the Cyberpunk genre is not supposed to be accurate
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Noir
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· Score: 2
I think you're missing the point. When Gibson wrote Neuromancer, he didn't know a thing about the inner workings of computers. He's admitted as much, and it's probably why he was able to write a book as mind-blowing as Neuromancer.
Good cyberpunk isn't really about what's going to happen in ten years or twenty or fifty or whatever. It's about technological and social trends that are barely visible today, and how they impact human beings. By extrapolating these trends, good authors can make us think about what makes us human, what kind of society we live in, what kind of society we want to create for the future.
Exaggeration is certainly a part of cyberpunk's core sensibility. But exaggeration can be very helpful in illuminating things. Remember Swift's "A Modest Proposal"? It's pure satire, grossly exaggerating the situation in Ireland at the time it was written, but it was very effective in pointing out the disparities between English landowners and Irish poor.
The violence that you see in so many cyberpunk stories is an extrapolation of the violence that's endemic to American society. It's everywhere around us - on TV, in music, in films, in our schools, on our streets, in our prisons.
As for technology, the merging of man and machine isn't currently as radical as you'd see in most cyberpunk stories, but think about this: prosthetic devices are gettting better and better every year, "bionic eyes" are moving closer to reality, genetic manipulation of human DNA is no longer fiction.
By exaggerating current trends, good authors can cause us to look at our current situation and say, "well, it ain't that bad now, but let's look at where we really are headed." Unlike "hard" science fiction of the Asimov school, cyberpunk is less concerned with the "how" of technology than with the "why" of it.
States do not function like software. They do not "crash" when "bugs" surface. Believe it or not, folks, not all things in the universe can be traced back to computers.
First, software doesn't adapt itself and change without reprogramming. Software doesn't have to make decisions that it's not programmed to process.
Ultimately, software is binary and cannot craft solutions that incorporate the tremendous variety of influences that human beings (yes, Virginia, the State Department is still run by humans) have to deal with every day.
Is China "crashing" right now? Is the US "buggy" right now over this spy plane issue? No. They're both acting in their own self-interests.
China wants to roll back US spying to the degree that it can. It wants to extend its own terrority further into international waters wherever possible. It wants to keep US hubris in check and show that it means business in defending its own interests.
The US wants to continue the tradition of spying from international waters. It wants to maintain existing definitions of territory. It wants to show China that it sees changes in the status quo as aggressive moves.
Note to Katz: go to Mongolia. Don't bring any techno-gizmos at all. Remain unwired for a month. Watch the traders and tribesmen. See how they interact. Come back and report to Slashdot with your observations. Do not use any words that include the following: hyper, techno, uber, ultra, quasi, multi, digital, electronic, net, or web.
The language of international diplomacy is put out carefully specifically because of the imporantance of saying exactly what you mean. When nation-states don't say exactly what they mean, bad things happen.
Case in point: the Korean War.
The US put out a list of nations it would defend with force against Communist attack. South Korea was not on that list. China and North Korea took this as tacit understanding that South Korea was not an area the US was willing to spill blood over.
The result is pretty well-known, even to today's undereducated American populace. North Korea attacked, the Korean War was started, the US and many other countries lost a lot of men and women in a contest that could have been avoided had the US communicated its intentions better.
Language is extremely powerful, and in the diplomatic arena those who don't wield it well are doomed to failure. To think of these words being exchanged as "mere posturing" is to expose a fundamental misunderstanding about how humans interact. Communicate weakness, and that perceived weakness will be acted upon. Communicate strength, and that perceived strength will be acted upon.
I'd certainly rather have a harsh exchange of words, a lot of tension, and ultimately a resolution that doesn't weaken America's position with China than an immediate backing down and apology for something that doesn't deserve it. The Chinese would certainly see such an apology as an admission by the US that when bullied, we'll acquiesce.
An apology over a downed plane is far from a Chamberlain-style cave-in, but not as far as we might think.
Most of the dot-bombs failed because they were me-too businesses not in the technology sense, but in the business sense.
Businesses exist to make money..
If the people starting the business don't know how they're going to get profitable quickly and maintain profitability, they shouldn't be starting the company. The days of instant 20-year old CEOs is over. Real-world business experience matters.
Even if you have the best online Widgetizer in the world, and millions of people use it, if your company doesn't have a solid method of deriving revenue from all those visits, the company won't succeed.
Look at the companies that are succeeding, and you'll see that the business model is what makes them different:
eBay is essentially a flea market. Like a flea market, they simply set up the marketplace and take make money from advertising. Note that this model only works if eBay generates a sufficient volume of business that is self-sustaining. Nobody really heard of eBay through advertising, at least at first. They were smart and used word of mouth to generate traffic. They didn't pull a Pets.com and blow all their money trying to generate traffic up front.
The reason they were able to do this successfully stems from the company leadership. They weren't going along with the lemmings. They had a clear vision. They knew what they wanted to do. They executed well and made using their site exciting for people. They kept operating costs down.
When checking out a start-up, remember that the technology is a secondary matter. Try to look at it as a total technology neophyte and just ask yourself "do these people have a solid method of making money, and are they smart enough and experienced enough to pull it off?"
OK, we could argue the specifics, and you're right, the M1 does have a HUGE logistical tail (though less of a tail than the M60, but I digress). In fact, I was a light infantry guy, so I'm not gonna argue that the M1 is the be-all-end-all weapon. However, it beats the crap out of lower-tech weapons like the T-80, which was my point.
You're also right about the air war of course, which again furthers my point. It lasted for weeks, but because of superior technology, we were able to beat down the Iraqis at minimal cost in lives.
I do remember the Valkyrie. I do remember the SGT York. But I'm also familiar with the Blackhawk, the F-16, and a few other extremely complex pieces of technology that work rather well. My whole point was that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I also know that flashy technology doesn't always win the day. Remember the GAO study about all those Scuds the Air Force "wiped out"? Turns out the only Scuds that were ever provably killed were taken out by Special Ops units on the ground. The Pave Low and other very sophisticated equipment certainly helped them get there, though.;-)
maybe that sentence would be better as "one reason to fear poorly implemented technology".
Let's not forget that the technology in the V22 is akin to the technology that allowed us to wipe out most of the Iraqi army in 100 hours with an incredibly small number of Coalition casualties.
This reminds me of the negative press coverage the M1 tank received during trials because it used a turbine engine similar to those used in helicopters. The engine had problems during trials and was roundly criticized for being costly and "gold plated".
That same turbine engine, after the glitches were fixed, turned out to be more reliable than the old engines it replaced. The M1 went on to become the most feared and capable main battle tank on the planet, easily taking out T-72 and T-80 tanks before they could even DETECT the M1.
Technology in military systems is always risky in one way or another, but the ultimate payoff is usually more than worth that initial risk.
The V22 has been plagued with problems from the beginning, and they may be pushing the envelope a bit too far with an overall concept that is just not workable. But if they do work out the glitches, the V22 will go from becoming an example of "too much" technology to an example of "amazing" technology.
"Linus has said a number of times that he's not out to change the world... or even do anything in particular for the world."
I understand that absolutely. Linus started Linux and has worked on it for years out of self-interest. No doubt about it.
What I'm getting at is that (unfortunately or not) Linus represents Open Source to the world at large. While most Linux afficionados know about Stallman, ESR, Perens, et. al., the lightening rod for Open Source right now is Linus Torvalds.
Whether he likes it or not, he represents Open Source to the non-hacker world. What I was getting at with my initial post is that even though Open Source movement and Linus Torvalds are two separate and distinct entities, that is not the perception.
The development of Linux shouldn't be run like a business, I wholeheartedly agree. But Torvalds has an effect far beyond just Linux. His straight up honesty is one of the things that has helped Linux come so far. It's one of the things that, by all accounts, makes him a good person.
But Open Source as a movement is bigger than Linus, and if we take Linux out of the equation for a moment, we can see that without Linux, Open Source wouldn't really have a flagship "product", regardless of what Stallman says. I mean, Apache is great and all, but a successful operating system is an order of magnitude more important when you're selling Open Source as a viable process for building software.
So now we have a situation where the de facto spokesman for Open Source might not be interested in taking on that role.
Where does that leave Open Source advocates who do care about presenting Open Source as a viable option (with or without Linux).
Anyone paying attention to technology - tech investors, business leaders, etc., has at least heard of Linus Torvalds. The days of obscurity are gone. Just as people know who Jobs and Ellison are, they now know who Torvalds is.
he's the representative in the mainstream public's eye of Open Source in general and Linux in particular.
I think that's why the press has latched onto this story, and why some of us find it particularly interesting. We all know that hackers flame each other, that for any technology to really matter, it has to originate from passionate individuals.
But the rest of the non-geek world doesn't know this, isn't familiar with hacker culture and how ideas are discussed. The business world operates differently, and in the business world, attacks like his attack on Mach are often interpreted as signs of fear or weakness.
It may be even more puzzling to the general public because they've been lead to believe that the Open Source community has always been interested in allowing many different technologies to flourish in a relatively benign environment.
I applaud Linus for the tremendous work he's done over the years in developing Linux and championing Open Source, but if you want to convince folks that Open Source is a kinder, gentler way to compute, saying Mach is crap might not be the best approach.
On a disk with an OS X and an OS 9.1 partition
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Multibooting on Macs?
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· Score: 2
you can boot up with the option key held down. Firmware will then show icons for each of the boot volumes. Select the volume, and hit the right arrow, and it will boot from that volume. May work with Linux as well.
um... WebObjects is incredibly powerful, but comparing it to HyperCard is like comparing Visual Basic to BEA WebLogic - they're operating in completely different worlds.
HyperCard is a development environment based on a card metaphor - it's designed for use on a Mac in a non-networked environment.
WebObjects is an application server that is used to build database-driven Web applications that are, by definition, served to multiple client machines.
BTW, WO 5 is due in May, the developer release is already out - it's a pure Java rewrite that will be deployable on any server OS that has a Java VM. Also, a totally revamped OS X Server is due at around the same time, and it should serve as an excellent development and deployment environment for WO.
HyperCard was great - it's what got me into multimedia and web development, but Apple has limited resources, and they need to think about the future. Life goes on, RealBASIC is here, Cocoa is here.
Mr. Miller, again thanks for fielding questions from all of us.
Given that Microsoft now supports Win3.1, Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2000 in its various flavors, WinCE, EmbeddedCE, and probably other OSes I'm not even aware of, how do you intend to differentiate these OSes in a way that doesn't confuse people?
To me it looks like these days Microsoft is doing what Proctor and Gamble has been doing for years - competing with its own brands against its own brands. It's hard not to chuckle when I see an ad comparing Win2k performance to WinNT performance. It's just like those "more whitening power" ads for Tide, but there are actual numbers behind the claims, and they don't make NT look very good at all.
My understanding is that at companies like P&G, separate brands are handled as separate profit centers - small companies inside larger companies, competing against each other. But Tide doesn't have to be interoperable with Clorox - you buy one, or you buy the other.
How do you think MS will deal with this going forward?
Mr. Miller, thanks for taking the time to address this forum. I'm sure you've realized that you jumped into a snake pit here.
My question is this: Most Slashdot readers have been around long enough to have witnessed some of what has been referred to as Microsoft's "Embrace and Extinguish" strategy.
With.Net, Microsoft is pushing the idea that Microsoft technologies will play well with others. In the past "interoperability" at Microsoft has seemed to mean, "we'll make our products work with yours just long enough that we can match your featureset then bury you with marketing and add many new features that only work in a homogeneous Microsoft environment."
What about.Net is different in this regard, over the long haul?
You know, I never went on the Web before, because I just really missed all the interruptions. I mean, TV has always been so satisfying, because it provides me with handy little commercial breaks. I can do the dishes, take a crap, even iron my laundry when I'm watching TV. But do you get that with the Web?
Noooo..., you certainly don't. Well all those snobby Internet people with their "advertising sucks" attitudes can all just kiss my ass, because I'm HAPPY that the Web is becoming just like TV. Yesserree!
because they used pencils to write down calculations and observations. The computer, like the pencil, is a tool. Scientists use their minds and tools together to create new things or discover existing facts.
talk about a lot of hot air about nothing! Journalists writing about what other journalists said in connection to a story about a pre-release piece of software.
We'll all be able to see for ourselves what the shipping version of OS X is like within a matter of hours. Some of the journalists, posters, and rabid pro and anti-Macheads will be proven correct, while some will be proven wrong.
Life will go on. The sun will rise in the morning and set in the evening.
only the squad leader really needs one to communicate with base
So what you really mean is - "the average PFC doesn't need a radio that is tuned to the platoon or company push." I agree with you there, and I agree that an inter-squad commo capability could be a very good thing, particularly in those instances when you're on the OBJ, the 60s are yammering, the mortar rounds are falling, and you suddenly lost track of where your squad is moving.
If every PFC were on the platoon or company push, it could get to be sort of like.. well, like Slashdot . Great community, but not an execution-oriented environment;-).
I've posted about this before - but remember that DARPA's charter is not to develop new technologies that are necessarily used "out of the box". There's a reason they're called the "Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.
There's a higher than even chance that this will be akin to a press release about.NET from Microsoft. The initial concept of the product and the actual (if any) end result are likely to have significant variance.
However, this is part of a larger DoD trend toward providing soldiers with ubiquitous communication. Believe it or not, individual soldiers in the Army generally still don't have personal radios down past the squad leader level.
While it's been pointed out that special ops units have lots of sophisticated personal communications devices, for the average soldier or marine on the ground, there's a lot of room for improvement.
This DARPA project is one out of many different options the military is exploring, so be happy (or upset, if you're not fond of the military) that they're exploring multiple paths before committing to a massive restructuring of their tactical communications setup.
Also as has been noted elsewhere, signal-hopping has been used for years by the US military in SINGGARS systems.
More significantly, there are signs that the public is losing faith in the digital revolution, and confused about it's goals.
Katz is contradicting himself here yet again. In previous pieces he has argued that the "revolution" of the Internet was leaderless and in many ways anarchic.
But how can a revolution without leaders and without any stated goals have any... goals for the public to be confused about?
Slashdot Mirror
Good cyberpunk isn't really about what's going to happen in ten years or twenty or fifty or whatever. It's about technological and social trends that are barely visible today, and how they impact human beings. By extrapolating these trends, good authors can make us think about what makes us human, what kind of society we live in, what kind of society we want to create for the future.
Exaggeration is certainly a part of cyberpunk's core sensibility. But exaggeration can be very helpful in illuminating things. Remember Swift's "A Modest Proposal"? It's pure satire, grossly exaggerating the situation in Ireland at the time it was written, but it was very effective in pointing out the disparities between English landowners and Irish poor.
The violence that you see in so many cyberpunk stories is an extrapolation of the violence that's endemic to American society. It's everywhere around us - on TV, in music, in films, in our schools, on our streets, in our prisons.
As for technology, the merging of man and machine isn't currently as radical as you'd see in most cyberpunk stories, but think about this: prosthetic devices are gettting better and better every year, "bionic eyes" are moving closer to reality, genetic manipulation of human DNA is no longer fiction.
By exaggerating current trends, good authors can cause us to look at our current situation and say, "well, it ain't that bad now, but let's look at where we really are headed." Unlike "hard" science fiction of the Asimov school, cyberpunk is less concerned with the "how" of technology than with the "why" of it.
Marketing types do something that's just as important to your business, if not more so, than the technical stuff. Just ask Microsoft ;-)
Be smart and let the marketeers do their thing while you do yours. You'll be happier.
First, software doesn't adapt itself and change without reprogramming. Software doesn't have to make decisions that it's not programmed to process.
Ultimately, software is binary and cannot craft solutions that incorporate the tremendous variety of influences that human beings (yes, Virginia, the State Department is still run by humans) have to deal with every day.
Is China "crashing" right now? Is the US "buggy" right now over this spy plane issue? No. They're both acting in their own self-interests.
China wants to roll back US spying to the degree that it can. It wants to extend its own terrority further into international waters wherever possible. It wants to keep US hubris in check and show that it means business in defending its own interests.
The US wants to continue the tradition of spying from international waters. It wants to maintain existing definitions of territory. It wants to show China that it sees changes in the status quo as aggressive moves.
Note to Katz: go to Mongolia. Don't bring any techno-gizmos at all. Remain unwired for a month. Watch the traders and tribesmen. See how they interact. Come back and report to Slashdot with your observations. Do not use any words that include the following: hyper, techno, uber, ultra, quasi, multi, digital, electronic, net, or web.
Case in point: the Korean War.
The US put out a list of nations it would defend with force against Communist attack. South Korea was not on that list. China and North Korea took this as tacit understanding that South Korea was not an area the US was willing to spill blood over.
The result is pretty well-known, even to today's undereducated American populace. North Korea attacked, the Korean War was started, the US and many other countries lost a lot of men and women in a contest that could have been avoided had the US communicated its intentions better.
Language is extremely powerful, and in the diplomatic arena those who don't wield it well are doomed to failure. To think of these words being exchanged as "mere posturing" is to expose a fundamental misunderstanding about how humans interact. Communicate weakness, and that perceived weakness will be acted upon. Communicate strength, and that perceived strength will be acted upon.
I'd certainly rather have a harsh exchange of words, a lot of tension, and ultimately a resolution that doesn't weaken America's position with China than an immediate backing down and apology for something that doesn't deserve it. The Chinese would certainly see such an apology as an admission by the US that when bullied, we'll acquiesce.
An apology over a downed plane is far from a Chamberlain-style cave-in, but not as far as we might think.
Businesses exist to make money..
If the people starting the business don't know how they're going to get profitable quickly and maintain profitability, they shouldn't be starting the company. The days of instant 20-year old CEOs is over. Real-world business experience matters.
Even if you have the best online Widgetizer in the world, and millions of people use it, if your company doesn't have a solid method of deriving revenue from all those visits, the company won't succeed.
Look at the companies that are succeeding, and you'll see that the business model is what makes them different:
eBay is essentially a flea market. Like a flea market, they simply set up the marketplace and take make money from advertising. Note that this model only works if eBay generates a sufficient volume of business that is self-sustaining. Nobody really heard of eBay through advertising, at least at first. They were smart and used word of mouth to generate traffic. They didn't pull a Pets.com and blow all their money trying to generate traffic up front.
The reason they were able to do this successfully stems from the company leadership. They weren't going along with the lemmings. They had a clear vision. They knew what they wanted to do. They executed well and made using their site exciting for people. They kept operating costs down.
When checking out a start-up, remember that the technology is a secondary matter. Try to look at it as a total technology neophyte and just ask yourself "do these people have a solid method of making money, and are they smart enough and experienced enough to pull it off?"
You're also right about the air war of course, which again furthers my point. It lasted for weeks, but because of superior technology, we were able to beat down the Iraqis at minimal cost in lives.
I do remember the Valkyrie. I do remember the SGT York. But I'm also familiar with the Blackhawk, the F-16, and a few other extremely complex pieces of technology that work rather well. My whole point was that we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bathwater.
I also know that flashy technology doesn't always win the day. Remember the GAO study about all those Scuds the Air Force "wiped out"? Turns out the only Scuds that were ever provably killed were taken out by Special Ops units on the ground. The Pave Low and other very sophisticated equipment certainly helped them get there, though. ;-)
maybe that sentence would be better as "one reason to fear poorly implemented technology".
Let's not forget that the technology in the V22 is akin to the technology that allowed us to wipe out most of the Iraqi army in 100 hours with an incredibly small number of Coalition casualties.
This reminds me of the negative press coverage the M1 tank received during trials because it used a turbine engine similar to those used in helicopters. The engine had problems during trials and was roundly criticized for being costly and "gold plated".
That same turbine engine, after the glitches were fixed, turned out to be more reliable than the old engines it replaced. The M1 went on to become the most feared and capable main battle tank on the planet, easily taking out T-72 and T-80 tanks before they could even DETECT the M1.
Technology in military systems is always risky in one way or another, but the ultimate payoff is usually more than worth that initial risk.
The V22 has been plagued with problems from the beginning, and they may be pushing the envelope a bit too far with an overall concept that is just not workable. But if they do work out the glitches, the V22 will go from becoming an example of "too much" technology to an example of "amazing" technology.
I understand that absolutely. Linus started Linux and has worked on it for years out of self-interest. No doubt about it.
What I'm getting at is that (unfortunately or not) Linus represents Open Source to the world at large. While most Linux afficionados know about Stallman, ESR, Perens, et. al., the lightening rod for Open Source right now is Linus Torvalds.
Whether he likes it or not, he represents Open Source to the non-hacker world. What I was getting at with my initial post is that even though Open Source movement and Linus Torvalds are two separate and distinct entities, that is not the perception.
The development of Linux shouldn't be run like a business, I wholeheartedly agree. But Torvalds has an effect far beyond just Linux. His straight up honesty is one of the things that has helped Linux come so far. It's one of the things that, by all accounts, makes him a good person.
But Open Source as a movement is bigger than Linus, and if we take Linux out of the equation for a moment, we can see that without Linux, Open Source wouldn't really have a flagship "product", regardless of what Stallman says. I mean, Apache is great and all, but a successful operating system is an order of magnitude more important when you're selling Open Source as a viable process for building software.
So now we have a situation where the de facto spokesman for Open Source might not be interested in taking on that role.
Where does that leave Open Source advocates who do care about presenting Open Source as a viable option (with or without Linux).
Even outside the Valley, he's gaining visibility: Time Digital's Digital 50: #4 Linus Torvalds.
Anyone paying attention to technology - tech investors, business leaders, etc., has at least heard of Linus Torvalds. The days of obscurity are gone. Just as people know who Jobs and Ellison are, they now know who Torvalds is.
I think that's why the press has latched onto this story, and why some of us find it particularly interesting. We all know that hackers flame each other, that for any technology to really matter, it has to originate from passionate individuals.
But the rest of the non-geek world doesn't know this, isn't familiar with hacker culture and how ideas are discussed. The business world operates differently, and in the business world, attacks like his attack on Mach are often interpreted as signs of fear or weakness.
It may be even more puzzling to the general public because they've been lead to believe that the Open Source community has always been interested in allowing many different technologies to flourish in a relatively benign environment.
I applaud Linus for the tremendous work he's done over the years in developing Linux and championing Open Source, but if you want to convince folks that Open Source is a kinder, gentler way to compute, saying Mach is crap might not be the best approach.
you can boot up with the option key held down. Firmware will then show icons for each of the boot volumes. Select the volume, and hit the right arrow, and it will boot from that volume. May work with Linux as well.
HyperCard is a development environment based on a card metaphor - it's designed for use on a Mac in a non-networked environment.
WebObjects is an application server that is used to build database-driven Web applications that are, by definition, served to multiple client machines.
BTW, WO 5 is due in May, the developer release is already out - it's a pure Java rewrite that will be deployable on any server OS that has a Java VM. Also, a totally revamped OS X Server is due at around the same time, and it should serve as an excellent development and deployment environment for WO.
HyperCard was great - it's what got me into multimedia and web development, but Apple has limited resources, and they need to think about the future. Life goes on, RealBASIC is here, Cocoa is here.
Given that Microsoft now supports Win3.1, Win95, Win98, WinNT, Win2000 in its various flavors, WinCE, EmbeddedCE, and probably other OSes I'm not even aware of, how do you intend to differentiate these OSes in a way that doesn't confuse people?
To me it looks like these days Microsoft is doing what Proctor and Gamble has been doing for years - competing with its own brands against its own brands. It's hard not to chuckle when I see an ad comparing Win2k performance to WinNT performance. It's just like those "more whitening power" ads for Tide, but there are actual numbers behind the claims, and they don't make NT look very good at all.
My understanding is that at companies like P&G, separate brands are handled as separate profit centers - small companies inside larger companies, competing against each other. But Tide doesn't have to be interoperable with Clorox - you buy one, or you buy the other.
How do you think MS will deal with this going forward?
My question is this: Most Slashdot readers have been around long enough to have witnessed some of what has been referred to as Microsoft's "Embrace and Extinguish" strategy.
With .Net, Microsoft is pushing the idea that Microsoft technologies will play well with others. In the past "interoperability" at Microsoft has seemed to mean, "we'll make our products work with yours just long enough that we can match your featureset then bury you with marketing and add many new features that only work in a homogeneous Microsoft environment."
What about .Net is different in this regard, over the long haul?
Noooo..., you certainly don't. Well all those snobby Internet people with their "advertising sucks" attitudes can all just kiss my ass, because I'm HAPPY that the Web is becoming just like TV. Yesserree!
AS IF banner ads were REAL advertising..
We'll all be able to see for ourselves what the shipping version of OS X is like within a matter of hours. Some of the journalists, posters, and rabid pro and anti-Macheads will be proven correct, while some will be proven wrong.
Life will go on. The sun will rise in the morning and set in the evening.
So what you really mean is - "the average PFC doesn't need a radio that is tuned to the platoon or company push." I agree with you there, and I agree that an inter-squad commo capability could be a very good thing, particularly in those instances when you're on the OBJ, the 60s are yammering, the mortar rounds are falling, and you suddenly lost track of where your squad is moving.
If every PFC were on the platoon or company push, it could get to be sort of like.. well, like Slashdot . Great community, but not an execution-oriented environment ;-).
There's a higher than even chance that this will be akin to a press release about .NET from Microsoft. The initial concept of the product and the actual (if any) end result are likely to have significant variance.
However, this is part of a larger DoD trend toward providing soldiers with ubiquitous communication. Believe it or not, individual soldiers in the Army generally still don't have personal radios down past the squad leader level.
While it's been pointed out that special ops units have lots of sophisticated personal communications devices, for the average soldier or marine on the ground, there's a lot of room for improvement.
This DARPA project is one out of many different options the military is exploring, so be happy (or upset, if you're not fond of the military) that they're exploring multiple paths before committing to a massive restructuring of their tactical communications setup.
Also as has been noted elsewhere, signal-hopping has been used for years by the US military in SINGGARS systems.
Katz is contradicting himself here yet again. In previous pieces he has argued that the "revolution" of the Internet was leaderless and in many ways anarchic.
But how can a revolution without leaders and without any stated goals have any... goals for the public to be confused about?
If you view all choices as having only two possible answers, that's what I'd call a binary worldview.
Yes! It's true, it *does* happen. There are even, dare I say it, popular but not so smart students who tolerate and accept smart kids.
I know, that's not a binary view of the world, but sometimes the world ain't binary. ;-)