My girlfriend is a Library Scientist once told me something interesting.
The most durable mediam, in terms of longevity alone, is the stone tablet. But the same way the papyrus superceded the stone tablet, and the magnetic media replaced paper, and finally optical media has replaced magnetic media (for long term archival purposes at least). Although the information density of media increased with time, not so the longevity.
Then, according to your argument, we should go back to using stone tablets. Forget about information density. It is only a question of permanence. The next copy of Playboy should be preserved for 1,000 years.
Long ago, when computers were as big as houses, and magazines were, well, 11x8, people still read magazines on paper.
But now that your average PDA is small than the magazine, and you can get the latest news online, not to save the number of trees you save, there's not really a justification for having paper publication of periodicals.
But I still prefer reading my books on paper. And most people I know feel the same.
I thought "de-volving" DNA was a 50's sci-fi movie myth. I
understand that it is sometimes possible, at least in theory, to "turn
on" suppressed DNA, and that one could mutate and selectively breed
modern species into creatures with traits resembling extinct species, but
without the full genome of the extinct species to "rewrite" your modern
genome into a copy of, you would just end up with a vaguely dinosuar-like
modified bird, which would exhibit any mistaken assumptions of the
breeders.
Simply put, a bird would not "revert" into a real dinosaur, it would
evolve into an immitation dinosaur.
As far as frozen mammoth thread goes, I think it should be possible
to reconstruct the mammoth genome from frozen DNA, as I understand that
DNA is much more stable than most other organic structures. Once you had
your genome to work from, if you had the time and money to devote vast
biotech rescources I suppose a mammoth zygote could be synthesized, but
it would be immpossible to guess the cost or time involved anywhere
within several orders of magnitude.
I have no proffesional training in any of this, I'm just an informed
interested person throwing in my $0.02 worth in. However, if I was a
betting man, I'd put my money on the mammoth resurrection group over the
bird devolution group without a second thought!
The Creative Archive is a product of this exciting era of digital media and the internet. It's possible because of innovations in technology and content licensing, along with editorial vision. However, it remains a challenging and complex project with many unknowns. To help us understand the best way to deliver the Creative Archive, we have decided to start with a pilot project.
And that in English means?
I wonder how long before the IFPI gets into the show.
Most of the positive fanatics write lots of papers; those who think
it's not going anywhere (like me) don't. There are sound physical
reasons to be skeptical, in my mind:
1) Wavelengths are too big: 1 micron is now a large number, and optics
doesn't work much smaller than this.
2) There are no good nonlinearities. Anyone can make a linear OR gate
optically, but to function as an effective digital technology you need
nonlinearity and level restoration. This is missing in pure optical
systems, except at very high power levels. The high power levels
imply low density. There are some optical gates which process data in
"femtoseconds," but ask them how long it takes to get to the next
gate. Maybe someday someone will invent a great, low power, fast,
optically nonlinear material. Don't invest in it yet.
3) The serious workers are now mostly working in combined
electronic/optical modes. The speeds here are limited by the gate
speeds of the electronics, just like normal computers. You have to
then ask if optics is a good (cost effective, space efficient, low
power...) replacement for wire. Ultimately, the answer is probably
yes, but there's an awful lot of work to do before that's true (for
the distances of a few centimeters in high density computers, that
is).
In practice, a word processor that can't read Microsoft® Word documents is an economic dead end. The formats used by the Microsoft Office applications have become a de facto standard, giving Microsoft a substantial competitive edge because each new release of its software can deliver for it a window of opportunity during which only its software is fully compatible; this is mitigated a bit, though, because incompatibility in a new version makes customers slow to upgrade to that newest version.
Not true. Even Microsoft makes its products backward compatible. (One might say they make their products backwards, but that is another story).
In some cases, a standard comes with some kind of licensing restrictions, or involves something that someone has a patent on. For instance, Unisys had a patent governing a bit of the algorithm used for GIF images. In general, patents are a huge weakness for a standard. The MP3 standard is used very widely by people who simply don't know -- or don't care -- that someone theoretically has a patent on part of it, and only some code using the patented algorithm actually has a license from the patent holder. Developers and users can be bitten by this many years after they make the design decision to use a patented algorithm, due to the nature of patents. De jure standards often require contributors to clearly disclose any known patents; de facto standards generally have no way to do this.
Software patents are evil. Full stop. It has nothing to do with standards.
Ironically, this article, published by IBM, fails to mention how once IBM itself used to be a de facto standard for PCs.
From the TFA:Finally, asked if there were any new laws for next 40 years, he said: "I'll rest on my laurels on this one! I'm not close enough now to make new predictions - several things have been called Moore's Second Law but I can't take credit for any of them."
Here's are some thoughts from me:
Quantum Technology and/or Bio-molecular computing will become the next big thing.
Software Patents will effectively make software development exclusively a big player game
Virus infected nano-bots will wreak havok.
High fuel prices will effectively slow the pace of technological development all around.
Not content with going at US and European ISPs, IFPI is also targetting Asian ISPs according to these two reports. Report 1, Report 2.
From TFA
"The industry has decided this is the time to act," said IFPI Chairman and Chief Executive John Kennedy. "The Japanese are law-abiding citizens and it may be this delivers the short, sharp jolt that we need there."
Too bad the moderators have modded the parent down as off-topic. ETS have not learnt the losson from SAT. Instead of trying to fix the problem, they come up with a new test.
Even more shockingly, computerized grading for essay tests is now being tested on
several state tests. Given the sheer number of SAT tests taken every year,
It wouldn't surprise me to find the development of this technology is what
is spurring ETS to add the essay now, since I KNOW it's been considered
since the late 1980's (I was part of the norming group for a new trial SAT,
which included an essay-so obviously they were considering it at that time,
if not earlier.)
Slashdot Mirror
Online subscribers pay $84/year, whereas print subscribers are still paying $356
Use the remaining US$252 to buy yourself a decent PDA.
The most durable mediam, in terms of longevity alone, is the stone tablet. But the same way the papyrus superceded the stone tablet, and the magnetic media replaced paper, and finally optical media has replaced magnetic media (for long term archival purposes at least). Although the information density of media increased with time, not so the longevity.
Then, according to your argument, we should go back to using stone tablets. Forget about information density. It is only a question of permanence. The next copy of Playboy should be preserved for 1,000 years.
But now that your average PDA is small than the magazine, and you can get the latest news online, not to save the number of trees you save, there's not really a justification for having paper publication of periodicals.
But I still prefer reading my books on paper. And most people I know feel the same.
It's you. Not déjà vu.
I thought "de-volving" DNA was a 50's sci-fi movie myth. I understand that it is sometimes possible, at least in theory, to "turn on" suppressed DNA, and that one could mutate and selectively breed modern species into creatures with traits resembling extinct species, but without the full genome of the extinct species to "rewrite" your modern genome into a copy of, you would just end up with a vaguely dinosuar-like modified bird, which would exhibit any mistaken assumptions of the breeders.
Simply put, a bird would not "revert" into a real dinosaur, it would evolve into an immitation dinosaur. As far as frozen mammoth thread goes, I think it should be possible to reconstruct the mammoth genome from frozen DNA, as I understand that DNA is much more stable than most other organic structures. Once you had your genome to work from, if you had the time and money to devote vast biotech rescources I suppose a mammoth zygote could be synthesized, but it would be immpossible to guess the cost or time involved anywhere within several orders of magnitude. I have no proffesional training in any of this, I'm just an informed interested person throwing in my $0.02 worth in. However, if I was a betting man, I'd put my money on the mammoth resurrection group over the bird devolution group without a second thought!
The Creative Archive is a product of this exciting era of digital media and the internet. It's possible because of innovations in technology and content licensing, along with editorial vision. However, it remains a challenging and complex project with many unknowns. To help us understand the best way to deliver the Creative Archive, we have decided to start with a pilot project.
And that in English means?
I wonder how long before the IFPI gets into the show.
Most of the positive fanatics write lots of papers; those who think it's not going anywhere (like me) don't. There are sound physical reasons to be skeptical, in my mind:
1) Wavelengths are too big: 1 micron is now a large number, and optics doesn't work much smaller than this.
2) There are no good nonlinearities. Anyone can make a linear OR gate optically, but to function as an effective digital technology you need nonlinearity and level restoration. This is missing in pure optical systems, except at very high power levels. The high power levels imply low density. There are some optical gates which process data in "femtoseconds," but ask them how long it takes to get to the next gate. Maybe someday someone will invent a great, low power, fast, optically nonlinear material. Don't invest in it yet.
3) The serious workers are now mostly working in combined electronic/optical modes. The speeds here are limited by the gate speeds of the electronics, just like normal computers. You have to then ask if optics is a good (cost effective, space efficient, low power...) replacement for wire. Ultimately, the answer is probably yes, but there's an awful lot of work to do before that's true (for the distances of a few centimeters in high density computers, that is).
In practice, a word processor that can't read Microsoft® Word documents is an economic dead end. The formats used by the Microsoft Office applications have become a de facto standard, giving Microsoft a substantial competitive edge because each new release of its software can deliver for it a window of opportunity during which only its software is fully compatible; this is mitigated a bit, though, because incompatibility in a new version makes customers slow to upgrade to that newest version.
Not true. Even Microsoft makes its products backward compatible. (One might say they make their products backwards, but that is another story).
In some cases, a standard comes with some kind of licensing restrictions, or involves something that someone has a patent on. For instance, Unisys had a patent governing a bit of the algorithm used for GIF images. In general, patents are a huge weakness for a standard. The MP3 standard is used very widely by people who simply don't know -- or don't care -- that someone theoretically has a patent on part of it, and only some code using the patented algorithm actually has a license from the patent holder. Developers and users can be bitten by this many years after they make the design decision to use a patented algorithm, due to the nature of patents. De jure standards often require contributors to clearly disclose any known patents; de facto standards generally have no way to do this.
Software patents are evil. Full stop. It has nothing to do with standards.
Ironically, this article, published by IBM, fails to mention how once IBM itself used to be a de facto standard for PCs.
Here's are some thoughts from me:
yep, like Lotus Bloats and Don't Bother Too
From TFA
"The industry has decided this is the time to act," said IFPI Chairman and Chief Executive John Kennedy. "The Japanese are law-abiding citizens and it may be this delivers the short, sharp jolt that we need there."
Even more shockingly, computerized grading for essay tests is now being tested on several state tests. Given the sheer number of SAT tests taken every year, It wouldn't surprise me to find the development of this technology is what is spurring ETS to add the essay now, since I KNOW it's been considered since the late 1980's (I was part of the norming group for a new trial SAT, which included an essay-so obviously they were considering it at that time, if not earlier.)