Too much evidence this time. Now it's only a matter of due diligence, and choosing to put them on trial as war criminals, or as terrorism sponsors, or both.
Ukrainian Ministry of Defense states that there were no Buks in the bases taken over by the terrorists, and any other military equipment left there was rendered unusable by the leaving troops.
Musk figures the colony program — which he wants to be a collaboration between government and private enterprise — would end up costing about $36 billion. He arrived at that number by estimating that a colony that costs 0.25 percent or 0.5 percent of a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) would be considered acceptable.
The United States' GDP in 2010 was $14.5 trillion; 0.25 percent of $14.5 trillion is $36 billion. If all 80,000 colonists paid $500,000 per seat for their Mars trip, $40 billion would be raised.
I'm not saying that's a reasonable way to draw a budget, just to provide an estimate on what Musk is targeting. Since this article came out (Nov 2012), I think his cost estimations went up, and his funding plans shifted more to preparing a realistic IPO (not covering the whole thing, but some of the early stages). Cannot readily find a quote for that.
There are many more (somewhat obfuscated) details in that article, like this one:
Musk also ruled out SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which the company is developing to ferry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit, as the spacecraft that would land colonists on the Red Planet. When asked by SPACE.com what vehicle would be used, he said, "I think you just land the entire thing."
Asked if the "entire thing" is the huge new reusable rocket — which is rumored to bear the acronymic name MCT, short for Mass Cargo Transport or Mars Colony Transport — Musk said, "Maybe."
“Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket — half a million dollars. It can be done,” he told the BBC.
Musk did hint that one of the keys to low-cost trips to the red planet would be the ability to not only refuel there, but also to reuse the entire spacecraft on the return trip. In the BBC interview Musk said by reusing the spacecraft, you end up with the same sorts of costs airlines face. Musk compared it to flying today where a 747 isn’t simply thrown away after a flight to London. Like the airplane, the cost of the spacecraft could be spread out over numerous flights rather than just a single trip making fuel one of the main expenses rather than the entire ship.
Asked about the possibility of a SpaceX IPO, Musk said the company’s plans are too long-term to attract many hedge fund managers, making an IPO unlikely any time soon.
“Maybe [when] we’re close to developing the Mars vehicle, or ideally we’ve flown it a few times, then I think going public would make more sense,” he said.
So, I can't comment on how realistic is each of his cost and time estimations, but he is trying hard to make them internally consistent, and most and first of all, to bring down the launch costs and to improve the reusability. We can already see several successful steps in that direction, and we will see the gradual progress, or lack thereof, very soon. It's not some Kickstarter scheme for Gates & Buffet.
Well, that $500B estimation came from NASA in the 80's, and Musk is working hard to push it down. As far as I understand, he plans to fund it partially from other launches to bootstrap, partially from an IPO (when the transporter is clearly on track), and eventually from ticket sales ($500K a pop, once the full-size "bus" is flying).
Maybe next time Slashdot can invite Elon Musk to elaborate on his Mars colonization program, including in-situ resource utilization and other popular objections.
1. A sleep tracker and a smart vibrating alarm, so I could get the most from my sleep hours and not wake up my wife and baby. Something similar exists and does not require an OS like Android, but would be a nice feature for a device like this.
2. Solve the city navigation. To the level of "now which exit should I take from this subway station?" and "now where is this bus stop I'm supposed to take next?"
3. Electronic wallet, if they can make it universally acceptable.
4. It would be nice if it could replace the phone for calls and maybe music, even if phone calls are not as convenient and are only meant to be a backup option. It has to work as a standalone device without also carrying a phone in your pocket, anyway. Optional software integration is welcome.
5. It must work at least a week without recharging, and maybe have an optional wireless charger you could use at your work desk without taking it off. Battery life is more important here than the display colors or the ability to play video.
6. There can be different screen sizes (jewelry to PipBoy 2000) and different price points. It's going to be hard to balance the screen, batteries, looks and price. If you want it to be popular, there has to be a $100 version with limited functionality, a $300 version that replaces all the main smartphone functions (maybe use a flexible/curved 4" screen), and multiple $1000+ fashion makes.
All these features don't have to be present in every device. For example, I would not use a 4" device for a wearable smart alarm.
Many small businesses are happy with a Facebook page.
That gives them something to find in Google, to advertise online, to like and share, to post a nice picture and occasional updates, and to enter something in every context that requires an URL. And many additional services can also be set up at third party websites.
Of course there is a drawback of depending on Facebook. But there are benefits in simplicity, reliability and social integration, and they often win for small business.
Similarly, many hobby projects can and do host all their content on free blogging/social/media services. They often provide additional bonuses in addition to free hosting, like software and exposure. And things you give up are not immediately perceived as critical.
The desire to own a domain name or a traditional website is not as popular as it used to be.
I enjoy the occasional updates from people I can no longer meet daily, as well as some insight into the current day-to-day affairs of my home country. I don't post often, but when I do have something to say, normally several people show interest.
Facebook is no longer an unfiltered pile of Farmville requests. Especially if you take the time just once to mark your close friends and to unfollow the obsessive narcissists. Its ranking and personalization algorithms also help.
Also, it is often the easiest way to contact a person when you don't have their email or phone number ready.
This would answer the question "why the government does not want us to have this". But my question was completely different.
We have plenty of capable programmers who don't mind "illegal" data sharing, and we have millions of people who disagree strongly with the current copyright laws, for example, and having no realistic means to change the law, choose to ignore it.
Let's set aside and not discuss the moral and legal side of this right now. We know many people exist who would support and enjoy such a system. So why has no-one managed to build it so far?
P2P poisoning is done by malicious servers that announce millions of connected users and return results for all sorts of keyword queries with fake filenames and spammy or malicious content.
I was suggesting a reputation system based on signatures as a possible part of a solution to this problem in P2P networks. The rating system was not the main goal of my suggestion but a means to end, so saying, "But some torrent sites already have user-rating systems," is missing the point.
Let the uploaders voluntarily sign their uploads. Then, as the user verifies a few packages by that uploader, they assign a higher trust score to them, so their personal spam filter ranks this uploader's other packages better.
I can also have friends and trusted vendors whom I can whitelist based on their signatures.
We can also have global distributed "trust rank" for uploaders and individual packages, based on feedback from multiple users. That's not very reliable, but possibly useful as one of spam filter heuristics.
Then, we can also have pseudonymous meta-moderation, where users who consistently flag good and bad packages are trusted more about their future feedback.
So maybe this community screening/flagging could be decentralized?
And maybe we could still find a meaningful set of heuristics for the spam filter? Signals from users, file type, file size, first uploader location and software stack, known file checksums in the package, etc. - maybe if there are 100 carefully calibrated input signals, the detection rate would keep it usable.
Also, AC in this thread made vague suggestions about using PGP authentication (for trusted uploaders?) and some bitcoin-like algorithm (which I unfortunately don't understand how it applies here, but maybe it makes sense to someone who creates this sort of systems).
I obviously understand very little about the technical details of the problem, so I'm just trying to ask questions and pass around the ideas.
Another useful idea, probably from the same AC as above:
PGP has incredible potential as a decentralized authentication system, and once you have one of those, you can have consensuses that are highly resistant to interference (i.e. censorship).
There aren't many situations where anonymity is particularly useful
Now this is ironic in an AC post. Also, I don't understand your point about anonymity working against you in preventing the monitoring. Are you talking about "circle of friends" type networks?
I also noticed the spam/"poisoning" problem with p2p networks. Using BitCoin-like algorithmic approach to solve that is a new idea to me, which I need to think more about to understand it, but it does sound interesting.
Another decentralized system where spam problem was somewhat mitigated is email. For me, SpamAssassin with its bayesian filters was a 90% fine solution, and GMail with its power of scale solved the problem for 99.9% of cases. There may be 1 in 1000 slipped spam or a false positive, but that doesn't bother me much, and it is uncomparable to the spam disaster we had in ca. 2000.
So spam and poisoning is a real problem, but not an unsolvable one.
This sounds like one of plausible reasons. I imagine this would keep me from joining one of those networks where everybody must store and share a bunch of encrypted file fragments without knowing what's inside. I would not like to facilitate in distribution of certain content in any way, nor to be potentially liable.
But is this so fundamental? Perhaps we could develop some system where everyone can self-moderate what they share. Maybe also some sort of voting and commenting system could help.
Building such a system is easier now that we have bittorrent and DHT. A keyword-based search layer on top of that is a smaller problem. Then, if someone is concerned about privacy flaws in bittorrent, they can also try to use it over some encrypted tunnel.
Because the software market would completely tank if large file sharing was legal.
There is so much wrong with this post:
1. File sharing in general is legal. Sharing certain specific files may be illegal in certain jurisdictions.
2. The legal side of the problem is separate. In many spheres of life there is an area of untracked relations between people. Small cash transfers, personal presents, favors, discussions, meetings. I understand that the governments want to control, censor and tax all of this as much as possible, and at least ask for voluntary self-reporting in many cases. But I feel this "breath room" is important to keep the society sane, and we should have an equivalent in the digital world.
3. The software market would not tank even if file sharing became easier. There are risks in downloading software from untrusted sources, and people who can afford it (or cannot afford the risk) normally buy it. Then there is also support, upgrades, special deals and so on. Media market has more to worry about, but also not as much as they claim.
Yes, I know. I was referring to the bittorrent community in general, including the index websites, forums with links, seeders, etc.
In fact, it makes me wonder even more. When we already have a great data transfer protocol, and even a distributed database for hashes that makes "magnet links" work, why is there still no mainstream distributed keyword search system on top of that?
Part of the reason could be people disappointed with spammy eDonkey experience. Another part, as one poster here mentioned, is that people don't want to join networks which may be distributing objectionable content. But both these reasons don't sound so absolutely unbeatable by some creative filtering and public moderation.
Granted, this whack-a-mole game with individual torrent sites makes for a fun show sometimes. But I find it embarrassing that the online community has to work around these issues time after time, and that some good people get caught up in legal battles.
Are there any good alternatives to bittorrent for private, anonymous file search and exchange? I heard about several "darknet" projects, but they never seem to gain traction for some reason. Given a huge number of hobbyist hackers who support free exchange of information, I am surprised.
Is there a fundamental reason why we cannot have free, anonymous file exchange? Or is everyone just happy with the status quo?
I would put the telecom second and the media distribution mafia first.
It is pathetic, true, how the telecom providers have been selling a commodity service on mass scale for 20+ years, yet the pricing and service quality are on "novelty" levels or worse. Your cable bill has no good reason to be higher than that (local) phone bill 30 years ago. One of the reasons for the pathetic prices are the unreasonably high media licensing fees and unbreakable channel bundles. The cable companies then cut costs on everything else, which gives you multiple week waiting times to connect, half-hour wait times on support lines, and clueless staff.
And the media mafia also criminalizes everyone for downloading a few songs on P2P and threatens with lawsuits.
Slashdot Mirror
First soft landing on solid surface expected in Oct-Dec 2014.
640k should be enough for anybody.
Too much evidence this time. Now it's only a matter of due diligence, and choosing to put them on trial as war criminals, or as terrorism sponsors, or both.
Ukrainian Ministry of Defense states that there were no Buks in the bases taken over by the terrorists, and any other military equipment left there was rendered unusable by the leaving troops.
Ok, we need some links with more concrete figures:
1. Huge Mars Colony Eyed by SpaceX Founder Elon Musk
Musk figures the colony program — which he wants to be a collaboration between government and private enterprise — would end up costing about $36 billion. He arrived at that number by estimating that a colony that costs 0.25 percent or 0.5 percent of a nation’s gross domestic product (GDP) would be considered acceptable. The United States' GDP in 2010 was $14.5 trillion; 0.25 percent of $14.5 trillion is $36 billion. If all 80,000 colonists paid $500,000 per seat for their Mars trip, $40 billion would be raised.
I'm not saying that's a reasonable way to draw a budget, just to provide an estimate on what Musk is targeting. Since this article came out (Nov 2012), I think his cost estimations went up, and his funding plans shifted more to preparing a realistic IPO (not covering the whole thing, but some of the early stages). Cannot readily find a quote for that.
There are many more (somewhat obfuscated) details in that article, like this one:
Musk also ruled out SpaceX's Dragon capsule, which the company is developing to ferry astronauts to and from low-Earth orbit, as the spacecraft that would land colonists on the Red Planet. When asked by SPACE.com what vehicle would be used, he said, "I think you just land the entire thing."
Asked if the "entire thing" is the huge new reusable rocket — which is rumored to bear the acronymic name MCT, short for Mass Cargo Transport or Mars Colony Transport — Musk said, "Maybe."
2. Elon Musk Says Ticket to Mars Will Cost $500,000
“Land on Mars, a round-trip ticket — half a million dollars. It can be done,” he told the BBC.
Musk did hint that one of the keys to low-cost trips to the red planet would be the ability to not only refuel there, but also to reuse the entire spacecraft on the return trip. In the BBC interview Musk said by reusing the spacecraft, you end up with the same sorts of costs airlines face. Musk compared it to flying today where a 747 isn’t simply thrown away after a flight to London. Like the airplane, the cost of the spacecraft could be spread out over numerous flights rather than just a single trip making fuel one of the main expenses rather than the entire ship.
3. Tesla’s (TSLA) Musk On Colonizing the Red Planet
Asked about the possibility of a SpaceX IPO, Musk said the company’s plans are too long-term to attract many hedge fund managers, making an IPO unlikely any time soon.
“Maybe [when] we’re close to developing the Mars vehicle, or ideally we’ve flown it a few times, then I think going public would make more sense,” he said.
So, I can't comment on how realistic is each of his cost and time estimations, but he is trying hard to make them internally consistent, and most and first of all, to bring down the launch costs and to improve the reusability. We can already see several successful steps in that direction, and we will see the gradual progress, or lack thereof, very soon. It's not some Kickstarter scheme for Gates & Buffet.
Well, that $500B estimation came from NASA in the 80's, and Musk is working hard to push it down. As far as I understand, he plans to fund it partially from other launches to bootstrap, partially from an IPO (when the transporter is clearly on track), and eventually from ticket sales ($500K a pop, once the full-size "bus" is flying).
Maybe next time Slashdot can invite Elon Musk to elaborate on his Mars colonization program, including in-situ resource utilization and other popular objections.
Interesting framework with those interrelated frontiers.
Also, I didn't know about those decadal surveys. I wonder how transparent they are, both on suggestion and on the reporting side.
I wish my question about chaotic gravity assist was answered (it ranked among top 10), but I guess the idea was not deemed practical.
A few things come to mind.
1. A sleep tracker and a smart vibrating alarm, so I could get the most from my sleep hours and not wake up my wife and baby. Something similar exists and does not require an OS like Android, but would be a nice feature for a device like this.
2. Solve the city navigation. To the level of "now which exit should I take from this subway station?" and "now where is this bus stop I'm supposed to take next?"
3. Electronic wallet, if they can make it universally acceptable.
4. It would be nice if it could replace the phone for calls and maybe music, even if phone calls are not as convenient and are only meant to be a backup option. It has to work as a standalone device without also carrying a phone in your pocket, anyway. Optional software integration is welcome.
5. It must work at least a week without recharging, and maybe have an optional wireless charger you could use at your work desk without taking it off. Battery life is more important here than the display colors or the ability to play video.
6. There can be different screen sizes (jewelry to PipBoy 2000) and different price points. It's going to be hard to balance the screen, batteries, looks and price. If you want it to be popular, there has to be a $100 version with limited functionality, a $300 version that replaces all the main smartphone functions (maybe use a flexible/curved 4" screen), and multiple $1000+ fashion makes.
All these features don't have to be present in every device. For example, I would not use a 4" device for a wearable smart alarm.
Many small businesses are happy with a Facebook page.
That gives them something to find in Google, to advertise online, to like and share, to post a nice picture and occasional updates, and to enter something in every context that requires an URL. And many additional services can also be set up at third party websites.
Of course there is a drawback of depending on Facebook. But there are benefits in simplicity, reliability and social integration, and they often win for small business.
Similarly, many hobby projects can and do host all their content on free blogging/social/media services. They often provide additional bonuses in addition to free hosting, like software and exposure. And things you give up are not immediately perceived as critical.
The desire to own a domain name or a traditional website is not as popular as it used to be.
Um...is anyone on Slashdot still on Facebook?
Yes.
I enjoy the occasional updates from people I can no longer meet daily, as well as some insight into the current day-to-day affairs of my home country. I don't post often, but when I do have something to say, normally several people show interest.
Facebook is no longer an unfiltered pile of Farmville requests. Especially if you take the time just once to mark your close friends and to unfollow the obsessive narcissists. Its ranking and personalization algorithms also help.
Also, it is often the easiest way to contact a person when you don't have their email or phone number ready.
One of the transcripts, from an earlier competition. About as bad as always. http://parsely.tumblr.com/post...
This would answer the question "why the government does not want us to have this". But my question was completely different.
We have plenty of capable programmers who don't mind "illegal" data sharing, and we have millions of people who disagree strongly with the current copyright laws, for example, and having no realistic means to change the law, choose to ignore it.
Let's set aside and not discuss the moral and legal side of this right now. We know many people exist who would support and enjoy such a system. So why has no-one managed to build it so far?
P2P poisoning is done by malicious servers that announce millions of connected users and return results for all sorts of keyword queries with fake filenames and spammy or malicious content.
I was suggesting a reputation system based on signatures as a possible part of a solution to this problem in P2P networks. The rating system was not the main goal of my suggestion but a means to end, so saying, "But some torrent sites already have user-rating systems," is missing the point.
I agree with this. What I found ironic is Anonymous Coward saying "There aren't many situations where anonymity is particularly useful".
Yes, this actually sounds interesting for some use cases. What it lacks is keyword-based search for files shared globally by others.
What about a pseudonymous reputation system?
Let the uploaders voluntarily sign their uploads. Then, as the user verifies a few packages by that uploader, they assign a higher trust score to them, so their personal spam filter ranks this uploader's other packages better.
I can also have friends and trusted vendors whom I can whitelist based on their signatures.
We can also have global distributed "trust rank" for uploaders and individual packages, based on feedback from multiple users. That's not very reliable, but possibly useful as one of spam filter heuristics.
Then, we can also have pseudonymous meta-moderation, where users who consistently flag good and bad packages are trusted more about their future feedback.
So maybe this community screening/flagging could be decentralized?
And maybe we could still find a meaningful set of heuristics for the spam filter? Signals from users, file type, file size, first uploader location and software stack, known file checksums in the package, etc. - maybe if there are 100 carefully calibrated input signals, the detection rate would keep it usable.
Also, AC in this thread made vague suggestions about using PGP authentication (for trusted uploaders?) and some bitcoin-like algorithm (which I unfortunately don't understand how it applies here, but maybe it makes sense to someone who creates this sort of systems).
I obviously understand very little about the technical details of the problem, so I'm just trying to ask questions and pass around the ideas.
Another useful idea, probably from the same AC as above:
PGP has incredible potential as a decentralized authentication system, and once you have one of those, you can have consensuses that are highly resistant to interference (i.e. censorship).
There aren't many situations where anonymity is particularly useful
Now this is ironic in an AC post. Also, I don't understand your point about anonymity working against you in preventing the monitoring. Are you talking about "circle of friends" type networks?
I also noticed the spam/"poisoning" problem with p2p networks. Using BitCoin-like algorithmic approach to solve that is a new idea to me, which I need to think more about to understand it, but it does sound interesting.
Another decentralized system where spam problem was somewhat mitigated is email. For me, SpamAssassin with its bayesian filters was a 90% fine solution, and GMail with its power of scale solved the problem for 99.9% of cases. There may be 1 in 1000 slipped spam or a false positive, but that doesn't bother me much, and it is uncomparable to the spam disaster we had in ca. 2000.
So spam and poisoning is a real problem, but not an unsolvable one.
This sounds like one of plausible reasons. I imagine this would keep me from joining one of those networks where everybody must store and share a bunch of encrypted file fragments without knowing what's inside. I would not like to facilitate in distribution of certain content in any way, nor to be potentially liable.
But is this so fundamental? Perhaps we could develop some system where everyone can self-moderate what they share. Maybe also some sort of voting and commenting system could help.
Building such a system is easier now that we have bittorrent and DHT. A keyword-based search layer on top of that is a smaller problem. Then, if someone is concerned about privacy flaws in bittorrent, they can also try to use it over some encrypted tunnel.
Because the software market would completely tank if large file sharing was legal.
There is so much wrong with this post:
1. File sharing in general is legal. Sharing certain specific files may be illegal in certain jurisdictions.
2. The legal side of the problem is separate. In many spheres of life there is an area of untracked relations between people. Small cash transfers, personal presents, favors, discussions, meetings. I understand that the governments want to control, censor and tax all of this as much as possible, and at least ask for voluntary self-reporting in many cases. But I feel this "breath room" is important to keep the society sane, and we should have an equivalent in the digital world.
3. The software market would not tank even if file sharing became easier. There are risks in downloading software from untrusted sources, and people who can afford it (or cannot afford the risk) normally buy it. Then there is also support, upgrades, special deals and so on. Media market has more to worry about, but also not as much as they claim.
Yes, I know. I was referring to the bittorrent community in general, including the index websites, forums with links, seeders, etc.
In fact, it makes me wonder even more. When we already have a great data transfer protocol, and even a distributed database for hashes that makes "magnet links" work, why is there still no mainstream distributed keyword search system on top of that?
Part of the reason could be people disappointed with spammy eDonkey experience. Another part, as one poster here mentioned, is that people don't want to join networks which may be distributing objectionable content. But both these reasons don't sound so absolutely unbeatable by some creative filtering and public moderation.
Granted, this whack-a-mole game with individual torrent sites makes for a fun show sometimes. But I find it embarrassing that the online community has to work around these issues time after time, and that some good people get caught up in legal battles.
Are there any good alternatives to bittorrent for private, anonymous file search and exchange? I heard about several "darknet" projects, but they never seem to gain traction for some reason. Given a huge number of hobbyist hackers who support free exchange of information, I am surprised.
Is there a fundamental reason why we cannot have free, anonymous file exchange? Or is everyone just happy with the status quo?
I would put the telecom second and the media distribution mafia first.
It is pathetic, true, how the telecom providers have been selling a commodity service on mass scale for 20+ years, yet the pricing and service quality are on "novelty" levels or worse. Your cable bill has no good reason to be higher than that (local) phone bill 30 years ago. One of the reasons for the pathetic prices are the unreasonably high media licensing fees and unbreakable channel bundles. The cable companies then cut costs on everything else, which gives you multiple week waiting times to connect, half-hour wait times on support lines, and clueless staff.
And the media mafia also criminalizes everyone for downloading a few songs on P2P and threatens with lawsuits.