On the other hand, a network of several bots playing *at the same table* could do some fairly serious damage over time, and with relatively uncomplicated heuristics.
I posted this in a totally unrelated article some time ago, but it is very much on topic now.;-)
And yes, audiophiles do quite a bit of blind testing. Or at least scientist audiophiles do. I was totally blown away when i tested different power supplies, power cords, interconnect cables, and speaker cables on the same system. I basically figured most of the hype was total nonsense. I mean, why the heck would you have to burn in a *cable*? Turns out that you can easily tell the difference in a blind test even though such a test is difficult to arrange - you basically have to have one guy rewiring stuff and one guy blindfolded listening. We were shocked that the differences predicted by the audiophile crowd were mostly pretty damn obvious. I still dont *understand* why some of these differences exist, though others do make some sense.
Actually, I have been messing about with audiophile quality mp3 systems for some time now. I know, I know, it sounds like an oxymoron, but despite popular opinion it is possible to get really impressive sound with high quality variable bit rate mp3s.
It turns out that the secret is in the quality of the sound card you use and the quality of the D to A converter. Using a studio quality soundcard with digital audio output and a nice D to A (I am quite pleased with Theta, but there are other excellent manufacturers) together make high quality variable bit rate mp3s sound quite good on an audiophile quality system.
To give you some idea of how good, I have a very nice transport (CD player for the uninitiated), and direct comparison of CD, SACD, and high quality mp3s reveals only minor flaws. The most significant is that the mp3s sound slightly 'cleaner' than the CD or SACD versions. This is not a good thing for the purist who desires to hear the sound *exactly* as it was recorded, but many less discriminating listeners actually prefer the mp3 versions.
Somewhat off topic, of course, but it is interesting to me that you can indeed build near audiophile quality sound systems based around mp3s. Not something there is much discussion about in audiophile communities as yet, but as digital encoding gets better i suspect more and more audiophiles will cross the 'digital divide' that currently exists. For instance, the same sort of thing happened with the transition from vinyl to CD and SACD- even though some diehard purists still sing the praises of vinyl, most audiophile folks now agree that SACD is the 'best' sound currently available.
Another selling point is that truly digital recordings stored on random access media do not degrade over time, while the CDs and SACDs in your collection do so demonstrably. Interesting stuff.
Curiously the carbon fiber itself is relatively inexpensive compared to traditional materials (steel, wood, concrete, stone, etc). On the other hand, the resin matrix for the carbon fiber is quite expensive indeed.
If anyone knows where to find cheap aerospace quality resins, let the slashdot community know! I for one would greatly appreciate some pointers towards non-toxic homebrew resins and foams that cost less than those available from the wholesale and retail manufacturing community...
Actually, I have been messing about with audiophile quality mp3 systems for some time now. I know, I know, it sounds like an oxymoron, but despite popular opinion it is possible to get really impressive sound with high quality variable bit rate mp3s.
It turns out that the secret is in the quality of the sound card you use and the quality of the D to A converter. Using a studio quality soundcard with digital audio output and a nice D to A (I am quite pleased with Theta, but there are other excellent manufacturers) together make high quality variable bit rate mp3s sound quite good on an audiophile quality system.
To give you some idea of how good, I have a very nice transport (CD player for the uninitiated), and direct comparison of CD, SACD, and high quality mp3s reveals only minor flaws. The most significant is that the mp3s sound slightly 'cleaner' than the CD or SACD versions. This is not a good thing for the purist who desires to hear the sound *exactly* as it was recorded, but many less discriminating listeners actually prefer the mp3 versions.
Somewhat off topic, of course, but it is interesting to me that you can indeed build near audiophile quality sound systems based around mp3s. Not something there is much discussion about in audiophile communities as yet, but as digital encoding gets better i suspect more and more audiophiles will cross the 'digital divide' that currently exists. For instance, the same sort of thing happened with the transition from vinyl to CD and SACD- even though some diehard purists still sing the praises of vinyl, most audiophile folks now agree that SACD is the 'best' sound currently available.
Another selling point is that truly digital recordings stored on random access media do not degrade over time, while the CDs and SACDs in your collection do so demonstrably. Interesting stuff.
Well, i suppose that depends on how long you think flat screen hollywood style movies will survive. I truly expect there to be fundamental changes in entertainment in the next 96 years, so it might be reasonable to suppose that movies created in the first couple of decades have a real chance at being 'movie of the century', tho that honor may be a hollow one.
Now whether the lord of the rings trilogy qualifies is another discussion entirely.;-)
One thing folks who are considering laser based corrective surgery is an alternative treatment, corneal restrictive therapy. Called CRT in the trades, which is kind of an irritating acronym for the geeks among us. Anyway, CRT basically just uses different contacts to reshape the cornea. You have to wear them at night for about two weeks, then one night every couple of months to maintain.
The cool thing is that you get 80-90% improvement after the first night, and if anything changes in your vision (and it will as you age) you can just get new restrictive lenses to wear once every couple months. It is still hard to do laser surgery more than once, tho they are working on the problem.
So the upshot is that CRT is cheaper, just as advantageous, slightly less convienient, and the worst case scenario is considerably less stressful.
One key thing to add, when building a mass storage system *always* buy drives from different lots. Drives in the same lot will often fail very close to the same time, so spreading your your expected drive failures by buying different lots is a very good idea. Buy drives from multiple vendors and even manufacturers if at all possible.
Not strictly true. I use abrasive waterjet for 3 dimensional bas relief with some frequency, the accuracy is as good or better than most mechanical devices. Especially on stone. Most tombstones are currently carved with water jets, and commonly use bas relief. Laser cutting can also be used for three dimensional imaging. Look up laser engraving or stereolithography for some examples.
The key is to choose a device that allows real time variation of beam strength (in the case of laser) or real time pressure modulation and abrasive content for water jet.
Limitations are that these techniques using existing tools work better with pieces that you can divide into multiple cutting planes and have consistent structural characteristics. Mechanical systems have an advantage when the material you are working with is less consistent - if the density of the material varies greatly the degree to which you modulate the ablative power of the water or laser does not consistently remove the same amount of material, while mechanical methods are less sensitive to variations in composition.
The upshot is that you can do amazing things with current machining, and EDM (electron discharge machining), laser systems, photolithography, chemical lithography, stereolithography, ablative water jet, and various mechanical CNC systems are all useful in frequently overlapping ways. Once you understand the 'cutting' edge machining technologies, you can make design decisions that are tailored to appropriate tech in order to minimize cost and production time.;-)
Tape works, but not as well (i.e. robustly), as fast, *or as cheaply* as an intelligently designed software based archival system that uses geographically distributed hard disk drive storage.
Hey! Yeah, you in the back about to submit the inital barrage in a pro-tape flame war, at least read the rest of my post before pulling the trigger. That might keep the discussion more productive. heh.
Designing the software and algorithms to run such a system is hard, but once you solve the basic problems the advantages are pretty compelling, and a lot of really juicy bits sort of just 'fall out'. I may, of course, be biased because I spent quite a few years building just such a system.
For more information see the company at Avamar Technologies (course you have to wade through marketroid speak to actually understand what they do)
And, of course, there are some patents granted and pending for this class of algorithms. (one of my specific interests) Press release for patent #6,704,730
In the interest of full disclosure, as I said, I worked there from the beginning for over three years until it turned into less of an R&D project and more of a money making machine.
I am, however, free to discuss most of the algorithmic aspects of the system in some detail. So specific questions are welcome as long as they come with a certain degree of technical sophistication.;-)
Maybe I should debug my development methodology, seeing as I never seem to get to step 9.
The cool thing about the xprize is that it provides a fixed milestone for private companies to shoot for in a fixed timeframe.
I am a big fan of the private 'prize' process, and think that with the success of the xprize we should figure out how to offer a slew of additional prizes to continue to stimulate private space efforts.
I am somewhat surprized that there are not more prizes offered for solutions to hard problems in other areas. Seems like a cheap way for folks to get researchers motivated.
Why not start a non-profit foundation whose sole purpose is to offer bounties with well defined acceptance criteria for a whole range of technical challenges? Any philanthropic and technically oriented billionaires up for the challenge?;-)
As you say, this looks like a great candidate for simple robotics and emergent behavior. Instead of a 'flock of sheep', however, imagine a 'colony' of robotic 'ants' that simply wander around the yard snipping grass blades one at a time to specified height and carrying the cut remnants to the 'ant hill' where a human empties the hopper every so often and the ants recharge themselves.
Might make a good thesis or senior project for someone.
One issue is the one you raise (which is not the issue I was discussing), regarding the degree to which a capitalistic system efficiently allocates existing wealth (or resources) to highest valued activities. Everything you say is valid under a certain well defined set of assumptions. For instance, you are assuming that there is a statistical correlation between possessing wealth and making the right decision. There are clearly exceptions to this assumption (inheritance laws, lottery, etc). Another fundamental flaw in this sort of analysis is that you are assuming all the 'actors' in your model have access to accurate information and make rational decisions based on that data. This assumption is useful to make when modeling virtual economies, but is demonstrably flawed in the real world.
Additionally, there is a whole range of debate possible regarding the degree to which the American economy can actually be modeled by anything like a free market model.
My personal belief is that standard economic models do have some validity, and that the US domestic market can be accurately modeled to within one order of magnitude based on traditional economic models. Additional precision in my mind requires non-traditional models.
The other main issue (which is what I was discussing) is the very real distinction between allocating an *existing* pool of assets or resources (wealth in this case) versus *expanding* the size of the pool itself. This is a distinction ignored in most simple economic models, but turns out to be a critical component in successful market analysis on real world economies.
For instance, it turns out that when analyzing historical economic trends, changes associated with advances in production efficiency dwarf most other model components. It is highly unlikely that this distinction is not as valid today as it has been historically.
So my main point is that capitalism (as practiced in the US) rewards those involved in allocating wealth significantly more than it does those who are involved in *enlarging* the pool of resources available to everyone participating in the economy.
Further, it is demonstrable that the net gains associated with increasing the efficiency of resource allocation are dwarfed by the gains associated with enlarging the pool of resources, and so it is curious that we reward those who specialize in asset reallocation significantly more than we do those who specialize in increasing the size of the pool of resources we draw from.
Actually, I think the real problem in the US at the moment has nothing to do with scientific dominance, but rather the degree to which compensation is not tied to the creation of wealth.
It is blatantly true that the closer you are to the money in the US, the more money you make. This goes for lawyers, executives, and the entire management class. Unfortunately, it is also generally true that the closer you are to the money the less you have to do with the actual creation of wealth and the more you have to do with the reallocation of wealth.
To use a somewhat flawed analogy, those who recieve the highest compensation in the US are involved in trying to increase thier share of the pie (or the share of the organization whose interests they represent). While engineers and scientists who are actually *increasing* the size of the pie for everyone are compensated significantly less.
So I completely agree that the US is still one of the dominant players in both theoretical and applied science, but the issue is that it has become increasingly less *rewarding* for individuals to involve themselves in creating these advances.
This disparity between the compensation of those who *create* wealth and those who *redistribute* wealth is one which has continued to grow since the 1950s, and it is not clear that this trend will change. Especially since the management class is strongly motivated to support the status quo, and the relative societal and cultural valuation of management activities versus engineering and scientific activities has continued to trend toward managment.
Before responding off the cuff, take a moment to look at how much your close acquaintainces are compensated as well as what they actually do. There is something wrong with our system of compensation when folks doing innovative work in computing, material science, industrial chemistry, biotechnology, et al, make significantly less than folks doing mortgage underwriting, accounting, money management, real estate, etc.
Personally, the right answer to this conundrum seems to be to do *both*. Unfortunately, there is very little overlap in the skill sets required to exploit innovation and to innovate. In addition, acquiring both is not only rare, but the few folks who do are generally so much better rewarded for exploiting innovation that they have a hard time making a logical case for doing anything else.
Fortunately, most of the folks who innovate do so for emotional and intellectual reasons rather than financial ones. It is sad, however, that the financial rewards for innovation are disproportionately smaller than those for exploiting it.
This class of bugs is significantly less painful than the little known 'shrodinbug' which is reported by testers and/or users, and cannot be reproduced in the prescence of a qualified observer or logged in any usable way.
The question is whether there is a 'planck constant' associated with debugging any sufficiently complex algorithmic function that constrains the ability of the coder to localize the bug while specifing its effects.
A question for the theorists among us, no doubt.
Interestingly, several theoretical frameworks do exist to describe the heisenbug and shrodinbug but unfortunately none have yet been verified through experiment, and it is not clear that the tools currently exist to allow us to do so.
Actually, the Russian version of the RIAA (with whom allofmp3.com is licenced) pays artists *directly* for licenced downloads. Thier share of a.65 cent album download is actually significantly *higher* than artists get from an equivalent retail purchase in the US.
As a point of reference, after all distribution, licencing, and record label costs are taken out, artists are extremely lucky to see around.25 cents per $15 purchased CD..05-.10 cents is more common.
Most artists make almost all their money through royalties on airplay and concerts. The CD sales merely drive listener attention and make labels and the distribution chain money.
Anyone see any problems with this model? I personally think the Russian model makes more sense.
Of course, whether artists see any of the money they should be making according to the actual regulations for each Russian transaction is another question entirely, and one to which I do not know the answer.
This is actually very explicitly *not* true. There are well defined exceptions in US import regulations regarding purchasing prescriptions drugs for which you have a prescription in foreign countries and bringing them back in.
Look at the relevant sections on the US customs site. The restrictions are that you can only bring in one 'refill' for each valid prescription you have. You are in violation of import statutes if you try to bring in large quantities of drugs even if you have a valid prescription, however.
This is designed so folks who have valid prescriptions can purchase drugs when they are travelling and bring them back with them.
Of course you could do a software raid with these.
The question is why you would want to. I could maybe see a centralized backup option for your home network or something i guess.
My pet peeve is why they can call it wireless data storage when I am still plugging the dang thing into the wall for power 24x7, so how exactly is it wireless?
Now give me one of these that is powered from the USB port and/or battery option and I am actually interested.
Internationally rights to songs are an interesting issue. On the bright side, before the internet many US companies sold the rights to thier song libraries for international distribution quite cheaply, so now there are various organizations in other countries that have legal rights to thier back catalogs. One good example is
www.allofmp3.com
which is a russian site. high variable bit rate encoding of songs from quite a large catalog for about.90 US a CD. Read the FAQ to look at their legal position.
Just a quick comment to those who are concerned that the US is outsourcing many of its "white collar" jobs - the US military industrial complex (including NASA and other scientific organizations) is collectively one of the largest "industries" in the world, and considering current sociopolitical trends is likely to remain so for some time.
Several interesting implications:
1) These jobs cannot be outsourced for security reasons. 2) "white collar" employees who work in this area are compensated generously, with relatively good vacations, pensions, and job security. 3) It is quite easy to get a job in the private sector or overseas if you decide for whatever reasons to leave the military industrial complex. 4) These organizations are generally working on problems at the very far end of the complexity spectrum and so provide a very interesting work environment.
So, if the dot com bubble has left you high and dry, as long as you have some serious technical skills there will always be a domestic market for those skills (and additional education can only improve your marketability).
More accurately, he implanted a duct that bypassed normal salivary channels and output generated saliva into a graduated cylinder. That way he could not only tell if they were salivating, but how much, and even more importantly, measure the amount of saliva generated.
More topically, the thing most folks seem to be missing here is that the representatives dont like the extent to which the game is *against* animal testing. I guess the UK has enough trouble with foaming at the mouth animal rights terror^H^H^H^H^H^Hactivists that it does not want to encourage the next generation.
My feeling is that in the interest of fairness we ought to promote games which involve human vivisection of animals *and* animal vivisection of humans. I like to see issues from both sides, you see... and as a side benefit, you would get to play with surgical implements. whooo! shiny!
Adding the dimension of time to data storage as in the link you provide is hardly revolutionary (cf cvs and other version control systems). On the other hand, there are some very interesting developments in distributed file and archival systems.
Some of this work is happening in the academic community (OceanStore, et al) and some is happening in the commercial sector (Avamar, Connected, etc etc).
It seems to me that the storage industry is advancing on two main fronts.
First, hardware is getting better and better at a fairly rapid rate. Storage densities, I/O speeds, hardware based data protection are all improving. This area is generally characterized by incremental improvements like you discuss and is where established players like EMC and other hardware players dominate.
Second, the community is in the process of developing software that attempts to handle (index, search, backup, restore, distribute, etc) the exponential growth in amount of data stored.
The difficult problem between the two is the algorithmic one at this time. This is where revolutionary approaches are needed. And, in fact, there are quite a few folks working in this area. More interesting, perhaps, is the number of efforts that have tried and failed to make significant headway.
I agree that there are likely to be revolutionary changes in the software that we use to interact with data, and sooner rather than later.
I sure hope the average CS grad knows more about the inner operations of the computer than the average medical grad knows about the internal functioning of the human body, considering we actually are still only scratching the surface of what there is to know about the human body.
In fact, i suggest that it will be a red letter day when we can attest to an understanding of the human genetic code that even approximates our understanding of the relationships between high order, assembly, and machine languages.
Especially considering that one is a completely human creation and the other is not.;-)
Slashdot Mirror
On the other hand, a network of several bots playing *at the same table* could do some fairly serious damage over time, and with relatively uncomplicated heuristics.
;-)
Something to think about.
I posted this in a totally unrelated article some time ago, but it is very much on topic now. ;-)
And yes, audiophiles do quite a bit of blind testing. Or at least scientist audiophiles do. I was totally blown away when i tested different power supplies, power cords, interconnect cables, and speaker cables on the same system. I basically figured most of the hype was total nonsense. I mean, why the heck would you have to burn in a *cable*? Turns out that you can easily tell the difference in a blind test even though such a test is difficult to arrange - you basically have to have one guy rewiring stuff and one guy blindfolded listening. We were shocked that the differences predicted by the audiophile crowd were mostly pretty damn obvious. I still dont *understand* why some of these differences exist, though others do make some sense.
Actually, I have been messing about with audiophile quality mp3 systems for some time now. I know, I know, it sounds like an oxymoron, but despite popular opinion it is possible to get really impressive sound with high quality variable bit rate mp3s.
It turns out that the secret is in the quality of the sound card you use and the quality of the D to A converter. Using a studio quality soundcard with digital audio output and a nice D to A (I am quite pleased with Theta, but there are other excellent manufacturers) together make high quality variable bit rate mp3s sound quite good on an audiophile quality system.
To give you some idea of how good, I have a very nice transport (CD player for the uninitiated), and direct comparison of CD, SACD, and high quality mp3s reveals only minor flaws. The most significant is that the mp3s sound slightly 'cleaner' than the CD or SACD versions. This is not a good thing for the purist who desires to hear the sound *exactly* as it was recorded, but many less discriminating listeners actually prefer the mp3 versions.
Somewhat off topic, of course, but it is interesting to me that you can indeed build near audiophile quality sound systems based around mp3s. Not something there is much discussion about in audiophile communities as yet, but as digital encoding gets better i suspect more and more audiophiles will cross the 'digital divide' that currently exists. For instance, the same sort of thing happened with the transition from vinyl to CD and SACD- even though some diehard purists still sing the praises of vinyl, most audiophile folks now agree that SACD is the 'best' sound currently available.
Another selling point is that truly digital recordings stored on random access media do not degrade over time, while the CDs and SACDs in your collection do so demonstrably. Interesting stuff.
Curiously the carbon fiber itself is relatively inexpensive compared to traditional materials (steel, wood, concrete, stone, etc). On the other hand, the resin matrix for the carbon fiber is quite expensive indeed.
If anyone knows where to find cheap aerospace quality resins, let the slashdot community know! I for one would greatly appreciate some pointers towards non-toxic homebrew resins and foams that cost less than those available from the wholesale and retail manufacturing community...
Actually, I have been messing about with audiophile quality mp3 systems for some time now. I know, I know, it sounds like an oxymoron, but despite popular opinion it is possible to get really impressive sound with high quality variable bit rate mp3s.
It turns out that the secret is in the quality of the sound card you use and the quality of the D to A converter. Using a studio quality soundcard with digital audio output and a nice D to A (I am quite pleased with Theta, but there are other excellent manufacturers) together make high quality variable bit rate mp3s sound quite good on an audiophile quality system.
To give you some idea of how good, I have a very nice transport (CD player for the uninitiated), and direct comparison of CD, SACD, and high quality mp3s reveals only minor flaws. The most significant is that the mp3s sound slightly 'cleaner' than the CD or SACD versions. This is not a good thing for the purist who desires to hear the sound *exactly* as it was recorded, but many less discriminating listeners actually prefer the mp3 versions.
Somewhat off topic, of course, but it is interesting to me that you can indeed build near audiophile quality sound systems based around mp3s. Not something there is much discussion about in audiophile communities as yet, but as digital encoding gets better i suspect more and more audiophiles will cross the 'digital divide' that currently exists. For instance, the same sort of thing happened with the transition from vinyl to CD and SACD- even though some diehard purists still sing the praises of vinyl, most audiophile folks now agree that SACD is the 'best' sound currently available.
Another selling point is that truly digital recordings stored on random access media do not degrade over time, while the CDs and SACDs in your collection do so demonstrably. Interesting stuff.
Well, i suppose that depends on how long you think flat screen hollywood style movies will survive. I truly expect there to be fundamental changes in entertainment in the next 96 years, so it might be reasonable to suppose that movies created in the first couple of decades have a real chance at being 'movie of the century', tho that honor may be a hollow one.
;-)
Now whether the lord of the rings trilogy qualifies is another discussion entirely.
One thing folks who are considering laser based corrective surgery is an alternative treatment, corneal restrictive therapy. Called CRT in the trades, which is kind of an irritating acronym for the geeks among us. Anyway, CRT basically just uses different contacts to reshape the cornea. You have to wear them at night for about two weeks, then one night every couple of months to maintain.
The cool thing is that you get 80-90% improvement after the first night, and if anything changes in your vision (and it will as you age) you can just get new restrictive lenses to wear once every couple months. It is still hard to do laser surgery more than once, tho they are working on the problem.
So the upshot is that CRT is cheaper, just as advantageous, slightly less convienient, and the worst case scenario is considerably less stressful.
One key thing to add, when building a mass storage system *always* buy drives from different lots. Drives in the same lot will often fail very close to the same time, so spreading your your expected drive failures by buying different lots is a very good idea. Buy drives from multiple vendors and even manufacturers if at all possible.
Not strictly true. I use abrasive waterjet for 3 dimensional bas relief with some frequency, the accuracy is as good or better than most mechanical devices. Especially on stone. Most tombstones are currently carved with water jets, and commonly use bas relief. Laser cutting can also be used for three dimensional imaging. Look up laser engraving or stereolithography for some examples.
;-)
The key is to choose a device that allows real time variation of beam strength (in the case of laser) or real time pressure modulation and abrasive content for water jet.
Limitations are that these techniques using existing tools work better with pieces that you can divide into multiple cutting planes and have consistent structural characteristics. Mechanical systems have an advantage when the material you are working with is less consistent - if the density of the material varies greatly the degree to which you modulate the ablative power of the water or laser does not consistently remove the same amount of material, while mechanical methods are less sensitive to variations in composition.
The upshot is that you can do amazing things with current machining, and EDM (electron discharge machining), laser systems, photolithography, chemical lithography, stereolithography, ablative water jet, and various mechanical CNC systems are all useful in frequently overlapping ways. Once you understand the 'cutting' edge machining technologies, you can make design decisions that are tailored to appropriate tech in order to minimize cost and production time.
Heck, some folks would spend $20 million just so they could put a bumper sticker on thier Gulfstream to taunt the other billionaires.
;-)
How does
"My other plane is a SPACECRAFT."
sound?
Tape works, but not as well (i.e. robustly), as fast, *or as cheaply* as an intelligently designed software based archival system that uses geographically distributed hard disk drive storage.
;-)
Hey! Yeah, you in the back about to submit the inital barrage in a pro-tape flame war, at least read the rest of my post before pulling the trigger. That might keep the discussion more productive. heh.
Designing the software and algorithms to run such a system is hard, but once you solve the basic problems the advantages are pretty compelling, and a lot of really juicy bits sort of just 'fall out'. I may, of course, be biased because I spent quite a few years building just such a system.
For more information see the company at
Avamar Technologies
(course you have to wade through marketroid speak to actually understand what they do)
A customer reference from someone who switched over
Qualcomm press release
And, of course, there are some patents granted and pending for this class of algorithms. (one of my specific interests)
Press release for patent #6,704,730
In the interest of full disclosure, as I said, I worked there from the beginning for over three years until it turned into less of an R&D project and more of a money making machine.
I am, however, free to discuss most of the algorithmic aspects of the system in some detail. So specific questions are welcome as long as they come with a certain degree of technical sophistication.
I think you forgot the most important part of the development process. So my general software development proceedure tends to look more like -
;-)
1. Write code
2. Proclaim success!
3. Prof... err, wait, some bugs
4. Fix code
5. Proclaim success!
6. Prof... err, wait, some bugs
7. Customer or Management changes requirements
8. goto 1.
9. Profit!
Maybe I should debug my development methodology, seeing as I never seem to get to step 9.
The cool thing about the xprize is that it provides a fixed milestone for private companies to shoot for in a fixed timeframe.
I am a big fan of the private 'prize' process, and think that with the success of the xprize we should figure out how to offer a slew of additional prizes to continue to stimulate private space efforts.
I am somewhat surprized that there are not more prizes offered for solutions to hard problems in other areas. Seems like a cheap way for folks to get researchers motivated.
Why not start a non-profit foundation whose sole purpose is to offer bounties with well defined acceptance criteria for a whole range of technical challenges? Any philanthropic and technically oriented billionaires up for the challenge?
As you say, this looks like a great candidate for simple robotics and emergent behavior. Instead of a 'flock of sheep', however, imagine a 'colony' of robotic 'ants' that simply wander around the yard snipping grass blades one at a time to specified height and carrying the cut remnants to the 'ant hill' where a human empties the hopper every so often and the ants recharge themselves.
Might make a good thesis or senior project for someone.
Well, its not the phone that wrings you, its the telco. The phone is merely the instrument that allows them to do so. ;-)
There are actually two separate issues here.
One issue is the one you raise (which is not the issue I was discussing), regarding the degree to which a capitalistic system efficiently allocates existing wealth (or resources) to highest valued activities. Everything you say is valid under a certain well defined set of assumptions. For instance, you are assuming that there is a statistical correlation between possessing wealth and making the right decision. There are clearly exceptions to this assumption (inheritance laws, lottery, etc). Another fundamental flaw in this sort of analysis is that you are assuming all the 'actors' in your model have access to accurate information and make rational decisions based on that data. This assumption is useful to make when modeling virtual economies, but is demonstrably flawed in the real world.
Additionally, there is a whole range of debate possible regarding the degree to which the American economy can actually be modeled by anything like a free market model.
My personal belief is that standard economic models do have some validity, and that the US domestic market can be accurately modeled to within one order of magnitude based on traditional economic models. Additional precision in my mind requires non-traditional models.
The other main issue (which is what I was discussing) is the very real distinction between allocating an *existing* pool of assets or resources (wealth in this case) versus *expanding* the size of the pool itself. This is a distinction ignored in most simple economic models, but turns out to be a critical component in successful market analysis on real world economies.
For instance, it turns out that when analyzing historical economic trends, changes associated with advances in production efficiency dwarf most other model components. It is highly unlikely that this distinction is not as valid today as it has been historically.
So my main point is that capitalism (as practiced in the US) rewards those involved in allocating wealth significantly more than it does those who are involved in *enlarging* the pool of resources available to everyone participating in the economy.
Further, it is demonstrable that the net gains associated with increasing the efficiency of resource allocation are dwarfed by the gains associated with enlarging the pool of resources, and so it is curious that we reward those who specialize in asset reallocation significantly more than we do those who specialize in increasing the size of the pool of resources we draw from.
Actually, I think the real problem in the US at the moment has nothing to do with scientific dominance, but rather the degree to which compensation is not tied to the creation of wealth.
It is blatantly true that the closer you are to the money in the US, the more money you make. This goes for lawyers, executives, and the entire management class. Unfortunately, it is also generally true that the closer you are to the money the less you have to do with the actual creation of wealth and the more you have to do with the reallocation of wealth.
To use a somewhat flawed analogy, those who recieve the highest compensation in the US are involved in trying to increase thier share of the pie (or the share of the organization whose interests they represent). While engineers and scientists who are actually *increasing* the size of the pie for everyone are compensated significantly less.
So I completely agree that the US is still one of the dominant players in both theoretical and applied science, but the issue is that it has become increasingly less *rewarding* for individuals to involve themselves in creating these advances.
This disparity between the compensation of those who *create* wealth and those who *redistribute* wealth is one which has continued to grow since the 1950s, and it is not clear that this trend will change. Especially since the management class is strongly motivated to support the status quo, and the relative societal and cultural valuation of management activities versus engineering and scientific activities has continued to trend toward managment.
Before responding off the cuff, take a moment to look at how much your close acquaintainces are compensated as well as what they actually do. There is something wrong with our system of compensation when folks doing innovative work in computing, material science, industrial chemistry, biotechnology, et al, make significantly less than folks doing mortgage underwriting, accounting, money management, real estate, etc.
Personally, the right answer to this conundrum seems to be to do *both*. Unfortunately, there is very little overlap in the skill sets required to exploit innovation and to innovate. In addition, acquiring both is not only rare, but the few folks who do are generally so much better rewarded for exploiting innovation that they have a hard time making a logical case for doing anything else.
Fortunately, most of the folks who innovate do so for emotional and intellectual reasons rather than financial ones. It is sad, however, that the financial rewards for innovation are disproportionately smaller than those for exploiting it.
Ah, you refer to the notorious heisenbug.
This class of bugs is significantly less painful than the little known 'shrodinbug' which is reported by testers and/or users, and cannot be reproduced in the prescence of a qualified observer or logged in any usable way.
The question is whether there is a 'planck constant' associated with debugging any sufficiently complex algorithmic function that constrains the ability of the coder to localize the bug while specifing its effects.
A question for the theorists among us, no doubt.
Interestingly, several theoretical frameworks do exist to describe the heisenbug and shrodinbug but unfortunately none have yet been verified through experiment, and it is not clear that the tools currently exist to allow us to do so.
Actually, the Russian version of the RIAA (with whom allofmp3.com is licenced) pays artists *directly* for licenced downloads. Thier share of a .65 cent album download is actually significantly *higher* than artists get from an equivalent retail purchase in the US.
.25 cents per $15 purchased CD. .05-.10 cents is more common.
As a point of reference, after all distribution, licencing, and record label costs are taken out, artists are extremely lucky to see around
Most artists make almost all their money through royalties on airplay and concerts. The CD sales merely drive listener attention and make labels and the distribution chain money.
Anyone see any problems with this model? I personally think the Russian model makes more sense.
Of course, whether artists see any of the money they should be making according to the actual regulations for each Russian transaction is another question entirely, and one to which I do not know the answer.
This is actually very explicitly *not* true. There are well defined exceptions in US import regulations regarding purchasing prescriptions drugs for which you have a prescription in foreign countries and bringing them back in.
c ation_drugs.xml
Look at the relevant sections on the US customs site. The restrictions are that you can only bring in one 'refill' for each valid prescription you have. You are in violation of import statutes if you try to bring in large quantities of drugs even if you have a valid prescription, however.
This is designed so folks who have valid prescriptions can purchase drugs when they are travelling and bring them back with them.
Relevant reference can be found at
http://www.customs.gov/xp/cgov/travel/alerts/medi
Of course you could do a software raid with these.
The question is why you would want to. I could maybe see a centralized backup option for your home network or something i guess.
My pet peeve is why they can call it wireless data storage when I am still plugging the dang thing into the wall for power 24x7, so how exactly is it wireless?
Now give me one of these that is powered from the USB port and/or battery option and I am actually interested.
Internationally rights to songs are an interesting issue. On the bright side, before the internet many US companies sold the rights to thier song libraries for international distribution quite cheaply, so now there are various organizations in other countries that have legal rights to thier back catalogs. One good example is
.90 US a CD. Read the FAQ to look at their legal position.
www.allofmp3.com
which is a russian site. high variable bit rate encoding of songs from quite a large catalog for about
Just a quick comment to those who are concerned that the US is outsourcing many of its "white collar" jobs - the US military industrial complex (including NASA and other scientific organizations) is collectively one of the largest "industries" in the world, and considering current sociopolitical trends is likely to remain so for some time.
Several interesting implications:
1) These jobs cannot be outsourced for security reasons.
2) "white collar" employees who work in this area are compensated generously, with relatively good vacations, pensions, and job security.
3) It is quite easy to get a job in the private sector or overseas if you decide for whatever reasons to leave the military industrial complex.
4) These organizations are generally working on problems at the very far end of the complexity spectrum and so provide a very interesting work environment.
So, if the dot com bubble has left you high and dry, as long as you have some serious technical skills there will always be a domestic market for those skills (and additional education can only improve your marketability).
Food for thought.
More accurately, he implanted a duct that bypassed normal salivary channels and output generated saliva into a graduated cylinder. That way he could not only tell if they were salivating, but how much, and even more importantly, measure the amount of saliva generated.
... and as a side benefit, you would get to play with surgical implements. whooo! shiny!
More topically, the thing most folks seem to be missing here is that the representatives dont like the extent to which the game is *against* animal testing. I guess the UK has enough trouble with foaming at the mouth animal rights terror^H^H^H^H^H^Hactivists that it does not want to encourage the next generation.
My feeling is that in the interest of fairness we ought to promote games which involve human vivisection of animals *and* animal vivisection of humans. I like to see issues from both sides, you see
Adding the dimension of time to data storage as in the link you provide is hardly revolutionary (cf cvs and other version control systems). On the other hand, there are some very interesting developments in distributed file and archival systems.
Some of this work is happening in the academic community (OceanStore, et al) and some is happening in the commercial sector (Avamar, Connected, etc etc).
It seems to me that the storage industry is advancing on two main fronts.
First, hardware is getting better and better at a fairly rapid rate. Storage densities, I/O speeds, hardware based data protection are all improving. This area is generally characterized by incremental improvements like you discuss and is where established players like EMC and other hardware players dominate.
Second, the community is in the process of developing software that attempts to handle (index, search, backup, restore, distribute, etc) the exponential growth in amount of data stored.
The difficult problem between the two is the algorithmic one at this time. This is where revolutionary approaches are needed. And, in fact, there are quite a few folks working in this area. More interesting, perhaps, is the number of efforts that have tried and failed to make significant headway.
I agree that there are likely to be revolutionary changes in the software that we use to interact with data, and sooner rather than later.
The martian moons are not geostationary, an essential requirement for a space elevator terminus.
I sure hope the average CS grad knows more about the inner operations of the computer than the average medical grad knows about the internal functioning of the human body, considering we actually are still only scratching the surface of what there is to know about the human body.
;-)
In fact, i suggest that it will be a red letter day when we can attest to an understanding of the human genetic code that even approximates our understanding of the relationships between high order, assembly, and machine languages.
Especially considering that one is a completely human creation and the other is not.