We've seen our muscles and physical health degrade
as a result of using motors to do all of our
physical work. Now maybe we'll see our brains
atrophy as a result of using computer to do
our mental work.
So how about a project to create a clickable
map of the world that would access a photograph
of that place? Then you could sit in front of
a browser and go anywhere in the world by
clicking on the map.
Back in the Fall of 1969 when the ARPAnet came
up for the first time, all networking was P2P.
Most networking stayed that way until the WWW
technology made a client/server form of networking
possible in the middle 1990s. There is absolutely
nothing new or unusual about P2P - every basic
technology on the Internet was designed to support
it from the earliest days.
I basically agree with Bob, but in fairness
I need to point out that Sun makes their
bug database available, including early warnings
about things that might not even be bugs.
I don't know why they didn't apply that policy
with the server memory problem.
One fundamental difference between law as a practice, and technology as a practice, is that law is basically a zero sum game - ie. for every winner there must be an equal but opposite loser. This is the fundamental property of a court decision, and it governs how everyone involved thinks about the law.
Technology, on the other hand, is a positive sum game. If I write a useful program and release it to the world under the GPL or similar license, everybody wins. Even if I sell my program for more than it cost me to write, but less than it would cost the buyer to write an equivalent program, the sum of the game is still positive. This also governs the way techies like me look at the overall game.
There is one major difference between a technology like software, where if you write a crappy program people will delete their copy and forget about it, and genetic engineering. If we find out that a plant has bad properties we might not be able to stop it from propagating.
Right now in the US we have major headaches from exotic species like cheat grass, tamarisk and kudzu. Cheat grass is a major problem where I live because it is replacing the natural prarie grasses, with the result that we have grass fires every year instead of every 10 or 15 years. Tamarisk is replacing our natural stream-side vegetation and greatly increasing the rate at which streams lose water to evaporation. Both of these plants evolved naturally in a different ecosystem and are now replacing our local species. It is effectively impossible to stop this process.
My greatest fear for genetically engineered plants is that somebody will produce a plant with even worse properties than cheat grass or tamarisk, release it into the environment and create major headaches for everybody. Since a DNA-based technology can replicate itself unaided, we might well find it as impossible to stop as cheat grass. Since genetically engineered DNA is not subject to the usual evolutionary constraints, there seems to be no limit to the potential for noxious properties.
Well, when I got involved with it, 20 years ago, we were just a handful of people sharing scientific data. We had absolutely no idea that it would evolve into a worldwide popular phenomenon. I still get a kick out of seeing URLs on the sides of city buses.
It took me six months of constant pestering to get my US West DSL connection in downtown Salt Lake working. As nearly as I could tell from stories, the first two months of delay were lack of DSLAM capacity in the CO, and the rest were the US West cable crews trying to get the cable to carry data.
For US$40.35/month, I get 256kb/s from an Ethernet port on the back of a Cisco 675 "modem" with a fixed IP address. The Cisco unit plugs directly into my phone wall jack, and the phone plugs in in parallel thru a low pass filter. I can plug the phone into a low pass filter on the back of the Cisco, or directly to a wall jack thru one of several low pass filters supplied with the Cisco.
US West also sent me a bundled Ethernet card, and instructions to install it in a PC. Since at the time of my order I had only a Sun workstation the PC card was redundant. I now have the Cisco plugged into a small Ethernet hub where I also connect my Sun, an HP printer, and a PC running Linux that I bought a few months ago. Linux is configured to do IP masquerading, so that Linux reaches the net directly and the Sun reaches the net thru Linux with a remapped IP address. This all works just fine. Neither US West nor XMission has attempted to get in the way of this setup.
The biggest part of the problem was getting to this stage. Fortunately I have a few connections and I was forced to use them to the fullest to get the thing to work. First, US West quoted me some ridiculous distance from the CO and claimed that DSL would never work. By my measurement, my actual distance is *well* within their limits. It took me quite a bit of work to convince them of this however. Ultimately, from what I can gather, they found that the cable to my house carried a 60Hz common mode voltage large enough to interfere with operation of the DSL modem. The US West cable department apparently did some rework on their grounds or something. Eventually they got it all working reliably but the delay was so long and the billing so confused that one of their executives decided to "forget" about the installation fee.
The bottom line is that I have now had months of highly reliable operation from this arrangement, and am very pleased with it.
As an entertaining side note, a few weeks ago I was at a party with a bunch of US West people. They were amazed that I had managed to get DSL and one said that US West had told her she was too far from her CO to get it at her house. I told her my story and suggested that she measure the distance herself:^)
My arrangement is a US West DSL to my XMission account here in Salt Lake City. It took US West several months to get it running, and they said they had to do some work on the grounding of the cables in my neighborhood, but now everything works great. I pay US West $40.35/month over and above my regular phone service, and I pay XMission for the account. I get one static IP address and an Ethernet port, which is plugged into my 10BaseT hub. There was a funny conversation when I placed the order about "what kind of PC do you have?" "Sun SPARCstation" etc. and the order taker ended up checking "other" on all the boxes.
Slashdot Mirror
but then they seemed happy with the situation ...
in their last election
We've seen our muscles and physical health degrade
as a result of using motors to do all of our
physical work. Now maybe we'll see our brains
atrophy as a result of using computer to do
our mental work.
How do the managers of the Nupedia project plan to maintain consistent and useful cross-linking between articles written by different authors?
That's what I did on Travelocity. It worked!
So how about a project to create a clickable
map of the world that would access a photograph
of that place? Then you could sit in front of
a browser and go anywhere in the world by
clicking on the map.
Back in the Fall of 1969 when the ARPAnet came
up for the first time, all networking was P2P.
Most networking stayed that way until the WWW
technology made a client/server form of networking
possible in the middle 1990s. There is absolutely
nothing new or unusual about P2P - every basic
technology on the Internet was designed to support
it from the earliest days.
I've been happy with XMission
I basically agree with Bob, but in fairness
I need to point out that Sun makes their
bug database available, including early warnings
about things that might not even be bugs.
I don't know why they didn't apply that policy
with the server memory problem.
One fundamental difference between law as a practice, and technology as a practice, is that law is basically a zero sum game - ie. for every winner there must be an equal but opposite loser. This is the fundamental property of a court decision, and it governs how everyone involved thinks about the law.
Technology, on the other hand, is a positive sum game. If I write a useful program and release it to the world under the GPL or similar license, everybody wins. Even if I sell my program for more than it cost me to write, but less than it would cost the buyer to write an equivalent program, the sum of the game is still positive. This also governs the way techies like me look at the overall game.
There is one major difference between a technology like software, where if you write a crappy program people will delete their copy and forget about it, and genetic engineering. If we find out that a plant has bad properties we might not be able to stop it from propagating.
Right now in the US we have major headaches from exotic species like cheat grass, tamarisk and kudzu.
Cheat grass is a major problem where I live because it is replacing the natural prarie grasses, with the result that we have grass fires every year instead of every 10 or 15 years. Tamarisk is replacing our natural stream-side vegetation and greatly increasing the rate at which streams lose water to evaporation. Both of these plants evolved naturally in a different ecosystem and are now replacing our local species. It is effectively impossible to stop this process.
My greatest fear for genetically engineered plants is that somebody will produce a plant with even worse properties than cheat grass or tamarisk, release it into the environment and create major headaches for everybody. Since a DNA-based technology can replicate itself unaided, we might well find it as impossible to stop as cheat grass. Since genetically engineered DNA is not subject to the usual evolutionary constraints, there seems to be no limit to the potential for noxious properties.
Well, when I got involved with it, 20 years ago,
we were just a handful of people sharing scientific
data. We had absolutely no idea that
it would evolve into a worldwide popular
phenomenon. I still get a kick out of seeing
URLs on the sides of city buses.
my US West DSL connection in downtown Salt Lake
working. As nearly as I could tell from stories,
the first two months of delay were lack of DSLAM
capacity in the CO, and the rest were the US West
cable crews trying to get the cable to carry data.
For US$40.35/month, I get 256kb/s from an Ethernet
port on the back of a Cisco 675 "modem" with a
fixed IP address. The Cisco unit plugs directly
into my phone wall jack, and the phone plugs in
in parallel thru a low pass filter. I can plug
the phone into a low pass filter on the back of
the Cisco, or directly to a wall jack thru one
of several low pass filters supplied with the
Cisco.
US West also sent me a bundled Ethernet card,
and instructions to install it in a PC. Since
at the time of my order I had only a Sun
workstation the PC card was redundant. I now
have the Cisco plugged into a small Ethernet hub
where I also connect my Sun, an HP printer, and
a PC running Linux that I bought a few months ago.
Linux is configured to do IP masquerading, so
that Linux reaches the net directly and the Sun
reaches the net thru Linux with a remapped IP
address. This all works just fine. Neither
US West nor XMission has attempted to get in the
way of this setup.
The biggest part of the problem was getting to
this stage. Fortunately I have a few connections
and I was forced to use them to the fullest to
get the thing to work. First, US West quoted me
some ridiculous distance from the CO and claimed
that DSL would never work. By my measurement,
my actual distance is *well* within their limits.
It took me quite a bit of work to convince them
of this however. Ultimately, from what I can
gather, they found that the cable to my house
carried a 60Hz common mode voltage large enough
to interfere with operation of the DSL modem.
The US West cable department apparently did some
rework on their grounds or something. Eventually
they got it all working reliably but the delay
was so long and the billing so confused that
one of their executives decided to "forget"
about the installation fee.
The bottom line is that I have now had months of
highly reliable operation from this arrangement,
and am very pleased with it.
As an entertaining side note, a few weeks ago I
was at a party with a bunch of US West people.
They were amazed that I had managed to get DSL
and one said that US West had told her she was
too far from her CO to get it at her house.
I told her my story and suggested that she
measure the distance herself
My arrangement is a US West DSL to my XMission
account here in Salt Lake City. It took US West
several months to get it running, and they said
they had to do some work on the grounding of the
cables in my neighborhood, but now everything
works great. I pay US West $40.35/month over
and above my regular phone service, and I pay
XMission for the account. I get one static IP
address and an Ethernet port, which is plugged
into my 10BaseT hub. There was a funny conversation
when I placed the order about "what
kind of PC do you have?" "Sun SPARCstation" etc.
and the order taker ended up checking "other"
on all the boxes.