about the function-key thing).
:). (Well, people can learn)
But I was talking more about the theoretical aspects of security. Unless you have trusted hardware on the client side, you cannot trust the data produced by the client. Even when you have a bug free client, the client still can be modified, or mimiced by a bot. So, no matter how bug-free and well-designed the server is, the client can still cheat.
This is most fatal in ego-shooters, but AFAIK scripting also exists Ultima Online and is inherently possible for all online-games.
Of course, when you write buggy programs, no additional security measurements makes your software more secure. But it is possible to write programs, which are secure.
Lastly, there is no cure for stupidity, but evolution
In a way, you are right.
Palladium can make out of the PC a trusted hardware (especially trusted by the company distributing the game), the trusted hardware can verifies the software, which signs its data.
So, the user can't inject false data into the stream.
Problem: Extracting the secret from hardware can be hard or easy, but not impossible. DVD-players should be trusted hardware. Having Xing distributing a software player with weak protections made it relatively easy.
There is no perfect anti-cheat system. Theoretically, it is impossible to create one.
:) ), but one could consider extending the punishement to reach to RL.
Practically, one can create, where cheating is near useless.
One possibility is to eliminate competion, but since this is most often the driving force behind an MMOG, it's not possible.
Another one is a "weapon race", so to speak.
In MMORPGs people are usually cheating by scripting their avatars, letting them doing the tedious repetetive work. By keeping the tasks more complicated (and more interesting) one could eliminate this scripting by making it too complicated and interesting to do the actual work.
The problem is, the client can be beefed up, to tackle the task and there are a lot more clients than servers. This is impossible for less social/intellectual games (ego-shooters).
Last possibility: Social engineering.
In RL people can cheat and make other people feel miserable, too.
Why is it still in acceptable bounds? Because people get punished by the community, who don't behave.
An online-game is a community, too. But why doesn't it work? Because, there is no real punishment possible.
To a certain degree, a community with punishements comes to existence by itself. For example, in Dark Age of Camelot, one can complain over the offender by the guild of the offender (often with support from ones own guild). The guild reprimands or even expells the offender (Or so I'm told from a friend of mine, lacking first hand experience in this game).
This helps, but only for people, who are already involved in the gameplay, so that those potential measurements are really a punishement.
But no one hinders people from creating another character, and fooling around with that one.
And what about people, who just started?
One solution could be, by integrating community functions more into the game system. For example a punishement could be extended to the other characters as well.
But what about people just starting with the game?
Hopefully, a well functioning community will integrate them (see Slashdot
For example, one has to sign a contract for a membership over a year. It is terminable at will, unless the person commits a "crime", which requires the culprit to pay for at least a year.
I've admit this is less than ideal, since it is very suceptible to abuse.
After fixing his problem with the audio:
Benny38: What a lithe and lissom priestress you are.
Shalandra (impersonated by Mr BigMac): Oh, you are flattering me.
Uru is called a MMOG, not MMORPG.
Reading the press-release, and considering the Myst series, it will be a game more concentrating on a story line and riddles, than leveling. (Wonder, how they want to achieve story lines in MMOGs)
I think it is an interesting approach, since leveling always introduces a competetive element, which a) is often less appealing to women (see success of Myst) b) is more appealing to pks.
> I mean how many MMOG [...]
So many, that the different type of players have their type of game, e.g. Roleplaying-people don't have to be bothered by Hack-n-slay-people, or strategists have their little empire, while more reactive-oriented people can have their ego-shooter world.
I think, currently the problem with MMOGs is, that most MMOGs are only variation of the same game with different themes and rules. Not different MMOGs.
I think this is more a way to protect themselves from law suits stemming from releasing this product under an open source license.
Someone on slashdot once wrote, that compilers are a patent-minefield.
Practically, you can't write a decent compiler without (unintentionally) infringing someones patent.
So, when they release the code, this someone might find out about it and might "commence an action for patent infringement", claiming in retrospect bazzilion dollars.
Half-close? As in half-correct? I thought this is a three-way handshake, which is a necessity as the underlying protocol is considered unreliable.
RFC 761 it is explicitly stated that both connecting and disconnecting involves a three-way handshake with SYN/ACKs and in the case of disconnecting FIN/ACKs.
Of course, the second FIN may be lost (or not send at all, as in MSIEs case), so additionally there is a time-out, which will make the connection close anyway. But this is somehow undermining the sense of the ACKs.
In RFC 793 (supersedes RFC 761) 3.1, I read nothing about a "half-close".
> punk died over a decade ago.
Did it ever live in the US? I think most people who could have been punks are now in NGOs like ATTAC. (FYI: I neither disrespect punks, nor ATTAC)
> Now that everyone has Internet access
I think, that it is hardly the net access, that is the most important theme of the book. It is the social enviroment. The characters are (or will be) drop-outs from the society, working against the establishement, the transnational companies.
Hence, punk.
> We badly need a new vision of the future.
Neal Stephensons "Diamond Age" is post-cyberpunk and its vision differs greatly from cyberpunk-vision.
But, considering the current fast pace, with that the world is changing, I think no vision would be satisfying.
> Traditional corporations [...] are the norm.
I thought that his description was, that there are essentially two kinds of companies left. Those transnational entities similar to T-A and little shark companies. Small, fast, flexible, biting. Traditional companies ceased to exist.
Tessier-Ashpool was only an exception, because they were still ruled and owned by a family, but not in other aspects. Actually, in being family-run, it was a remnant of the last century.
So, for a limited time, yes. Not forever. And the news is, in isolated systems. In unisolated systems, this already known.
I think there are no consequences, since nano-machines are seldom isolated systems.
Magnetical RAM (MRAM). Storage with access times and density like SRAM, but non-volatile.
In essence, this would allow a computer to resume its work after powered on in an instant from where it left before.
So, yes it essentially the same thing in a smaller scale. Like transitors are tubes in a smaller scale and the HDs are just smaller versions of floppy discs.
> the implicit contract of voting is that you consent to be bound by the outcome, whether or not your party wins.
No, it is the implicit contract of living in a democratic society. You'll have to accept the majority decision. That doesn't mean you don't may complain about it.
E.g: When there is a democratic decision of going in a certain film, I'll have to follow that decision and view the film. After the viewing the film against my decision my bitching about the film will be most surely tolerated (to a certain degree).
In contrast, when I didn't participated in the vote, I guess it will be much less appreciated.
So, what is the difference between rendering your vote invalid and not to vote?
Rendering your vote invalid requires you to go to the ballot and do something. Not to vote, does not.
Furthermore, it is not the case, that you can only vote or abstain from voting. In all democratic countries, you can actively take part in changing the society in other ways, like working in a party or a non-govermental-organisation, founding a new party, or candidating....
What will not doing anything change? Nothing.
The abstinence from even the easiest kind of democratic participation is only a sign of lack of discomfort with the current situation (and interest for that matter).
So, if you don't even vote, you really have no right to complain about the goverment.
When you are participate in a different kind of acitivity in changing the situation, I'll retract the statement.