"The future is dense with computers. They will hang around everywhere in lush growths like Spanish moss. They will swarm like locusts." Oooooh....moss and locusts! Gee, the future is going to have lots of computers in it...who'd a thunk it?
"If a million people use a Web site simultaneously, doesn't that mean that we must have a heavy-duty remote server to keep them all happy? No; we could move the site onto a million desktops and use the internet for coordination." he should finish: "and this will all be designed by magical fairies other than me..."
And I don't get it...#21 is actually smart, where as #22 is the most absurdly obvious, but not quite clear thing I have ever read...AGH!...I can't take any more...
I don't get it...he seems to have put a lot of thought into this, but should've gone one step further. Why is it so x,y Cartesian?...I mean, especially when dealing with one finger, my finger sure as hell can't move as easily completely in a flat x,y fashion. My finger is much more able to move in an arcing fashion...sort've polar instead of cartesian...
So why the linearity?...just didn't totally think it through?
This idea has been bouncing around for a decade (or more) now...
Doesn't everyone remember the dozens of articles written years ago about that guy in the MIT Media Lab who had the exact same idea (called electronic ink, then)...All the pop. mags picked it up. Even check out the corporate spinoff: www.eink.com and also check out the neat-o simple flash anim off of the "Technology" section...
Does anyone else think the mouse looks like a new sandal with the straps cutoff?...Seriously, it looks like I'm sticking my hand on a pair of Tevas or Nike Air Deshutz's or something...
Everyone is forgetting that in 6-12 months, a PC that will be able to turn out the performance of the X-box will still be over $1000. Yes, and it will still be able to do FAR LESS than that $1000 computer. Please, do you really want to try to surf the web on your computer. Have you SEEN what fonts look like at that resolution??
Fact is, most PC games are single user (multiplayer through the net at best). Please! Consoles are JUST NOW starting to get net-saavy? Define multiplayer, because to me, being able to play Starcraft with 7 other people or Quake3Arena against 30 -- THAT'S multiplayer. Yes, consoles are admittedly better if you all want to be playing on the same monitor, but half the time I hate that anyways, because when the TV screen gets divided up, it gets really hard to tell who's doing what. But I'm getting off track...In any case, admittedly there are some types of games I would definitely rather play with others on a console -- BUT NOT ALL. Sports games (football, basketball, etc.) are a perfect example. Racing games are another. However, there are LOTS of games that I would never in a million years want to play on a console. Starcraft for instance. Quake3 or UT for another example.
You've got to remember, that with all this "plug n go" you're talking about, your making a number of huge hardware sacrifices, foremost being resolution. I don't know about you, but would I want to play Quake3 with a gamepad and at 640x480 when I can play on my PC at 1280x1024 -- FOUR TIMES the resolution, and with a mouse! Hell, no. And lots of others feel the same way...
look at how much crap is released for PCs that would never sell on a console.
That's because it is far cheaper to develop for the PC since you don't need all the fancy dev-hardware you do to develop for a console. Additionally, all the big console companies require you to APPLY once you've made a game to them to get your game approved for sale for their console, so if your game doesn't meet their standards, it's a no go!
While this may make for better game quality overall on average, it also makes for FAR, FAR fewer games overall and correspondingly less interesting experimentation as well!
Hmm...let's extrapolate here for a second...Digital optic interfaces could only lead to someone somewhere making a chip such that I can watch TV directly from my eyes...hmmm, then companies start to pay an even larger premium for advertising space literally in my eyeballs, and the world goes to hell?
Or perhaps hackers figure out nifty ways to broadcast at some odd frequency, whatever, to disrupt the chips, and we all go blind -- the world goes to hell?
Yep, I think it's pretty clear: we're all going to die now.
I so long for the days when I could tell chips apart from one another...the 386, the 486, etc. But, now, how do I compare a Pentium, an Athlon, a Celeron, a Crusoe, a whatever?... While I am half-joking here, I seriously though want them to stop adding on numbers to the Pentium and go to the next logical name. Let's see, doesn't it go Pent, Sex, Sept, Oct, Non, Dec?...so would that make this the Sexium? Or perhaps that was the Pentium II, and this is actually the Octium?
>Guess you didn't notice that a majority of stuff was donated. Only the stuff they paid for was listed. But that's my point! Saying you can build X for under some amount of money when a lot of X is donated is fraudulent.
As a couple others have pointed out, what's with their budget?...it seems totally misleading to me.
First, there's a BUNCH of things missing, like motherboards, memory, etc.
Second, the numbers don't make any sense, 40 network cards for a cluster of 16 machines? But wait, only 15 CPUs??
Third, many of the prices they got was sheer luck (and perhaps a little bit of work, which I would applaud them on)...I mean comeon, they managed to get from their salvage dept. (what's that, BTW?) network cards for ONE DOLLAR a piece and tape drives for $2.50 a piece (their keyboard adapter cost $2.32, only 18cents less than a tape drive). Those prices are so not good examples of real prices others would be able to consistently find -- or most likely at all!
All in all, almost none of their budget makes any logical sense, and it all just strikes me as stretched truth + luck = a cheap cluster here. I mean comeon, I'm going to have my friend by a $5000 computer, and sell it to me for 1cent, and then post to the world on my webpage that I bought the cheapest PentiumIII-whatever around?
Ok, suppose in the future we are using a lot more of voice recognition software to control our computers in general, more than just in games...as was mentioned with regardst to linux.
Sounds all fine and good right?...one question: How do I tell my computer to go to Slashdot?
Think about it...I'm gonna have to spell it?..heehee...or perhaps, if implemented the other way, slashdots daily hit count will quadruple instantly...
Man, we've all heard the statistics on Windows 2000 being the biggest program ever, right?...Open Source that??...And people thought Mozilla was big and confusing!
Without good guides from the engineers themselves, or really good and extremely dedicated (not to mention with tons of time on their hands) people wading through it forever and writing some guides themselves...
I dunno...IMHO, the downfall of most Open Source attempts is the sheer complexity of getting even a little involved in big projects. Yes, it's all well and good to release an Open Source driver for some graphics card for Linux, but really doing big overhauls of something?
Whether people want to admit it or not, size and complexity is daunting. I don't know about you guys, but I for one would not want to wade into the Win2k source, for example, blindly without some vague notions of principles at the least...
This article talks so much about the bandwidth capabilities of this new "data-streaming"...but, as a consumer and developer, what I care most about at this point (which may possibly change in the future) is better resolution, not more bandwidth! Of course the two are forever intertwined, but HDTV directly has a much better resolution than my old crappy NTSC TV, and that means so much more to me than having interactive content, more channels, etc. etc.
I will never, ever buy a console gaming system, for example, until one comes out that can match the resolution of my PC! What's the point, otherwise, when I can play the exact same game on my computer at 4 times the resolution of this crummy NTSC game on my TV?
This is, IMHO, one of the most important sentances in this article: "Multicasting or datacasting is fine, as long as they don't abandon HDTV," he said. So very true...so don't buy an HDTV yet?...no, please do! Support the standard, so I don't go blind by the time I'm 60!
The one thing not mentioned so far in any of the ads or in conversation here is the introduction to the book... by none other than Prof. Jenkins! One of the coolest Professor's on the planet, and the guy who testified before the Senate a little less than a year ago about goths, computer games, violence, etc... I'm psyched to read that!
While what they are talking about in this article, as opposed to many of the beliefs of people here, is in fact something special that is refered to as DNA computing...DNA computing as described here is nothing more than a special type of genetic algorithm.
So, " kinda the land where 1s and 0s and Darwin meet"...not quite. Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming have been around for a long time. DNA computing is just a special version of gentic algorithms...so nothing new...what's the big fuss?
Although it's not really being delayed all that much (now) after all, it still has already been pushed back so much, I don't understand how Daikatana expects to compete? Quake3 and UT are already out and have their market share. Now, they are entering, and if to gain any of that market share, they have to be better on some front than Q3 and UT, not just as good as, or what's the incentive to play?
And, the worst part is, I have a hard time imagining that it is in fact going to be better esp. given the fact that it was initially started SO long ago! Isn't it just going to be out-dated as soon as its released?
Then again, isn't their big thing the single player game as opposed to the multiplayer?...as opposed to Q3A and UT. Hmmm....
This strikes me as somewhat odd, for I never realized, I guess, how much money Verisign has. I always figured Network Solutions would've had more, and if a buyout such as this were to happen, it would be the other way around (NetworkSolutions buying Verisign).
I mean, what are the two companies big products? NetworkSolutions = domain name registry Verisign = certificate signature I always figured domain name registration was a more lucrative field than certificates...or am I missing something?
Then again, I still can't believe AOL bought TimeWarner and not the other way around...
There are lots of interesting issues to think about when it comes to Napster. First and formost is the legality of the whole thing. This is still very much up in the air...while I personally think it should be legal, two comments were made on here I want to address.
Someone said making napster illegal would be like making (among other things) the USENET illegal. The problem with this analogy is there isn't the same level of direct culpability with regards to the USENET as there is with Napster. The USENET is a far larger and amorphous entity than Napster is. Who would you find liable for file trading on the USENET?...The USENET isn't a product of a given company like napster is...
Another analogy was made to VHS and cassette tapes. I would say this isn't the best analogy but instead think of "video stabalizers" or "cable decoder boxes". So called video stabalizers have long been used to try to break copy protection in copying a tape from one VCR to another. Similarly, cable decoder/descrambler boxes have long been used to circumvent the cable companies scrambling. Now, the problem here, and with napster, is that all three products have the possibility and potential to be used in a completely legal manner. If I am working on a video project on some crappy old VCR, I might use a video stabalizer to improve my image quality; if I by accident knock my cable box off my TV and break it and want a new one without wanting to pay the cable company, I may just choose to go buy one from a shop down the street. Similarly, if I am an independent music producer (some small indie band or whatnot), I may choose to try to use napster and it's chat rooms to promote my band by giving away free samples...
Legally the question becomes then not can the product be used for legal purposes, but what is it most likely to be used for. And this is where the law gets REALLY hairy. Then, "intent" has to be proven, which is a mess in and of itself, and it gets crazy. Two perfect examples though are syringes and "burgalarious tools". If you are caught in a drug bust, or whatever, it is against the law to carry a syringe without a valid reason why (at least this is true in Massachussetts...some MIT students recently got in trouble for just this (amongst other things)). Also, if you are caught breaking into a house and you have a bag of hammers, screwdrivers, etc. (esp., lockpicks!), you can be cited for illegal possession of "burgalarious tools". In both these instances, the person is usually caught doing something else, and these are secondary charges the cops like to tack on additionally, but still, a good example of how something completely legal can be found to be illegal.
It's scary, I know...
Now, departing from the legal side, Napster has technical problems galore (still being so new). Here's just a couple complaints:
Multiple servers that don't communicate, and yet provide no notice to the user that there are in fact multiple servers nor which server they are on
Search queries that can't be aborted
Lots of firewall problems
Lots of connection issues
Lots of UI problems (like I can't look at what files someone has without explicitly adding them to my hotlist)
But hopefully, these will all be sorted out in later versions...so I strongly hope napster is around for a while yet!
And now on to the article...first, I was amused to see this sentence in the second paragraph: "At a time when the MP3 industry is under fire from multiple directions, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has filed a lawsuit against the small start-up company out of San Mateo, California, known as Napster. " So there's an MP3 "industry" now, is there?...heh...
And here's a bold lie by the RIAA: "We love the idea of using technology to build artist communities" Yes, when it's a community around an artist that already is well set in the industry...new small artists not really interested in the RIAA? Uhuh. No way...The RIAA is not only not interested in them, it doesn't like them! They are potentially dangerous!
And here's a misnomer on Shawn's part too: "I think it's pretty obvious to most people that Napster is not media specific". Well, no. Currently, it is. It doesn't have to be, is what I think he's trying to say, and eventually won't be, but currently, yes, it is.
But in general, I don't think this article really says anything new. Big companies hate it, small individuals like it, and so it goes as per usual... Interestingly, Jon Katz was recently at MIT and stated this was an excellent example of how Geeks and young smart computer kids have usurped the "Corporatism" that exists today. I wondered about one point he made: he mentioned corporatism was different than capitalism, but I just don't see how?...
Slashdot Mirror
The visual effects industry regularly makes models and puts them in a 3D scanner to get a basic mesh to work from. Also, the vfx industry regularly takes full lidar sweeps of outdoor sets to more easily do match-moves, make mattes, and such. For example, see: http://www.vfxpro.com/.getarticle/.772 954741 and http:/ /www.digitalpostproduction.com/Htm/Features/ScanMa ster/ScanMasters.htm
Heck, do a search for 3D scanner, and you come up with tons of hits...here's a couple:
So can someone please tell me what the big news is? Is is the resolution, I take it?...That IS pretty small and pretty cool...
"The future is dense with computers. They will hang around everywhere in lush growths like Spanish moss. They will swarm like locusts."
Oooooh....moss and locusts! Gee, the future is going to have lots of computers in it...who'd a thunk it?
"If a million people use a Web site simultaneously, doesn't that mean that we must have a heavy-duty remote server to keep them all happy? No; we could move the site onto a million desktops and use the internet for coordination."
he should finish: "and this will all be designed by magical fairies other than me..."
And I don't get it...#21 is actually smart, where as #22 is the most absurdly obvious, but not quite clear thing I have ever read...AGH!...I can't take any more...
So why the linearity?...just didn't totally think it through?
Where's all the time between 1984 and 2000?...(ok, 14 years in one sense, but still??)
The Media Lab group: MicroMedia
Doesn't everyone remember the dozens of articles written years ago about that guy in the MIT Media Lab who had the exact same idea (called electronic ink, then)...All the pop. mags picked it up.
Even check out the corporate spinoff: www.eink.com and also check out the neat-o simple flash anim off of the "Technology" section...
Old idea, new company trying it...
Does anyone else think the mouse looks like a new sandal with the straps cutoff?...Seriously, it looks like I'm sticking my hand on a pair of Tevas or Nike Air Deshutz's or something...
Yes, and it will still be able to do FAR LESS than that $1000 computer. Please, do you really want to try to surf the web on your computer. Have you SEEN what fonts look like at that resolution??
Fact is, most PC games are single user (multiplayer through the net at best).
Please! Consoles are JUST NOW starting to get net-saavy? Define multiplayer, because to me, being able to play Starcraft with 7 other people or Quake3Arena against 30 -- THAT'S multiplayer. Yes, consoles are admittedly better if you all want to be playing on the same monitor, but half the time I hate that anyways, because when the TV screen gets divided up, it gets really hard to tell who's doing what. But I'm getting off track...In any case, admittedly there are some types of games I would definitely rather play with others on a console -- BUT NOT ALL. Sports games (football, basketball, etc.) are a perfect example. Racing games are another. However, there are LOTS of games that I would never in a million years want to play on a console. Starcraft for instance. Quake3 or UT for another example.
You've got to remember, that with all this "plug n go" you're talking about, your making a number of huge hardware sacrifices, foremost being resolution. I don't know about you, but would I want to play Quake3 with a gamepad and at 640x480 when I can play on my PC at 1280x1024 -- FOUR TIMES the resolution, and with a mouse! Hell, no. And lots of others feel the same way...
That's because it is far cheaper to develop for the PC since you don't need all the fancy dev-hardware you do to develop for a console. Additionally, all the big console companies require you to APPLY once you've made a game to them to get your game approved for sale for their console, so if your game doesn't meet their standards, it's a no go!
While this may make for better game quality overall on average, it also makes for FAR, FAR fewer games overall and correspondingly less interesting experimentation as well!
Or perhaps hackers figure out nifty ways to broadcast at some odd frequency, whatever, to disrupt the chips, and we all go blind -- the world goes to hell?
Yep, I think it's pretty clear: we're all going to die now.
So what language are the ones you just described?... And the "Pent" in Pentium wasn't supposed to be a latin derivation?
I so long for the days when I could tell chips apart from one another...the 386, the 486, etc. But, now, how do I compare a Pentium, an Athlon, a Celeron, a Crusoe, a whatever?...
While I am half-joking here, I seriously though want them to stop adding on numbers to the Pentium and go to the next logical name. Let's see, doesn't it go Pent, Sex, Sept, Oct, Non, Dec?...so would that make this the Sexium? Or perhaps that was the Pentium II, and this is actually the Octium?
>Guess you didn't notice that a majority of stuff was donated. Only the stuff they paid for was listed. But that's my point! Saying you can build X for under some amount of money when a lot of X is donated is fraudulent.
First, there's a BUNCH of things missing, like motherboards, memory, etc.
Second, the numbers don't make any sense, 40 network cards for a cluster of 16 machines? But wait, only 15 CPUs??
Third, many of the prices they got was sheer luck (and perhaps a little bit of work, which I would applaud them on)...I mean comeon, they managed to get from their salvage dept. (what's that, BTW?) network cards for ONE DOLLAR a piece and tape drives for $2.50 a piece (their keyboard adapter cost $2.32, only 18cents less than a tape drive). Those prices are so not good examples of real prices others would be able to consistently find -- or most likely at all!
All in all, almost none of their budget makes any logical sense, and it all just strikes me as stretched truth + luck = a cheap cluster here. I mean comeon, I'm going to have my friend by a $5000 computer, and sell it to me for 1cent, and then post to the world on my webpage that I bought the cheapest PentiumIII-whatever around?
Sounds all fine and good right?...one question: How do I tell my computer to go to Slashdot?
Think about it...I'm gonna have to spell it?..heehee...or perhaps, if implemented the other way, slashdots daily hit count will quadruple instantly...
Without good guides from the engineers themselves, or really good and extremely dedicated (not to mention with tons of time on their hands) people wading through it forever and writing some guides themselves...
I dunno...IMHO, the downfall of most Open Source attempts is the sheer complexity of getting even a little involved in big projects. Yes, it's all well and good to release an Open Source driver for some graphics card for Linux, but really doing big overhauls of something?
Whether people want to admit it or not, size and complexity is daunting. I don't know about you guys, but I for one would not want to wade into the Win2k source, for example, blindly without some vague notions of principles at the least...
I will never, ever buy a console gaming system, for example, until one comes out that can match the resolution of my PC! What's the point, otherwise, when I can play the exact same game on my computer at 4 times the resolution of this crummy NTSC game on my TV?
This is, IMHO, one of the most important sentances in this article: "Multicasting or datacasting is fine, as long as they don't abandon HDTV," he said. So very true...so don't buy an HDTV yet?...no, please do! Support the standard, so I don't go blind by the time I'm 60!
The one thing not mentioned so far in any of the ads or in conversation here is the introduction to the book... by none other than Prof. Jenkins! One of the coolest Professor's on the planet, and the guy who testified before the Senate a little less than a year ago about goths, computer games, violence, etc... I'm psyched to read that!
So, " kinda the land where 1s and 0s and Darwin meet"...not quite. Genetic Algorithms and Genetic Programming have been around for a long time. DNA computing is just a special version of gentic algorithms...so nothing new...what's the big fuss?
But still no new TLDs! Comeon, it's only a matter of time before it has to happen, why the hell hasn't it already happened?????
It is much more practical and better than 99% of the others out there...
And, the worst part is, I have a hard time imagining that it is in fact going to be better esp. given the fact that it was initially started SO long ago! Isn't it just going to be out-dated as soon as its released?
Then again, isn't their big thing the single player game as opposed to the multiplayer?...as opposed to Q3A and UT. Hmmm....
Another Mission to Mars review
I mean, what are the two companies big products?
NetworkSolutions = domain name registry
Verisign = certificate signature
I always figured domain name registration was a more lucrative field than certificates...or am I missing something?
Then again, I still can't believe AOL bought TimeWarner and not the other way around...
Someone said making napster illegal would be like making (among other things) the USENET illegal. The problem with this analogy is there isn't the same level of direct culpability with regards to the USENET as there is with Napster. The USENET is a far larger and amorphous entity than Napster is. Who would you find liable for file trading on the USENET?...The USENET isn't a product of a given company like napster is...
Another analogy was made to VHS and cassette tapes. I would say this isn't the best analogy but instead think of "video stabalizers" or "cable decoder boxes". So called video stabalizers have long been used to try to break copy protection in copying a tape from one VCR to another. Similarly, cable decoder/descrambler boxes have long been used to circumvent the cable companies scrambling. Now, the problem here, and with napster, is that all three products have the possibility and potential to be used in a completely legal manner. If I am working on a video project on some crappy old VCR, I might use a video stabalizer to improve my image quality; if I by accident knock my cable box off my TV and break it and want a new one without wanting to pay the cable company, I may just choose to go buy one from a shop down the street. Similarly, if I am an independent music producer (some small indie band or whatnot), I may choose to try to use napster and it's chat rooms to promote my band by giving away free samples...
Legally the question becomes then not can the product be used for legal purposes, but what is it most likely to be used for. And this is where the law gets REALLY hairy. Then, "intent" has to be proven, which is a mess in and of itself, and it gets crazy. Two perfect examples though are syringes and "burgalarious tools". If you are caught in a drug bust, or whatever, it is against the law to carry a syringe without a valid reason why (at least this is true in Massachussetts...some MIT students recently got in trouble for just this (amongst other things)). Also, if you are caught breaking into a house and you have a bag of hammers, screwdrivers, etc. (esp., lockpicks!), you can be cited for illegal possession of "burgalarious tools". In both these instances, the person is usually caught doing something else, and these are secondary charges the cops like to tack on additionally, but still, a good example of how something completely legal can be found to be illegal.
It's scary, I know...
Now, departing from the legal side, Napster has technical problems galore (still being so new). Here's just a couple complaints:
- Multiple servers that don't communicate, and yet provide no notice to the user that there are in fact multiple servers nor which server they are on
- Search queries that can't be aborted
- Lots of firewall problems
- Lots of connection issues
- Lots of UI problems (like I can't look at what files someone has without explicitly adding them to my hotlist)
But hopefully, these will all be sorted out in later versions...so I strongly hope napster is around for a while yet!And now on to the article...first, I was amused to see this sentence in the second paragraph:
"At a time when the MP3 industry is under fire from multiple directions, the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) has filed a lawsuit against the small start-up company out of San Mateo, California, known as Napster. "
So there's an MP3 "industry" now, is there?...heh...
And here's a bold lie by the RIAA:
"We love the idea of using technology to build artist communities"
Yes, when it's a community around an artist that already is well set in the industry...new small artists not really interested in the RIAA? Uhuh. No way...The RIAA is not only not interested in them, it doesn't like them! They are potentially dangerous!
And here's a misnomer on Shawn's part too:
"I think it's pretty obvious to most people that Napster is not media specific".
Well, no. Currently, it is. It doesn't have to be, is what I think he's trying to say, and eventually won't be, but currently, yes, it is.
But in general, I don't think this article really says anything new. Big companies hate it, small individuals like it, and so it goes as per usual... Interestingly, Jon Katz was recently at MIT and stated this was an excellent example of how Geeks and young smart computer kids have usurped the "Corporatism" that exists today. I wondered about one point he made: he mentioned corporatism was different than capitalism, but I just don't see how?...