Diaspora is not about standards. it is about decentralization though. But they want their product to be the one on all the servers.
If you want to look at open standards, look at the stuff around Buzz (not buzz itself) but things like activity streams, Salmon, pubsub. Most of those protocols have been about for ages but are only getting traction now.
The thing that really pisses me off is that instead of talking about protocols, we're talking about diaspora, loading them up with requests and expectations way before there's even a glimmer of a product.
Damn right!
Diaspora has already pissed me off, 4 college kids getting their funding in 10 days when there's been open source projects slogging it out for years. I'll bet they'll be "learning" heavily from the OSS projects too.
So how come these guys got the public eye?
as far as I can tell it's cos they've got a nice name, and got featured on HackerNews.
Until they release code they're got getting any support from me.
I don't mean to down the kid, he deserves kudos for doing the work.
BUT. I agree with parent, the basics of this idea is pretty similar, and they've been tryingf to grow 3d nanocrystals for years which has yielded few practical results. all this kid did was some research, he hasn't built a prototype, hasn't proven the principle, nor worked out all of the engineering challenges that will inevitible come up.
So I get annoyed when a lay-mans armchair idea as parent called it gets lauded as brilliance when all the real challenges of *making the damn thing work* are still ahead.
Now get off my lawn!
You're right to a point, if you're just looking for another drone to plod away at whatever it is then yeah they need to conform to all the typical business stereo types, cos that's what they're applying for, middle management that doesn't really do, make or accomplish anything.
I'd rather put out my eye than hire someone like that.
If someone is talented enough, everything else fades into the background. if a genius programmer is only sober enough to work 1 hour of the day, but in that hour accomplishes more than 5 full time zombies, I'll hire him... I'll probably not pay him 5 people's wages, but I'll pay him at least one drone's salary.
Mediocre crap like myspace pictures only come into play if all the candidates are mediocre, and frankly if you're hiring mediocre people it doesn't make much of a difference either way.
Yeah, agreed, silicon is the pricey bit, and theres something of a shortage worldwide as well.
On the cynical side, not sure what the big deal is here, TFA doesn't give the efficiency numbers, but I'm guessing since she's using an etching method she can't get to the level of effiency the labs do through nanodeposition and 3d fractal crap, so she's probably in the 10-15% range.
The problem with the whole setup is that it's seen as an asset for the business or service provider, A9 in this case. which is wrong. it shouldn't be.
It is an asset though, for the users using that service. You and me could get great benefit from having our past search data, clikthroughs and surfing habits analysed and used to improve our web experience, however I don't trust any company (even ones that "do no evil") to do that without skewing things in their favour and/or violating my privacy, whether now or in response to some government request.
What I don't get is, with these toolbars, desktop searchers and whatnot, why does this even need to be stored at the service provider? Why not simply store it locally in an open format and then start publishing tools for users to make use of this lovely data goodness? Surely a browser extension that uses your usage data locally, from across the web, will completely outperform something based on only one site, and avoid the privacy and commercial skewing issues.
Seems to me like A9 is dodging a bullet, but missing the boat.
I don't reckon 611 defects and 70 something vulnerabilities is that bad going.
This is the kind of number I'd expect on a small enterprise project with about 10 coders, lasting about 4 -6 months. For something thats been tinkered with and expanded for near on three years (just as firefox, not even talking about the moz history) this aint bad at all.
Also you've got to take these "code analysis" things with a pinch of salt. Functions capable of returning null for example, only a small fraction of those would even be exposed to unvalidated input normally.
Sure these things should be sorted, but in my opinion it'll be a matter of weeks before all of these would be wiped out, with the caveat that when tfa says it gave the details to firefox, that it gave them more than a pretty management summary.
Wouldn't it be just typical for them to go, "Hey, we've found x defects in your code. Pay us and we'll tell you where they are."
Best thing I've seen for implanted devices, such as cochlear implants is an article from two years ago by some japanese researchers than managed to build a fuel cell based on blood.
It mimics the processes of mitochondria in human cells, i.e. uses glucose and O2 to create some form of ionisation.
So why have a battery that expires in 12 years when you could just have something that is indeffinately powered by your own body processes, and lose a little weight in the process.
I take issue with the tone of this article, not the content. I do not doubt the accuracy of the information in the article at all, but there's a prevailing sense of: "NASA Knows Best".
Just because an organisation employs thousands of the brightest people it can find doesn't make their end product the best, it simply does not follow.
Beurocracy, design constraints, budgetary constraints and pure "can't think out the box" attitudes in large organisations tend to quash innovation. Not that NASA don't innnovate, of course they do, but if those individual bright people we're allowed to bring their own ideas to fruition there would be much more innovation. Not to mention that government agencies the world over are generally stifled by administration, that just further compounds things.
Again, the article is probably right in it's facts, but claiming that "Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth" (the article title) is like saying that linux would never be more popular on desktops than windows, or that desktop pc's would never outperform mainframes, or any other flippant claims about how the current way of doing things is the best.
In every industry I've bothered to look into there's is always at least one example of a small set-up coming up with something innovative that breaks all the established rules.
SS1 may have been it, it may not, but saying that it'll never happen is just asking to be proven wrong.
I will bet money that you cannot find the details of this particular method of nanotube growing anywhere.
Yes scientists publish, but they also need funding, funding they get from research grants which normally include the intellectual property of what they are researching. I can't claim any personal knowledge of this, but this is what I am lead to believe reading scientists opinions of research grants, and critising other scientists for "selling out".
In my personal experience though is research published in CS, and you very rarely find that the actual method is published, sure they'll explain their thoughts and present their results, but I've only found the occasional CS research paper that actually allows you to take the idea and run with it. Contradictorily the paper I recall reading with the most technical detail was published by researchers working for Pixar, who obviously have IP tie in. go figure.
if there was ever a technology that could benefit from more people working on it, this is it.
For me, nanotech is probably the most exciting thing going on at the moment, it's a shame that more people can't take a hand.
I think everyone agrees that information should be kept as clean as possible and that something as helpfull and so obviously in everyones best interest as wikipedia should be kept free of commercialism, thankfully, the BBC tend to agree too:
From BoingBoing: "Just to confirm, the BBC would never use Wikipedia as a marketing tool. The first posting was simply a case of a fan of the game getting into the spirit of alternative reality a little too much. The follow up posting was made by a fan of the game who happens to work for the BBC and was made without the knowledge of anyone in the Jamie Kane Team or BBC Marketing."
And I have to say that I agree with him to a point, Stephenson and Gibson both dwelled on 9/11 to a certain extent. I personally felt Gibson probably did it to excess in "Pattern Recognition". Hell even bloody Dan Brown mentioned it in "Davinci Code", but that by no means is a purely American trait.
Hell, Stross himself did a bit of an allegory of it in "Iron sunrise", weapons of mass destruction, nazi types taking over the unverse, etc. etc. In fact in "sky" he also works in the whole war on terror angle. He does however do it in very subtle ways and never mentions it directly like all good escapisms should.
Have to say though that at the moment, the best Fantasy writers are still American, go psycho-analyse that.
Seems you can put your own audio up there too using rss. which leads me to believe either two things will happen: 1) People will post free copies of comercial music and be blocked, or perhaps the service gets closed down. 2) New independant artists could use this as a launching platform.
What this really needs though is some sort of amazonesque, other people who liked this also like... and an ebay-esque method for people to be able to publish their own original music.
With those two things this could really help break the stranglehold the media companies have on the music industry.
While I agree that software patents are a bad idea, and I'd even go further by saying that algorithms should not be patentable either. How are we ever going to stop the mega-corps from trying to lock up fundemental ideas and charge royalties for using them?
We either need to have it explicitly stated that non-physical inventions are simlpy non-patentable, which to be honest I think is unlikely to ever happen or stick if it does, or we need to lower the barrier to entry.
In the same way that OSS tends to be more inovative and quicker on its feet that closed source, would it not hold that if anyone could apply for patents easilly thereby lower the barrier to entry, that you'd get an Open patent movement?
At the moment it costs upwards of 500 euros to get an application in, not to mention legal fees and whatnot. Why not simply do an Open Patent setup, where people can submit their ideas to for little to no cost, with the provision that if it's granted it's put into the public domain. This will at the very least elliminitate stupid and obvious prior-art patents that get everyones back-up (one-click ordering, reminders, inserting whitespace, insert your fav MS or Amazon patent here)
If DMOZ and wikipedia can get volunteers to do their content management why can something like this not be volunteer based?
Now the first argument against this would probably be that an independant voluntary patent body would have zero authority, and you'd be right too, but as far as I can understand at least with it you can prove prior art, and who knows maybe somewhere along the line it would become as authorative as wikipedia is.
I've heard it quoted that patents and copyright are only as viable as it is to enforce them, compuserver gif's are a prime example of this, they patented the format of gif, but since everyone and their dog uses it how are they ever going to enforce licensing?
I really believe that innovation could only be saved if the people that do the innovation claim it first. If we can't beat the legislatosaurs, we beat them at their own game, patent everything ourselves and slap it in the public domain, once there ideas would safe from the grubby clutches of all these vulturous mega-corporates.
Since I know little of the legal authority actually granted to patent offices I may be completely in the wrong here, but what does everyone else think?
What really gets my goat is that Microsoft would not be in their current position if it were not for piracy.
In the early 80's I didn't know of a single person that owned their own copy of MS-DOS, they all just copied from someone, on those big ol' 5 1/2" disks. but when newer versions of DOS came out more and more people started buying until they became everybody's favourite monopoly. Apple never stood a chance, because you had to pay for it.
Free stuff spreads the love, then the buggers make you pay for it.
ActiveX is being dropped by MS anyway. as even they realise it's insecure.
Xforms is really going to come up against Infopath and Avalon which are both new tech's Ms is rolling out. And if mozilla does not provide an alternative it will be left behind again as netscape was in the browser wars.
So all in all this is a good thing, perhaps it would be even better through web forms but as per a prior poster the foundations is working on them already. If anything the foundation needs more coders to help roll it out quickly. The web is a fickle place and whoever builds new tech first gets the jump on the market, and as such gets to keep that market.
Slashdot Mirror
Diaspora is not about standards. it is about decentralization though. But they want their product to be the one on all the servers.
If you want to look at open standards, look at the stuff around Buzz (not buzz itself) but things like activity streams, Salmon, pubsub. Most of those protocols have been about for ages but are only getting traction now.
The thing that really pisses me off is that instead of talking about protocols, we're talking about diaspora, loading them up with requests and expectations way before there's even a glimmer of a product.
Damn right! Diaspora has already pissed me off, 4 college kids getting their funding in 10 days when there's been open source projects slogging it out for years. I'll bet they'll be "learning" heavily from the OSS projects too. So how come these guys got the public eye? as far as I can tell it's cos they've got a nice name, and got featured on HackerNews. Until they release code they're got getting any support from me.
You missed the centripetal force of the orbit they're in :)
Not a great analogy. The cars do kinda jitter and freeze, as cars == data packets, or somesuch.
better analogy would be that they reckon the stock exchange stops working... then again with no traders it might.
This traffic analogy is broken.
How about if there's traffic on the roads, all doors to houses & offices will stick, only open to admit an arm, or be welded shut?
I don't mean to down the kid, he deserves kudos for doing the work.
BUT. I agree with parent, the basics of this idea is pretty similar, and they've been tryingf to grow 3d nanocrystals for years which has yielded few practical results. all this kid did was some research, he hasn't built a prototype, hasn't proven the principle, nor worked out all of the engineering challenges that will inevitible come up.
So I get annoyed when a lay-mans armchair idea as parent called it gets lauded as brilliance when all the real challenges of *making the damn thing work* are still ahead.
Now get off my lawn!
You're right to a point, if you're just looking for another drone to plod away at whatever it is then yeah they need to conform to all the typical business stereo types, cos that's what they're applying for, middle management that doesn't really do, make or accomplish anything. I'd rather put out my eye than hire someone like that. If someone is talented enough, everything else fades into the background. if a genius programmer is only sober enough to work 1 hour of the day, but in that hour accomplishes more than 5 full time zombies, I'll hire him... I'll probably not pay him 5 people's wages, but I'll pay him at least one drone's salary. Mediocre crap like myspace pictures only come into play if all the candidates are mediocre, and frankly if you're hiring mediocre people it doesn't make much of a difference either way.
Yeah, agreed, silicon is the pricey bit, and theres something of a shortage worldwide as well.
On the cynical side, not sure what the big deal is here, TFA doesn't give the efficiency numbers, but I'm guessing since she's using an etching method she can't get to the level of effiency the labs do through nanodeposition and 3d fractal crap, so she's probably in the 10-15% range.
In which case the cells are in the range of gratzel cells, which have been printable and low cost for years: http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2007/04/13/solarcells_tec.html
Hell, you can even buy kits to build them at home, http://www.solaronix.com/technology/assembly/ and they use a hot air blower for the sintering, The raw materials are cheaper too
So if the point of this is to let people build their own cells at home, it's obsolete, as gratzel cells are a better, simpler option.
The problem with the whole setup is that it's seen as an asset for the business or service provider, A9 in this case. which is wrong. it shouldn't be. It is an asset though, for the users using that service. You and me could get great benefit from having our past search data, clikthroughs and surfing habits analysed and used to improve our web experience, however I don't trust any company (even ones that "do no evil") to do that without skewing things in their favour and/or violating my privacy, whether now or in response to some government request.
What I don't get is, with these toolbars, desktop searchers and whatnot, why does this even need to be stored at the service provider? Why not simply store it locally in an open format and then start publishing tools for users to make use of this lovely data goodness? Surely a browser extension that uses your usage data locally, from across the web, will completely outperform something based on only one site, and avoid the privacy and commercial skewing issues.
Seems to me like A9 is dodging a bullet, but missing the boat.
Just goes to prove: "A good tester is worth his weight in gold." Sorry to have implied that you'd do otherwise. Good job.
I don't reckon 611 defects and 70 something vulnerabilities is that bad going.
This is the kind of number I'd expect on a small enterprise project with about 10 coders, lasting about 4 -6 months.
For something thats been tinkered with and expanded for near on three years (just as firefox, not even talking about the moz history) this aint bad at all.
Also you've got to take these "code analysis" things with a pinch of salt. Functions capable of returning null for example, only a small fraction of those would even be exposed to unvalidated input normally.
Sure these things should be sorted, but in my opinion it'll be a matter of weeks before all of these would be wiped out, with the caveat that when tfa says it gave the details to firefox, that it gave them more than a pretty management summary.
Wouldn't it be just typical for them to go, "Hey, we've found x defects in your code. Pay us and we'll tell you where they are."
Best thing I've seen for implanted devices, such as cochlear implants is an article from two years ago by some japanese researchers than managed to build a fuel cell based on blood.
2 78131.html
It mimics the processes of mitochondria in human cells, i.e. uses glucose and O2 to create some form of ionisation.
So why have a battery that expires in 12 years when you could just have something that is indeffinately powered by your own body processes, and lose a little weight in the process.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/03/1059849
I take issue with the tone of this article, not the content. I do not doubt the accuracy of the information in the article at all, but there's a prevailing sense of: "NASA Knows Best".
Just because an organisation employs thousands of the brightest people it can find doesn't make their end product the best, it simply does not follow.
Beurocracy, design constraints, budgetary constraints and pure "can't think out the box" attitudes in large organisations tend to quash innovation. Not that NASA don't innnovate, of course they do, but if those individual bright people we're allowed to bring their own ideas to fruition there would be much more innovation. Not to mention that government agencies the world over are generally stifled by administration, that just further compounds things.
Again, the article is probably right in it's facts, but claiming that "Why SpaceShipOne Never Did, Never Will, And None Of Its Direct Descendants Ever Will, Orbit The Earth" (the article title) is like saying that linux would never be more popular on desktops than windows, or that desktop pc's would never outperform mainframes, or any other flippant claims about how the current way of doing things is the best.
In every industry I've bothered to look into there's is always at least one example of a small set-up coming up with something innovative that breaks all the established rules.
SS1 may have been it, it may not, but saying that it'll never happen is just asking to be proven wrong.
I will bet money that you cannot find the details of this particular method of nanotube growing anywhere. Yes scientists publish, but they also need funding, funding they get from research grants which normally include the intellectual property of what they are researching. I can't claim any personal knowledge of this, but this is what I am lead to believe reading scientists opinions of research grants, and critising other scientists for "selling out". In my personal experience though is research published in CS, and you very rarely find that the actual method is published, sure they'll explain their thoughts and present their results, but I've only found the occasional CS research paper that actually allows you to take the idea and run with it. Contradictorily the paper I recall reading with the most technical detail was published by researchers working for Pixar, who obviously have IP tie in. go figure.
if there was ever a technology that could benefit from more people working on it, this is it.
For me, nanotech is probably the most exciting thing going on at the moment, it's a shame that more people can't take a hand.
http://www.boingboing.net/2005/08/15/bbc_wikipedi
I think everyone agrees that information should be kept as clean as possible and that something as helpfull and so obviously in everyones best interest as wikipedia should be kept free of commercialism, thankfully, the BBC tend to agree too:
I'm a big fan of Stross, really like his style.
And I have to say that I agree with him to a point, Stephenson and Gibson both dwelled on 9/11 to a certain extent. I personally felt Gibson probably did it to excess in "Pattern Recognition". Hell even bloody Dan Brown mentioned it in "Davinci Code", but that by no means is a purely American trait.
Hell, Stross himself did a bit of an allegory of it in "Iron sunrise", weapons of mass destruction, nazi types taking over the unverse, etc. etc. In fact in "sky" he also works in the whole war on terror angle. He does however do it in very subtle ways and never mentions it directly like all good escapisms should.
Have to say though that at the moment, the best Fantasy writers are still American, go psycho-analyse that.
Anyone else notice the submit page?
Seems you can put your own audio up there too using rss. which leads me to believe either two things will happen:
1) People will post free copies of comercial music and be blocked, or perhaps the service gets closed down.
2) New independant artists could use this as a launching platform.
What this really needs though is some sort of amazonesque, other people who liked this also like... and an ebay-esque method for people to be able to publish their own original music.
With those two things this could really help break the stranglehold the media companies have on the music industry.
While I agree that software patents are a bad idea, and I'd even go further by saying that algorithms should not be patentable either. How are we ever going to stop the mega-corps from trying to lock up fundemental ideas and charge royalties for using them?
We either need to have it explicitly stated that non-physical inventions are simlpy non-patentable, which to be honest I think is unlikely to ever happen or stick if it does, or we need to lower the barrier to entry.
In the same way that OSS tends to be more inovative and quicker on its feet that closed source, would it not hold that if anyone could apply for patents easilly thereby lower the barrier to entry, that you'd get an Open patent movement?
At the moment it costs upwards of 500 euros to get an application in, not to mention legal fees and whatnot.
Why not simply do an Open Patent setup, where people can submit their ideas to for little to no cost, with the provision that if it's granted it's put into the public domain. This will at the very least elliminitate stupid and obvious prior-art patents that get everyones back-up (one-click ordering, reminders, inserting whitespace, insert your fav MS or Amazon patent here)
If DMOZ and wikipedia can get volunteers to do their content management why can something like this not be volunteer based?
Now the first argument against this would probably be that an independant voluntary patent body would have zero authority, and you'd be right too, but as far as I can understand at least with it you can prove prior art, and who knows maybe somewhere along the line it would become as authorative as wikipedia is.
I've heard it quoted that patents and copyright are only as viable as it is to enforce them, compuserver gif's are a prime example of this, they patented the format of gif, but since everyone and their dog uses it how are they ever going to enforce licensing?
I really believe that innovation could only be saved if the people that do the innovation claim it first. If we can't beat the legislatosaurs, we beat them at their own game, patent everything ourselves and slap it in the public domain, once there ideas would safe from the grubby clutches of all these vulturous mega-corporates.
Since I know little of the legal authority actually granted to patent offices I may be completely in the wrong here, but what does everyone else think?
What really gets my goat is that Microsoft would not be in their current position if it were not for piracy. In the early 80's I didn't know of a single person that owned their own copy of MS-DOS, they all just copied from someone, on those big ol' 5 1/2" disks. but when newer versions of DOS came out more and more people started buying until they became everybody's favourite monopoly. Apple never stood a chance, because you had to pay for it. Free stuff spreads the love, then the buggers make you pay for it.
ActiveX is being dropped by MS anyway. as even they realise it's insecure. Xforms is really going to come up against Infopath and Avalon which are both new tech's Ms is rolling out. And if mozilla does not provide an alternative it will be left behind again as netscape was in the browser wars. So all in all this is a good thing, perhaps it would be even better through web forms but as per a prior poster the foundations is working on them already. If anything the foundation needs more coders to help roll it out quickly. The web is a fickle place and whoever builds new tech first gets the jump on the market, and as such gets to keep that market.