It's so sad how much despairing and conflict-promoting minisinformation is in this discussion.
Beyond that, there is room for quadrillions of humans in space habitats, and we've been able to build them (in theory) since the 1970s. You'd expect "nerds" might be more optimistic. Who is profiting from this despair?
"some asshole on the internet who you don't actually know, but who is glad you did what you did."
Same here.:-) I don't have mosch's low number, but I read for a long time before I finally posted.
Thanks for creating such a wonderful community forum, Rob. I gained so much understanding about contemporary technology stories through slashdot as well as feeling in touch with the pulse of geekdom. I probably would not be half the technologist I am without slashdot.
All the best with your new ventures as well as finding a new healthy balance in your life.
You're right. Here is a 12 minute YouTube video I made that talks about a balance between five interwoven economies that shifts with cultural change and technological change: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY "This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems. "
But right now, pretty much not one gets this. Mainstream economists are in denial. They just assume infinite demand (not limits from environmentalism, voluntary simplicity, or a law of diminishing or negative returns), that robots and AI and better design and voluntary social networks can't replace most paid human labor, that wealth be evenly distributed (not centralized to the owners of capital), that the mean on the bell curve on IQ will suddenly jump globally from 100 (remember, half below) to 200 to everyone can have great high technology creative jobs, and so on.
Anyway, I've put all my resources into understanding these issues and telling peopel about solutions to the point of my own family's economic collapse. But for the most part no one cares; well, I should really say, many people care do about the problem, or say they care, (especially when it effects them personally or someone they care about), but most people just want a solution that does not entail any substantial change to the status quo. It seems our current political and economic leadership would rather drive our society off a cliff to collapse rather than consider things like a basic income, expanded gift economy, better democratic resource based planning, promoting local subsistence via 3D printing and organic gardnening robots, and so on.
Anyway, there are solutions if we can find the collective social will to put them in place. Already the US averages about US$700 per month per citizen in payments for social security, schooling, unemployment, and disability. We could bring that up to US$1000 or even $2000 a month. And we could get rid of or shorten patents and copyrights and do other things to promote a gift economy. And so on. Someday we will probably do all those things or similar ones if we are to survive and thrive. It's just a question of how much suffering will happen before then.
But, as Martin Ford said, while military planners are planning for and funding the development of robots that can do tasks in unstructured battlefields, economists continue to assume robots and AI will never take over most work in a highly structured factory or office.
Great points. In general the idea of "artificial scarcity" through patents and copyrights is becoming immoral in the 21st century, IMHO. Richard Stallman talks about how copyright was not such a bad bargain when copies were hard to make. Now that copies are easy to make, copyright makes a lot less sense. Patents are a somewhat different issue because they are shorter, and 3D printers are still under initial development, but some of the same logic applies. In general, we need to stop funding creation of digital works through a lottery model of success (a few big winners). And as people point out, copyrights and patents are now slowing down innovation. Who can make a cell phone when it infringes on 200,000 patents? Who has time to negotiate that? We need to move beyond that model, A basic income can support inventors, as can a gift economy, or better government planning, or inventors printing consumer good for themselves via 3D printing or advanced robots. A different world is increasingly possible. A related site I made: http://artificialscarcity.com/
Compressed air, thermal storage in molten salts, and pumping water are all workable solutions for storing power, as are improving batteries and hydrogen production. There are solutions. The big issue is that we don't make coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear pay the true cost for pollution costs, health damage, defense costs, climate change, or meltdown risk.
So, for example, I can't eat fish caught locally in the North East US because of mercury pollution from coal burning power plants in the Midwest US. So, I've lost something valuable, for what in exchange? US Republicanism in practice is the worst sort of socialism -- privatizing gains but socializing costs (not to say US Democrats are often that much better). Thirty years of this worst sort of socialism has done a lot of damage to the USA (might as well have real "socialism" instead, IMHO, because it is hard to imagine everyone having medical care and free college and reliable infrastructure would make things worse at this point): "Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy' Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline" http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy-2010-08-10
Not to say we were not warned, like by Jimmy Carter: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/ "We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power "Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy. In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current."
Reading a lot about that, it seems that renewables have been cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear since the 1970s if externalities are accounted for (including pollution, disease, defense, corruption, other risk). The difference is that now, through decades of hard work by dedicated researchers, renewable are now becoming cheaper even when not accounting for externalities. http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/ ""Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co. (GE)," Bloomberg reports."
Pistol Shrimp are possibly nuclear: http://www.iwantat.com/blog/2011/03/pistol-shrimp-packing-a-nuclear-reacting-punch-and-how-to-draw-snoopy/ "It takes special breed of high speed camera to slow down time and capture the action of a Pistol Shrimps attack on itâ(TM)s prey. By using itâ(TM)s claw as a sonic weapon it stuns it prey with a tremendous sonic blast by creating a shock wave that can stun or kill in one strike without ever having to touch itâ(TM)s prey. As itâ(TM)s name for which it is called cocks itâ(TM)s claw like a pistol just before an attack at the right moment snaps it shut at such high speed it causes an IMPLOSION of a bubble that collapses upon itself so fast it creates a nuclear fusion instantaneously for a very small brief of time. With temperatures reaching near our own suns temperature at 4,700 ÂC (Degrees) or 8,492 ÂF. (Fahrenheit)"
"and this only happened because commuter rail systems are not regulated by the federal government like intercity rail"
Wait, I've been told by the Republicans that regulation and the federal government are bad. You're saying that is not always true? What kind of un-American socialist are you, trying to save US American lives by regulation? It's people like you who are destroying this country with inconvenient truths.:-)
Fixing both of those issues in my own life has led to more energy and mental clarity for learning new things.
Otherwise, code monkeys are at big risk of more than bad management from eating chips, drinking soda, and working indoors, which curtails the time for learning on this plane of existence:
"Code Monkey" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA
Exercise, good sleep, and other lifestyle issues can also contribute to having more energy and more mental capacity. http://www.bluezones.com/
So true. The 68000 was such a better processor, for example.
And for a few pennies more in resistors, no one would have had to experience IRQ hell as cards could have been self-configuring.
IBM also should have shipper Forth as the OS, not DOS.
Too bad Commodore was such a messed up company, too, as otherwise they had some great hardware and later software (like with the Amiga).
I'm glad I've kept some of my old Byte magazines and others to remember that history, but I got rid of most of them, sadly. How quickly a historical perspective gets lost. Michael Mahoney was a late professor of mine who tried to do something about that: http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/
... why Mozilla has not made a social semantic desktop with all that vast amount of money. No search engine advertising revenues? http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_Desktop "The Internet, electronic mail, and the Web have revolutionized the way we communicate and collaborate - their mass adoption is one of the major technological success stories of the 20th century. We all are now much more connected, and in turn face new resulting problems: information overload caused by insufficient support for information organization and collaboration. For example, sending a single file to a mailing list multiplies the cognitive processing effort of filtering and organizing this file times the number of recipients ? leading to more and more of peoples' time going into information filtering and information management activities. There is a need for smarter and more fine-grained computer support for personal and networked information that has to blend the boundaries between personal and group data, while simultaneously safeguarding privacy and establishing and deploying trust among collaborators.
The Semantic Web holds promises for information organization and selective access, providing standards means for formulating and distributing metadata and Ontologies.
Still, we miss a wide use of Semantic Web technologies on personal computers...."
But maybe sour grapes on my part as I applied for a job at Mozilla a couple months ago, suggesting upgrading Thunderbird into such a thing, and never heard back. I've been trying on-and-off on my own for years towards that SSD end, but some finanical support (and teamwork) would help me have time to focus on it more and help make it happen: http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/
"Most likely because he greatly overrates his productivity relative to said entry-level programmer."
One of the problems is that programmer productivity can differ by literally several orders of magnitude including in the negative range (see the book the Mythical Man Month, so, -1000% to +100,000%, but a range for typical programmer salaries might differ by 50% to 100%.
Of course, the best programming situation is when money is taken off the table and people have purpose, self-actualization and a increasing sense of mastery, and a great team to work with, like talked about here:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
But such places can be few and far between (unless you run your own shop). SAS is maybe one such place, but sadly they are not FOSS. Google has aspects of this with their 20% time.
I hope the programmer on the sidelines for two years is turning out a lot of good free and open source software in any case. I'd suggest Java (especially other JVM languages like Clojure and Jython) and Smalltalk (Squeak or Pharo) as mind expanding things. Why not do FOSS work in stuff like that, where true value can be created regardless of how many imaginary fiat dollars get moved around?
Also: "This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. (Douglas Adams)"
And: "Money is a sign of poverty. (Iain Banks)"
Program for the love of it, because the world needs high quality software. The problem is, our economy has not yet caught up with the potential for abundance through our technology. We need a basic income, and an expanded gift economy, and better government planning, and better 3D printers and organic gardening robots.
This was originally posted to Slashdot on May 25 2002: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33107&cid=3582999 It was in relation to an article: "MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!" about the MPAA wanting copyright protection built into all computer hardware. I sent a copy to Richard Stallman back then and he said it made him laugh.:-) My comments to the Department of Justice request for comments were in the form of this satire:
Transcript of April 1, 2016 MicroSlaw Presidential Speech (Before final editing prior to release under standard U.S. Government for-fee licensing under 2011 Fee Requirements Law)
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster, that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates, music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a similar approach to law.
There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold dear in this great land.
First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation.
MicroSlaw's core code defines a legal operating standard or OS we can all rely on. While I know some GPL supporters may be painting a rosy view of free law to the general public, it is obvious that any so called free alternative to MicroSlaw's legal code fails at the start because it would require great costs for learning about new so-called free laws, plus additional costs to switch all legal forms and court procedures to the new so called free standard. So free laws are really more expensive, especially as we are talking here about free as in cost, not free as in freedom.
In any case, why would you want to pay public servants like those old time -- what were they called? -- Senators? Representatives? -- around $145K a year out of public funds just to make free laws? Laws are made far more efficiently, inexpensively and, I assure you, justly, by large corporatio
The people worst affected by all this are blameless people who made the mistake of owning shops on a high street or renting apartments above shops or similar things. I mean who didn't see that coming?"
Also related:
"Can Economic Factors Explain The Riots?" http://news.sky.com/home/business/article/16046645 "There's no one root cause for the riots across the country, but a range of economic indicators often associated with social unrest have been on the rise for some time.... Add this to the fact that overall UK inequality levels have risen to the highest levels since the 1960s (or alternatively the 1930s, depending on whose statistics you trust). It's notable that many of the areas affected by the rioting are within touching distance of poorer areas, as is the case in Tottenham where the rioting began.... London's local authorities have borne much of the brunt of the Government's austerity package -- their grants from Whitehall fell by 11.3% this year and will drop a further 7.6% in 2012/13. And the first non-essential services to be cut include youth services budgets -- Haringey's was slashed by 75% leading to the closure of youth clubs."
"Blameless" is a problematical term when we are talking politics including how people vote about long term trends. People vote for the world they want to live in, and sometimes their assumptions or predictions are wrong.
I don't know much about UK politics, but as for the USA, the current dominant voting pattern follows the idea that if we give all out money to rich people they will stick in their mattresses (or maybe use it in poker games with each other) and this will create jobs for everyone. If that does not work to create jobs, then the potential consequences are severe. Are the people who vote for such policies "blameless" if the consequences are social collapse?
"Yes because food, shelter and medical care are not enough. The safety net should include PS3s and 50" flat panels like those the rioters are carrying off"
Two ways your sarcasm misses the point: * Advanced 3D printers could print out PS3s and flat panels someday, probably sooner than you think (say, twenty to thirty years, maybe sooner). * A basic income is not a "safety" net; it is about human rights, and the right of a citizen to make a claim on the industrial commons as a right of citizenship and having some equity in the land the government is the ultimate owner of.
"The Mythology of Wealth" http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
Already in the USA, the old have a basic income (called social security) and the young get money spent on their behalf (problematically) in schools. With unemployment and some other things, that averages out to about US$700 per person per month. Why not just give everyone that much money directly at any age (and take it away again when they are in jail, so, an incentive not to riot)?
Really, how expensive are PS3s and Flat Panels, anyway? They are getting cheaper all the time. It is a lot cheaper even for the government to give such things away then pay for face-to-face education or entertainment or deal with civil unrest. Not saying drugging the country with PS3s is an optimum strategy for social health though (it's fairly Brave New World-ish).
Seriously, if someone has been so disadvantaged in our society by not being able to find meaningful work, or not having great friends and family to help them out when they are down, then you begrudge them a home entertainment system to hide away from that painful reality with? These rioters are essentially stealing (computerized) painkillers.
The USSR had to guard its borders against potential escapees who hated it there; it seems the USA (and UK etc.) needs to guard its medicine cabinets for the same reasons. What does that tell you about a society?
Slashdot Mirror
http://unbridledspeculation.com/2011/06/09/solar-cheaper-than-coal-in-3-5-years-ge-and-first-solar-think-so/
http://unbridledspeculation.com/2011/03/17/the-exponential-gains-in-solar-power-per-dollar/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR11.txt
We can make synthetic fuels from solar energy:
http://unbridledspeculation.com/2011/06/09/solar-cheaper-than-coal-in-3-5-years-ge-and-first-solar-think-so/
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/TCHAR11.txt
Bartlett ignores that solutions can grow exponentially, not just problems. See, for example:
http://unbridledspeculation.com/2011/03/17/the-exponential-gains-in-solar-power-per-dollar/
http://unbridledspeculation.com/2011/06/09/solar-cheaper-than-coal-in-3-5-years-ge-and-first-solar-think-so/
The Club of Rome made the same mistake in the 1970s.
See also:
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
It's so sad how much despairing and conflict-promoting minisinformation is in this discussion.
Beyond that, there is room for quadrillions of humans in space habitats, and we've been able to build them (in theory) since the 1970s. You'd expect "nerds" might be more optimistic. Who is profiting from this despair?
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htm
"Today, I spend the vast majority of my free time at my computer desk."
Also, look into treadmill workstations and curing vitamin d deficiency. Humans are not adapted to be sedentary indoor creatures.
See my comment here:
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
Also:
http://thewaronkids.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Underground_History_of_American_Education
On the difference between learning "just in case" in schools and "learning just in time" using laptops and the internet:
http://patapata.sourceforge.net/WhyEducationalTechnologyHasFailedSchools.html
"some asshole on the internet who you don't actually know, but who is glad you did what you did."
Same here. :-) I don't have mosch's low number, but I read for a long time before I finally posted.
Thanks for creating such a wonderful community forum, Rob. I gained so much understanding about contemporary technology stories through slashdot as well as feeling in touch with the pulse of geekdom. I probably would not be half the technologist I am without slashdot.
All the best with your new ventures as well as finding a new healthy balance in your life.
And remember:
http://science.slashdot.org/story/08/06/24/0125225/Lack-of-Sunlight-Could-Lead-To-Early-Death
http://science.slashdot.org/story/07/04/29/0724246/Vitamin-D-Deficiency-Behind-Many-Western-Cancers
http://www.google.com/#q=site:slashdot.org+vitamin+D"
And get your vegetables, too! :-)
You're right. Here is a 12 minute YouTube video I made that talks about a balance between five interwoven economies that shifts with cultural change and technological change:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
"This video presents a simplified education model about socioeconomics and technological change. It discusses five interwoven economies (subsistence, gift, exchange, planned, and theft) and how the balance will shift with cultural changes and technological changes. It suggests that things like a basic income, better planning, improved subsistence, and an expanded gift economy can compensate in part for an exchange economy that is having problems. "
A PDF file of the presentation is here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/media/FiveInterwovenEconomies.pdf
Other related stuff by me:
http://knol.google.com/k/beyond-a-jobless-recovery
But right now, pretty much not one gets this. Mainstream economists are in denial. They just assume infinite demand (not limits from environmentalism, voluntary simplicity, or a law of diminishing or negative returns), that robots and AI and better design and voluntary social networks can't replace most paid human labor, that wealth be evenly distributed (not centralized to the owners of capital), that the mean on the bell curve on IQ will suddenly jump globally from 100 (remember, half below) to 200 to everyone can have great high technology creative jobs, and so on.
Some alternative economists have called for change, but are so far mostly ignored:
http://www.responsiblefinance.ch/
Anyway, I've put all my resources into understanding these issues and telling peopel about solutions to the point of my own family's economic collapse. But for the most part no one cares; well, I should really say, many people care do about the problem, or say they care, (especially when it effects them personally or someone they care about), but most people just want a solution that does not entail any substantial change to the status quo. It seems our current political and economic leadership would rather drive our society off a cliff to collapse rather than consider things like a basic income, expanded gift economy, better democratic resource based planning, promoting local subsistence via 3D printing and organic gardnening robots, and so on.
Anyway, there are solutions if we can find the collective social will to put them in place. Already the US averages about US$700 per month per citizen in payments for social security, schooling, unemployment, and disability. We could bring that up to US$1000 or even $2000 a month. And we could get rid of or shorten patents and copyrights and do other things to promote a gift economy. And so on. Someday we will probably do all those things or similar ones if we are to survive and thrive. It's just a question of how much suffering will happen before then.
But, as Martin Ford said, while military planners are planning for and funding the development of robots that can do tasks in unstructured battlefields, economists continue to assume robots and AI will never take over most work in a highly structured factory or office.
See also, by Marshall Brain:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
Great points. In general the idea of "artificial scarcity" through patents and copyrights is becoming immoral in the 21st century, IMHO. Richard Stallman talks about how copyright was not such a bad bargain when copies were hard to make. Now that copies are easy to make, copyright makes a lot less sense. Patents are a somewhat different issue because they are shorter, and 3D printers are still under initial development, but some of the same logic applies. In general, we need to stop funding creation of digital works through a lottery model of success (a few big winners). And as people point out, copyrights and patents are now slowing down innovation. Who can make a cell phone when it infringes on 200,000 patents? Who has time to negotiate that? We need to move beyond that model, A basic income can support inventors, as can a gift economy, or better government planning, or inventors printing consumer good for themselves via 3D printing or advanced robots. A different world is increasingly possible. A related site I made: http://artificialscarcity.com/
Interesting analogy, thanks.
Friendly AI is more likely to get built if we upgrade our economy first:
http://www.marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
http://postbiota.org/pipermail/tt/2009-August/005797.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vK-M_e0JoY
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
Compressed air, thermal storage in molten salts, and pumping water are all workable solutions for storing power, as are improving batteries and hydrogen production. There are solutions. The big issue is that we don't make coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear pay the true cost for pollution costs, health damage, defense costs, climate change, or meltdown risk.
So, for example, I can't eat fish caught locally in the North East US because of mercury pollution from coal burning power plants in the Midwest US. So, I've lost something valuable, for what in exchange? US Republicanism in practice is the worst sort of socialism -- privatizing gains but socializing costs (not to say US Democrats are often that much better). Thirty years of this worst sort of socialism has done a lot of damage to the USA (might as well have real "socialism" instead, IMHO, because it is hard to imagine everyone having medical care and free college and reliable infrastructure would make things worse at this point):
"Reagan insider: 'GOP destroyed U.S. economy'
Commentary: How: Gold. Tax cuts. Debts. Wars. Fat Cats. Class gap. No fiscal discipline"
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/reagan-insider-gop-destroyed-us-economy-2010-08-10
Not to say we were not warned, like by Jimmy Carter:
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/primary-resources/carter-crisis/
"We are at a turning point in our history. There are two paths to choose. One is a path I've warned about tonight, the path that leads to fragmentation and self-interest. Down that road lies a mistaken idea of freedom, the right to grasp for ourselves some advantage over others. That path would be one of constant conflict between narrow interests ending in chaos and immobility. It is a certain route to failure. All the traditions of our past, all the lessons of our heritage, all the promises of our future point to another path, the path of common purpose and the restoration of American values. That path leads to true freedom for our nation and ourselves. We can take the first steps down that path as we begin to solve our energy problem."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Externality
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy. In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current."
Reading a lot about that, it seems that renewables have been cheaper than fossil fuels and nuclear since the 1970s if externalities are accounted for (including pollution, disease, defense, corruption, other risk). The difference is that now, through decades of hard work by dedicated researchers, renewable are now becoming cheaper even when not accounting for externalities.
http://cleantechnica.com/2011/05/29/ge-solar-power-cheaper-than-fossil-fuels-in-5-years/
""Solar power may be cheaper than electricity generated by fossil fuels and nuclear reactors within three to five years because of innovations, said Mark M. Little, the global research director for General Electric Co. (GE)," Bloomberg reports."
Pistol Shrimp are possibly nuclear: http://www.iwantat.com/blog/2011/03/pistol-shrimp-packing-a-nuclear-reacting-punch-and-how-to-draw-snoopy/
"It takes special breed of high speed camera to slow down time and capture the action of a Pistol Shrimps attack on itâ(TM)s prey. By using itâ(TM)s claw as a sonic weapon it stuns it prey with a tremendous sonic blast by creating a shock wave that can stun or kill in one strike without ever having to touch itâ(TM)s prey. As itâ(TM)s name for which it is called cocks itâ(TM)s claw like a pistol just before an attack at the right moment snaps it shut at such high speed it causes an IMPLOSION of a bubble that collapses upon itself so fast it creates a nuclear fusion instantaneously for a very small brief of time. With temperatures reaching near our own suns temperature at 4,700 ÂC (Degrees) or 8,492 ÂF. (Fahrenheit)"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonoluminescence#Biological_sonoluminescence
Exercise is a mixed bag because it tends to increase appetite (although it is good for your health for other reasons).
If you want to understand weight gain and loss, see Dr. Joel Fuhrman's writings to eat more vegetables, fruits, and beans, which, along with adequate vitamin D and some earlier fasting, have helped me lose and keep off 50 excess pounds over the last year and a half:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
How to make our communities more health-friendly
http://www.bluezones.com/
... a finite game, but to play an infinite one. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_and_Infinite_Games
My suggestion about how the USA can win the infinite game about security:
"A Social Semantic Desktop for Sensemaking and Analysis about Threats And Opportunities"
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=2368162&cid=37016386
Just waiting for the financial support I asked for there to show up.... :-)
The main problem is probably that the project is too cheap.
"and this only happened because commuter rail systems are not regulated by the federal government like intercity rail"
Wait, I've been told by the Republicans that regulation and the federal government are bad. You're saying that is not always true? What kind of un-American socialist are you, trying to save US American lives by regulation? It's people like you who are destroying this country with inconvenient truths. :-)
It's an occupational hazard of indoor manager/coder types.
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-vitamin-d/how-to-get-your-vitamin-d/vitamin-d-supplementation/
Vegetable deficiency disease (in part from stress) is a killer too.
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/PCI_angioplasty_article.aspx
Fixing both of those issues in my own life has led to more energy and mental clarity for learning new things.
Otherwise, code monkeys are at big risk of more than bad management from eating chips, drinking soda, and working indoors, which curtails the time for learning on this plane of existence:
"Code Monkey"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v4Wy7gRGgeA
Exercise, good sleep, and other lifestyle issues can also contribute to having more energy and more mental capacity.
http://www.bluezones.com/
Also, there is a lot to be done for improving software projects beside code, so you might be able to push your project management skills in new directions, like discussed by David Eaves here for FOSS projects:
http://www.slideshare.net/david_a_eaves/community-management-presentation/
So true. The 68000 was such a better processor, for example.
And for a few pennies more in resistors, no one would have had to experience IRQ hell as cards could have been self-configuring.
IBM also should have shipper Forth as the OS, not DOS.
Too bad Commodore was such a messed up company, too, as otherwise they had some great hardware and later software (like with the Amiga).
I'm glad I've kept some of my old Byte magazines and others to remember that history, but I got rid of most of them, sadly. How quickly a historical perspective gets lost. Michael Mahoney was a late professor of mine who tried to do something about that:
http://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/
... why Mozilla has not made a social semantic desktop with all that vast amount of money. No search engine advertising revenues? ..."
http://semanticweb.org/wiki/Semantic_Desktop
"The Internet, electronic mail, and the Web have revolutionized the way we communicate and collaborate - their mass adoption is one of the major technological success stories of the 20th century. We all are now much more connected, and in turn face new resulting problems: information overload caused by insufficient support for information organization and collaboration. For example, sending a single file to a mailing list multiplies the cognitive processing effort of filtering and organizing this file times the number of recipients ? leading to more and more of peoples' time going into information filtering and information management activities. There is a need for smarter and more fine-grained computer support for personal and networked information that has to blend the boundaries between personal and group data, while simultaneously safeguarding privacy and establishing and deploying trust among collaborators.
The Semantic Web holds promises for information organization and selective access, providing standards means for formulating and distributing metadata and Ontologies.
Still, we miss a wide use of Semantic Web technologies on personal computers.
But maybe sour grapes on my part as I applied for a job at Mozilla a couple months ago, suggesting upgrading Thunderbird into such a thing, and never heard back. I've been trying on-and-off on my own for years towards that SSD end, but some finanical support (and teamwork) would help me have time to focus on it more and help make it happen:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/pointrel/
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-05-26/solar-may-be-cheaper-than-fossil-power-in-five-years-ge-says.html
"Most likely because he greatly overrates his productivity relative to said entry-level programmer."
One of the problems is that programmer productivity can differ by literally several orders of magnitude including in the negative range (see the book the Mythical Man Month, so, -1000% to +100,000%, but a range for typical programmer salaries might differ by 50% to 100%.
Of course, the best programming situation is when money is taken off the table and people have purpose, self-actualization and a increasing sense of mastery, and a great team to work with, like talked about here:
"RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
But such places can be few and far between (unless you run your own shop). SAS is maybe one such place, but sadly they are not FOSS. Google has aspects of this with their 20% time.
I hope the programmer on the sidelines for two years is turning out a lot of good free and open source software in any case. I'd suggest Java (especially other JVM languages like Clojure and Jython) and Smalltalk (Squeak or Pharo) as mind expanding things. Why not do FOSS work in stuff like that, where true value can be created regardless of how many imaginary fiat dollars get moved around?
Also: "This planet has -- or rather had -- a problem, which was this: most of the people living on it were unhappy for pretty much of the time. Many solutions were suggested for this problem, but most of these were largely concerned with the movements of small green pieces of paper, which is odd because on the whole it wasn't the small green pieces of paper that were unhappy. (Douglas Adams)"
And: "Money is a sign of poverty. (Iain Banks)"
Program for the love of it, because the world needs high quality software. The problem is, our economy has not yet caught up with the potential for abundance through our technology. We need a basic income, and an expanded gift economy, and better government planning, and better 3D printers and organic gardening robots.
http://www.pdfernhout.net/microslaw.html
This was originally posted to Slashdot on May 25 2002: :-) My comments to the Department of Justice request for comments were in the form of this satire:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=33107&cid=3582999
It was in relation to an article: "MPAA to Senate: Plug the Analog Hole!" about the MPAA wanting copyright protection built into all computer hardware. I sent a copy to Richard Stallman back then and he said it made him laugh.
Transcript of April 1, 2016 MicroSlaw Presidential Speech (Before final editing prior to release under standard U.S. Government for-fee licensing under 2011 Fee Requirements Law)
My fellow Americans. There has been some recent talk of free law by the General Public Lawyers (the GPL) who we all know hold un-American views. I speak to you today from the Oval Office in the White House to assure you how much better off you are now that all law is proprietary. The value of proprietary law should be obvious. Software is essentially just a form of law governing how computers operate, and all software and media content has long been privatized to great economic success. Economic analysts have proven conclusively that if we hadn't passed laws banning all free software like GNU/Linux and OpenOffice after our economy began its current recession, which started, how many times must I remind everyone, only coincidentally with the shutdown of Napster, that we would be in far worse shape then we are today. RIAA has confidently assured me that if independent artists were allowed to release works without using their compensation system and royalty rates, music CD sales would be even lower than their recent inexplicably low levels. The MPAA has also detailed how historically the movie industry was nearly destroyed in the 1980s by the VCR until that too was banned and all so called fair use exemptions eliminated. So clearly, these successes with software, content, and hardware indicate the value of a similar approach to law.
There are many reasons for the value of proprietary law. You all know them since you have been taught them in school since kindergarten as part of your standardized education. They are reflected in our most fundamental beliefs, such as sharing denies the delight of payment and cookies can only be brought into the classroom if you bring enough to sell to everyone. But you are always free to eat them all yourself of course! [audience chuckles knowingly]. But I think it important to repeat such fundamental truths now as they form the core of all we hold dear in this great land.
First off, we all know our current set of laws requires a micropayment each time a U.S. law is discussed, referenced, or applied by any person anywhere in the world. This financial incentive has produced a large amount of new law over the last decade. This body of law is all based on a core legal code owned by that fine example of American corporate capitalism at its best, the MicroSlaw Corporation.
MicroSlaw's core code defines a legal operating standard or OS we can all rely on. While I know some GPL supporters may be painting a rosy view of free law to the general public, it is obvious that any so called free alternative to MicroSlaw's legal code fails at the start because it would require great costs for learning about new so-called free laws, plus additional costs to switch all legal forms and court procedures to the new so called free standard. So free laws are really more expensive, especially as we are talking here about free as in cost, not free as in freedom.
In any case, why would you want to pay public servants like those old time -- what were they called? -- Senators? Representatives? -- around $145K a year out of public funds just to make free laws? Laws are made far more efficiently, inexpensively and, I assure you, justly, by large corporatio
The people worst affected by all this are blameless people who made the mistake of owning shops on a high street or renting apartments above shops or similar things. I mean who didn't see that coming?"
Also related: ... Add this to the fact that overall UK inequality levels have risen to the highest levels since the 1960s (or alternatively the 1930s, depending on whose statistics you trust). It's notable that many of the areas affected by the rioting are within touching distance of poorer areas, as is the case in Tottenham where the rioting began. ... London's local authorities have borne much of the brunt of the Government's austerity package -- their grants from Whitehall fell by 11.3% this year and will drop a further 7.6% in 2012/13. And the first non-essential services to be cut include youth services budgets -- Haringey's was slashed by 75% leading to the closure of youth clubs."
"Can Economic Factors Explain The Riots?"
http://news.sky.com/home/business/article/16046645
"There's no one root cause for the riots across the country, but a range of economic indicators often associated with social unrest have been on the rise for some time.
"Blameless" is a problematical term when we are talking politics including how people vote about long term trends. People vote for the world they want to live in, and sometimes their assumptions or predictions are wrong.
I don't know much about UK politics, but as for the USA, the current dominant voting pattern follows the idea that if we give all out money to rich people they will stick in their mattresses (or maybe use it in poker games with each other) and this will create jobs for everyone. If that does not work to create jobs, then the potential consequences are severe. Are the people who vote for such policies "blameless" if the consequences are social collapse?
"Yes because food, shelter and medical care are not enough. The safety net should include PS3s and 50" flat panels like those the rioters are carrying off"
Two ways your sarcasm misses the point:
* Advanced 3D printers could print out PS3s and flat panels someday, probably sooner than you think (say, twenty to thirty years, maybe sooner).
* A basic income is not a "safety" net; it is about human rights, and the right of a citizen to make a claim on the industrial commons as a right of citizenship and having some equity in the land the government is the ultimate owner of.
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
Already in the USA, the old have a basic income (called social security) and the young get money spent on their behalf (problematically) in schools. With unemployment and some other things, that averages out to about US$700 per person per month. Why not just give everyone that much money directly at any age (and take it away again when they are in jail, so, an incentive not to riot)?
Really, how expensive are PS3s and Flat Panels, anyway? They are getting cheaper all the time. It is a lot cheaper even for the government to give such things away then pay for face-to-face education or entertainment or deal with civil unrest. Not saying drugging the country with PS3s is an optimum strategy for social health though (it's fairly Brave New World-ish).
Seriously, if someone has been so disadvantaged in our society by not being able to find meaningful work, or not having great friends and family to help them out when they are down, then you begrudge them a home entertainment system to hide away from that painful reality with? These rioters are essentially stealing (computerized) painkillers.
The USSR had to guard its borders against potential escapees who hated it there; it seems the USA (and UK etc.) needs to guard its medicine cabinets for the same reasons. What does that tell you about a society?