I had a similar thought, but closer to the base algorithms that make modern computing possible.
Things like binary addition, which would be hardwired now inside the CPU. I look back at the function of the first practical computers. ENIAC, UNIVAC, and other 1950's "big iron".
Just to think, one of the first uses is a statistical method to predict elections.
On the other hand, there are those software packages that have evolved over time. This includes the BIOS bootstrap, BIND, and other low level functions of the O/S and Network.
It just depends on how you think about it, and you get a different answer. Of course, there is always the Hello World program.
Reading through other comments, the one issue I didn't see represented is the social impacts.
The framers of the constitution did not want to unfairly penalize artists. While the perception of the time that art, in its variety, was a act of benevolence to society, this was not the intent of limiting copyrights. There is a payment due for innovation, but exactly how does one make a fair price for it? When urban development encroaches on residential neighborhoods, the government often makes a claim of immanent domain to be able to suit the needs of society as a whole. (I know I am leaving out the significant portion of corruption problems with the use of immanent domain, but work with me here)
In effect, the limitation for copyright prevents the means of development and production from being "owned" by only a few people in a form of aristocracy. For a democracy, this would be inherently troubling. Yet, how does one distinguish legally between a work which is purely literary, and a work which is entirely functional. Looking back at the works of da Vinci, the tie between pure artistry and technical development is well documented.
What if the great works of pure artistry were perpetually copyrighted? What if only a few people were allowed to think and interact with the masterpieces of spirituality, expression, and aesthetics? How quickly we forget that before the Gutenberg press, knowledge was the domain of the church, as they had the only "real" means of production. How can one fight against censorship of thoughts in a society, when you don't know the censor?
In the end, copyright is not a property to be owned, it is a form of license. Socially, We never actually surrender our volition of liberty. Instead, we accept making a payment of sorts to recognize the excellence of a useful development or work. We can quickly see how such ownership, compounded over many generations of development, would closely resemble a lordship of the monarchy model or even worse class stratification.
Its less about abridging the rights of innovators and artists, but preventing innovators and artists from abridging each others and everyone else's liberty.
I think more interesting is that "internet" seems to have the same ownership or participatory ownership as the word "society"
Perhaps the internet is "a society for computers".
The thought is perplexing.
While this expresses the common ownership, it also addresses the attributes for collective action, dynamic effects, and the complexity of the system as a whole.
I find it more interesting to consider the possibilities for a change in the system architecture.
We have the "pure" SSD devices:
If we have a solid state storage, why do we need to force it into the same protocol actions as a traditional disk? All HDD protocols are based on only being able to read one thing at a time. It strikes me a much simpler transport similar to a "low speed" direct memory management system is the next logical step. Would this remove more of the latency from SSD devices? How many parallel reads could you do if you "rebuilt" the architecture?
I wonder if there is a possibility of an office terminal device that uses non-volatile (but slow) memory directly for execution replacing the faster DRAM entirely. While I doubt this would stress modern processors, but the idea of a functional interactive computer as an embedded device seems intuitively to have its advantages.
and we have the hybrid solid state devices:
If we consider the possibility of having "two systems, one execution" and be able to optimize and load only the most used memory segments rather than moving the entire program into the memory. This would reduce the amount of DRAM a computer would require to have similar performance to current technology.
If we are considering a larger permanent storage solution external to the system, couldn't this be served by a LAN service? Combine a high speed network, and most applications can be served as needed. This is an odd extension of PXE and SaaS services. This has implications to change how applications are developed and licensed.
Then there are other implications:
On the software side, you can also reconsider the idea of file systems. You can idealistically present the file structure in any form you choose now that you are independent of consecutive reads, perhaps even multiples of ways of organizing files at the same time. Possibly the ability of going from a deliberate file structure to a relational database structure based on the installation and back again based on what context is most convenient at the time.
Then again, perhaps this is all just happy dreaming with new technology.
Quickly tabulate the number of US carriers currently advertising that they are in or could begin chapter 11 negotiations. US Air recently stated that they could be out of buisness by the end of the year. Delta is seeking wage cuts from pilots after continually reducing price cuts to other areas. Most airlines are apparently raiding their pension funds.
Now if the US can get ONE space program working. This isn't too much to ask, is it?
I wonder if the next generation of the space program will look like commercial sector endorsements. It at least seams like thats where the technology is, or would this be setting up annother regulated industry that will fail as soos as it gets too expensive (like the airlines).
Problem: Unix is great!, unless:
- You just want a plug and pray answer
- You just want a word processor
- You just want......
If someone is only looking for a single application, it is hard to shove such a versitile system down their throat.
Solution: Create a truely modular UNIX/OS that does not depend on any single environment(init/SYSV). Make a pluggable API-level interface that you can plug anything from a single application to a complete system environment into. Then get someone to develop EXACTLY what you want.
Note that the inlet is built out of the forward body of the vehicle, so the shockwave is still external. Its only the portion of the stream that enters the combustion zone that is being propelled, the rest can be reguarded as bypass air. Also note the tail of the aircraft is formed to handle post/hyper-sonic exhaust.
The speed of sound is approx. sqrt((gamma)RT)
Assuming Ideal Gas
Gamma (roughly constant for air (1.4))
R = Ideal Gas Constant
T = Absolute Temperature (relates to density, etc) (somehow I knew those thermodynamics and aerodynamics courses would pay off someday)
At 100,000 ft, the temperature is only somewhat lower. This only marginally lowers the speed of sound, but also lowers problems with skin heating at high speed, parasite drag, etc.
So, no, noone is pulling a fast one. This is an impressive achievement for an air-breathing vehicle. Now if anyone can find an article detailing if they got any positive thrust out of it or if it was all the pegasus booster.
While a open-referendum system would supply fast, and copius ideas, I question a few aspects of the process.
1) Who of all the public has the time to spend to review all bills before this legislature without being a professional "statesman"? Does this create a neccisary bias towards the rich?
2) If government was quick (instant). How do the people become educated on an issue? Do we expect to "follow the advice of an enlightened leader"?
3) How does this system provide for consistancy? The populous wont be able to jerk back and forth as something is illegal or unfunded and times that it is legal or funded. How would one find out if something is illegal or not? This seems to deny freedom, given that it seems to support the concept of "All things not explicitly stated are illegal" rather than vice-versa.
4) How can a government of this magnitude educate the populous on what it is doing? While I personally am not a big fan of the secrecy of a govenment, there are things that a government needs to keep to itself in order to protect the public good. Do we have "special committees" to oversee defence? How is that chosen?
5) Who is, and who isnt allowed to participate in government? To answer this question is aristocracy. If you dont answer it, 5-year olds and forign nationals will be helping you make decisions.
I admit that I am playing devils advocate here. I am not wholy opposed to true "open-source" democracy. The last question I have is where do you blur the lines between republic, aristocracy, and democracy to make a realistic government possible in the current time frame.
Many states consider any database of citizens fair game for jury duty selection and other civil responsibilities. Most popular are voter registration and drivers licences (or related state identification).
The ironic thing is the trend to unify these databases.
I admit that it has been a while since I have worked in the "pure" or "mainstream" IT market, but there seems to be a new class of pseudo-IT markets brewing in the disguise of more traditional technical trades.
I have noticed that in-house IT is being performed by IT "Enabled" Professionals. Employees who are hired to work in a core-business technical area, but also has rudimentary administration skills to cover the day-to-day IT needs.
It would not surprise me that the lower-grade programming and service-support positions are being transformed to "non-IT" employees. This also leads to a growth in the need for self-employed work to perform higher-level maintenance.
I find that starting people with a "polished" GUI distro (Fedora, Mandrake) to understand day to day use works best. The trick afterwards is to start teaching them to read how the GUI tools "work". Teaches use, scripting, and administration with less frusteration. This seems to work well with previous windows admins as they are used to a fundamental GUI-ness of administration.
And in the early 80's, I would never fill a 50MB hard drive. Then file formats got larger, carried more detail and information. Now it is pretty hard to prevent multimedia files from being larger than 50MB.
Anyone thinking 500 pico-pixel 128-Mbit color depth with dub-over and closed captioning for 14 languages 3-D immersive "movie" entertainment product. Product includes versions of the sketchboard, segmented raw, Directors cut, release version, 10th anniversary edition, and voiceovers from just about anyone who cared enough to review it. Now! with xml annotated production script with changes.
(All written in a file format that uses 10^128 bits for data that could be stored as ulong)
Granted, Noone would care to assemble a product like this, and if they did, it is arguable that noone would care.
In 2014, the world would be seeing the extreme of the current trends in corperate culture. To put it into current buzzwords:
"The corperate structure will leverage contract supplied product from a series of providers to fill the order. This will produce a small stipend of profit while passing almost all of the risk on to the providers."
In other words. A person would wake up in the morning, figure out who is producing what widgets for them, and where they need to sell them to. The economy is more entrepenereal. Production happens in a contractual basis between small (possibly individual person) corperations, all in the same "assembly line".
Big corperations of the future would assume too much risk, considering the growth of litigation and punative judicial costs. The cost growth of per-person employment plans will continue to grow till employment of ANY "non-executive" employees will not be "economical".
Im not sure if this is a grim depiction, or a optimistic one. Granted the world economics would organize into "family corperations", and benefits would be only what you could provide for yourself. We will have new litigation problems for definition of "child labor". We will also see more "freedom" in labor practices as we will only be responsible to ourselves (the ole' 9-5 becomes something like "on-call 24 hours, but needed XX hours a week, acording to contract". The world will have to shrug off the "Free Lunch" idealisms
(people will starve trying to adapt to the new economy, not wanting to go into it for themselves).
It is at least something to think about. Think of your own IT consultancy or programming "firm".
Your children will become CPA's by neccessity. I think it would be likely that certification would be a graduation requirement for high school.
This is sounding like a new way to pass the buck. At the same time, there are far more social implications to these technologies.
What geeks saw in the 80's. College students saw in the early 90s, and what the entire world is waking up to now is that by changing the extent of a single persons ability to communicate, we have a much larger base population for any one society.
It is interesting to note that while large corperations are throwing money at ways to resist economic change, governments and traditional cultures are also trying to resist a "global" society by protecting viewpoints,certain sentimentalities,and cultural identification. Are we seeing a unilateral changes in social-political power structures as well as economic systems?
I agree that skill and evolution are not the same, but we are also looking at is the "specialist" problem.
The so-called "first-world" nations can have a specialty programs to develop the skills of their atheletes, not to mention be able to identify potential atheletes through their education systems. Smaller nations cannot devote the manpower or economy to such programs. It is interesting to note that there is a lag function involved using prior achievement to show the effectiveness of the national athletic organizations. So what we are looking at is the skill of individuals being improved through the improvement of all athletic programs.
I think this is an interesting proof that the world quality of life is leveling off.
Does capital punishment fit the crime? Does the current implementation of capital punishment act as a deterant?
What options does society have to prevent computer crime? Isolation of the criminal element? Break up the net for many, in order to protect the few?
I think it is becoming clear that producing "risk-mitigation" strategies, phantom damages, and jail time has been shown to be ineffective. All that seems to have been accomplished is the generation of media icons, and encouraged the activity.
No good can come from "throwing the book" at the hobbyist, witless, helpless, or ignorant. Too many people consider the possibility that they will be next.
In reality, does the possibility of 36 months do anything to deter this behavior, or are we only interested in generating a bitter, and possibly better informed criminal element?
How do you punish someone for engaging in computer crime, and deter those that consider comiting similar crimes?
"He has all the virtues I dislike, and none of the vices that I admire" -- Sir Winston Churchill
Slashdot Mirror
I know its on display at the LSM, but it was built and owned privately. It's just being displayed at the LSM.
I had a similar thought, but closer to the base algorithms that make modern computing possible.
Things like binary addition, which would be hardwired now inside the CPU. I look back at the function of the first practical computers. ENIAC, UNIVAC, and other 1950's "big iron".
Just to think, one of the first uses is a statistical method to predict elections.
On the other hand, there are those software packages that have evolved over time. This includes the BIOS bootstrap, BIND, and other low level functions of the O/S and Network.
It just depends on how you think about it, and you get a different answer. Of course, there is always the Hello World program.
Reading through other comments, the one issue I didn't see represented is the social impacts.
The framers of the constitution did not want to unfairly penalize artists. While the perception of the time that art, in its variety, was a act of benevolence to society, this was not the intent of limiting copyrights. There is a payment due for innovation, but exactly how does one make a fair price for it? When urban development encroaches on residential neighborhoods, the government often makes a claim of immanent domain to be able to suit the needs of society as a whole. (I know I am leaving out the significant portion of corruption problems with the use of immanent domain, but work with me here)
In effect, the limitation for copyright prevents the means of development and production from being "owned" by only a few people in a form of aristocracy. For a democracy, this would be inherently troubling. Yet, how does one distinguish legally between a work which is purely literary, and a work which is entirely functional. Looking back at the works of da Vinci, the tie between pure artistry and technical development is well documented.
What if the great works of pure artistry were perpetually copyrighted? What if only a few people were allowed to think and interact with the masterpieces of spirituality, expression, and aesthetics? How quickly we forget that before the Gutenberg press, knowledge was the domain of the church, as they had the only "real" means of production. How can one fight against censorship of thoughts in a society, when you don't know the censor?
In the end, copyright is not a property to be owned, it is a form of license. Socially, We never actually surrender our volition of liberty. Instead, we accept making a payment of sorts to recognize the excellence of a useful development or work. We can quickly see how such ownership, compounded over many generations of development, would closely resemble a lordship of the monarchy model or even worse class stratification.
Its less about abridging the rights of innovators and artists, but preventing innovators and artists from abridging each others and everyone else's liberty.
I think more interesting is that "internet" seems to have the same ownership or participatory ownership as the word "society"
Perhaps the internet is "a society for computers".
The thought is perplexing.
While this expresses the common ownership, it also addresses the attributes for collective action, dynamic effects, and the complexity of the system as a whole.
I find it more interesting to consider the possibilities for a change in the system architecture.
We have the "pure" SSD devices:
If we have a solid state storage, why do we need to force it into the same protocol actions as a traditional disk? All HDD protocols are based on only being able to read one thing at a time. It strikes me a much simpler transport similar to a "low speed" direct memory management system is the next logical step. Would this remove more of the latency from SSD devices? How many parallel reads could you do if you "rebuilt" the architecture?
I wonder if there is a possibility of an office terminal device that uses non-volatile (but slow) memory directly for execution replacing the faster DRAM entirely. While I doubt this would stress modern processors, but the idea of a functional interactive computer as an embedded device seems intuitively to have its advantages.
and we have the hybrid solid state devices:
If we consider the possibility of having "two systems, one execution" and be able to optimize and load only the most used memory segments rather than moving the entire program into the memory. This would reduce the amount of DRAM a computer would require to have similar performance to current technology.
If we are considering a larger permanent storage solution external to the system, couldn't this be served by a LAN service? Combine a high speed network, and most applications can be served as needed. This is an odd extension of PXE and SaaS services. This has implications to change how applications are developed and licensed.
Then there are other implications:
On the software side, you can also reconsider the idea of file systems. You can idealistically present the file structure in any form you choose now that you are independent of consecutive reads, perhaps even multiples of ways of organizing files at the same time. Possibly the ability of going from a deliberate file structure to a relational database structure based on the installation and back again based on what context is most convenient at the time.
Then again, perhaps this is all just happy dreaming with new technology.
Quickly tabulate the number of US carriers currently advertising that they are in or could begin chapter 11 negotiations. US Air recently stated that they could be out of buisness by the end of the year. Delta is seeking wage cuts from pilots after continually reducing price cuts to other areas. Most airlines are apparently raiding their pension funds.
At what point do you say an industry is failing?
--Kei
Now if the US can get ONE space program working. This isn't too much to ask, is it?
I wonder if the next generation of the space program will look like commercial sector endorsements. It at least seams like thats where the technology is, or would this be setting up annother regulated industry that will fail as soos as it gets too expensive (like the airlines).
Diareah of words, constipation of thought.....
--Kei
Problem: ......
Unix is great!, unless:
- You just want a plug and pray answer
- You just want a word processor
- You just want
If someone is only looking for a single application, it is hard to shove such a versitile system down their throat.
Solution:
Create a truely modular UNIX/OS that does not depend on any single environment(init/SYSV). Make a pluggable API-level interface that you can plug anything from a single application to a complete system environment into. Then get someone to develop EXACTLY what you want.
Idiotware without the bloat.
Laughing all the way,
-- Kei
If anyone cares:
Earnest Mach
--Kei
Note that the inlet is built out of the forward body of the vehicle, so the shockwave is still external.
Its only the portion of the stream that enters the combustion zone that is being propelled, the rest can be reguarded as bypass air.
Also note the tail of the aircraft is formed to handle post/hyper-sonic exhaust.
--Kei
The speed of sound is approx. sqrt((gamma)RT)
Assuming Ideal Gas
Gamma (roughly constant for air (1.4))
R = Ideal Gas Constant
T = Absolute Temperature (relates to density, etc)
(somehow I knew those thermodynamics and aerodynamics courses would pay off someday)
At 100,000 ft, the temperature is only somewhat lower. This only marginally lowers the speed of sound, but also lowers problems with skin heating at high speed, parasite drag, etc.
So, no, noone is pulling a fast one. This is an impressive achievement for an air-breathing vehicle. Now if anyone can find an article detailing if they got any positive thrust out of it or if it was all the pegasus booster.
--Kei
While a open-referendum system would supply fast, and copius ideas, I question a few aspects of the process.
1) Who of all the public has the time to spend to review all bills before this legislature without being a professional "statesman"? Does this create a neccisary bias towards the rich?
2) If government was quick (instant). How do the people become educated on an issue? Do we expect to "follow the advice of an enlightened leader"?
3) How does this system provide for consistancy? The populous wont be able to jerk back and forth as something is illegal or unfunded and times that it is legal or funded. How would one find out if something is illegal or not? This seems to deny freedom, given that it seems to support the concept of "All things not explicitly stated are illegal" rather than vice-versa.
4) How can a government of this magnitude educate the populous on what it is doing? While I personally am not a big fan of the secrecy of a govenment, there are things that a government needs to keep to itself in order to protect the public good. Do we have "special committees" to oversee defence? How is that chosen?
5) Who is, and who isnt allowed to participate in government? To answer this question is aristocracy. If you dont answer it, 5-year olds and forign nationals will be helping you make decisions.
I admit that I am playing devils advocate here. I am not wholy opposed to true "open-source" democracy. The last question I have is where do you blur the lines between republic, aristocracy, and democracy to make a realistic government possible in the current time frame.
--Kei
Many states consider any database of citizens fair game for jury duty selection and other civil responsibilities. Most popular are voter registration and drivers licences (or related state identification).
The ironic thing is the trend to unify these databases.
Not sure if this helps, but it is information...
I admit that it has been a while since I have worked in the "pure" or "mainstream" IT market, but there seems to be a new class of pseudo-IT markets brewing in the disguise of more traditional technical trades.
I have noticed that in-house IT is being performed by IT "Enabled" Professionals. Employees who are hired to work in a core-business technical area, but also has rudimentary administration skills to cover the day-to-day IT needs.
It would not surprise me that the lower-grade programming and service-support positions are being transformed to "non-IT" employees. This also leads to a growth in the need for self-employed work to perform higher-level maintenance.
--Kei
I find that starting people with a "polished" GUI distro (Fedora, Mandrake) to understand day to day use works best. The trick afterwards is to start teaching them to read how the GUI tools "work". Teaches use, scripting, and administration with less frusteration. This seems to work well with previous windows admins as they are used to a fundamental GUI-ness of administration.
--Kei
Couple of thoughts:
1) Can we really do authentication for masses of "grid" members without eating up the bandwidth?
2) Is this the next market for spoofing-spam distributors?
And in the early 80's, I would never fill a 50MB hard drive. Then file formats got larger, carried more detail and information. Now it is pretty hard to prevent multimedia files from being larger than 50MB.
Anyone thinking 500 pico-pixel 128-Mbit color depth with dub-over and closed captioning for 14 languages 3-D immersive "movie" entertainment product. Product includes versions of the sketchboard, segmented raw, Directors cut, release version, 10th anniversary edition, and voiceovers from just about anyone who cared enough to review it. Now! with xml annotated production script with changes.
(All written in a file format that uses 10^128 bits for data that could be stored as ulong)
Granted, Noone would care to assemble a product like this, and if they did, it is arguable that noone would care.
In 2014, the world would be seeing the extreme of the current trends in corperate culture. To put it into current buzzwords:
"The corperate structure will leverage contract supplied product from a series of providers to fill the order. This will produce a small stipend of profit while passing almost all of the risk on to the providers."
In other words. A person would wake up in the morning, figure out who is producing what widgets for them, and where they need to sell them to. The economy is more entrepenereal. Production happens in a contractual basis between small (possibly individual person) corperations, all in the same "assembly line".
Big corperations of the future would assume too much risk, considering the growth of litigation and punative judicial costs. The cost growth of per-person employment plans will continue to grow till employment of ANY "non-executive" employees will not be "economical".
Im not sure if this is a grim depiction, or a optimistic one. Granted the world economics would organize into "family corperations", and benefits would be only what you could provide for yourself. We will have new litigation problems for definition of "child labor". We will also see more "freedom" in labor practices as we will only be responsible to ourselves (the ole' 9-5 becomes something like "on-call 24 hours, but needed XX hours a week, acording to contract". The world will have to shrug off the "Free Lunch" idealisms
(people will starve trying to adapt to the new economy, not wanting to go into it for themselves).
It is at least something to think about. Think of your own IT consultancy or programming "firm".
Your children will become CPA's by neccessity. I think it would be likely that certification would be a graduation requirement for high school.
Kei
This is sounding like a new way to pass the buck. At the same time, there are far more social implications to these technologies.
What geeks saw in the 80's. College students saw in the early 90s, and what the entire world is waking up to now is that by changing the extent of a single persons ability to communicate, we have a much larger base population for any one society.
It is interesting to note that while large corperations are throwing money at ways to resist economic change, governments and traditional cultures are also trying to resist a "global" society by protecting viewpoints,certain sentimentalities,and cultural identification. Are we seeing a unilateral changes in social-political power structures as well as economic systems?
My $.02, but I think I have change coming.
Kei
I agree that skill and evolution are not the same, but we are also looking at is the "specialist" problem.
The so-called "first-world" nations can have a specialty programs to develop the skills of their atheletes, not to mention be able to identify potential atheletes through their education systems. Smaller nations cannot devote the manpower or economy to such programs. It is interesting to note that there is a lag function involved using prior achievement to show the effectiveness of the national athletic organizations. So what we are looking at is the skill of individuals being improved through the improvement of all athletic programs.
I think this is an interesting proof that the world quality of life is leveling off.
Does capital punishment fit the crime? Does the current implementation of capital punishment act as a deterant?
What options does society have to prevent computer crime? Isolation of the criminal element? Break up the net for many, in order to protect the few?
I think it is becoming clear that producing "risk-mitigation" strategies, phantom damages, and jail time has been shown to be ineffective. All that seems to have been accomplished is the generation of media icons, and encouraged the activity.
No good can come from "throwing the book" at the hobbyist, witless, helpless, or ignorant. Too many people consider the possibility that they will be next.
--Kei
In reality, does the possibility of 36 months do anything to deter this behavior, or are we only interested in generating a bitter, and possibly better informed criminal element?
How do you punish someone for engaging in computer crime, and deter those that consider comiting similar crimes?
"He has all the virtues I dislike, and none of the vices that I admire" -- Sir Winston Churchill
And here I thought they were talking about boy sprouts. The story is quite amusing confusing the two..