See, if I were designing the Furby, I would put in an easter egg which, when the Furby were cut open or otherwise mutilated, would cause the Furby to let out blood-curdling screams of pain!
Just thinking about some kid accidentally maiming his Furby and being terribly traumatized as a result just makes me chuckle.
We should beware our personal info being tracked electronically--or so says the article (until someone found a nologin URL) on the website that requires you to log in to read most of their stories. So we're getting a future where in order to learn about privacy, you can compromise your privacy in the process. Hmmm...
I hope everyone got a good chuckle out the bit on crypto products, particularly the quote about, "You can trust us, because we don't expect you to trust us." Thanks, but I'll trust you as soon as you open your source code to peer review. Curiously, programs like PGP and GPG, which meet this critera, go unmentioned.
BTW, I'll re-post a URL that somebody posted in regards to a banner ad privacy article several weeks ago, because I think it's relevant to this and worth reading.
Oh yes, I really meant virulent. Perhaps not quite in the classic sense of the word, but in a slightly updated context meaning something closer to "virus-like." It propagates rapidly, memetically infests other languages, and effectively kills other languages. It was indeed intended to be used to denote a negative aspect. (I know my Latin son, don't lecture me.:-P)
Artificial languages, like Esperanto, Lojban, and Klingon, are never going to catch on. Most people just won't bother to learn a language when there isn't an established user base somewhere. If the masses somewhere won't adopt it, then there's little point. Why waste time learning a language that is spoken by a handful of weirdos (not a bad thing, of course) on the planet, when you could learn a language actually spoken by actual nations that you will use?
Or, as the one-eyed evil aliens on the Simpsons say,
"We can speak all of your Earth languages! Well, except Esperanto, we could tell that one wasn't going anywhere...":-)
(Semi-related fact: William Shatner starred in the only motion picture spoken in Esperanto, "Incubus.")
English already is, and will continue to be, the primary language for the internet. English is an incredibly virulent and successful language, and many culture find themselves pushing to maintain their native languages.
But languages that seek to maintain "purity" from other languages are doomed because they won't adapt. For example, the Vatican has to regularly try to fit modern concepts into the existing ancient vocabulary of Latin, sometimes to amusingly complicated results. And we know how popular Latin is today.
French, the language most recently considered the "international language," is the next language that will suffer this fate of resistance, which I find amusing since it came into existance as "impure" version of Latin.
English is incredibly successful largely because it very easily assimilates vocabulary from other languages. Most of the words in English were absorbed from French when the English and French were busy occupying each other. We've been more than happy to add words lifted from other languages as needed. German seems to be good at this too, but doesn't have the advantage of being spread around by the British Empire.
Grammatical purists, however, will be pulling their hair out, since the "common" English won't be the Queen's English but rather a vulgar version of American English. I don't think anyone reading this would disagree that a very large amount of content on the internet blatantly ignores proper rules for spelling and grammar. Blame the American public school system if you like, but I think this has more to do with not needing to go through the editorial process to publish. And when no attempt at all is made to keep language within some kind of guidelines, it changes very rapidly. (Think pre-Shakespearian English.) So it's possible that "English" one hundred years from now will be nearly unrecognizable.
There's also the recent explosions of acronyms which goes hand-in-hand with the need to name all of this new technology. It's likely that acronyms could grow to a point where they make up a huge portion of the vocabulary and speakers don't even remember for what the letters stood. In some cases, this is already happening. Think of the last hardware conversation you had, or of the way new lusers are coming to use computing terminology. (So I need to buy a RAM? Why would I want to get a [CD-]ROM burner?)
Freecell? Bah! I already know a StrongARM based Palm will suck due to binary incompatiblity, since it won't be able to run the ultra-slick port of M68000 Sim City!
FYI, they didn't pass out those tapes, the fans passed out boot leg ones on their own. Oh my god! We better sue 3M!!
That's exactly what I was thinking when I heard about this. Music bootlegging is nothing new, people dub tapes all the time, CD-R burners have even given people the ability to totally duplicate compact discs should they so decide to violate copyright law. I've never heard of anyone suggesting something so ridiculous as to sue audio cassette manufacturers, despite that the majority of tapes sold are probably used for unauthorized music reproduction. (But then, this may have something to do with media manufacturers being owned by or sleeping with record companies...)
Of course, I'm sure record companies, in hindsight, wish they could have prevented recordable media solutions from emerging. I suspect the playback-only nature of compact disc technology may have been more appealing to record company execs than the quality benefits; even now CD audio burning equipment is still expensive compared to players.
Napster does of course, pose a somewhat new twist to this, since you no longer have to rely on a buddy to get a bootleg, you can get your musicz (hey! I coined a new l33t-speak word! w00t!) from thousands of strangers on the internet. This obviously scares the hell out of the record industry, so they're going to try to kill it dead before it becomes a mainstream phenomenon.
Of course, siccing the lawyers on one small company is going to be worthless in the long run. We all know that any of dozens of similars programs like Gnutella can replace Napster with startling speed. Maybe if the industry spent time innovating a GOOD on-demand commercial digital content distribution system (buzzwords are as much fun as Legos, you can link them together and build amusing toys!) and less time trying to bully such threats, they could actually enjoy the benefits of technology. But then, that might actually force them to make any such music very affordable, (to be able to compete with illegal systems) meaning they might not be able to pocket as large a share of their artists' money.
(Thank you for reading, I'm sure there's no way this got mod'ed up this far down.)
What's amusing here is that my browser, not recognizing the file format, displayed this as a plaintext file. And surely enough, the offending string is CLEARLY visible.
Immediately before the segment with Emmet (about 2hrs 50min in), Lydon replies to an e-mail and mentions that he doesn't know what Linux is!!!
Quick, everybody mailbomb him and tell him what an ignorant ass he is!
:P (That was sarcasm.)
Seriously though, I have no idea if he's interested in computers outside of the online aspect, but I bet somebody who's clever could get him hooked on the issues involved with free software. (Especially after all that slashdot pimpage.) Now who wouldn't like to hear Johnny Rotten go head-to-head with Richard Stallman?:D
In any case, I really enjoyed how well the dialog turned out between Emmet and Lydon.
Re:What if MSFT closed it's doors? Or Windows?
on
Microsoft Loses
·
· Score: 1
There are a handful of other companies that would take a big hit with the death of MS; supply-chain type companies that have been enjoying the generous business of the colossus.
Seattle-based Airborne Express, the small (compared to UPS or FedEx) parcel company, would lose a MAJOR contract.
And... uh... hmm... Well, most of the companies MS relies on tend to be aquired by MS.
I hate to sound like a pedant around here, but it's worth pointing out that since IDcide is closed source, you are relying on your trust of their company to determine that there aren't any "hidden" features to this software. It's not too farfetched to imagine that this utility is also secretly sending out private information, just the thing the user is trying to prevent by using it.
As another poster noticed, this program modifies your cookies with something about "qbots.com", which turns out to be a parent company.
I'm sure a little packet sniffing could turn up something...
The posting of the hacking code is akin to mass producing and distributing keys to a department store. The keys have only one real purpose: to allow a thief to open a locked door to steal the goods he targets.
Well, actually most department stores leave their doors unlocked (during business hours.) Otherwise it would be sort of hard to use the department store. Even despite the fact that people DO try to steal goods. (It's called shoplifting.) Because most of the people who walk into an unlocked department store are legitamate customers looking to buy something. The sort of DVD "department store" he seeks to maintain is one where you can't come in to shop until you've paid for a special key. Once you've got the key, you must agree not to duplicate it, or even look at it to see how it works. Then if you want to buy something, you need to use the key to let yourself into the store first.
I'm always a little amused with the naivety of people who think they can just upload their brain into a computer and they'll live forever. They seem to be either oblivious, or perhaps self-deluded to some major flaws with this concept.
The first problem is that anything resembling our concept of consiousness exists wholly self-contained within the brain. A massive portion of what makes us are biological factors outside the brain. Hormones play a huge role in our emotions, and affect our perceptions and judgement even if we believe we are perfectly logical and objective. Other factors play into our decisions and experience, from the very major sex drive to subtle things like that funny but pleasant feeling after you've stuffed youself with a good meal. Divorce these biological sensations, and you end up with something that thinks VERY differently than what we consider a human being.
Then there's the issue of actually mapping the brain into binary form. The article is pretty insightful about the idea of using nanotech probes to map the brain. However, the computational power to handle such a feat is massive. It's not just a matter of building a computer with capabilities equivalent to the human brain. The mind works in a very different way than an electronic computer; it's not like we use binary. What would be necessary would be a sort of "neuron emulator" to simulate the cells. As probably any Slashdot reader knows, emulators require a whole lot more power than the original application.
Now of course, one can suppose that we solve the first problem by generating a whole lot of simulated biological sensations, and the latter problem by simply achieving insanely powerful computers. But these solutions are grotesquely inefficient. By the time we have devised suffient computing power, sentient AI will have already emerged, and will not have the issue of the ineffiency needed by transhumans. This leaves any potiential transhumans in the position of being a curious novelty at best.
Never underestimate the flesh. Please, let's be realistic and just shoot for cybernetic augmentation.
I am dissapointed that minEguE is not on this list. Easily the nicest combination of pretty e things and simplicity. FWIW, a lot of these themes (I think all of the nominees) have been converted to gtk themes and sawmill themes as well.
Okay, here's my interpretation of this series of articles. Katz, who adamantly states that he is far too thick-skinned from his years of journalism to take insult from a flame, is reaching a subconscious boiling point after actually trying to provide earnest replies to a deluge of email with clever suggestions like "Please die." Katz subconsiously comes to believe (based on personal experience) that 95% of the e-mail that gets sent on the internet is hate-based. Maintaining his stoic, professional facade, Katz's id is forced to vent itself into his writings, and he gets his shot to get back at his attackers while consciously maintaining the belief that it's really just an analysis of an emergent internet sociological trend.
Maybe I'm missing the profound insight here, but I think this comment was supposed to be funny. I sentence the Slashdot moderators to watch TVLand until their nostalgo-humor is properly functioning.
FWIW, the Genesis3D SDK is in violation of the Open Source definition. While it does indeed make its source code available, the licensing terms are fairly restrictive, so it is not free software. A much cooler project is Crystal Space, the LGPL'd cross-platform multi-API 3D game engine. It's nowhere nearly as complete as Genesis, but shows a lot of promise. I suspect today's announcement will be a boon to CS, since any of the code in Quake can now go into CS.
Some people are wondering what all the fuss is about, others are wondering why Amazon keeps getting singled out when there are other e-businesses out there with shifty practices. Amazon is generally considered THE model for doing business over the internet. (Whether Amazon actually deserves this reputation is irrelevant.) Other companies look at Amazon as the business leader. (This becomes obvious when you see market analysts using Amazon as a barometer for the Internet.) So when Amazon decides to abuse their privacy policy, sue over (internet) software patents, or other unethical behavior, it sends a message to other companies trying to figure out the e-commerce thing that "If Amazon can do it, so should we." Amazon is a corporate role-model, and elicits a sort of peer pressure on other companies. Yes, maybe stupid business policy, but it's an unfortunate fact that most web commerce sites are sheep trying to follow the herd.
Ow, that's low. We're getting our place by cheating?
Now let's see... I've noticed that on my dual-boot machine, the Seti@home client runs about twice as fast under Linux than under Windows 98. (Maybe it's the pretty graphics.) This is clearly going to give Unix users a hand.
Second, uh, the Slashdot effect. I suspect Unix/Linux types are disproportionately represented among Seti@home users, more sci/tech enthusiasts or something.
Unix/Linux implies hacker (read: cracker) mentality? Yeah, it's a good thing that there is no such thing as a Windows hAXX0r d00d. (sarcasm)
Ugh. I've been mulling about what's wrong with IP law lately, and I've decided a large part of the problem is that large, restrictive contracts like EULAs are being granted legal enforcement. Let's face it, most people don't read through that list of conditions because it's so easy to bypass, so they waive all sorts of legal rights to the software manufacturer. If you ask most Joe Users, they aren't aware that they don't legally OWN the software, they can't modify it in certain ways, etc. User ignorance, yes, but the ignorance of the masses impacts the individual.
I think if, in order to make a EULA enforceable, the user would have to SIGN a real contract, people would become much more aware of the drawbacks of non-Free software and become hopping mad at the conditions that most vendors are trying to get them to commit to.
The poll has changed. They are no longer asking IF you would like to see Linux support. They are now asking WHICH upcoming game you would like to see ported!:)
Boy, I sure hope you are all planning to BUY these games if they do port them...
Slashdot Mirror
How lame.
See, if I were designing the Furby, I would put in an easter egg which, when the Furby were cut open or otherwise mutilated, would cause the Furby to let out blood-curdling screams of pain!
Just thinking about some kid accidentally maiming his Furby and being terribly traumatized as a result just makes me chuckle.
We should beware our personal info being tracked electronically--or so says the article (until someone found a nologin URL) on the website that requires you to log in to read most of their stories. So we're getting a future where in order to learn about privacy, you can compromise your privacy in the process. Hmmm...
I hope everyone got a good chuckle out the bit on crypto products, particularly the quote about, "You can trust us, because we don't expect you to trust us." Thanks, but I'll trust you as soon as you open your source code to peer review. Curiously, programs like PGP and GPG, which meet this critera, go unmentioned.
BTW, I'll re-post a URL that somebody posted in regards to a banner ad privacy article several weeks ago, because I think it's relevant to this and worth reading.
http://www.tiac.net/users/smiths/privacy/banads.ht m
Oh yes, I really meant virulent. Perhaps not quite in the classic sense of the word, but in a slightly updated context meaning something closer to "virus-like." It propagates rapidly, memetically infests other languages, and effectively kills other languages. It was indeed intended to be used to denote a negative aspect. (I know my Latin son, don't lecture me. :-P)
Artificial languages, like Esperanto, Lojban, and Klingon, are never going to catch on. Most people just won't bother to learn a language when there isn't an established user base somewhere. If the masses somewhere won't adopt it, then there's little point. Why waste time learning a language that is spoken by a handful of weirdos (not a bad thing, of course) on the planet, when you could learn a language actually spoken by actual nations that you will use?
:-)
Or, as the one-eyed evil aliens on the Simpsons say,
"We can speak all of your Earth languages! Well, except Esperanto, we could tell that one wasn't going anywhere..."
(Semi-related fact: William Shatner starred in the only motion picture spoken in Esperanto, "Incubus.")
English already is, and will continue to be, the primary language for the internet. English is an incredibly virulent and successful language, and many culture find themselves pushing to maintain their native languages.
:)
But languages that seek to maintain "purity" from other languages are doomed because they won't adapt. For example, the Vatican has to regularly try to fit modern concepts into the existing ancient vocabulary of Latin, sometimes to amusingly complicated results. And we know how popular Latin is today.
French, the language most recently considered the "international language," is the next language that will suffer this fate of resistance, which I find amusing since it came into existance as "impure" version of Latin.
English is incredibly successful largely because it very easily assimilates vocabulary from other languages. Most of the words in English were absorbed from French when the English and French were busy occupying each other. We've been more than happy to add words lifted from other languages as needed. German seems to be good at this too, but doesn't have the advantage of being spread around by the British Empire.
Grammatical purists, however, will be pulling their hair out, since the "common" English won't be the Queen's English but rather a vulgar version of American English. I don't think anyone reading this would disagree that a very large amount of content on the internet blatantly ignores proper rules for spelling and grammar. Blame the American public school system if you like, but I think this has more to do with not needing to go through the editorial process to publish. And when no attempt at all is made to keep language within some kind of guidelines, it changes very rapidly. (Think pre-Shakespearian English.) So it's possible that "English" one hundred years from now will be nearly unrecognizable.
There's also the recent explosions of acronyms which goes hand-in-hand with the need to name all of this new technology. It's likely that acronyms could grow to a point where they make up a huge portion of the vocabulary and speakers don't even remember for what the letters stood. In some cases, this is already happening. Think of the last hardware conversation you had, or of the way new lusers are coming to use computing terminology. (So I need to buy a RAM? Why would I want to get a [CD-]ROM burner?)
Disclaimer: IANAL (I am not a linguist
Freecell? Bah! I already know a StrongARM based Palm will suck due to binary incompatiblity, since it won't be able to run the ultra-slick port of M68000 Sim City!
That's exactly what I was thinking when I heard about this. Music bootlegging is nothing new, people dub tapes all the time, CD-R burners have even given people the ability to totally duplicate compact discs should they so decide to violate copyright law. I've never heard of anyone suggesting something so ridiculous as to sue audio cassette manufacturers, despite that the majority of tapes sold are probably used for unauthorized music reproduction. (But then, this may have something to do with media manufacturers being owned by or sleeping with record companies...)
Of course, I'm sure record companies, in hindsight, wish they could have prevented recordable media solutions from emerging. I suspect the playback-only nature of compact disc technology may have been more appealing to record company execs than the quality benefits; even now CD audio burning equipment is still expensive compared to players.
Napster does of course, pose a somewhat new twist to this, since you no longer have to rely on a buddy to get a bootleg, you can get your musicz (hey! I coined a new l33t-speak word! w00t!) from thousands of strangers on the internet. This obviously scares the hell out of the record industry, so they're going to try to kill it dead before it becomes a mainstream phenomenon.
Of course, siccing the lawyers on one small company is going to be worthless in the long run. We all know that any of dozens of similars programs like Gnutella can replace Napster with startling speed. Maybe if the industry spent time innovating a GOOD on-demand commercial digital content distribution system (buzzwords are as much fun as Legos, you can link them together and build amusing toys!) and less time trying to bully such threats, they could actually enjoy the benefits of technology. But then, that might actually force them to make any such music very affordable, (to be able to compete with illegal systems) meaning they might not be able to pocket as large a share of their artists' money.
(Thank you for reading, I'm sure there's no way this got mod'ed up this far down.)
What's amusing here is that my browser, not recognizing the file format, displayed this as a plaintext file. And surely enough, the offending string is CLEARLY visible.
Immediately before the segment with Emmet (about 2hrs 50min in), Lydon replies to an e-mail and mentions that he doesn't know what Linux is!!!
:D
Quick, everybody mailbomb him and tell him what an ignorant ass he is!
:P (That was sarcasm.)
Seriously though, I have no idea if he's interested in computers outside of the online aspect, but I bet somebody who's clever could get him hooked on the issues involved with free software. (Especially after all that slashdot pimpage.) Now who wouldn't like to hear Johnny Rotten go head-to-head with Richard Stallman?
In any case, I really enjoyed how well the dialog turned out between Emmet and Lydon.
There are a handful of other companies that would take a big hit with the death of MS; supply-chain type companies that have been enjoying the generous business of the colossus.
Seattle-based Airborne Express, the small (compared to UPS or FedEx) parcel company, would lose a MAJOR contract.
And... uh... hmm... Well, most of the companies MS relies on tend to be aquired by MS.
I hate to sound like a pedant around here, but it's worth pointing out that since IDcide is closed source, you are relying on your trust of their company to determine that there aren't any "hidden" features to this software. It's not too farfetched to imagine that this utility is also secretly sending out private information, just the thing the user is trying to prevent by using it.
As another poster noticed, this program modifies your cookies with something about "qbots.com", which turns out to be a parent company.
I'm sure a little packet sniffing could turn up something...
I'm always a little amused with the naivety of people who think they can just upload their brain into a computer and they'll live forever. They seem to be either oblivious, or perhaps self-deluded to some major flaws with this concept.
The first problem is that anything resembling our concept of consiousness exists wholly self-contained within the brain. A massive portion of what makes us are biological factors outside the brain. Hormones play a huge role in our emotions, and affect our perceptions and judgement even if we believe we are perfectly logical and objective. Other factors play into our decisions and experience, from the very major sex drive to subtle things like that funny but pleasant feeling after you've stuffed youself with a good meal. Divorce these biological sensations, and you end up with something that thinks VERY differently than what we consider a human being.
Then there's the issue of actually mapping the brain into binary form. The article is pretty insightful about the idea of using nanotech probes to map the brain. However, the computational power to handle such a feat is massive. It's not just a matter of building a computer with capabilities equivalent to the human brain. The mind works in a very different way than an electronic computer; it's not like we use binary. What would be necessary would be a sort of "neuron emulator" to simulate the cells. As probably any Slashdot reader knows, emulators require a whole lot more power than the original application.
Now of course, one can suppose that we solve the first problem by generating a whole lot of simulated biological sensations, and the latter problem by simply achieving insanely powerful computers. But these solutions are grotesquely inefficient. By the time we have devised suffient computing power, sentient AI will have already emerged, and will not have the issue of the ineffiency needed by transhumans. This leaves any potiential transhumans in the position of being a curious novelty at best.
Never underestimate the flesh. Please, let's be realistic and just shoot for cybernetic augmentation.
Here is the article that the Telegraph seems to have based their article off of http://www.space.c om/science/solarsystem/second_moon_991029.html More informative, and no registration necessary.
I am dissapointed that minEguE is not on this list. Easily the nicest combination of pretty e things and simplicity. FWIW, a lot of these themes (I think all of the nominees) have been converted to gtk themes and sawmill themes as well.
Okay, here's my interpretation of this series of articles. Katz, who adamantly states that he is far too thick-skinned from his years of journalism to take insult from a flame, is reaching a subconscious boiling point after actually trying to provide earnest replies to a deluge of email with clever suggestions like "Please die." Katz subconsiously comes to believe (based on personal experience) that 95% of the e-mail that gets sent on the internet is hate-based. Maintaining his stoic, professional facade, Katz's id is forced to vent itself into his writings, and he gets his shot to get back at his attackers while consciously maintaining the belief that it's really just an analysis of an emergent internet sociological trend.
Beats a cartoon parrot.
Maybe I'm missing the profound insight here, but I think this comment was supposed to be funny. I sentence the Slashdot moderators to watch TVLand until their nostalgo-humor is properly functioning.
FWIW, the Genesis3D SDK is in violation of the Open Source definition. While it does indeed make its source code available, the licensing terms are fairly restrictive, so it is not free software.
A much cooler project is Crystal Space, the LGPL'd cross-platform multi-API 3D game engine. It's nowhere nearly as complete as Genesis, but shows a lot of promise. I suspect today's announcement will be a boon to CS, since any of the code in Quake can now go into CS.
You know, I was actually thinking about getting my parents a WebTV system for Christmas. I'm suddenly very glad I got them a DVD player instead. ;-)
Some people are wondering what all the fuss is about, others are wondering why Amazon keeps getting singled out when there are other e-businesses out there with shifty practices.
Amazon is generally considered THE model for doing business over the internet. (Whether Amazon actually deserves this reputation is irrelevant.) Other companies look at Amazon as the business leader. (This becomes obvious when you see market analysts using Amazon as a barometer for the Internet.) So when Amazon decides to abuse their privacy policy, sue over (internet) software patents, or other unethical behavior, it sends a message to other companies trying to figure out the e-commerce thing that "If Amazon can do it, so should we." Amazon is a corporate role-model, and elicits a sort of peer pressure on other companies. Yes, maybe stupid business policy, but it's an unfortunate fact that most web commerce sites are sheep trying to follow the herd.
From one of my favorite sites: http://www.dumbentia.com/pdflib/cpqad.pdf
Ow, that's low. We're getting our place by cheating?
Now let's see... I've noticed that on my dual-boot machine, the Seti@home client runs about twice as fast under Linux than under Windows 98. (Maybe it's the pretty graphics.) This is clearly going to give Unix users a hand.
Second, uh, the Slashdot effect. I suspect Unix/Linux types are disproportionately represented among Seti@home users, more sci/tech enthusiasts or something.
Unix/Linux implies hacker (read: cracker) mentality? Yeah, it's a good thing that there is no such thing as a Windows hAXX0r d00d. (sarcasm)
Ugh. I've been mulling about what's wrong with IP law lately, and I've decided a large part of the problem is that large, restrictive contracts like EULAs are being granted legal enforcement. Let's face it, most people don't read through that list of conditions because it's so easy to bypass, so they waive all sorts of legal rights to the software manufacturer. If you ask most Joe Users, they aren't aware that they don't legally OWN the software, they can't modify it in certain ways, etc. User ignorance, yes, but the ignorance of the masses impacts the individual.
I think if, in order to make a EULA enforceable, the user would have to SIGN a real contract, people would become much more aware of the drawbacks of non-Free software and become hopping mad at the conditions that most vendors are trying to get them to commit to.
The poll has changed. They are no longer asking IF you would like to see Linux support. They are now asking WHICH upcoming game you would like to see ported! :)
Boy, I sure hope you are all planning to BUY these games if they do port them...