The simple problem is that the US is just too big. Setting up a global cellular service over half a continent is a major challenge, which creates a huge barrier to entry. This means that it's easier for existing operators to corner the market, create an oligopoly and impose restrictions on the services offered to the customer.
This is in addition to the fact that the US did not choose a single 1st generation standard (GSM, CDMA, whatever), which fragmented the market even more.
In Europe, you have several middle-size countries in which local operators can develop, and then make agreements with each other to allow for international communications. It works, though it's more expensive (texting my firned in Hungary from the UK costs more than texting someone in the same country).
In the UK alone, I know of 7 significant nationwide mobile phone operators (0range, Vodaphone, O2, 3, Virgin, T-Mobile, Tesco), and I'm sure there are a few more (OK, at least two of these are "virtual" operators which piggyback on the network of another operator, but still, that's more competition).
It is obvious that it will be virtually impossible for you to pack up and leave with short (2 days) notice if the impending disaster occurs. But in reality, you've had years of notice. What the hell are you doing in New Orleans?
The same thing that millions of folks are doing in LA, even though they've had years of notice about the upcoming Big One.
Or the same thing as we humans keep doing with fossil fuel and carbon emissions, even though we've had years of notice about the greenhouse effect and climate change.
Organisms cannot be driven to evolve. They can either have the trait that is advantageous for survival or they can die. Humans had the trait, probably for adaptation (perhaps through creative thinking) and developed sociability as a means of survival. They were not driven to evolve sociability and cooperation. They were driven to use these traits that they already had.
I don't get it. Are you saying that no new traits ever appear in evolving populations ?
Organisms don't evolve, period. Lineages do. And lineages can certainly be "driven" to evolve. The difference between teosinte and maize is (human-)driven evolution. Would you say that teosinte "already had" all the traits of maize ?
Same thing here. A selection pressure (big ugly predators) is applied. At some point, a mutation appears which induces better sociability. Because of the selective pressure, this mutation is favoured and takes over the population. Had the selective pressure been different, this mutation could have disappeared immediately and a different evolution would have taken place.
In other words, they were driven to adapt.
When the adaptation is fundamentally genetic (and hopefully you're not denying that the specific abilities of humans in sociability and cooperation have a strong genetic component) how is "being driven to adapt" different from "being driven to evolve" ?
apparently a majority of Chinese wouldn't want to live under ours.
When did "a majority of Chinese" express their support for censorship ?
The fact that the "Democratic Republic of China" is anything but, makes the point moot. In the case of Europeans, you do have a clear majority which agrees with laws against pro-Nazi propaganda. This is confirmed by the fact that elected representatives have passed these laws (and were not booted for it). So you may have a dilemma there. But in the case of China, I doubt very much that a majority of Chinese support the "right" not to be exposed to any opinion which the PRC might find unpalatable.
As a side note, the "ancient language" remained very consistant for a very long time. There is very little difference between the hebrew spoken then versus now. Only when you get far enough in the past to aramaic
Excuse me ? I was under the impression that ancient Hebrew predates Aramaic by maybe a millenium or so. By the time of Jesus, Aramaic was the standard language of everyday communication and Hebrew was only used for religious purposes.
As for the fact that modern Hebrew (the language they speak now in Israel) is very similar to Mosaic Hebrew, that's not really surprising, considering that it's the same language! When the Jews started to go back to Palestine, they spoke plenty of different languages - German, Arabic, Yiddish, whatever. So some guy came out with this crazy idea: "we already have a common language, the language of the Bible ! Why not use it ?" And quite incredibly, it worked !
Hebrew is the only example of a language that has effectively been dead for about two millenia, and then was resurrected into a thriving spoken language. Even if the Europeans decided to adopt Latin as a common tongue, it wouldn't be half as amazing.
Illuminati suck ! As any sensible conspiracy theorist will tell you, you should ONLY ever use the time-tested, tried-and-true Freemasons in your conspiracies ! Illuminati are such a joke, they were fashionable for exactly 2 mins back in the 70s and then everyone realised how much they blew. Freemasons run circles around Illuminati ! Illuminati make your computer slow and give you bad breath ! ILLMUNIATI ARE TEH SUXXORZZZZZ !!!!111!!1!!! FREMEAS0NZ REWLLLLZZZZZ !!!1!1!!!!!!!!!!!
(What, I'm just trying to bring this back on topic !)
Apes evolved into modern humans with populations in the hundred thousands over tens of thousands of generations
And the total difference in genetic material is under.1 %. Out of about 30K genes.
Doesn't that tell you something ?
What you don't seem to realise is that there is a fundamental difference between evolution in nature and evolution in computers. In computers, most often, you'll find that each gene directly influences one particular aspect of the solution. One gene = one trait. Evolution is seen as a "one-way" optimisation problem : you have a well-defined function which tells you whether a given set of parameters is better or worse than others. The mapping is unambiguous and often fragile. You need complex genomes to create complex designs.
In nature, genes are just a general recipe for a complex self-regulating chemical reaction. It is incredibly easy to create very complex designs with minimal information, because the complexity is not provided by the genes themselves: it is provided by the chemical reactions, for which the genes provide only high-level control. Essentially a genome is like a program in a very high-level programming language. There are languages that can let you create complex applications with a few lines of code. This is because much of the complexity is located in the underlying libraries: your program just specifies how and when these complex components should interact.
So in nature, where does this complexity come from ? At the most basic level, the answer is simply: "proteins". Long molecules which spontaneously bend in complex 3D shapes. These complex shapes allow them to catalyse just about any reaction you might think of, with arbitrary specificity - including reactions between other proteins ! It also gives then structural properties: they can use each other to build stuff. The problem of knowing how brute matter can, under certain conditions, spontaneously self-organise into complex patterns is the core of complexity science.
Natural selection does not create complexity: natural selection creates *adaptation*. Because of the peculiar properties of proteins, and because the genome itself is also able to self-regulate (genes can switch each other on and off), there are plenty of possible complex designs to choose from. A small genetic difference in genetic information can have a wide range of consequences, from the trivial to the dramatic; but those differences will often follow complex patterns of their own, simply because they are differences in how an already existing complex pattern should be organised. Natural selection guides evolution towards those which are (increasingly) better adapted to their particular environment. Furthermore (and that is another difference with artificial evolution), the environment is so rich and complex that biological creatures constantly find new ways to exploit it. The fitness function is "open". That's without even mentioning coevolution (when you evolve a new feature, other lineages may evolve other features in response, to which you have to adapt again, etc.)
Of course there is a feedback loop in the system, in that selection may favour those lineages which develop the most "clever" developmental system, thus facilitating the further creation of efficient complexity. People call that "evolution of evolvability".
You want to read two (short, layman-oriented) books: "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod and "At home in the Universe" by Stuart Kauffman.
I dont believe you could solve a problem such as the development of an equivalent to an F16 starting with a sopwith camel using GAs unless you used [at least] tens of millions of individuals over millions of generations.
This would be true if you had one gene for every joint and every bolt. This wouldn't be true if the planes were self-constructing machines (as living systems are) such that the genome would be the overall organiser of a complex developmental system. Those big wings are a bit awk
You just made a comparison, saying that Hindus or Jews would not be reacting violently in a similar situation.
WTF ????? Hinduism is the second worst offender when it comes to modern religious fanaticism.
I'll concede your point about the modern Jews though - if you need explanation about the "modern" bit, have a look at the Book of Joshua or the Book(s) of Judges someday.
Neither scientific advances nor engineering advances are protected by copyrights,
WTF ? Your own original post mentioned patents, which only apply to science and technology !
And you only need to look at the UK to see what the long term consequences of that are.
Yeah, I guess having the most successful economy among countries of comparable size must be really tough for them. Or maybe you're referring to them having produced more interesting music (both learned and popular) than any other European country over the last fscking century ? I mean, the Stones, the Beatles, Benjamin Britten, Radiohead, yeah, perfect proof that copyright kills creativity and all that.
I can't believe the crap we have to deal with here on Slashdot. Hell, we're the techies, we're supposed to be analytical and rational and all that ! But as soon as you say "copyright" all of a sudden everyone goes into crackpot mode and starts spouting some nonsense that would make the "fake moon landing" crowd proud.
The difference is that in the case of the book, the information is coupled with a physical object and thus causes the confusion in the form of some people's physical-world-coupled simian brains being unable to realize what it is they are sharing.
The difference is that in one case you share it with one person while in the other you share it with fscking millions. Is that so hard to understand ?
Any "practical" measures to restrict sharing of information (which is what this is all about) will and must lead to totalitarian measures in regards to digital communication equipment
Uh, no. Companies will eventually come up with some working public-key based DRM system. Media will only be playable on machines which follow the rules. Sure you still have the analog hole, but it kind of sucks for movies and doesn't work for apps.
I am Richard Stallman, inventor of the original much-imitated EMACS editor, now at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT.
It's much easier to give your work away when you know that your employer will keep paying you no matter how much time you devote to your side project.
I fail to see how this compares to Bill G., who I understand was head of a company in a competitive market and didn't have Mother Academia to pay the bills.
Thomas- (And yes, technically I'm an academic too)
Of course not. The reason geeks have all the hot women is that this "analytical-autistic" deformation happens to be a kind of "extreme male brain". It is an exaggeration of the most tangible differences between (most) female brains and (most) male brains.
Have a look at this essay at PLoS Biology, which is mostly based on Baron-Cohen's results, and which seems to be causing quite a stir at the moment.
So next time your conversation dries up, rejoice, for this is a shining proof of your extreme virility !:D
In other news, media outlets report that thousands of computer geeks throughout the country have suddenly left their basements in a frantic rush towards the nearest seafood store or marine aquarium.
"I mean, I know they're flabby cold-blooded cephalopods, but it's still better than nothing right ?" said one afflicted geek. "I, for one, can't wait to welcome our new sexually dominant molluscan overlords !"
Actually "Chirac Airlines" use small-size / mid-size aircrafts: Falcon 50, Falcon 900 and Airbus A319. No Airbus A340, for example. Of these, the Falcon 900 are most commonly used. They're small, fast and practical - and they're 100% French-made.
In 2003, Chirac flew 245 hours in Airbus aircrafts, and 428 hours in Falcon aircrafts (source).
There would probably be a PR backlash if the President started to fly only in big, luxurious, expensive aircrafts a la Air Force One. Remember, this is France, not the USA: you're not supposed to show off your money, especially when it comes from the taxpayers' pocket. Announcing "big cuts" in spending on official transport is a popular gimmick among French politicians.
but I saw somewhere that they implied that the inaccuracy of predictions in precession over time was a result of our current theories being flawed, and that the binary theory somehow magically removed this inaccuracy. This is an example of the utter bullshit that anyone with an understanding of nonlinear dynamics would notice immediately. You're dealing with a many-body system here. That's inherently chaotic.
Now maybe in this particular case the inaccuracies are not compatible with a "hidden star" (or can easily be explained without it), but saying that inacurracies in many-bodies problems cannot be exploited for discovering new things is just plain wrong.
Slashdot Mirror
The simple problem is that the US is just too big. Setting up a global cellular service over half a continent is a major challenge, which creates a huge barrier to entry. This means that it's easier for existing operators to corner the market, create an oligopoly and impose restrictions on the services offered to the customer.
This is in addition to the fact that the US did not choose a single 1st generation standard (GSM, CDMA, whatever), which fragmented the market even more.
In Europe, you have several middle-size countries in which local operators can develop, and then make agreements with each other to allow for international communications. It works, though it's more expensive (texting my firned in Hungary from the UK costs more than texting someone in the same country).
In the UK alone, I know of 7 significant nationwide mobile phone operators (0range, Vodaphone, O2, 3, Virgin, T-Mobile, Tesco), and I'm sure there are a few more (OK, at least two of these are "virtual" operators which piggyback on the network of another operator, but still, that's more competition).
Thomas-
It is obvious that it will be virtually impossible for you to pack up and leave with short (2 days) notice if the impending disaster occurs. But in reality, you've had years of notice. What the hell are you doing in New Orleans?
The same thing that millions of folks are doing in LA, even though they've had years of notice about the upcoming Big One.
Or the same thing as we humans keep doing with fossil fuel and carbon emissions, even though we've had years of notice about the greenhouse effect and climate change.
In other words, when you have plenty of precious metal, well it's not precious anymore.
D'uh !
Thomas-
Organisms cannot be driven to evolve. They can either have the trait that is advantageous for survival or they can die. Humans had the trait, probably for adaptation (perhaps through creative thinking) and developed sociability as a means of survival. They were not driven to evolve sociability and cooperation. They were driven to use these traits that they already had.
I don't get it. Are you saying that no new traits ever appear in evolving populations ?
Organisms don't evolve, period. Lineages do. And lineages can certainly be "driven" to evolve. The difference between teosinte and maize is (human-)driven evolution. Would you say that teosinte "already had" all the traits of maize ?
Same thing here. A selection pressure (big ugly predators) is applied. At some point, a mutation appears which induces better sociability. Because of the selective pressure, this mutation is favoured and takes over the population. Had the selective pressure been different, this mutation could have disappeared immediately and a different evolution would have taken place.
In other words, they were driven to adapt.
When the adaptation is fundamentally genetic (and hopefully you're not denying that the specific abilities of humans in sociability and cooperation have a strong genetic component) how is "being driven to adapt" different from "being driven to evolve" ?
Thomas-
Bandwidth is expensive and this type of crap can push me into the red.
/. sig will do wonders to your bandwidth consumption :D
While obviously putting a link to your website in your
Thomas-
apparently a majority of Chinese wouldn't want to live under ours.
When did "a majority of Chinese" express their support for censorship ?
The fact that the "Democratic Republic of China" is anything but, makes the point moot. In the case of Europeans, you do have a clear majority which agrees with laws against pro-Nazi propaganda. This is confirmed by the fact that elected representatives have passed these laws (and were not booted for it). So you may have a dilemma there. But in the case of China, I doubt very much that a majority of Chinese support the "right" not to be exposed to any opinion which the PRC might find unpalatable.
Thomas-
As a side note, the "ancient language" remained very consistant for a very long time. There is very little difference between the hebrew spoken then versus now. Only when you get far enough in the past to aramaic
Excuse me ? I was under the impression that ancient Hebrew predates Aramaic by maybe a millenium or so. By the time of Jesus, Aramaic was the standard language of everyday communication and Hebrew was only used for religious purposes.
As for the fact that modern Hebrew (the language they speak now in Israel) is very similar to Mosaic Hebrew, that's not really surprising, considering that it's the same language! When the Jews started to go back to Palestine, they spoke plenty of different languages - German, Arabic, Yiddish, whatever. So some guy came out with this crazy idea: "we already have a common language, the language of the Bible ! Why not use it ?" And quite incredibly, it worked !
Hebrew is the only example of a language that has effectively been dead for about two millenia, and then was resurrected into a thriving spoken language. Even if the Europeans decided to adopt Latin as a common tongue, it wouldn't be half as amazing.
Thomas-
Illuminati suck ! As any sensible conspiracy theorist will tell you, you should ONLY ever use the time-tested, tried-and-true Freemasons in your conspiracies ! Illuminati are such a joke, they were fashionable for exactly 2 mins back in the 70s and then everyone realised how much they blew. Freemasons run circles around Illuminati ! Illuminati make your computer slow and give you bad breath ! ILLMUNIATI ARE TEH SUXXORZZZZZ !!!!111!!1!!! FREMEAS0NZ REWLLLLZZZZZ !!!1!1!!!!!!!!!!!
(What, I'm just trying to bring this back on topic !)
Thomas-
Apes evolved into modern humans with populations in the hundred thousands over tens of thousands of generations
.1 %. Out of about 30K genes.
And the total difference in genetic material is under
Doesn't that tell you something ?
What you don't seem to realise is that there is a fundamental difference between evolution in nature and evolution in computers. In computers, most often, you'll find that each gene directly influences one particular aspect of the solution. One gene = one trait. Evolution is seen as a "one-way" optimisation problem : you have a well-defined function which tells you whether a given set of parameters is better or worse than others. The mapping is unambiguous and often fragile. You need complex genomes to create complex designs.
In nature, genes are just a general recipe for a complex self-regulating chemical reaction. It is incredibly easy to create very complex designs with minimal information, because the complexity is not provided by the genes themselves: it is provided by the chemical reactions, for which the genes provide only high-level control. Essentially a genome is like a program in a very high-level programming language. There are languages that can let you create complex applications with a few lines of code. This is because much of the complexity is located in the underlying libraries: your program just specifies how and when these complex components should interact.
So in nature, where does this complexity come from ? At the most basic level, the answer is simply: "proteins". Long molecules which spontaneously bend in complex 3D shapes. These complex shapes allow them to catalyse just about any reaction you might think of, with arbitrary specificity - including reactions between other proteins ! It also gives then structural properties: they can use each other to build stuff. The problem of knowing how brute matter can, under certain conditions, spontaneously self-organise into complex patterns is the core of complexity science.
Natural selection does not create complexity: natural selection creates *adaptation*. Because of the peculiar properties of proteins, and because the genome itself is also able to self-regulate (genes can switch each other on and off), there are plenty of possible complex designs to choose from. A small genetic difference in genetic information can have a wide range of consequences, from the trivial to the dramatic; but those differences will often follow complex patterns of their own, simply because they are differences in how an already existing complex pattern should be organised. Natural selection guides evolution towards those which are (increasingly) better adapted to their particular environment. Furthermore (and that is another difference with artificial evolution), the environment is so rich and complex that biological creatures constantly find new ways to exploit it. The fitness function is "open". That's without even mentioning coevolution (when you evolve a new feature, other lineages may evolve other features in response, to which you have to adapt again, etc.)
Of course there is a feedback loop in the system, in that selection may favour those lineages which develop the most "clever" developmental system, thus facilitating the further creation of efficient complexity. People call that "evolution of evolvability".
You want to read two (short, layman-oriented) books: "Chance and Necessity" by Jacques Monod and "At home in the Universe" by Stuart Kauffman.
I dont believe you could solve a problem such as the development of an equivalent to an F16 starting with a sopwith camel using GAs unless you used [at least] tens of millions of individuals over millions of generations.
This would be true if you had one gene for every joint and every bolt. This wouldn't be true if the planes were self-constructing machines (as living systems are) such that the genome would be the overall organiser of a complex developmental system. Those big wings are a bit awk
You just made a comparison, saying that Hindus or Jews would not be reacting violently in a similar situation.
WTF ????? Hinduism is the second worst offender when it comes to modern religious fanaticism.
I'll concede your point about the modern Jews though - if you need explanation about the "modern" bit, have a look at the Book of Joshua or the Book(s) of Judges someday.
Thomas-
Neither scientific advances nor engineering advances are protected by copyrights,
WTF ? Your own original post mentioned patents, which only apply to science and technology !
And you only need to look at the UK to see what the long term consequences of that are.
Yeah, I guess having the most successful economy among countries of comparable size must be really tough for them. Or maybe you're referring to them having produced more interesting music (both learned and popular) than any other European country over the last fscking century ? I mean, the Stones, the Beatles, Benjamin Britten, Radiohead, yeah, perfect proof that copyright kills creativity and all that.
I can't believe the crap we have to deal with here on Slashdot. Hell, we're the techies, we're supposed to be analytical and rational and all that ! But as soon as you say "copyright" all of a sudden everyone goes into crackpot mode and starts spouting some nonsense that would make the "fake moon landing" crowd proud.
Thomas-
The difference is that in the case of the book, the information is coupled with a physical object and thus causes the confusion in the form of some people's physical-world-coupled simian brains being unable to realize what it is they are sharing.
The difference is that in one case you share it with one person while in the other you share it with fscking millions. Is that so hard to understand ?
Any "practical" measures to restrict sharing of information (which is what this is all about) will and must lead to totalitarian measures in regards to digital communication equipment
Uh, no. Companies will eventually come up with some working public-key based DRM system. Media will only be playable on machines which follow the rules. Sure you still have the analog hole, but it kind of sucks for movies and doesn't work for apps.
Thomas-
Thanks to people generally not being able to control themselves with chat programs,
/. ?
As opposed to people being able to control themselves with surfing the web and wasting time on
Thomas-
are there still what we consider to be "dinosaurs" - and what were considered "dragons" prior to 1850 or so - roaming the remote places of the earth?
Why "remote" ? You've got plenty of them right out the window !
Thomas
Just like Batman. Except with less bats.
But then what's the point ?
What this guy really needs is the time-tested, tried-and-true Waterfall development process !
Thomas-
I am Richard Stallman, inventor of the original much-imitated EMACS editor, now at the Artificial Intelligence Lab at MIT.
It's much easier to give your work away when you know that your employer will keep paying you no matter how much time you devote to your side project.
I fail to see how this compares to Bill G., who I understand was head of a company in a competitive market and didn't have Mother Academia to pay the bills.
Thomas-
(And yes, technically I'm an academic too)
More to the point, what does Google plan to do that Ubuntu isn't already doing?
Whatever Apple did that FreeBSD wasn't already doing ?
Thomas-
Engrish in the spirit of Freedom!
All your base are Beijing to us !
It is a puzzle; a enigma that traps those so affected in a lifelong struggle for social status and recognition.
/. discussions (ahem) ?
Nerds crave social recognition. It's just that they can't get it, so they learn to do without.
consisting of inability to think independently of the social group, marked impairment in the ability to think logically or critically,
As opposed to the brilliant rationality, diversity and independence of thought which is commonly displayed on
Thomas-
Of course not. The reason geeks have all the hot women is that this "analytical-autistic" deformation happens to be a kind of "extreme male brain". It is an exaggeration of the most tangible differences between (most) female brains and (most) male brains.
:D
Have a look at this essay at PLoS Biology, which is mostly based on Baron-Cohen's results, and which seems to be causing quite a stir at the moment.
So next time your conversation dries up, rejoice, for this is a shining proof of your extreme virility !
Thomas-
Us computer geeks are basically fucked
In other news, media outlets report that thousands of computer geeks throughout the country have suddenly left their basements in a frantic rush towards the nearest seafood store or marine aquarium.
"I mean, I know they're flabby cold-blooded cephalopods, but it's still better than nothing right ?" said one afflicted geek. "I, for one, can't wait to welcome our new sexually dominant molluscan overlords !"
Actually "Chirac Airlines" use small-size / mid-size aircrafts: Falcon 50, Falcon 900 and Airbus A319. No Airbus A340, for example. Of these, the Falcon 900 are most commonly used. They're small, fast and practical - and they're 100% French-made.
In 2003, Chirac flew 245 hours in Airbus aircrafts, and 428 hours in Falcon aircrafts (source).
There would probably be a PR backlash if the President started to fly only in big, luxurious, expensive aircrafts a la Air Force One. Remember, this is France, not the USA: you're not supposed to show off your money, especially when it comes from the taxpayers' pocket. Announcing "big cuts" in spending on official transport is a popular gimmick among French politicians.
Thomas-
but I saw somewhere that they implied that the inaccuracy of predictions in precession over time was a result of our current theories being flawed, and that the binary theory somehow magically removed this inaccuracy. This is an example of the utter bullshit that anyone with an understanding of nonlinear dynamics would notice immediately. You're dealing with a many-body system here. That's inherently chaotic.
Uh ? Certainly you're aware that Neptune was discovered by calculations based on the anomalous trajectories of known planets, right ? You're also aware that one of the triumphs of relativity was its ability to explain bizarre quirks in the orbit of Mercury.
Now maybe in this particular case the inaccuracies are not compatible with a "hidden star" (or can easily be explained without it), but saying that inacurracies in many-bodies problems cannot be exploited for discovering new things is just plain wrong.
Chatting with some people there makes the part of my brain that learned English die a little bit every time.
;)
So you're reading Slashdot to finish it off then ?
Thomas-