Give me a break. You're talking about a cost of roughly 1 Yuan RMB (~eu 0.10). It is lost in the costing noise of any physical computer system, at the retail point.
Anyhow, I suggest burning a usable programming system into the BIOS, thus eliminating the need for a CD. Hell, with broadband, who needs hardrives? Just mount S3 or (free) GMail.
That seems a fair description of the future, as far as it goes. But you left out Orwells "boot stamping on a human face".
Through the 20th century, power tended to centralize, inevitably. Technology is changing that. Now there is one fundamental struggle that underlies all human activity. It is not the struggle between Islam and Materialism, or the struggle between Marxism and Captialism, or the struggle between Rich and Poor, or the struggle between Democracy and Fascism. It is the technological race to develop effective weapons to support or to destroy the continuing centralization of power and control over the population. Obviously the vested interests of centralization are largely in control of the means of discovery and production, but the numbers of those devoted to opposing them are vast, and the need for organization is minimal. As long as the advocates of personal freedom are able to promulgate their ideas, their eventual success is therefore assured. Insuring that capability is therefore critical to the survival of value itself.
Reducing food supply is *not* something the Chinese would easily choose to do. Forcing the U.S. to bid up the global food prices would be very damaging. Others argue that damaging the ability of the U.S. to purchase Chinese goods would also be contrary to self-interest, but I disbelieve it: The U.S. is buying largely on credit loaned to us by China, Japan, Korea. They own a lot of stuff in the U.S. that they can never use. The only way to actually take posession of their property is to wash away the freeloaders squatting on it.
Because we drive up the price of oil and steel, and require them to field ICBMs and submarines, which they can ill afford. Because we are surrounding them with military bases, and could destroy their entire society on a moments notice, and will eventually (according to the laws of probability), unless they get us first. China faces a trilemma: Become a client of the global hegemon; wage effective resistance to assimilation and suffer endless conflict and peril; or kill the beast. The first is inconceivable, the second, intolerable, and thus the third is inevitable.
Whereas plutonium does not require isotopic enrichment. HEU is not required for nuclear weapons. I think I could make one for under US$ 2 million, but it would take a while.
Even so, the real threat is from national governments. It must be very tempting to the Chinese, for example, to deploy an IL-4 enhanced virus that only kills caucasians. Or vice-versa the USUK.
Brilliant. We'll strip out all the non-USASCII-English stuff, then ship 100 million expensive bricks to kids who speak spanish, chinese, thai, vietnamese, lao, hindi, urdu, swahili, arabic, tamil... or not.
I think a learning machine device for children should encourage multilingualism, in a big way.
I'm sure they'll be testing a variety of browsers and balancing the considerations. Opera's handheld version ought to be optimized for footprint. The browser in DSL is very slim, but might not be nearly so featureful.
He must have meant the kernel. If he had meant a distro he would have said "RedHat" or "Debian" or "Suse". The kernel is way too fat for the device, after all, but it's trivial to trim it down. The trick is to make sure you're matching the kernel features you want with the userspace you want. If you wanted really small, you'd go with uCLinux, but I think they'll want to support a broad range of modern applications, so it will be a reasonably recent standard kernel, with very few device drivers and network features. I'd argue for a 2.4 kernel myself, just for the slim comparison to 2.6. I don't know of any 2.6 features that are compelling for this device.
But he's right, it is a piddling example. The difference in complexity from those systems which Behe calls irreducibly complex systems is several orders of magnitude.
Megatonnes of iron, in fact. The result is that we can solve the problem without killing billions of people, which is what any *effective* emission reduction strategy would require. While it is certainly possible to reduce emissions gradually through technological change, by the time you have converted the system thoroughly enough to effect an order of magnitude reduction in emissions, New York City, the Netherlands, the Maldives, Bangladesh, sub-sahelian Africa are doomed, hundreds of millions have died of malnutrition and disease and warfare resulting from destabilization of political and economic systems, the corals are dead within 30 degrees of the equator, it is no longer feasible to harvest sealife for human consumption, Britain and Scandinavia are uninhabitable, and there are no more tropical rainforests. In contrast, there are no known detriments to providing a more nutrient-rich environment in the open equatorial ocean.
Responsible action of course requires some level of effective preparatory research, in order to provide a reasonable assurance that no profoundly negative consequences will derive. However, were the project, once undertaken, to demonstrate the potential of a negative consequence by its continuation, it would simply be terminated. In the vastness of the Pacific, a few million tonnes of iron will quickly be lost in the noise. There is no way to estimate the probability of encountering an unanticipated side-effect in advance of trying. There is no way to justify not trying.
This is all the more reason why it is urgent to undertake the project immediately. It can't begin to be scaled up to effective proportions until a responsible effort has been made to eliminate such uncertainties.
If you would like to take the wind out of their sails, I suggest helping to solve the problem constructively. Then there's no motivation to accept destructive solution.
Giving up freedom is never a solution to a problem. It is itself a problem.
If you want to solve problems, you have to give people with motivation and ability the freedom to act. I propose a solution to global warming here, and it doesn't involve enslaving or murdering anyone.
The expense would be incredible. I think this solution is much more feasible, because it leverages the ecosystem, employing cheap labor (phytoplankton) to do the work for us.
Teller (yes, "father of the fusion bomb" Teller) proposed this back in the 60s. I think the "Geritol" solution is more practical and less disruptive. See this link for numbers.
I propose fixing the problem by technical means, and provide numbers to back up the feasibility of the project, here. If you want to take the wind out of the sails of the Luddites, please consider contributing your energies to solving the problem.
If you would like to know what EPA scientists calculate to be the anthropogenic contribution to CO2 surplus, in relation to natural sources and sinks, you can find a link in this short article. If you wish to help solve the problem, please consider collaborating on the organization and engineering effort.
The EPA reported linked from this page provides a high-quality estimate of the relationship between sources, sinks, annual surplus, and anthropogenic sources.
A rather more reality-based view of the magnitude of anthropogenic contribution to climate change by surplus CO2 emission can be taken from the EPA report linked from http://www.southoftheclouds.net/wp/index.php/archi ves/68">this brief article.
Slashdot Mirror
the box containing the dirty pictures of domo-kun?
is that the one?
Give me a break. You're talking about a cost of roughly 1 Yuan RMB (~eu 0.10). It is lost in the costing noise of any physical computer system, at the retail point.
Anyhow, I suggest burning a usable programming system into the BIOS, thus eliminating the need for a CD. Hell, with broadband, who needs hardrives? Just mount S3 or (free) GMail.
That seems a fair description of the future, as far as it goes. But you left out Orwells "boot stamping on a human face".
Through the 20th century, power tended to centralize, inevitably. Technology is changing that. Now there is one fundamental struggle that underlies all human activity. It is not the struggle between Islam and Materialism, or the struggle between Marxism and Captialism, or the struggle between Rich and Poor, or the struggle between Democracy and Fascism. It is the technological race to develop effective weapons to support or to destroy the continuing centralization of power and control over the population. Obviously the vested interests of centralization are largely in control of the means of discovery and production, but the numbers of those devoted to opposing them are vast, and the need for organization is minimal. As long as the advocates of personal freedom are able to promulgate their ideas, their eventual success is therefore assured. Insuring that capability is therefore critical to the survival of value itself.
Any system that depends on secrecy is broken.
Reducing food supply is *not* something the Chinese would easily choose to do. Forcing the U.S. to bid up the global food prices would be very damaging. Others argue that damaging the ability of the U.S. to purchase Chinese goods would also be contrary to self-interest, but I disbelieve it: The U.S. is buying largely on credit loaned to us by China, Japan, Korea. They own a lot of stuff in the U.S. that they can never use. The only way to actually take posession of their property is to wash away the freeloaders squatting on it.
Because we drive up the price of oil and steel, and require them to field ICBMs and submarines, which they can ill afford. Because we are surrounding them with military bases, and could destroy their entire society on a moments notice, and will eventually (according to the laws of probability), unless they get us first. China faces a trilemma: Become a client of the global hegemon; wage effective resistance to assimilation and suffer endless conflict and peril; or kill the beast. The first is inconceivable, the second, intolerable, and thus the third is inevitable.
No enriched uranium is required in order to produce plutonium.
That's true of one form of logic, but not true of others. "Logic" has come to be a very large and fuzzy thing in the last 100 years or so.
Whereas plutonium does not require isotopic enrichment. HEU is not required for nuclear weapons. I think I could make one for under US$ 2 million, but it would take a while.
Even so, the real threat is from national governments. It must be very tempting to the Chinese, for example, to deploy an IL-4 enhanced virus that only kills caucasians. Or vice-versa the USUK.
Brilliant. We'll strip out all the non-USASCII-English stuff, then ship 100 million expensive bricks to kids who speak spanish, chinese, thai, vietnamese, lao, hindi, urdu, swahili, arabic, tamil... or not.
I think a learning machine device for children should encourage multilingualism, in a big way.
MOD PARENT UP!
Man, I need to take that to heart. Ignorance is not a disease, it's a survival strategy.
Master your plan, and leave the rest to the Higher Power.
I'm sure they'll be testing a variety of browsers and balancing the considerations. Opera's handheld version ought to be optimized for footprint. The browser in DSL is very slim, but might not be nearly so featureful.
He must have meant the kernel. If he had meant a distro he would have said "RedHat" or "Debian" or "Suse". The kernel is way too fat for the device, after all, but it's trivial to trim it down. The trick is to make sure you're matching the kernel features you want with the userspace you want. If you wanted really small, you'd go with uCLinux, but I think they'll want to support a broad range of modern applications, so it will be a reasonably recent standard kernel, with very few device drivers and network features. I'd argue for a 2.4 kernel myself, just for the slim comparison to 2.6. I don't know of any 2.6 features that are compelling for this device.
But he's right, it is a piddling example. The difference in complexity from those systems which Behe calls irreducibly complex systems is several orders of magnitude.
Megatonnes of iron, in fact. The result is that we can solve the problem without killing billions of people, which is what any *effective* emission reduction strategy would require. While it is certainly possible to reduce emissions gradually through technological change, by the time you have converted the system thoroughly enough to effect an order of magnitude reduction in emissions, New York City, the Netherlands, the Maldives, Bangladesh, sub-sahelian Africa are doomed, hundreds of millions have died of malnutrition and disease and warfare resulting from destabilization of political and economic systems, the corals are dead within 30 degrees of the equator, it is no longer feasible to harvest sealife for human consumption, Britain and Scandinavia are uninhabitable, and there are no more tropical rainforests. In contrast, there are no known detriments to providing a more nutrient-rich environment in the open equatorial ocean.
Responsible action of course requires some level of effective preparatory research, in order to provide a reasonable assurance that no profoundly negative consequences will derive. However, were the project, once undertaken, to demonstrate the potential of a negative consequence by its continuation, it would simply be terminated. In the vastness of the Pacific, a few million tonnes of iron will quickly be lost in the noise. There is no way to estimate the probability of encountering an unanticipated side-effect in advance of trying. There is no way to justify not trying.
This is all the more reason why it is urgent to undertake the project immediately. It can't begin to be scaled up to effective proportions until a responsible effort has been made to eliminate such uncertainties.
If you would like to take the wind out of their sails, I suggest helping to solve the problem constructively. Then there's no motivation to accept destructive solution.
Bad link, sorry. Can't edit, too bad. Here's the correct link.
Giving up freedom is never a solution to a problem. It is itself a problem.
If you want to solve problems, you have to give people with motivation and ability the freedom to act. I propose a solution to global warming here, and it doesn't involve enslaving or murdering anyone.
The expense would be incredible. I think this solution is much more feasible, because it leverages the ecosystem, employing cheap labor (phytoplankton) to do the work for us.
Teller (yes, "father of the fusion bomb" Teller) proposed this back in the 60s. I think the "Geritol" solution is more practical and less disruptive. See this link for numbers.
I propose fixing the problem by technical means, and provide numbers to back up the feasibility of the project, here. If you want to take the wind out of the sails of the Luddites, please consider contributing your energies to solving the problem.
If you would like to know what EPA scientists calculate to be the anthropogenic contribution to CO2 surplus, in relation to natural sources and sinks, you can find a link in this short article. If you wish to help solve the problem, please consider collaborating on the organization and engineering effort.
The EPA reported linked from this page provides a high-quality estimate of the relationship between sources, sinks, annual surplus, and anthropogenic sources.
A rather more reality-based view of the magnitude of anthropogenic contribution to climate change by surplus CO2 emission can be taken from the EPA report linked from http://www.southoftheclouds.net/wp/index.php/archi ves/68">this brief article.