The idea seems technically interesting. I just don't think that the government is going to be good at picking a good winner here. The role of the government IMHO should be funding a variety of basic research using a system of prize awards.
The "Manhattan Project" was really fundamentally a bad idea. The weapon produced, wasn't all _that_ useful--and has produced enormous problems the last 50 years--and the power source produced has simply not be economical--even before you take into account those nasty Russian accidents.
The corruption here goes deeper than Bush. Clinton was in bed with the Israeli Lobby(AIPAC)--Clinton could have funded this stuff too. Bush got support from the Arab Anti-defamation league. Neither side here really wants to see alternative energy made oil a non-entity.
Since WWII, the biggest single factor in controlling brush-fire wars has been the control of the worlds oil supply. When alternative energy comes up,things get chaotic, and that makes vested interests nervous. Big money likes security and stability.
Basically, the guvvies aren't serious about space. The situation is as described in the film
"Tucker a man an his dream". Major corporations does innovate until forced to do so by their competitors. The US only did space seriously when the Russians forced them do get in. As it is now, they are following the same failed strategy as they did with airflight by funding Langley(the man that couldn't do what the Wright brothers did despite lots of US Federal funding).
We'll know the guvvies are serious about space when the guvvies start funding prizes for space development similar to the bounties they used to promote aerial mapping of the American west. Until then--look at the folks like John Carmack(the game guru that now funds Armadillo Aerospace)--or Jim Bowery( http://come.to/croatan
)-that are getting their money on the open market.
Congress has as much right to limit the kinds of contracts is will enforce between musicians and record companies as congress has a right to refuse
to enforce a contract by which someone sells
themselves into slavery.
The constitution authorizes congress to give
writers and authors exclusive rights to that
work. Those rights might be limited to extracting
fees from people that copy this work--or might
include ability of an artists/writer to determine
how a work is to be used---it is up to congress
to decide how far to go here.
Basically, the Hatch proposal doesn't affect folks
that want to get revenue on this work--it limits
the degree to which congress will enforce _non-monetarily_ motivated control over a work. Congress according to the constitution is not
_obligated_ to provide these rights-it simply
is _authoirized_ to decide what rights to protect
here in line with its view of what promotes
the arts and sciences.
Now, given that today, the copyright/patent
law is mainly a means for corporate elites to
play games, I have little problem with redoing
the rights accorded here. The Hatch proposal seems a good first step.
Is it really just a coincidence that this is
happening right after the US court decision?
Seriously, this reminds of the middle age practices when someone might be tortured for throwing mud a statue of the Virgin Mary or some such thing. What we really need is a reconsideration of the whole concept of intellectual property laws. Would we really not have good music if intellectual property laws didn't exist?
In a prior article a Micro$oft exec was complaining about the whole concept of Open Source. Now do we really expect the Music Moguls to be especially principled when it comes to respecting the rights of the Open Source community? Would the music execs really put up with a free music site _even if every piece on it was performed by musicians who had GPL'd their
music?
Thing is that a lot more than.74% of all men wind up in prison at one time or another in their life-or get embroiled in some other mess involving the judicial system. I have a friend whose brother wound up blowing his brains out after a California police official threatened him with a prison term for a fairly minor offense.
It's important to keep in mind here is that a _much_ larger portion of men wind up in prison than women.
There is other stuff out there besides Rotan that hasn't gotten anywhere near the hype.
The _real_ shame here IMHO is that the overall
level of private space investment has been so low-in part because there are real issues competing with a government subsidized entity. This could be corrected quite rapidly(say through Jim Bowery's proposal to offer bounty's for the mapping of mars similar to what was done to aerially map the the the American west last century).
Russia is driving this project at this point, but the thing to consider here:
The cost of living in Alaska is very high compared to other US states. A big chunk of the reason for this high cost of living is the transport costs associated with bringing in products that are tranported by rail elsewhere in the US. Durable goods can be transported via ship-this just doesn't work for things like lettuce and milk. California veggies are typically shipped to New York via Rail and then disbursed by truck.
One big question here: how would Alaska, Northern Canada and Siberia be different with a bigger workforce with a higher standard of living?
There are some pretty decent models showing how
availability of rail transport has made lasting change in property values of various areas.
This is IMHO the real way of establishing if this kind of project would make economic sense(in Hong Kong, the private rail roads are subsidized by giving them a portion of the rise in property tax revenues that happen when new rail lines are built).
There are some theoretically sound alternatives
to Java on the Server side that have more profound
advantages to languages like Perl than Java offers. IMHO, the leading one here(introduced to me by a friend of mine who is a network architect): Mozart-OZ.
Mozart has solves dome of the basic issues of object oriented programing that annoy Smalltalk
programmers that are forced by the market to move to Java. At the same time, Mozart goes far beyond the networking capability of Java. The Mozart VM is more integrated with a network later, making it possible to write distributed applications where the network is rather transparent--this solves a lot of problems like
session management problems that plague Java and Perl hackers. They have some benchmarks that show Mozart kicking Java's ass.
On top of this, the Mozart folks have done a rather nice job with integrating multiple programing paradigms: they nicely handle functional programming, logic programing, constraint programming in one nice neat package.
The only real hole here:Integration with databases/relational programming isn't handled as seemlessly here.
Take a look at it. I think that my friend was
correct when we said if this isn't the future, it is going to be something much like it or better.
RJB
The Daley family stole a _lot_ more than just the
Kennedy election. Dead folks vote quite regularly in Chicago--and for that matter lots of other
major US cities. Its to the point in Chicago, that I'd expect lots of GOP types don't even bother voting. Now, the real question here:
How much is Democratic vote fraud vs. GOP vote
fraud?
The odds of the cats prize being obtained were never all that high according to the odds on the claim Rocket on Ideosphere.
I think the real question here: What would it take to improve the odds of private space development happening in a significant way? What are the kind of events that could lead up to creation of a real frontier in space? I would sincerely appreciate if some folks would participate in creating some more space claims on Ideosphere. This tool isn't perfect, but it is a reasonable pass at giving folks a realistic idea of the odds of uncertain events. I'd be happy to help judge these claims and help write them if necessary(my e-mail is randall_burns@hotmail.com).
Slashdot Mirror
The "Manhattan Project" was really fundamentally a bad idea. The weapon produced, wasn't all _that_ useful--and has produced enormous problems the last 50 years--and the power source produced has simply not be economical--even before you take into account those nasty Russian accidents.
Since WWII, the biggest single factor in controlling brush-fire wars has been the control of the worlds oil supply. When alternative energy comes up,things get chaotic, and that makes vested interests nervous. Big money likes security and stability.
Basically, the guvvies aren't serious about space. The situation is as described in the film "Tucker a man an his dream". Major corporations does innovate until forced to do so by their competitors. The US only did space seriously when the Russians forced them do get in. As it is now, they are following the same failed strategy as they did with airflight by funding Langley(the man that couldn't do what the Wright brothers did despite lots of US Federal funding).
We'll know the guvvies are serious about space when the guvvies start funding prizes for space development similar to the bounties they used to promote aerial mapping of the American west. Until then--look at the folks like John Carmack(the game guru that now funds Armadillo Aerospace)--or Jim Bowery( http://come.to/croatan )-that are getting their money on the open market.
Congress has as much right to limit the kinds of contracts is will enforce between musicians and record companies as congress has a right to refuse to enforce a contract by which someone sells themselves into slavery.
I second the nomination.
Basically, the Hatch proposal doesn't affect folks that want to get revenue on this work--it limits the degree to which congress will enforce _non-monetarily_ motivated control over a work. Congress according to the constitution is not _obligated_ to provide these rights-it simply is _authoirized_ to decide what rights to protect here in line with its view of what promotes the arts and sciences.
Now, given that today, the copyright/patent law is mainly a means for corporate elites to play games, I have little problem with redoing the rights accorded here. The Hatch proposal seems a good first step.
In a prior article a Micro$oft exec was complaining about the whole concept of Open Source. Now do we really expect the Music Moguls to be especially principled when it comes to respecting the rights of the Open Source community? Would the music execs really put up with a free music site _even if every piece on it was performed by musicians who had GPL'd their music?
The odds of a Nuclear weapon being used by 2010 are about 45% and an armed conflict between US and China by 2010 are about 34% according to Ideosphere, a reputational betting pool.
I haven't tried this yet, but I've heard about folks on their beta program.
It's important to keep in mind here is that a _much_ larger portion of men wind up in prison than women.
The _real_ shame here IMHO is that the overall level of private space investment has been so low-in part because there are real issues competing with a government subsidized entity. This could be corrected quite rapidly(say through Jim Bowery's proposal to offer bounty's for the mapping of mars similar to what was done to aerially map the the the American west last century).
RJB
One big question here: how would Alaska, Northern Canada and Siberia be different with a bigger workforce with a higher standard of living?
There are some pretty decent models showing how availability of rail transport has made lasting change in property values of various areas. This is IMHO the real way of establishing if this kind of project would make economic sense(in Hong Kong, the private rail roads are subsidized by giving them a portion of the rise in property tax revenues that happen when new rail lines are built).
There are some theoretically sound alternatives to Java on the Server side that have more profound advantages to languages like Perl than Java offers. IMHO, the leading one here(introduced to me by a friend of mine who is a network architect): Mozart-OZ. Mozart has solves dome of the basic issues of object oriented programing that annoy Smalltalk programmers that are forced by the market to move to Java. At the same time, Mozart goes far beyond the networking capability of Java. The Mozart VM is more integrated with a network later, making it possible to write distributed applications where the network is rather transparent--this solves a lot of problems like session management problems that plague Java and Perl hackers. They have some benchmarks that show Mozart kicking Java's ass. On top of this, the Mozart folks have done a rather nice job with integrating multiple programing paradigms: they nicely handle functional programming, logic programing, constraint programming in one nice neat package. The only real hole here:Integration with databases/relational programming isn't handled as seemlessly here. Take a look at it. I think that my friend was correct when we said if this isn't the future, it is going to be something much like it or better. RJB
Here is a decent page on Electronic Democracy.
The Daley family stole a _lot_ more than just the Kennedy election. Dead folks vote quite regularly in Chicago--and for that matter lots of other major US cities. Its to the point in Chicago, that I'd expect lots of GOP types don't even bother voting. Now, the real question here: How much is Democratic vote fraud vs. GOP vote fraud?
That quote was interesting, because the next line was "I don't think witchcraft is a religion". that somehow got left out
I'd be happy to judge a claim on www.ideosphere.com for this event if anyone cares to create the claim
I think the real question here: What would it take to improve the odds of private space development happening in a significant way? What are the kind of events that could lead up to creation of a real frontier in space? I would sincerely appreciate if some folks would participate in creating some more space claims on Ideosphere. This tool isn't perfect, but it is a reasonable pass at giving folks a realistic idea of the odds of uncertain events. I'd be happy to help judge these claims and help write them if necessary(my e-mail is randall_burns@hotmail.com).