Sure he has. This won't have nearly enough power to take him all the way to Mars. Or did you mean the warmongers (and other rather unpleasant people) with nuclear (and other high-powered) weapons on Earth? I think some of us already find ourselves trapped here, and would like to get away.
No, my analysis has nothing to do with optimisation- all rockets are pretty highly optimised.
For certain things, perhaps, but they're not all optimized for cost. The Space Shuttle is a case in point.
Though, I agree with the rest of what you say. It's a catch 21, though: we're not going to get a high flight rate with expensive rockets, and it's hard to make rockets cheap without high flight rates. There are ways out of this (I'm working on one), but again, it's not easy.
You're comparing optimized, theoretical expendables vs. unoptimized but actually deployed reusable. Unoptimized varies by degree of unoptimization, but in theory, optimized (cheap) reusables could get down to $100/kg or less.
"Our tank just went BSOD, and rolled about a quarter mile off the beach before the motor died. The good news is, no one can see us - it's a good match for the local waters - and the hatches jammed closed so we didn't have to worry about bailing out. The bad news is, no one can see us, not even the rescue crews, and we're starting to run out of air in here."
Yeah, but you could use nanites to smuggle the napalm into all the body's cells inside inert packages, so you could combust the tagged person at the touch of a button - or not, if said person did what you wanted. (Including getting retagged every so often, if the tags would naturally degrade into non-flammability over time.)
I checked out Visual Route. It couldn't find the correct physical location of my present employer's Web server (www.findlaw.com). This is a common problem among IP-to-geography matching software: everyone assumes the database is accurate, but when you look at it, it's usually full of errors.
What would be the #1 thing you could change about the Internet today, if you somehow gained temporary total control over every machine with an IP address and every address-less router? (Besides, of course, making it impossible for anyone to get total control ever again, even at the cost of your own control.)
Engineer In A Box? Provided it actually works, hell yeah! If the computer can do 90% of the work and I only have to do the remaining 10%, bring it on! Hell, if I thought I could, I'd even write it myself.
Of course, the problem is that there's always that remaining little 1% the computer can't do. For instance, I use a calculator where my dad used a slide rule. That specific task is relegated to an artificial aid, while we retain capability for general problem solving - and we do know how to do things that the aid does, if necessary. On the rare occasion where a calculator is unavailable and I am too distracted or fried to just quickly compute sums in my head, I still do resort to long form addition when necessary. But it's very rarely necessary.
There is a fundamental difference between never needing a skill in practice, and almost never needing a skill in practice. Where decent software exists to do a task I do, I find myself in the latter category. The only time I find myself in the former category is with needs that are ultimately provided by other human beings: (mostly corporate) farmers, with tons of agricultural machinery, grow my food; shipping companies run by people ship it to market by plane, boat, truck, and rail; I write scripts whose services other people sell, so there will be money in the bank when I cash my paycheck; et cetera. But the bits I manipulate, I know how to manipulate from the ground up - on the silicon if necessary. On rare occasion, the system fails so hard that - or merely fails to anticipate my needs so that - I must do so (and the bits involved so valuable that it is worth my time to do so).
This frees me to concentrate on those bits I must do. I need not know the exact angle and force with which to use a soldering iron, for a robot can weld a circuit faster, cheaper, and better than I - so I use the robot to do that task, saving myself time, money, and aggrivation at my own incompetence. I remember, in my very first job in my early adolesence, I used to trace circuits by hand: they had no software to do the task, but the circuits were simple enough that even a child (by their standards) could do it - and better to pay a child minimum wage, than to take their own time. (I suspect those circuits I traced have long since fallen prey to Moore's law, if nothing else.) If faced with the same task today, the firm could buy chip design software, and cycle through several combinations of inputs and outputs to find the optimal design in the same time it used to take me to trace out one chip...but you know the software will have an option to delve into the design, in case it faces some circuit so intricate, or dealing with poorly-emulated quantum features, where human assistance is again required.
To believe that these things don't exist because the machine takes care of them is mere solipsism, just like walking around on a moonless night in a poorly lit city and believing that nothing, aside from those areas close to the street lights, truly exists. (This is a well-documented psychological disorder in certain Scandinavian villages, where such conditions do exist during winter.)
Still, from what I've heard of the plan, it's not too bad. Main points seem to be primarily relying on increased security awareness (come on, sysadmins of the clueless newbies, admit it: you've wished, at least once, that all new users of the chunk of the 'Net you control would have to get some decent training about what a virus is and how not to get one - well, that's about what they're advocating) and reliability rather than monitoring (not "scan all the traffic looking for something nasty" but "lock down the ports so nasty things don't happen" - i.e., prevention).
Me:...okay, care to explain how you can get it down to 1/100th of what others are selling for?
Frankly, stuff like this does happen to me often enough that I can't automatically reject stuff just because it's cheap. Be suspicious, yes; automatically blow it off without reason, no. But I understand I'm not normal in that regard. (And note that this only applies to stuff I'm looking for, not unsolicited offers.)
Bravo. I've had a few stories like that myself, but they sum up to the same moral yours does. (Especially: get the staff actually using your developed-on-the-side version, and you've probably won. While it's still a prototype that no one uses, it's just a prototype...but good applications, once they are adopted by the right people, market themselves like nobody's business.)
Aye. And don't forget googling for Web pages with the same query.
Some time ago, I forged a deal with my employer: I'd take care of my own education, if I could pocket a decent portion of the money they would otherwise spend on training. I have yet to need any of the "training" my peers have received, often instead covering for them when this or that major bug breaks loose while they're away at training. When I need to learn something new, well, see above - with a bit more effort (different keywords, seeing what the advocates say as well as the detractors, et cetera). Everyone's happy so far, and my paycheck's growing.
Of course, because no one can make money selling this solution to you, consultants and vendors never advocate this solution if the topic comes up.
There have been far more bad cyborgs than good, especially of late. Consider, for instance, how Frankenstien's monster was at first just trying to get his lazy, good-for-nothing creator to take responsibility for him. Similar story.
Which is why I'm in favor of these powers being gained in this method: when anyone can just buy an upgrade, is the power it grants still "super"human, or does it just bring the naturally born up to the new human norm, just like modern artificial eyes are intended to bring the blind up to the modern human norm?
There's other ways to enforce game balance. Bad physical reactions to having too many interface plugs, perhaps. Or maybe magick itself require organic body mass (save, perhaps, for some evil undead "lich" type magick). Or maybe just straight wealth: ubercorporate head honchos get all kinds of cyber to live forever and become personally terrifying to the rank and file, but the rank and file that the players play are lucky to afford a single biochip.
Other technologies are being tested, but they are still *experimental*. Thus, until the newer stuff is found to work and tested further, what do we do *now*? (Besides not launch)
Umm...put one heck of a lot more money into testing and developing the replacement systems so they can be put into use sooner rather than later, and perhaps fund a bunch of different competing systems in case The One Chosen System fails like it has the last few times NASA's tried to come up with a replacement? Even if that means launching less often for now?
Do we really want new law crafted before 90% of the issues with a new device are known?
Of course we don't. But we typically don't get to significantly affect the law; we just get to live under what is imposed on us. Those who make the laws, on the other hand, often want to look like they're "doing something" about the current crisis, even if the best course of action is actually no action.
Sci-fi like ShadowRun tries to predict the future. Sometimes, they get it partially right. Though, frankly, I don't see any basis in reality for this "essence" nonsense: I've known plenty of cyborgs myself. Even my dad's one, technically (artificial heart valve). They're just people with artificial parts, not soulless monsters who have lost their humanity. (Though I've also seen plenty of 100% natural human beings would would count as "soulless monsters"...)
Augmented abilities like this are a form of power, and can be used for good or evil. The Borg, like most Hollywood cyborgs (with the exception of a few good guys like LaForge), tended to use it for evil, unfortunately. I suspect this stereotype won't go away until there's lots of people in the real world who use it for good.
The law as it currently stands is that, once they enter your brain, the perceptions are your inviolable IP. Of course, that's mainly because sharing thoughts and ideas had notably less than 100% fidelity.
Which makes for an interesting side-trip: what happens if, instead of attending world class universities and studying, one can just download and install a few files from reputable universities' Web sites in order to grok, say, physics just (or at least nearly) as well as the best physicists? But that requires hacking into the memories, which the subject of this article only begins to touch on.
Back on topic, I would suspect that, as with the fact of file sharing today, the laws will be widely ignored in practice if they would otherwise inconvenience the user. You could have people getting wired eyes so that whatever they see can be admitted as court evidence (which some undercover cops, to my knowledge, would gladly give their right arms for...and even more gladly give up just one or two body parts that get working artificial replacements as part of the deal). Many military uses also spring to mind. And then there's the art perspective of using yourself as a camera. All this would make the IP concerns seem trivial, especially if artificial eyes entered into wide use before the IP industry thought to purchase restrictive legistlation.
I think it says something that even the guys who were abusing ICANN to get rich, can't stand ICANN's practices any longer. There comes a point where even the filthy rich tire of holding their noses...
Of course. Plea to all the competent computer folks to get themselves locked up so the gov't can look like it knows what it's doing in the eyes of all the non-criminals.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure he has. This won't have nearly enough power to take him all the way to Mars. Or did you mean the warmongers (and other rather unpleasant people) with nuclear (and other high-powered) weapons on Earth? I think some of us already find ourselves trapped here, and would like to get away.
No, my analysis has nothing to do with optimisation- all rockets are pretty highly optimised.
For certain things, perhaps, but they're not all optimized for cost. The Space Shuttle is a case in point.
Though, I agree with the rest of what you say. It's a catch 21, though: we're not going to get a high flight rate with expensive rockets, and it's hard to make rockets cheap without high flight rates. There are ways out of this (I'm working on one), but again, it's not easy.
You're comparing optimized, theoretical expendables vs. unoptimized but actually deployed reusable. Unoptimized varies by degree of unoptimization, but in theory, optimized (cheap) reusables could get down to $100/kg or less.
"Our tank just went BSOD, and rolled about a quarter mile off the beach before the motor died. The good news is, no one can see us - it's a good match for the local waters - and the hatches jammed closed so we didn't have to worry about bailing out. The bad news is, no one can see us, not even the rescue crews, and we're starting to run out of air in here."
Yeah, but you could use nanites to smuggle the napalm into all the body's cells inside inert packages, so you could combust the tagged person at the touch of a button - or not, if said person did what you wanted. (Including getting retagged every so often, if the tags would naturally degrade into non-flammability over time.)
Unfortunately, the ones that type sexy often don't look or sound sexy in real life. And often times, they aren't even girls in real life.
So we keep hearing. Is this example the exception that proves the rule?
Dude, I know where the server I work on is. It ain't in North Carolina. And it ain't reporting its geographic location to anybody.
Also, Mountain View is in Santa Clara County, but it isn't in Santa Clara (the city). They're at almost opposite ends of the county.
I checked out Visual Route. It couldn't find the correct physical location of my present employer's Web server (www.findlaw.com). This is a common problem among IP-to-geography matching software: everyone assumes the database is accurate, but when you look at it, it's usually full of errors.
Are you kidding? Given what they (sponsors of the DMCA) sell, skin is one of the last things they'd declare illegal.
What would be the #1 thing you could change about the Internet today, if you somehow gained temporary total control over every machine with an IP address and every address-less router? (Besides, of course, making it impossible for anyone to get total control ever again, even at the cost of your own control.)
Engineer In A Box? Provided it actually works, hell yeah! If the computer can do 90% of the work and I only have to do the remaining 10%, bring it on! Hell, if I thought I could, I'd even write it myself.
Of course, the problem is that there's always that remaining little 1% the computer can't do. For instance, I use a calculator where my dad used a slide rule. That specific task is relegated to an artificial aid, while we retain capability for general problem solving - and we do know how to do things that the aid does, if necessary. On the rare occasion where a calculator is unavailable and I am too distracted or fried to just quickly compute sums in my head, I still do resort to long form addition when necessary. But it's very rarely necessary.
There is a fundamental difference between never needing a skill in practice, and almost never needing a skill in practice. Where decent software exists to do a task I do, I find myself in the latter category. The only time I find myself in the former category is with needs that are ultimately provided by other human beings: (mostly corporate) farmers, with tons of agricultural machinery, grow my food; shipping companies run by people ship it to market by plane, boat, truck, and rail; I write scripts whose services other people sell, so there will be money in the bank when I cash my paycheck; et cetera. But the bits I manipulate, I know how to manipulate from the ground up - on the silicon if necessary. On rare occasion, the system fails so hard that - or merely fails to anticipate my needs so that - I must do so (and the bits involved so valuable that it is worth my time to do so).
This frees me to concentrate on those bits I must do. I need not know the exact angle and force with which to use a soldering iron, for a robot can weld a circuit faster, cheaper, and better than I - so I use the robot to do that task, saving myself time, money, and aggrivation at my own incompetence. I remember, in my very first job in my early adolesence, I used to trace circuits by hand: they had no software to do the task, but the circuits were simple enough that even a child (by their standards) could do it - and better to pay a child minimum wage, than to take their own time. (I suspect those circuits I traced have long since fallen prey to Moore's law, if nothing else.) If faced with the same task today, the firm could buy chip design software, and cycle through several combinations of inputs and outputs to find the optimal design in the same time it used to take me to trace out one chip...but you know the software will have an option to delve into the design, in case it faces some circuit so intricate, or dealing with poorly-emulated quantum features, where human assistance is again required.
To believe that these things don't exist because the machine takes care of them is mere solipsism, just like walking around on a moonless night in a poorly lit city and believing that nothing, aside from those areas close to the street lights, truly exists. (This is a well-documented psychological disorder in certain Scandinavian villages, where such conditions do exist during winter.)
Yeah, that was my impression, too:
"'Discussion'. Yeah. Right."
Still, from what I've heard of the plan, it's not too bad. Main points seem to be primarily relying on increased security awareness (come on, sysadmins of the clueless newbies, admit it: you've wished, at least once, that all new users of the chunk of the 'Net you control would have to get some decent training about what a virus is and how not to get one - well, that's about what they're advocating) and reliability rather than monitoring (not "scan all the traffic looking for something nasty" but "lock down the ports so nasty things don't happen" - i.e., prevention).
Me: ...okay, care to explain how you can get it down to 1/100th of what others are selling for?
Frankly, stuff like this does happen to me often enough that I can't automatically reject stuff just because it's cheap. Be suspicious, yes; automatically blow it off without reason, no. But I understand I'm not normal in that regard. (And note that this only applies to stuff I'm looking for, not unsolicited offers.)
Bravo. I've had a few stories like that myself, but they sum up to the same moral yours does. (Especially: get the staff actually using your developed-on-the-side version, and you've probably won. While it's still a prototype that no one uses, it's just a prototype...but good applications, once they are adopted by the right people, market themselves like nobody's business.)
Aye. And don't forget googling for Web pages with the same query.
Some time ago, I forged a deal with my employer: I'd take care of my own education, if I could pocket a decent portion of the money they would otherwise spend on training. I have yet to need any of the "training" my peers have received, often instead covering for them when this or that major bug breaks loose while they're away at training. When I need to learn something new, well, see above - with a bit more effort (different keywords, seeing what the advocates say as well as the detractors, et cetera). Everyone's happy so far, and my paycheck's growing.
Of course, because no one can make money selling this solution to you, consultants and vendors
never advocate this solution if the topic comes up.
There have been far more bad cyborgs than good, especially of late. Consider, for instance, how Frankenstien's monster was at first just trying to get his lazy, good-for-nothing creator to take responsibility for him. Similar story.
Which is why I'm in favor of these powers being gained in this method: when anyone can just buy an upgrade, is the power it grants still "super"human, or does it just bring the naturally born up to the new human norm, just like modern artificial eyes are intended to bring the blind up to the modern human norm?
There's other ways to enforce game balance. Bad physical reactions to having too many interface plugs, perhaps. Or maybe magick itself require organic body mass (save, perhaps, for some evil undead "lich" type magick). Or maybe just straight wealth: ubercorporate head honchos get all kinds of cyber to live forever and become personally terrifying to the rank and file, but the rank and file that the players play are lucky to afford a single biochip.
Other technologies are being tested, but they are still *experimental*. Thus, until the newer stuff is found to work and tested further, what do we do *now*? (Besides not launch)
Umm...put one heck of a lot more money into testing and developing the replacement systems so they can be put into use sooner rather than later, and perhaps fund a bunch of different competing systems in case The One Chosen System fails like it has the last few times NASA's tried to come up with a replacement? Even if that means launching less often for now?
Do we really want new law crafted before 90% of the issues with a new device are known?
Of course we don't. But we typically don't get to significantly affect the law; we just get to live under what is imposed on us. Those who make the laws, on the other hand, often want to look like they're "doing something" about the current crisis, even if the best course of action is actually no action.
Sci-fi like ShadowRun tries to predict the future. Sometimes, they get it partially right. Though, frankly, I don't see any basis in reality for this "essence" nonsense: I've known plenty of cyborgs myself. Even my dad's one, technically (artificial heart valve). They're just people with artificial parts, not soulless monsters who have lost their humanity. (Though I've also seen plenty of 100% natural human beings would would count as "soulless monsters"...)
Augmented abilities like this are a form of power, and can be used for good or evil. The Borg, like most Hollywood cyborgs (with the exception of a few good guys like LaForge), tended to use it for evil, unfortunately. I suspect this stereotype won't go away until there's lots of people in the real world who use it for good.
The law as it currently stands is that, once they enter your brain, the perceptions are your inviolable IP. Of course, that's mainly because sharing thoughts and ideas had notably less than 100% fidelity.
Which makes for an interesting side-trip: what happens if, instead of attending world class universities and studying, one can just download and install a few files from reputable universities' Web sites in order to grok, say, physics just (or at least nearly) as well as the best physicists? But that requires hacking into the memories, which the subject of this article only begins to touch on.
Back on topic, I would suspect that, as with the fact of file sharing today, the laws will be widely ignored in practice if they would otherwise inconvenience the user. You could have people getting wired eyes so that whatever they see can be admitted as court evidence (which some undercover cops, to my knowledge, would gladly give their right arms for...and even more gladly give up just one or two body parts that get working artificial replacements as part of the deal). Many military uses also spring to mind. And then there's the art perspective of using yourself as a camera. All this would make the IP concerns seem trivial, especially if artificial eyes entered into wide use before the IP industry thought to purchase restrictive legistlation.
I think it says something that even the guys who were abusing ICANN to get rich, can't stand ICANN's practices any longer. There comes a point where even the filthy rich tire of holding their noses...
Of course. Plea to all the competent computer folks to get themselves locked up so the gov't can look like it knows what it's doing in the eyes of all the non-criminals.