Thanks for the link. Though I should point out that the authors note that tidal forces may sustain a smaller moon's geological activity for a sufficient period of time.
Which makes me think. If there were a habitable moon due to some lucky combination of size, parent's orbit, magnetosphere, tides, etc. would its inhabitants sit around saying: it's so unlikely that these factors combined to make our world habitable, what are the chances that a planet in the habitable zone could support life? All the while not knowing that a *different* set of lucky circumstances had done so?
My point being that even if it takes an intricate balance of physical factors to make life possible, the sheer number and variety of such combinations makes many such intricate balances possible. Just as there are many different intricate ecologies on Earth, and many of the creatures in any one habitat would go extinct from the slightest change, and yet all of these intricate ecologies support life in some form.
Okay, not war. How 'bout overconsumption? It has certainly ended numerous civilizations here on Earth, and no one is even sure if the six billion we hope to support right now is a sustainable population long-term.
And the thing that makes it a much better curtain-closer than war is that we will sit around and watch it happen and be unwilling or unable to change our way of life enough to stop it. Witness global warming.
Enrico Fermi (created first controlled fission reaction, among other things) responded to a question like this by asking: if intelligent life exists beyond Earth, why don't we have any evidence of it yet?
Even if you throw in very pessimistic estimates about how likely intelligent life is to evolve, and how slow and hard it is to colonize other worlds, and how few colonizable worlds there are, it is still hard to come up with numbers that don't make it likely that an intelligent species would colonize the entire galaxy within a few million years of gaining space travel.
Imagine a race on an Earth-like planet on the other side of the galaxy develops intelligence and space flight. In our case, this took 3.5 billion years after the oceans condensed, give or take a few hundred million. So in their case imagine it took the same time, but maybe their solar system formed a percent or so closer to the beginning of the universe, about a hundred million years.
Now imagine that our shared habitat is so rare, that planets like this can only be found at an average distance of 1,000 light years from each other (note that we've found 50 Jupiter-sized planets within 150 light years of us in only a decade of slow, crude searching). Imagine this race never figures out how to travel faster than light, and takes 1,000 years to make a hop to the next inhabited world. Imagine that successful colonies are rare and take time to develop, and so it takes 1,000 years on average before a colony launches its own colonization mission. Even at this slow pace, a million years is more than enough for a race to colonize every habitable planet in the galaxy, including ours, as the galaxy is only 100,000 light years in diameter.
So, this race would need less than a.1 percent head start from the beginning of the universe, and they would have made it in plenty of time to colonize Earth before we started walking upright.
Even if this research doesn't create silicon lasers, the use of it to amplify fiber-optic signals would be of great benefit in today's hot new networking tech: all-optical routers.
Today, if you want to amplify a light signal (they attenuate, too, at least when traveling through fiber) you need to convert the signal to electrical, then retransmit as optical. This is a big speed hit.
The article does mention this briefly, but this practical short-term application gets lost in the breathless predictions of a glowing future.
Does anyone have any idea whether the response of the silicon would be fast enough to improve on the current situation?
If you're not billed for it, if you have to wait an hour for your e-mail to arrive, but your full-screen 3-D surround-sound streaming videophone is instantaneous, guess which one your wife will use to give you the grocery list.
This, IMO, is the ultimate argument for the overall infrastructure to remain end-to-end (or, in the case of telephony, become end-to-end). As noted in the article in the VoIP discussion, the end-to-end-like architecture still allows for the possibility of use of central control near each end, so those who use that portion of the network can decide which local arhitecture suits their needs.
Re:Get out of the petri dish or die in the waste
on
On Asteroid Mining
·
· Score: 2
I'm fine with this entire commentary, especially it's urgent tone, except...
Practical fusion may be farther away than asteroid mining. Let's invest in the hydrogen economy for a while, instead. Which by the way would be helped by access to asteroid mining of platinum et al.
And doing all of the above doesn't relieve us of the need to learn to live sustainably (although stabilizing population is a huge first step.)
I prefer an alternative to spending limits that would actually have meaningful impact: ban political advertising on broadcast tv and radio.
Free speech, you say? Well, they are the public's airwaves, you know. There are guidelines about equal time and regulations about public service and educational programming, so a ban on political advertising coupled with rules requiring a minimum amount of free time to each candidate on the ballot should not fall to free speech objections.
This ban would reduce the effect of and need for money in politics, as the vast majority of the money is spent buying these ads.
Now how to define political advertising? Beyond the obvious (mentions a candidate's name, for instance) I don't have good answers, but even loophole-riddled guidelines would reduce the impact, and thus reduce the power, of money over the system.
"If you still can't figure out the ballot, the time to ask is before you punch the hole, not after."
News reports have indicated that many did ask before, but the people they asked were also confused or gave them wrong answers.
Also, some people realized their mistake and asked for a new ballot before turning it in, but were refused. This is a violation of Florida law.
"Note that spoiled ballots, such as those with two holes punched in them - are another matter entirely. I agree with the judge's decision to throw them out."
Then do you agree that the 19,000 who cast them should get another chance to vote? That's all they're asking for. (Yes, I know that since ballots are anonymous, this means whole precincts or the whole county would have to vote again.)
All this means is that it wasn't fraud. It doesn't mean that the votes were cast as intended, which (AFAIK) is a perfectly valid reason to challenge for a new election.
But pay attention to his point about "tough love" for the Democrats. What will do more to remind Democratic office-holders to attend to progressive issues? A Gore win and a surprising Green turnout in Texas, or a Gore loss due to a strong Green turnout in Michigan?
Then there's also Ralph's point, made in a news conference today, that there must be a point where a candidate flunks your standard of vote-worthy. There are getting to be too many issues where I find Gore's position and record unacceptable, and I'm happy to accelerate progress toward being able to elect an acceptable candidate, even if it's not this year.
If progressive voters do not send a message that they are willing to abandon the Democrats, they will always get candidates that are as close to Republicans as possible.
You will probably benefit much more without government debt.
Interest rates are the price that people without much money (most of us) pay to get money from those who have it. Examples of this -- your mortgage, your car loan, your student loans, your credit card, outweigh what non-wealthy Americans get from bond interest in both amount and frequency. The interest you collect on a bond is far outweighed by the harm of the government competing with you for the money supply.
Oh, and stocks go up when the price of money goes down, which happens when the government borrows less.
By getting out there and doing so! Any political party is just dying for volunteers: people to knock on doors, maintain mailing lists, call supporters, hand out literature at events, build signs, collect signatures for ballot access, attend local conventions, even to run for office. Do you have any idea how many offices even the major parties fail to put up a candidate in? Even if they do get a candidate, they're often scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Ever wonder why the Christian Coalition, NRA, labor, pro-choice, pro-life, etc. groups have influence beyond their money? Because these groups are well-organized and chock full of dedicated volunteers -- they're vital to running an effective campaign.
I do agree that money-soaked, TV-focused campaigns let the major parties turn their back on those who've done all that volunteering (like me), but any would-be third party can't ignore such work, because it's all that they have.
I just wish that the AFL-CIO had endorsed Nader, as they were considering. Then maybe the Democratic party would start missing all that volunteer power, and stop ignoring labor.
Ah, well. I'll pay them back when my vote for Nader helps cost them Minnesota...
Brin is 100% correct about the inheritance tax, but wrong that a vote for Gore will save it. Also, there are plenty of other examples of the powerful using their power for self-preservation, and Gore doesn't seem interested in getting in their way, while Nader does:
Campaign Finance Reform: This is the most important rule that must be reset in the people's favor. Without it, one trip to the booth to vote Gore won't save your precious inheritance tax or any other check we have on the power of the wealthy.
Globalization: Gore and Bush are in absolute lockstep in keeping any sane restrictions out of our trade agreements, whether they affect the environment, worker safety, intellectual property, privacy, or consumer protection.
Environmental protection: Gore has sat silently by while Clinton broke promises on fighting for Kyoto, raising the CAFE standards, enforcing pollution regulations, and including protections in trade laws. Earth in the balance? Feh. Al seems more concerned about his political future being in the balance.
"Intellectual Property": Al has been utterly silent on stopping the giveaways and protecting consumer rights, while taking a lot of money from the entertainment industry. Want seniors to pay less for prescription drugs? Stop giving away the patents to government-funded research!
And don't talk to me about the Supreme Court. Clinton's appointees aren't saving the 4th and 5th amendments from the drug war or the 1st amendment from the corporations.
Nice try, but I (and my wife and a few sisters) will be voting Nader, even if he's not as pretty.
It's all about keeping those who are winning the game from changing the rules in the middle. Nader will, Gore won't.
To get a Linux distro with.NET runtime, all you'll need is one with IE for Linux preintalled, which is what Corel's Linux will deliver.
Which is even more insidious than lock-in to a Linux.NET at the OS level, since it raises the possibility that via IE, Microsoft will extend desktop platform control to Linux. After all, new applications will all be accessed through the browser very soon.
Yes, the weight probably was the biggest thing, but I'm sure the *resilience* of Titanium (see Materials Science geek posts above) caused some ringing -- of both helmet and head.
As it has always said in my User Bio (not altered for this article), I probably owe my career and geekhood to my ZX81, 16k RAM, and B&W TV that I bought for $210 all told with my paper route money. My folks thought I was nuts at the time, my wife finally convinced me to throw it away in the early '90s, but that machine was how I learned BASIC and Assembler in a neighborhood where no one else had a clue.
And, yes, it was a horrible POS, but I would have been another 5 or more years behind without it, and a more usable machine wouldn't have taught me half as much.
Imagine if residential electrical usage were paid flat rate instead of metering. It seems to be much the same model as Internet access: everyone needs a certain amount of infrastructure to handle their needs, even though they don't often use it fully.
The main objection would be that the cost of producing electricity is not marginal when compared to the cost of building infrastructure, EXCEPT for nuclear and renewables, where the cost of maintaining infrastructure is almost all of the production cost. So flat rate would actually encourage utilities to invest in renewables and nuclear, and discourage use of fossil fuels.
Residential usage can benefit from conservation practices under metering, but only so much. Today, we subsidize electric utilities' conservation and education efforts. If flat-rate were the model, the advantages of such efforts would be evident to the utilities, and the efforts would increase: utilities would likely pay appliance manufacturers and home-builders to build in efficiency, rather than conservation-minded consumers having to pay a premium and hunt for such products.
Electric use wouldn't suffer the same level of "abuse" as bandwidth -- after a certain point, you don't need any more wattage in your light bulbs. If bandwith flat-rates can survive with "campers", electric flat rates could survive with people running businesses on their residential feeds.
Finally, we are facing an electric capacity shortage in the US today, and the article's point that metered service increases peak use is important here.
Has anyone heard proposals along these lines?
What would it do to the home-generation and co-generation efforts that benefit from reducing their metered usage? Could these producers simply not pay the flat rate and provide the power themselves?
This could be interesting. It's quite easy to manipulate the shape of a magnetic field (cf the torus-shaped fields used in fusion experiments). Maybe it doesn't have to be a bubble. Maybe it could be disk-like, and thus present a wide area for less energy than they figure for a spherical bubble. Hmmmmm....
I suppose I'm going to have to give the proper response to this: You keep the bubble on full the whole way.
Assuming two stars of equal solar wind, half way there, you're not being accelerated by the wind of either star, but you're coasting along at your highly accelerated rate. As you approach the other star, its solar wind begins to dominate, slowing you down to a neat stop at your destination.
THEN you turn off the bubble!
In a real example, Just adjust your bubble up or down as you go, according to the difference in solar winds.
But you've forgotten that the accel is continuous, not a single burn. As soon as you're going farther than the moon, you're saving time.
With a (helluva) rocket that gets you to 50,000kph in one extended burn, a 1 AU trip (150M km) takes 3,000 hours.
With a solar sail that gives continuous (and puny).01 m/s/s acceleration (.001*g, or 10N acting on 1000kg), a 1 AU trip takes 1,521 hours, or half as long.
(Neither of these take into account the time to brake, or my poor arithmetic. But plug in t = d/v versus t = sqrt (2d/a) with your favorite numbers and you get the idea.)
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the link. Though I should point out that the authors note that tidal forces may sustain a smaller moon's geological activity for a sufficient period of time.
Which makes me think. If there were a habitable moon due to some lucky combination of size, parent's orbit, magnetosphere, tides, etc. would its inhabitants sit around saying: it's so unlikely that these factors combined to make our world habitable, what are the chances that a planet in the habitable zone could support life? All the while not knowing that a *different* set of lucky circumstances had done so?
My point being that even if it takes an intricate balance of physical factors to make life possible, the sheer number and variety of such combinations makes many such intricate balances possible. Just as there are many different intricate ecologies on Earth, and many of the creatures in any one habitat would go extinct from the slightest change, and yet all of these intricate ecologies support life in some form.
Okay, not war. How 'bout overconsumption? It has certainly ended numerous civilizations here on Earth, and no one is even sure if the six billion we hope to support right now is a sustainable population long-term.
And the thing that makes it a much better curtain-closer than war is that we will sit around and watch it happen and be unwilling or unable to change our way of life enough to stop it. Witness global warming.
Enrico Fermi (created first controlled fission reaction, among other things) responded to a question like this by asking: if intelligent life exists beyond Earth, why don't we have any evidence of it yet?
.1 percent head start from the beginning of the universe, and they would have made it in plenty of time to colonize Earth before we started walking upright.
Even if you throw in very pessimistic estimates about how likely intelligent life is to evolve, and how slow and hard it is to colonize other worlds, and how few colonizable worlds there are, it is still hard to come up with numbers that don't make it likely that an intelligent species would colonize the entire galaxy within a few million years of gaining space travel.
Imagine a race on an Earth-like planet on the other side of the galaxy develops intelligence and space flight. In our case, this took 3.5 billion years after the oceans condensed, give or take a few hundred million. So in their case imagine it took the same time, but maybe their solar system formed a percent or so closer to the beginning of the universe, about a hundred million years.
Now imagine that our shared habitat is so rare, that planets like this can only be found at an average distance of 1,000 light years from each other (note that we've found 50 Jupiter-sized planets within 150 light years of us in only a decade of slow, crude searching). Imagine this race never figures out how to travel faster than light, and takes 1,000 years to make a hop to the next inhabited world. Imagine that successful colonies are rare and take time to develop, and so it takes 1,000 years on average before a colony launches its own colonization mission. Even at this slow pace, a million years is more than enough for a race to colonize every habitable planet in the galaxy, including ours, as the galaxy is only 100,000 light years in diameter.
So, this race would need less than a
So, where are they?
Even if this research doesn't create silicon lasers, the use of it to amplify fiber-optic signals would be of great benefit in today's hot new networking tech: all-optical routers.
Today, if you want to amplify a light signal (they attenuate, too, at least when traveling through fiber) you need to convert the signal to electrical, then retransmit as optical. This is a big speed hit.
The article does mention this briefly, but this practical short-term application gets lost in the breathless predictions of a glowing future.
Does anyone have any idea whether the response of the silicon would be fast enough to improve on the current situation?
If you're not billed for it, if you have to wait an hour for your e-mail to arrive, but your full-screen 3-D surround-sound streaming videophone is instantaneous, guess which one your wife will use to give you the grocery list.
This, IMO, is the ultimate argument for the overall infrastructure to remain end-to-end (or, in the case of telephony, become end-to-end). As noted in the article in the VoIP discussion, the end-to-end-like architecture still allows for the possibility of use of central control near each end, so those who use that portion of the network can decide which local arhitecture suits their needs.
I'm fine with this entire commentary, especially it's urgent tone, except...
Practical fusion may be farther away than asteroid mining. Let's invest in the hydrogen economy for a while, instead. Which by the way would be helped by access to asteroid mining of platinum et al.
And doing all of the above doesn't relieve us of the need to learn to live sustainably (although stabilizing population is a huge first step.)
"The only problem with this is that people might start questioning the validity of any expensive media operation designed to influence them. "
And this is a bad thing because...?
I prefer an alternative to spending limits that would actually have meaningful impact: ban political advertising on broadcast tv and radio.
Free speech, you say? Well, they are the public's airwaves, you know. There are guidelines about equal time and regulations about public service and educational programming, so a ban on political advertising coupled with rules requiring a minimum amount of free time to each candidate on the ballot should not fall to free speech objections.
This ban would reduce the effect of and need for money in politics, as the vast majority of the money is spent buying these ads.
Now how to define political advertising? Beyond the obvious (mentions a candidate's name, for instance) I don't have good answers, but even loophole-riddled guidelines would reduce the impact, and thus reduce the power, of money over the system.
"If you still can't figure out the ballot, the time to ask is before you punch the hole, not after."
News reports have indicated that many did ask before, but the people they asked were also confused or gave them wrong answers.
Also, some people realized their mistake and asked for a new ballot before turning it in, but were refused. This is a violation of Florida law.
"Note that spoiled ballots, such as those with two holes punched in them - are another matter entirely. I agree with the judge's decision to throw them out."
Then do you agree that the 19,000 who cast them should get another chance to vote? That's all they're asking for. (Yes, I know that since ballots are anonymous, this means whole precincts or the whole county would have to vote again.)
All this means is that it wasn't fraud. It doesn't mean that the votes were cast as intended, which (AFAIK) is a perfectly valid reason to challenge for a new election.
But pay attention to his point about "tough love" for the Democrats. What will do more to remind Democratic office-holders to attend to progressive issues? A Gore win and a surprising Green turnout in Texas, or a Gore loss due to a strong Green turnout in Michigan?
Then there's also Ralph's point, made in a news conference today, that there must be a point where a candidate flunks your standard of vote-worthy. There are getting to be too many issues where I find Gore's position and record unacceptable, and I'm happy to accelerate progress toward being able to elect an acceptable candidate, even if it's not this year.
If progressive voters do not send a message that they are willing to abandon the Democrats, they will always get candidates that are as close to Republicans as possible.
You will probably benefit much more without government debt.
Interest rates are the price that people without much money (most of us) pay to get money from those who have it. Examples of this -- your mortgage, your car loan, your student loans, your credit card, outweigh what non-wealthy Americans get from bond interest in both amount and frequency. The interest you collect on a bond is far outweighed by the harm of the government competing with you for the money supply.
Oh, and stocks go up when the price of money goes down, which happens when the government borrows less.
By getting out there and doing so! Any political party is just dying for volunteers: people to knock on doors, maintain mailing lists, call supporters, hand out literature at events, build signs, collect signatures for ballot access, attend local conventions, even to run for office. Do you have any idea how many offices even the major parties fail to put up a candidate in? Even if they do get a candidate, they're often scraping the bottom of the barrel.
Ever wonder why the Christian Coalition, NRA, labor, pro-choice, pro-life, etc. groups have influence beyond their money? Because these groups are well-organized and chock full of dedicated volunteers -- they're vital to running an effective campaign.
I do agree that money-soaked, TV-focused campaigns let the major parties turn their back on those who've done all that volunteering (like me), but any would-be third party can't ignore such work, because it's all that they have.
I just wish that the AFL-CIO had endorsed Nader, as they were considering. Then maybe the Democratic party would start missing all that volunteer power, and stop ignoring labor.
Ah, well. I'll pay them back when my vote for Nader helps cost them Minnesota...
When did I start ranting?
Brin is 100% correct about the inheritance tax, but wrong that a vote for Gore will save it. Also, there are plenty of other examples of the powerful using their power for self-preservation, and Gore doesn't seem interested in getting in their way, while Nader does:
Campaign Finance Reform: This is the most important rule that must be reset in the people's favor. Without it, one trip to the booth to vote Gore won't save your precious inheritance tax or any other check we have on the power of the wealthy.
Globalization: Gore and Bush are in absolute lockstep in keeping any sane restrictions out of our trade agreements, whether they affect the environment, worker safety, intellectual property, privacy, or consumer protection.
Environmental protection: Gore has sat silently by while Clinton broke promises on fighting for Kyoto, raising the CAFE standards, enforcing pollution regulations, and including protections in trade laws. Earth in the balance? Feh. Al seems more concerned about his political future being in the balance.
"Intellectual Property": Al has been utterly silent on stopping the giveaways and protecting consumer rights, while taking a lot of money from the entertainment industry. Want seniors to pay less for prescription drugs? Stop giving away the patents to government-funded research!
And don't talk to me about the Supreme Court. Clinton's appointees aren't saving the 4th and 5th amendments from the drug war or the 1st amendment from the corporations.
Nice try, but I (and my wife and a few sisters) will be voting Nader, even if he's not as pretty.
It's all about keeping those who are winning the game from changing the rules in the middle. Nader will, Gore won't.
Why wouldn't they? If you're fool enough to pay MS every time you want to send an email, they'll take your money even if you're running Linux.
To get a Linux distro with .NET runtime, all you'll need is one with IE for Linux preintalled, which is what Corel's Linux will deliver.
Which is even more insidious than lock-in to a Linux.NET at the OS level, since it raises the possibility that via IE, Microsoft will extend desktop platform control to Linux. After all, new applications will all be accessed through the browser very soon.
"Next time you read the Washington Times, be sure to check their math. (Mind you, this is a good idea with any newspaper)"
Especially when said newspaper is owned by the one pushing the numbers.
Apparently Moon owns or owned the Washington Times. Was he before or after the right-wingers owned it?
Yes, the weight probably was the biggest thing, but I'm sure the *resilience* of Titanium (see Materials Science geek posts above) caused some ringing -- of both helmet and head.
As it has always said in my User Bio (not altered for this article), I probably owe my career and geekhood to my ZX81, 16k RAM, and B&W TV that I bought for $210 all told with my paper route money. My folks thought I was nuts at the time, my wife finally convinced me to throw it away in the early '90s, but that machine was how I learned BASIC and Assembler in a neighborhood where no one else had a clue.
And, yes, it was a horrible POS, but I would have been another 5 or more years behind without it, and a more usable machine wouldn't have taught me half as much.
So there!
Imagine if residential electrical usage were paid flat rate instead of metering. It seems to be much the same model as Internet access: everyone needs a certain amount of infrastructure to handle their needs, even though they don't often use it fully.
The main objection would be that the cost of producing electricity is not marginal when compared to the cost of building infrastructure, EXCEPT for nuclear and renewables, where the cost of maintaining infrastructure is almost all of the production cost. So flat rate would actually encourage utilities to invest in renewables and nuclear, and discourage use of fossil fuels.
Residential usage can benefit from conservation practices under metering, but only so much. Today, we subsidize electric utilities' conservation and education efforts. If flat-rate were the model, the advantages of such efforts would be evident to the utilities, and the efforts would increase: utilities would likely pay appliance manufacturers and home-builders to build in efficiency, rather than conservation-minded consumers having to pay a premium and hunt for such products.
Electric use wouldn't suffer the same level of "abuse" as bandwidth -- after a certain point, you don't need any more wattage in your light bulbs. If bandwith flat-rates can survive with "campers", electric flat rates could survive with people running businesses on their residential feeds.
Finally, we are facing an electric capacity shortage in the US today, and the article's point that metered service increases peak use is important here.
Has anyone heard proposals along these lines?
What would it do to the home-generation and co-generation efforts that benefit from reducing their metered usage? Could these producers simply not pay the flat rate and provide the power themselves?
This could be interesting. It's quite easy to manipulate the shape of a magnetic field (cf the torus-shaped fields used in fusion experiments). Maybe it doesn't have to be a bubble. Maybe it could be disk-like, and thus present a wide area for less energy than they figure for a spherical bubble. Hmmmmm....
I suppose I'm going to have to give the proper response to this: You keep the bubble on full the whole way.
Assuming two stars of equal solar wind, half way there, you're not being accelerated by the wind of either star, but you're coasting along at your highly accelerated rate. As you approach the other star, its solar wind begins to dominate, slowing you down to a neat stop at your destination.
THEN you turn off the bubble!
In a real example, Just adjust your bubble up or down as you go, according to the difference in solar winds.
But you've forgotten that the accel is continuous, not a single burn. As soon as you're going farther than the moon, you're saving time.
.01 m/s/s acceleration (.001*g, or 10N acting on 1000kg), a 1 AU trip takes 1,521 hours, or half as long.
With a (helluva) rocket that gets you to 50,000kph in one extended burn, a 1 AU trip (150M km) takes 3,000 hours.
With a solar sail that gives continuous (and puny)
(Neither of these take into account the time to brake, or my poor arithmetic. But plug in t = d/v versus t = sqrt (2d/a) with your favorite numbers and you get the idea.)
Ask them to go a few days eating money.