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Though the specifications detailed in the article are definately a Good Thing, they lack (at least as far as I could tell) any way of preventing unauthorized physical access to the chip.

Physical access to machines is always a big issue in security, and one that is often overlooked. And while it's probably not a big deal for your home machine, consider large companies whose machines could conceivably be targetting for a physical attack to recover the keys directly from the TPM (Trusted Platform Module).

Stajano's "Ubiquitous Computing" book has excellent coverage of the rationale, issues, and complexity of attempting to prevent physical access to chips and devices which store sensitive information. It's an easy read, and well worth it: http://www-lce.eng.cam.ac.uk/~fms27/secubicomp/ind ex.html

Mmm... Half true.

UTF-8 is merely a means of expressing multi-byte Unicode codes in a way that can be passed through single-byte systems without corruption. Much like how UUEncoding protects 8-bit data (e.g. JPEG images) passing through 7-bit systems (e.g. Usenet).

There's no need for it to be compatible with any charset because it's *not* a charset or any other means of representing characters. So the ç doesn't really have a different code in UTF-8 than in ISO-8859-1; it's just that the representation isn't a single byte with the value E7 hex.

If UTF-8 was as compatible with ISO-8859-1 as it already is with ASCII (for simplicity for itself, rather than actual compatibility) then it would be complicated to the point of being useless.

My understanding of UTF-8 is far from expert. A better resource (one of many I refer to regularly) is at http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ucs/ISO-10646-UTF-8 .html .

I am currently using UML for running multiple servers on one host, and a collegue runs multiple linuces with XEN (he runs it on his desktop, too!), and he says it performs near to native. He demonstrated it to me, very impressive. Easier to administrate than UML. I'll switch to xen. And ISPs will, too.

I'll check opensolaris when it's ported to the xen-arch like netbsd and -soon- freebsd.

/graf0z.

Dasher is an information-efficient text-entry interface, driven by natural continuous pointing gestures. Dasher is a competitive text-entry system wherever a full-size keyboard cannot be used.

One area that DOJ regulators will be looking at, in particular, is a control panel in Longhorn that facilitates use of a browser and media player other than the Microsoft versions that will be pre-built into the system.

Great. We have government "experts" who think the choice of media player really important and they aren't even looking at the whole Trusted Computing initiative and the monopolistic implications thereof.

Someone needs to make tshirts and ties that have the EURion constellation on them. Even though apparently they aren't that big a deal anymore. Still fascinating.

http://www.mrc-cbu.cam.ac.uk/personal/matt.davis/C mabrigde/ Here's a place to start.

Well, I knew that this would devolve into a discussion about the failure of Social Security, or Medicare or whatever.

However, had anyone bothered to read up on Mr. de Grey, you would know he isn't talking about keeping old feeble people alive forever, but instead, keeping people healthy and youthful for as long as is reasonable by scientific methods. One of the questions he asks is (paraphrased) "What should people die from?" That is, should researchers keep aside some disease and not look into how to cure it, just so people keep dying from it?

Here is the link to SENS (Strategies for Engineered Negligible Senescence): http://www.gen.cam.ac.uk/sens/.

I thought that de Grey made some sense here. I'd like to decide how long I want to live, not some virus, bacteria or misfiring gene. Old age is a disease, and can be cured.

Here is his website that's been on /. several times b4. It explains his 7 targets to fix for immortality and everything else.

Some of the proteins outside our cells, however, are laid down early in our life and then never recycled at all, and some others are only recycled very very slowly. These long-lived proteins are susceptible to chemical reactions. Luckily, the function of long-lived proteins tends to be very simple -- they don't catalyse chemical reactions, for example, the way that enzymes do. In general they have a biophysical function -- they give a tissue elasticity (as in the artery wall) or transparency (as in the lens of the eye) or high tensile strength (as in ligaments). Occasional chemical reactions with other molecules in the extracellular space don't affect these functions very much -- at first. But in the long run, they can matter a lot, especially in the case of the artery wall, which becomes much more rigid and leads to high blood pressure. The type of chemical reaction that causes this loss of elasticity is one that results in a chemical bond (a cross-link) between two nearby proteins that were previously able to slide across or along each other.

Yah, if you read more at the actual SENS website, you'll see in much more detail why the things he's talking about are the only ones you need to really worry about.

Macrocellular problems are mainly in the "cell loss/atrophy" and "extracellular junk" plus "crosslinking". Extracellular junk is stuff like plaques (Alzheimer's) and probably arthritis as well - it's what degrades people's life experience probably most significantly.

The really interesting one is the "perfect cure for cancer", WILT - whole-body interdiction of lengthening of telomeres. Basically, the idea is that you can say "I don't care about nuclear mutations. The body already has developed a perfect way of handling those problems - kill off the screwed up cell, and replace it." The main flaw in that is cancer, and so all you really need is a "perfect cure for cancer".

The perfect cure for cancer is to prevent cells from ever being able to replicate infinitely, by preventing them from lengthening their telomeres (telomeres shorten a little after each cell division, and when they run out, the cell dies) - then, a cancer cell can divide, but eventually, the whole thing up and breaks down. The problem with this, of course, is that your body needs to replicate indefinitely - so his suggestion is that we lengthen telomeres ex vivo - that is, outside the human body. So you go in, say, once every few years, for a treatment, and then you'll never get cancer. If you miss the treatment, though, you'll die, so it's a bit of a tradeoff. :)

Interestingly, that sounds like a bizarre idea, but it has benefits, because it also would be a cure for a rare disease - dyskeratosis congenita, who are naturally missing the ability to lengthen telomeres. (This of course means these people are cancer-immune: they only live ten years, which is the downside)

and I think cells are only capable of growing into that patten, not necessarily replacing bad sections.

If you have an entire bad section, it's not from aging - it's from injury, and that's not what he's talking about. It's just senescence - that is, the falling apart of the body as it gets older.

It's important to remember most major systems in your body replace themselves completely, on average every 7 years. Some much faster, like the lining of your stomach. So your body is quite capable of replacing cells one at a time, except for senescence.

One of the best things about this kind of research is that all of the problems he's suggesting we work on have real consequences now. So there's benefit to working on them individually, but we also should be thinking a bit more globally in treatment regarding it. If you can come up with something that gets rid of almost all extracellular junk, for instance, it'll take care of Alzheimer's, heart disease, and several other problems as well.

This can especially be seen in M-theory, the successor to string theory, which states that what we perceive as the background noise of the universe, fluxuations in the fabric of space-time itself, result not from perturbations of the big bang but the interactions of structures called "branes" which span multiple universes which we perceive as 2-dimensional vibrating strings.

These relationships can be likened to the stock market where the valuations of particular stocks affect the valuations of other related stocks, and the only way to gain a gestalt view is to analyze and derive the interrelationships of the entire system.

to visit the SENS site itself and avoid the commentary-bloated article.
Basically TFA gives 3 pages of pertinent information and 3-4 pages of the author saying "He's charismatic but I hope he's wrong because I disagree with him." And he uses way too much verbal flourish to give his writing an air of authority.
I think the author could learn a thing or two from De Grey: "Everything he says is pertinent to his argument". He could've cut this article down by 1/3, and as a bonus it probably would have been a more enjoyable read.

...that the phrase "self-taught biologist" gives me the willies, I just can't get over the beard.

Like the guy who came in to fix my copier last week wearing a--I kid you not--Utilikilt.

Yes, I know I'm being shallow. However, I do tend to wonder about people who cultivate their hygiene in an apparent attempt to LOOK LIKE RASPUTIN.

Slightly OT, I suppose.

m-

Until trusted computing kicks in. I know this is off-topic and feel free to mod me as such, but this TC business worries me and anyone who doesn't know what this is should read that document...

Sorry for being a poon-tard, I found the good stuff here.

Does anyone have a link or a torrent for the XenDemoCD referenced on their main page? It's not on their downloads page like the link implies.

Does anyone have a link or a torrent for the XenDemoCD referenced on their main page? It's not on their downloads page like the link implies.

XEN does for the Intel platform what OpenPower does for the Power platform.

I'd assumed you were greatly exaggerating for dramatic effect, but benchmarks show a range from almost no improvement to a factor of 5.

One cannot simply hear the answer, for the answer is inside you waiting for you to quiet your mind so that it may rise to the surface. To achieve this, meditate upon the forgotten reference that was and is a part of the unseen aspect of the article. Meditate upon the vista of this.

They give a reason:

Longer term, virtualisation features in next-generation CPUs should make it much easier to support unmodified OSes: at that time we will reconsider Windows support.

I'm constantly amazed that this kind of uninsightful crap that you consistently trot out over and over again gets modded up as insightful. Probably because of the fact that you are a drooling MS fanboy, you seem to forget perhaps the most important feature that this "coolness" comes with: Next Generation Secure Computing Base.

Yes boys and girls, underneath all the ooo, shiny is that wonderful bit of technology: Trusted Computing. You know, the kind of trust where your computer doesn't trust you? But I suppose you wouldn't want to yell too loudly about that particular feature of Longhorn, now, would you, since it paints MS in a less than favorable light?

So you can have your fucking spinning Notepads and videos looping in the background of windows--to me the price that comes with that technology is simply too high.

1. Nasa.gov says "According to the big bang, the universe was created sometime between 10 billion and 20 billion years ago from a cosmic explosion that hurled matter and in all directions.".
2. Some guys at U Mich (GeoSci students?) say "About 15 billion years ago a tremendous explosion started the expansion of the universe."
3. Cambridge Cosmology says "About ten billion years ago, the Universe began in a gigantic explosion"

That's the first three results. How about Dictionary.com? "big bang [n.] The cosmic explosion that marked the origin of the universe according to the big bang theory."

So if I'm wrong in referring to it, in general and metaphorical terms (like the name "big bang" itself), as an "explosion", at least I stand in good company. So now that I've spent all this time defending my use of a single word, I can actually get to the relevant parts of your post (I don't mean anything personal by that, I promise ;)

I already admitted the error of attempting to tie an accelerating universe to problems with the Big Bang, I don't know why you wrote so much more about it, but thanks anyway, interesting stuff. I do find the accelerating universe a fascinating tangential subject. (If your response contains something along the lines of "the fact you think acceleration and the big bang are tangential to each other shows your complete ignorance, etc etc" I will stop reading)

'The mathematics of the Big Bang model are easier to work with when the vacuum energy density is zero: the equations are simpler, and various things are easier to calculate . . .and physicists will always consider the simplest case first.'

Yes, and I believe that eliminating the "ZPE" components because they complicated the equations has done enormous harm to our understanding of physics. (Similar to what happened to Maxwell's original equations when Heaviside butchered them)

I can tell you are a strong adherent to good experimental data (as am I)... a book I cannot recommend strongly enough to you is "The Field" by Lynne McTaggart. (Think I mentioned this in an ancestor post) It is chock full of recent experimental results concerning quantum physics and consciousness, from good solid double-blind placebo controlled studies. I am not given to superlatives, but this book will blow your

Well, I hope you're right with your more optimistic view.
It wouldn't be the first time for MS to fail so maybe there's really a chance this all turns out as vapor in the long run.

What about emulators which might be able to emulate the TC chip? Such emulators could theoretically provide a massive hole in the system and would either be deemed illegal under the DMCA as a circumvention device or would allow us to actually run, saw Windows and IE on VMWare in a pretend-trusted environment.

Well, by my understanding of the TCPA FAQ this would be a pretty tough job as they are using strong crypto this time.
It might be possible to emulate a chip that does "nothing" but fake their API (always returning "OK") to trick applications into believing they are inside their jail. But that would likely only work for a limited time until they "improve" it even more. I do believe it could be technically possible to make this airtight to a point where it's not making sense anymore to try and reverse engineer it. If we get to that point we'd have a whole new kind of "digital divide" (ppl locked in to the MS-world vs the rest).

On the other hand I still have quite a bit of faith in Microsoft's track-record of fucking anything up that has to do with software. ;-)
Wouldn't be surprised if they simply fail on the technical challenge...

Do you really tink IBM will let the PowerPC chips fail because of Intel phoenix and Microsoft working together? Do you think AMD will roll over and die?.

IBM and AMD are also part of the whole Trusted Computing "initiative". From TFA: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/tcpa-faq.html

source
1. What is TC - this `trusted computing' business? The Trusted Computing Group (TCG) is an alliance of Microsoft, Intel, IBM, HP and AMD which promotes a standard for a `more secure' PC.

Well, you can already type using your eyes (http://www.inference.phy.cam.ac.uk/dasher/)...

And why would that be the case considering how long time it takes to be proficient in typing? Surely, it is possible that an alternative text entry interface would emerge in the future.

For example Dasher is pretty cool, and there are other (in fact numerous) alternative interfaces. See for example Masui's on-line bibliography.

The Dasher Project is an interesting approach to gesture-based input for written communication that works on PDAs or workstations. There's a demo you can download.

The Tetra Society is a society of volunteer engineers & technical people who build and customize devices to assist people with disabilities. Take a look on their projects page for some ideas.

WorkshopSolutions has similar ideas.

I am somewhat involved in product development for portable machines for law-enforcement, so have a bit of an idea about what is what in portable land these days. First of all, "cheap" is a relative term - with these things, much like all else, you get what you pay for. If this would be your employers only reliable bridge with the outside world, I would have a good think about system criticality, and the relative worth of such.

Secondly, I assume from your question that you are looking for an off-the shelf solution in terms of software. There are plenty of off-the shelf systems that do TTS, but you may need to look at custom stuff, depending on the physical state and limitations of your employer.You may want to consider getting something done in-house, so to speak.

Hardware wise, in terms of form-factor, functionality and ruggedness, you may want to look at any of the current crop of handtops out there. However, they may be a bit expensive in terms of value for money. Tablet PC's are a bit expensive, and can be a bit fragile. They are also unwieldy. On the other hand, they give you a very good price/performance ratio, so could equate well in terms of value for money. Battery life may also be an issue. Finally, you can look at using wearable systems - they have come a long way, and with the right kind of setup, they can really be what you are looking for. From that link, you may want to look at the MA-TC system or the Xyberkids system. both have pro's and con's. However - they are really, really expensive - but I would probably go with the MA-TC platform, with a good HMD system.

Software wise, I would go with Linux as the core OS - can't beat value for money, stability, and software availability. I would combine that with Dasher for the input system, linked perhaps with Festival.

Also, to your employer: don't underestimate the value of working with professionals that know what they are talking about.

The native version as it came out of Word

It was a mistake to not do it in LaTeX, although if you did it successfully in Word, you didn't really make a ``wrong'' choice.

People just beginning their dissertations/theses have been able to learn enough LaTeX to create terrific papers with it. Mostly they gave up on Word quickly and were directed to LaTeX as a superior option. Many colleges already have LaTeX templates available for people to use.

To anyone else who is about to write a paper of some sort and is wondering about LaTeX: you have to be careful with what image formats you can use. Decide early on in the process, or you'll create more trouble. If you're not behind schedule, try LaTeX on this paper. I use this page as my first reference, and Google if I have more problems.

If you're using Word today to produce a scientific paper, then you're misusing it. Word isn't meant for doing large works. It has no concept of separating content from structure, and you'll often find yourself fighting the document to get it into the right shape. TeX (LaTeX is a macro language that boils down to TeX) was designed by Donald Knuth (the computer genius) to follow the correct rules of typesetting. It properly leaves the job of providing content to you. Think about CSS/HTML; it's the same stuff. CSS provides the structure, and HTML provides the content. Explore CSS Zen Garden for the power of this (correct) approach.

With all due respect to Pope Gregory XIII, he can bite me.

The end is at the end.

The end is not at the beginning.

ISO 8601 says that weeks start on Monday, and ISO carries much more authority then some pope.

he US Patent system, had it worked correctly, would have saved a number of budding software companies from Microsoft.

You are repeating a myth that is easily debunked by examining how cross-licensing works from the perspective of the "budding software compan[y]". Quoting RMS from his talk on the danger with software patents (or listen to the speech):

This phenomenon of cross-licensing refutes a common myth, the myth of the starving genius. The myth that patents "protect" the "small inventor". Those terms are propaganda terms. You shouldn't use them. The scenario is like this: Suppose there is a brilliant designer of whatever. Suppose he has spent years starving in the attic designing a new wonderful kind of whatever and now wants to manufacture it and isn't it a shame the big companies are going to go into competition with him, take away all the business and he'll "starve". I will have to point out that people in high tech fields are not generally working on their own and that ideas don't come in a vacuum, they are based on ideas of others and these people have pretty good chances of getting a job if they need to these days. So this scenario, the idea that a brilliant idea came from this brilliant person working alone is unrealistic and the idea that he is in danger of starving is unrealistic. But it is conceivable that somebody could have an idea and this idea along with 100 or 200 other ideas can be the basis of making some kind of product and that big companies might want to compete with him. So let's see what happens if he tries to use a patent to stop them. He says "Oh No, IBM. You cannot compete with me. I've got this patent." IBM says "let's see. Let's look at your product. Hmmm. I've got this patent and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one, which parts of your product infringe. If you think you can fight against all of them in court, I will just go back and find some more. So, why don't you cross license with me?" And then this brilliant small inventor says "Well, OK, I'll cross license". So he can go back and make these wonderful whatever it is, but so can IBM. IBM gets access to his patent and gets the right to compete with him, which means that this patent didn't "protect" him at all.

Also, note how the difference in the number of patents obtained: IBM has the most patents (so many that they can insulate themselves from the damage the patent system causes). Most "inventors" are not multinational corporations like IBM, HP, Apple, Microsoft, etc. and if they have any patents at all they only have patents that cover the wonderful something they're working on.

Therefore, when IBM gets a license by pressuring a small developer into cross-licensing, IBM gets virtually 100% of the small "inventor"'s patents but gives a license for a very small percentage of its patents. When multinationals cross-license they don't have this imbalance, so they cannot be bullied into cross-licensing all that they have. The imbalance and ill effect for the small "inventor" point out how what you are saying is a myth. Your post is highly overrated.

statistics:
R http://www.r-project.org/
WinBugs http://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/bugs/winbugs/contents .shtml

symbolic mathematics:
Maxima http://maxima.sourceforge.net/

numerics:
Octave http://www.octave.org/
Scilab http://scilabsoft.inria.fr/
g95 (Fortran 95 compiler)http://www.g95.org/

See a nice explanation here, and see why it probably never gonna be done here (just check out some of the comments there... sad...)

oh well...

It's a bit sad that with all the comments posted so far, nobody has mentioned xen, and the fact that it is accomplishing the same kind of thing today on x86 machines with operating systems (including linux 2.4 and 2.6, a couple xbsds, and plan 9) that have been ported to it, and will be able to support un-ported operating systems (e.g. windows xxx) once Intel's silvervale or AMD's pacifica technologies (both are CPU extensions that assist virtualization in hardware) become available (probably in 2006).

I still see Mozilla email search results come back with wacky date sorting like "1/2003, 1/2004, 11/2003, 11/2004".

Set your date format to ISO 8601 (yyyy-mm-dd) and it'll never happen again. In fact, the general public switched to it years ago... IN JAPAN!

I made some RPMS of 4.3.10 for RedHat 7.3 (this is an upgrade, not a specfic patch for the vulnerabilities). These are based on the RedHat RPMS, but I had to remove curl support to get it to compile. Oh, and you may need to remove the php-devel rpm to get them to install (don't ask me why). Also, you use these at your own risk. You may want to wait until the fedoralegacy RPMS are made. PHP RPMs

Alternatively, wait until RedHat releases RHES2.1 updates, and do a "rpmbuild --rebuild php.src.rpm" on it.

Why am I picturing something like dasher with live search results integrated into its database? hmmmmm...

Uncertainty principle, as in Quantum Mechanics?! That's a really funny one! The only thing fundamentally limiting signals transmission is noise, which in electromagnetic transmissions comes in its most unavoidable form from thermal noise. There are other sources of "noise" or "interference": depending on the environment, interference can come from other communicating devices, a car's engine ignition sparks, thunder, a static discharge, a microwave oven... And worsening it all, media also always attenuate the signal, more or less, therefore weakening the Signal-to-Noise ratio which along with the available bandwidth determines the theoretical capacity of the transmission system. The uncertainty principle has nothing to do with it.

Any good introductory course in Digital Communications will cover this, and introduce the notion of QAM and constellations in passing. May I suggest this Digital Communications OpenCourseWare module (viva MIT) or, for a gentler introduction that might not be as complete, this set of slides (viva University of Cambridge).

And once you've read all about it, be sure to write up an entry about it in WikiPedia ;-) -- or to update this one.

Radio systems utilizing multiple antennae (MIMO), may "trump" this to some extent by playing on the fact that spectrum is a three-dimensional medium and not a one-dimensional medium (contrary to twisted pairs or coaxial cables). On that, you may want to read this intro.

So they play Quantum Soccer, and get lost in mathematical studies... they're still human. We can empathize with them and their ignorance, curiousity, love and pain, losses and triumphs.

As for making it there, maybe Kurzweil's Fantastic Voyage can't get me all the way to the 7 not-all-that-complex looking solutions (below), but I sure don't want to be in the control group. And if its the next generation, not mine, that get all 7, I'll be jealous but I'm not going to try to keep them from having it.

"We've always done it this way, we had to go through it, so you do to" is a philosophy that caused a great many hospital mistakes (and deaths) before they realized that forcing 40 hour shifts doesn't make you a better doctor, it makes you a 'functionally equivalent to drunk' doctor. I'm thankful my ancestors worked their health up to keeping grandparents around (30,000 years ago) and got the average lifespan up from the 40's to the 70's (100 years ago). Now to try to get it from 80 to 160, so when you- some datarcheologist in your second career in your 130's- come sifting through Slashdot, don't forget to feel thankful for those of us who fought against the Kassian "We've always died, we're better for it" attitude.

And once more for those people who keep saying: "but what about Cancer and Alzheimers, we'll still have those?" No we won't. Look at what A.d.G is actually proposing, and why, here.

We know if teenagers think they're likely to die early (violent neighborhood, say) or they're unlikely to have a family (because they die early / other reasons), then they often live risky lives w/ short planning horizons. Even if its causing a feedback loop, it is rational behavior if, in fact, the local average lifespan is low.

Ditto for a sense of control and ownership of your health / home / public spaces and "the commons." If they aren't "defensible," that is, your hard work to protect them is easily ruined by external factors, then rationally you don't put much time into taking care of them. (Note that a "commons" meant that multiple people had predictable control over an area: outsiders couldn't arbitrarily ruin them.)

So even now we know we shouldn't have neighborhoods / countries / regions where most people think their lifespan is half of the worldwide average, or that they can't control their health or local environment. Their rational behavior can change their health / environment for the worse (nevermind the problem of angry hopeless young men and wars / violence). Pollution spreads. Epidemics spread. It is in everyone's best interest for all people to think that they're all on the same bell curve with regards to health, lifespan, the environment... for everyone to think and live as if they can make it to their 70's.

Of course currently it isn't true: many countries have significantly lower average life expectancies (even without childhood mortality in the mix). But it doesn't take much to change that: once countries hit a per capita GDP around $2000 then average lifespans get into the 60s to 70s. (Clean water, immunizations, basic access to clinics and medical knowledge). Once women have education and job opportunities birthrates go way down (education isn't the only factor, but the most significant one)

So lets say we can fix Aubrey's big 7 problems (see below) and can expect to reach 150. These aren't overwhelmingly complex solutions. Molecules can be copied: labs are getting cheaper. Science has always been more bazaar than cathedral, and with the internet open-source biology is even easier.

It may be for the most part "sharing" won't be relevant. We'll be "participating," so will most other people. "The rich" won't have much control over KaZaa-Life, and a billion eyeballs'll be keeping track of the anti-viral wetware on Life-Forge. In this case some people will still die young-- some treatments won't work for all people -- but that'd be just bad luck. You'll still try to live like 150 is possible.

But what if some countries are still on different bell curves: they reasonably can expect to live only 45-55, 65 years if they're lucky. They'll behave differently- taking more risks, discounting the future- not out of anger or jealousy (though never ignore the power of those), but simply because its rational. Using more untested / black-market copies of drugs. Perhaps slightly less likely to use antibiotics in "old" (=60+) age.

AdG writes that epidemics can still get us. Even without malicious intent they'll be more likely to come from the regions where lifespans are 1/3 the average. So again, if the wealthy elite (or 1st world countries generally) want to reach 150, we'll be handing out our telomere lengthening inhibitors and ATase like candy (low-glycolic index candy).

The 7 problems & solutions:

• Cell loss, cell atrophy: Stem cells, growth fact

We know if teenagers think they're likely to die early (violent neighborhood, say) or they're unlikely to have a family (because they die early / other reasons), then they often live risky lives w/ short planning horizons. Even if its causing a feedback loop, it is rational behavior if, in fact, the local average lifespan is low.

Ditto for a sense of control and ownership of your health / home / public spaces and "the commons." If they aren't "defensible," that is, your hard work to protect them is easily ruined by external factors, then rationally you don't put much time into taking care of them. (Note that a "commons" meant that multiple people had predictable control over an area: outsiders couldn't arbitrarily ruin them.)

So even now we know we shouldn't have neighborhoods / countries / regions where most people think their lifespan is half of the worldwide average, or that they can't control their health or local environment. Their rational behavior can change their health / environment for the worse (nevermind the problem of angry hopeless young men and wars / violence). Pollution spreads. Epidemics spread. It is in everyone's best interest for all people to think that they're all on the same bell curve with regards to health, lifespan, the environment... for everyone to think and live as if they can make it to their 70's.

Of course currently it isn't true: many countries have significantly lower average life expectancies (even without childhood mortality in the mix). But it doesn't take much to change that: once countries hit a per capita GDP around $2000 then average lifespans get into the 60s to 70s. (Clean water, immunizations, basic access to clinics and medical knowledge). Once women have education and job opportunities birthrates go way down (education isn't the only factor, but the most significant one)

So lets say we can fix Aubrey's big 7 problems (see below) and can expect to reach 150. These aren't overwhelmingly complex solutions. Molecules can be copied: labs are getting cheaper. Science has always been more bazaar than cathedral, and with the internet open-source biology is even easier.

It may be for the most part "sharing" won't be relevant. We'll be "participating," so will most other people. "The rich" won't have much control over KaZaa-Life, and a billion eyeballs'll be keeping track of the anti-viral wetware on Life-Forge. In this case some people will still die young-- some treatments won't work for all people -- but that'd be just bad luck. You'll still try to live like 150 is possible.

But what if some countries are still on different bell curves: they reasonably can expect to live only 45-55, 65 years if they're lucky. They'll behave differently- taking more risks, discounting the future- not out of anger or jealousy (though never ignore the power of those), but simply because its rational. Using more untested / black-market copies of drugs. Perhaps slightly less likely to use antibiotics in "old" (=60+) age.

AdG writes that epidemics can still get us. Even without malicious intent they'll be more likely to come from the regions where lifespans are 1/3 the average. So again, if the wealthy elite (or 1st world countries generally) want to reach 150, we'll be handing out our telomere lengthening inhibitors and ATase like candy (low-glycolic index candy).

The 7 problems & solutions:

• Cell loss, cell atrophy: Stem cells, growth fact

Is it just me or does this guy remind me of a cross between Rasputin and RMS?

Take a look for yourself!

Don't know if this is the right one (can't imagine that it's not) but here's what I ran across:

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/Research/SRG/netos/xen/

Am I the only one to notice the following at the bottom of the page: "Work on Xen has been supported by UK EPSRC grant GR/S01894, Intel Research,
HP Labs and Microsoft Research. "

Twelve Step TrustABLE IT:
Virtualised Linux Standard Base (VLSB)
in Virtual Demilitarized Network Zones (VDNZ)
from Trusted Build Agents (TBA)

Back in August 11, 1998, Microsoft's Vinod Valloppillil and Josh Cohen released a memorandum titled Linux OS Competitive Analysis: The Next Java VM?, in which they predicted that Linux would become ubiquitous as a services platform. However, the title of the paper could be even more prophetic.

Consider the following.

[1] It is well known that Linux is quite portable, in fact only NETBSD comes close to the number of hardware platforms supported.

[2] What is less well known is that the Linux kernel has even been ported to run on itself, as client for a virtual Monitor platform, and even to run virtualised on other operating systems including Win2K and XP.

[3] Other operating systems, such as BSD and Sun's Solaris can also use a compatbility layer to run applications compiled for Linux directly, without the need for virtualisation.

[4]The Linux Standard Base Mission Statement is to

To develop and promote a

set of standards that will increase compatibility among Linux distributions and enable software applications to run on any compliant system. In addition, the LSB will help coordinate efforts to recruit software vendors to port and write products for Linux.

[5] The above standard also defines a generic subset of the standards for each hardware platform as a source level application interface. In fact for an application to be certified for the LSB it must be tested on two of the plaforms supported by the LSB, one chosen at random by the testing body. Following the standard, it's not that difficult a job to write portable C and C++ code : Write once, compile for each platfom.

[6] The GNU Compiler Collection's future GCC 4.0 Release Series now divides the task of compiling into two stages based around Static Single Assignment trees. It should be possible to use the new GCC front ends to compile each language into a SSA tree that represents the common generic subset of the Linux Standard Base: [5].The resulting SSA tree for a build could be dumped into files, analogous to Java's JVM intermediate format, and then complied to native code for the target platform: Write once, run everywhere.

Be it open or closed source, every binary or script you execute represents a risk. It is possible to introduce hostile code at any point along the build chain, before the point where the binary is checksummed and the result digitally signed.

[7] It is possible to use constraints built into any Linux or Unix like operating system to isolate and restrict what a binary executable has access to or can do. Even without employing SELinux's manditory access controls or chroot/jail'ed environments, it is possible to run a process under a different user identity and group identity. Unix servers have used this te

Memory of Water

• Development of the Xen virtual machine monitor, a high-performance hypervisor for hosting multiple commodity operating systems on a single x86-based server. This forms the core of each Xenoserver node, providing the resource management, accounting and auditing that we require. Xen finds numerous applications outside the Xenoserver project. These inclue server consolidation and secure computing platforms.
• Development of the Xenoserver Open Platform control software for managing networks of Xenoservers. Our research includes distributed storage, server discovery, resource management and authentication, authorization and accounting (AAA) functions. This work finds relevance to Grid computing and to globally distributed testbeds such as PlanetLab.

According to Xen's site Microsoft Research is supporting the project.