The only thing that I take from all this discussion is that the price is ridiculous.
If it wasn't already part of the standard install (and it should be), then I would consider a nominal $3 or something similar to be reasonable for someone to press the button and install the image with firefox versus the image without firefox. The one thing that Dell does still have going for it is their ability to cobble together computers with a variety of hardware and software customizations at relatively low cost.
Charging an extra $30 for a variation of their image with free software on it seems like a misplaced decimal. And like I said, there is no reason that it shouldn't already be part of the default install.
Ideally they could design a probe or series of probes that could melt or dig their way through the ice, but that is a lot of energy that would be required. And then all that ice is going to make it very hard to relay any data back to Earth.
I would say until they can demonstrate a probe that can melt or dig its way through the ice on Europa that we are better off sending a probe to the edge of the ice cap on Mars.
There are also procedures for surplussing government property. And other ways that someone at NASA could spend a few hours, put together an RFP for some University, non-profit or other outside entity to put together a mission plan to reestablish communications, control and make some use of the space craft. Maybe it is really just redundant given much better instruments on other probes, but there is still likely some value that some University researchers could utilize. Heck sounds like it could be a pretty cool project to unleash team of University students and mostly volunteers on.
As much as I agree with the idea of open sourcing it...NASA would need to limit this to just one team and one mission. Otherwise you get multiple different teams sending commands to a satellite which would confuse the heck out of it.
If NASA can't do something with the satellite, then it should just hand the keys off to a University or other non-profit that has a shot to pull something together by August.
Yes; but it's also a government agency that probably has a few geeks on payroll. As an official project, there probably isn't even time to circulate the RFPs and cut the POs. As a hobby project, it's much more likely that somebody just needs to look the other way as whatever signalling gear can hit the right frequency sees a little after-hours misuse.
Just exactly what I was thinking. If there are still some useful instruments on this spacecraft, then could a bunch of volunteers come together under a University or non-profit to put together a transmitter and mission plan by August?
Most people in the space exploration business get one or two shots at a mission like this in their lives, so I think some mix of people that worked on this originally, some university students and some geekend warriors might be willing to pull it together.
Seems that NASA would just have to designate someone to be in charge and hand over the documentation to increase the odds of success over someone just making this a hobby project on the DL, but then it would be a matter of getting a relatively small team of expert volunteers together and matching them up with some time on a big enough transmitter to actually get a signal to the spacecraft.
In places where the restrictions on speech are broadly defined and allowed explicitly in the constitution, then there is less room for judicial review because judges are judging the law against whether it reasonably falls under one of the exceptions rather than judging the law against whether it is "abridging the freedom of speech" which is clearly and logically a much higher standard of judicial review.
So for instance a judge in the US would look at a law like "Publicly questioning the integrity of a public official shall be punished by a fine of no more than $500" and ask the question first "Does this abridge freedom of speech?" Where in Germany they might ask first whether this restriction falls under "protection of the reputation or rights of others" or does the law serve "the prevention of disorder".
This exception language is pretty much the same language that the UN adopted under which all manner of despots around the world are claiming to be suppressing speech in the name of public order. Of course the "public order" despots are protecting is the order of keeping themselves and their cronies at the top and the rest of society as their slaves.
"against using digital devices"... so analog devices are okay then?
I know what you are saying, but you are having the same problem as legislators will in coming up with good language for something like this. The evidence is pretty compelling that people are more distracted by other people in the car than by people they are talking to on the phone. But we accept one risk as natural while people don't accept the other risk as being natural.
I think it is clear that it isn't risk that is being compared but rather social norms. It is socially acceptable and natural to have a conversation with someone else in the car and would be weird to not talk to someone sitting next to you even though that small talk puts both people's lives in greater jeopardy.
I think it is pretty clear that Google is right in that these efforts are not based on the relative risk of distracted driving using a heads up device... in fact there is probably more than ample evidence that using a heads up display mitigates the risk compared with looking at a heads down in-dash display or other dash mounted or hand held display while operating a vehicle.
These companies didn't "need" to borrow a dime, the decision to make these bonds versus capital investments were decisions by the financial backers of these companies as to how they wanted to take profits out of the company. The return on investment is measured in just a few years or else nobody would have invested in this infrastructure in the first place. At some point after the infrastructure investment has been recouped several times over, then it really is just milking the customers and not about reinvestment in the infrastructure or operating costs.
Cut down the biggest branch of our government - the lobbying industry.
Every single industry and advocacy group is lobbying for this or that. It isn't as easy as "killing all the lawyers" because people will just call themselves something else and conform to the letter of the law but circumvent its spirit. Which is basically what happened with greater restrictions on "lobbyists" back in the 1980s and 1990s. The solution is more democracy and not less freedom for so called "lobbyists".
1) Laying (Or stringing) Fiber from pole to pole or underground takes up space on the pole or space in the underground right of way. With some buffer for line workers to work between the lines on poles and to stay clear of other pipes under ground there really isn't much room. So, it really does make the most sense to have one wire instead of two or three, but many communities do have two providers which shows it is possible... two isn't exactly much competition, but it is at least something. So, there really is a need for some sort of management of the right of way so that brings up point number two....
2) Who do you think buys off the local politicians to impose regulations or to rig the bids so that it benefits one company or the other?? The companies with the most money can buy people's time. And you don't need to buy off a politician or city worker directly in a quid pro quo fashion, but if you look at enough entanglements it should be pretty easy to see how to influence the process at every step along the way with paid lawyers and other agents 'working the process' and getting the right sorts of people into positions of influence.
Massive infrastructure with no obvious monetization plans?
Yes. Government.
There were many years between when we had cars and when we had a major national highway system. Plenty of time to let a private enterprise get in that space.
The obvious monetization plan is when there is greater efficiency and productivity in society the government (and the rest of society) will prosper. Monopolies, even if they are local "natural" ones, don't allow for the types of free market forces that make other areas of the economy most efficient because they are monopolies. By your analogy, plenty of private companies and individuals are making boatloads (or carloads rather) of money from the road system, but it is paid for with broader based taxes because we all benefit from the roads and to too closely meter their use would constrain the overall economy as people stop moving themselves and goods and services around as much.
Nearly the exact same argument holds true for the Internet. The benefit to the economy is that people are communicating and that goods and services are as freely flowing as possible. That is why net neutrality is so important and that municipally owned Fiber is starting to make sense with stagnating roll outs in the telecom controlled market which is more concerned about getting a cut of everyone's business than it is concerned about providing good service to everyone.
For years "The Telephone Company" used the government to actually make it illegal for anyone to do anything but circuit switched voice communications over the telephone network. Yes for a long while it was a crime to hook up a computer modem or anything other than equipment owned and manufactured by the telephone company... no modems, no answering machines, nothing. Eventually after years of bridling against such restrictions, the telephone companies would provide a very expensive ISDN service with up to 128kb of bandwidth. So, more often than not it is powerful companies using government regulation to stamp out competition to help them exercise market control and to pad margins.
Some people at the big telcos probably remember those days fondly when 'ma bell' was made king by the US government and every bit was sacred (and very expensive.)
And yet, Slashdot in general lauds the takeover of medicine by government.
Medicine was taken over by government decades ago. At this point I'd settle for them doing a better job at it and if that means admitting that the government is in control then so be it.
Personally, though I believe in the power of the purse... let people control the spending of their own healthcare dollars directly and you will get people making better decisions on cost and quality. And if people don't want to make their own decisions then lets pay for healthcare with an equitable income tax instead of taxing health insurance and medical devices and all these insidious taxes that appear to increase prices instead of letting people know what they are actually paying for.
No not wrong. What has been done before is 3D mapping using cameras. And even putting those cameras on a quad-rotor. And yes the first post about building the functionality into a quad-rotor was also a bit ignorant of recent work that has put cameras onto quad-rotors to do 3D mapping, but the underlying enthusiasm about what new capability is being provided is still valid if you consider it a bit less narrowly.
If you could just strap a smartphone that had a 3D camera onto a quad-rotor or ground robot and get 3D mapping capability "out of the box", then you have just reduced the cost and complexity (or DIY time) of 3D mapping down by an order of magnitude and that does open up new possibilities.
Yes, but this appears to just use a pair of cameras on the back of a regular phone. Most accurate 3D mapping for robotics is being done with expensive and more energy intensive (battery draining) LIDARs. Cameras are cheap and don't use a lot of power so using cameras could drive down the cost of mapping 3D environments or mapping an object for 3D printing if it is something that gets included in new phones... again sure it has been done, but not in something that could just be added as a feature to everyone's phone for a few bucks.
I think the point is that giving anyone (including the NSA) the NSA's current "duties" is a bad idea, but if the government still needs to spy on particular communications within the US as part of a criminal investigation, then it should be done using the government's police powers under a constitutionally valid warrant.
Only if there was an ongoing shooting war (not periodic acts of terrorism) should the government be using its war fighting authority to monitor domestic communications, which is essentially what it is doing now long after 9-11 and where we have been fighting wars overseas and not on US soil.
The fact that people in government cling to emergency powers long after the emergency is nothing new or novel in history. It just needs to be stopped no matter what label or acronym you put on the agency doing it.
So getting slapped down in court means they'll do it anyway?
The judge actually ruled that they could impose net neutrality, but only if they first labeled the companies as common carriers... which they most certainly are. All along the FCC should have been regulating these Internet network providers as telecommunication services and not merely as "Information Services". That designation made sense when companies like AOL were providing "Information Services" over existing telephone wires and thousands of ISPs were setting up shop with modem banks that used existing telecommunications networks for their communications, but it was always the case that the underlying infrastructure that connected these ISPs and connected the ISPs to the customers was regulated as a common carrier. Fast forward twenty years and we don't really have ISPs in the 1990s sense, at least not ones that are separate from the telecoms anymore.
and consequently would be willing to pay the ISP more for access
Personally I am willing to pay less for an already overpriced service. Google Fiber has demonstrated economical Gibabit speeds at the same prices that are being charged by Verizon FiOS and Comcast for much lower quality of service. What we have now is price gauging by local monopolies who are then using their market power to promote their own vertically integrated products and services. Yes the infrastructure has to be paid for, but we are already paying for it several times over what it actually costs to build, maintain and support.
And Troll sirens... I mean this is Slashdot, so it isn't exactly friendly territory for a monopolist telecom company that is trying to destroy Freedom on the Internet.
Pro-Comcast apologists point out that ESPN (owned by Disney) is so expensive and exerts so much market control, but fail to mention the fact that Comcast owned Weather Channel has actually been dropped by DirecTV because Comcast wanted too much money for it. So Comcast is providing its own example of what the world will be like when Content and Cable are vertically aligned. The Comcast and Time/Warner Merger means less choice for consumers. Where non-Comcast cable and satellite providers won't be able to afford Comcast's content and Comcast will disadvantage non-Comcast produced content.
And as far as I know Disney doesn't actually own any Cable Networks, but Comcast does have its own alternative sports channel that competes directly with ESPN. So Comcast can give its own content a leg up, placing it right next to ESPN in the lineup. All this combined market power is just too much and really should be restrained more effectively by regulators who seem asleep at the wheel.
I would mod up your post if I had mod points. We really should be able to mod up and down the original post. Since they are overhauling Slashdot.org anyway, I think now would be a good time to introduce this feature. Sure the owners/managers/admins might not always like the results, but it should give them a useful metric about what works, what doesn't and what the community finds useful for starting discussion.
All those other things are all well and good, but are much more land and resource intensive than fusion or even fission. I think rooftop solar for running the fridge and lights or even for producing the energy to charge your car sounds great, but for the industrial scale power that will still be required nuclear is the way to go. Most of those other power production technologies sound more like jobs programs than efficient ways to produce and distribute fuel and energy.
If the degree doesn't prepare you to make a living, then of what value was it to the student? If a judge determines that a person can't pay back a student loan because of the circumstances of their life then so be it. The original justification for not allowing students to discharge student loans in bankruptcy was because students are just starting out and getting jobs in the first few years after college so letting them declare bankruptcy right after school would have undermined the point of the loan in the first place.. But if they are 5 years out and unable to get a job that can support their living expenses and a student loan then it should at least be partially discharged and I would put the University on the hook for part of the loan in that case.
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The only thing that I take from all this discussion is that the price is ridiculous.
If it wasn't already part of the standard install (and it should be), then I would consider a nominal $3 or something similar to be reasonable for someone to press the button and install the image with firefox versus the image without firefox. The one thing that Dell does still have going for it is their ability to cobble together computers with a variety of hardware and software customizations at relatively low cost.
Charging an extra $30 for a variation of their image with free software on it seems like a misplaced decimal. And like I said, there is no reason that it shouldn't already be part of the default install.
Ideally they could design a probe or series of probes that could melt or dig their way through the ice, but that is a lot of energy that would be required. And then all that ice is going to make it very hard to relay any data back to Earth.
I would say until they can demonstrate a probe that can melt or dig its way through the ice on Europa that we are better off sending a probe to the edge of the ice cap on Mars.
Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station has some dishes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G...
There are also procedures for surplussing government property. And other ways that someone at NASA could spend a few hours, put together an RFP for some University, non-profit or other outside entity to put together a mission plan to reestablish communications, control and make some use of the space craft. Maybe it is really just redundant given much better instruments on other probes, but there is still likely some value that some University researchers could utilize. Heck sounds like it could be a pretty cool project to unleash team of University students and mostly volunteers on.
As much as I agree with the idea of open sourcing it...NASA would need to limit this to just one team and one mission. Otherwise you get multiple different teams sending commands to a satellite which would confuse the heck out of it.
If NASA can't do something with the satellite, then it should just hand the keys off to a University or other non-profit that has a shot to pull something together by August.
Yes; but it's also a government agency that probably has a few geeks on payroll. As an official project, there probably isn't even time to circulate the RFPs and cut the POs. As a hobby project, it's much more likely that somebody just needs to look the other way as whatever signalling gear can hit the right frequency sees a little after-hours misuse.
Just exactly what I was thinking. If there are still some useful instruments on this spacecraft, then could a bunch of volunteers come together under a University or non-profit to put together a transmitter and mission plan by August?
Most people in the space exploration business get one or two shots at a mission like this in their lives, so I think some mix of people that worked on this originally, some university students and some geekend warriors might be willing to pull it together.
Seems that NASA would just have to designate someone to be in charge and hand over the documentation to increase the odds of success over someone just making this a hobby project on the DL, but then it would be a matter of getting a relatively small team of expert volunteers together and matching them up with some time on a big enough transmitter to actually get a signal to the spacecraft.
In places where the restrictions on speech are broadly defined and allowed explicitly in the constitution, then there is less room for judicial review because judges are judging the law against whether it reasonably falls under one of the exceptions rather than judging the law against whether it is "abridging the freedom of speech" which is clearly and logically a much higher standard of judicial review.
So for instance a judge in the US would look at a law like "Publicly questioning the integrity of a public official shall be punished by a fine of no more than $500" and ask the question first "Does this abridge freedom of speech?" Where in Germany they might ask first whether this restriction falls under "protection of the reputation or rights of others" or does the law serve "the prevention of disorder".
This exception language is pretty much the same language that the UN adopted under which all manner of despots around the world are claiming to be suppressing speech in the name of public order. Of course the "public order" despots are protecting is the order of keeping themselves and their cronies at the top and the rest of society as their slaves.
"against using digital devices"... so analog devices are okay then?
I know what you are saying, but you are having the same problem as legislators will in coming up with good language for something like this. The evidence is pretty compelling that people are more distracted by other people in the car than by people they are talking to on the phone. But we accept one risk as natural while people don't accept the other risk as being natural.
I think it is clear that it isn't risk that is being compared but rather social norms. It is socially acceptable and natural to have a conversation with someone else in the car and would be weird to not talk to someone sitting next to you even though that small talk puts both people's lives in greater jeopardy.
I think it is pretty clear that Google is right in that these efforts are not based on the relative risk of distracted driving using a heads up device... in fact there is probably more than ample evidence that using a heads up display mitigates the risk compared with looking at a heads down in-dash display or other dash mounted or hand held display while operating a vehicle.
These companies didn't "need" to borrow a dime, the decision to make these bonds versus capital investments were decisions by the financial backers of these companies as to how they wanted to take profits out of the company. The return on investment is measured in just a few years or else nobody would have invested in this infrastructure in the first place. At some point after the infrastructure investment has been recouped several times over, then it really is just milking the customers and not about reinvestment in the infrastructure or operating costs.
Cut down the biggest branch of our government - the lobbying industry.
Cut down the biggest branch of our government - the lobbying industry.
Every single industry and advocacy group is lobbying for this or that. It isn't as easy as "killing all the lawyers" because people will just call themselves something else and conform to the letter of the law but circumvent its spirit. Which is basically what happened with greater restrictions on "lobbyists" back in the 1980s and 1990s. The solution is more democracy and not less freedom for so called "lobbyists".
There are two answers to that:
1) Laying (Or stringing) Fiber from pole to pole or underground takes up space on the pole or space in the underground right of way. With some buffer for line workers to work between the lines on poles and to stay clear of other pipes under ground there really isn't much room. So, it really does make the most sense to have one wire instead of two or three, but many communities do have two providers which shows it is possible... two isn't exactly much competition, but it is at least something. So, there really is a need for some sort of management of the right of way so that brings up point number two....
2) Who do you think buys off the local politicians to impose regulations or to rig the bids so that it benefits one company or the other?? The companies with the most money can buy people's time. And you don't need to buy off a politician or city worker directly in a quid pro quo fashion, but if you look at enough entanglements it should be pretty easy to see how to influence the process at every step along the way with paid lawyers and other agents 'working the process' and getting the right sorts of people into positions of influence.
Massive infrastructure with no obvious monetization plans?
Yes. Government.
There were many years between when we had cars and when we had a major national highway system. Plenty of time to let a private enterprise get in that space.
The obvious monetization plan is when there is greater efficiency and productivity in society the government (and the rest of society) will prosper. Monopolies, even if they are local "natural" ones, don't allow for the types of free market forces that make other areas of the economy most efficient because they are monopolies. By your analogy, plenty of private companies and individuals are making boatloads (or carloads rather) of money from the road system, but it is paid for with broader based taxes because we all benefit from the roads and to too closely meter their use would constrain the overall economy as people stop moving themselves and goods and services around as much.
Nearly the exact same argument holds true for the Internet. The benefit to the economy is that people are communicating and that goods and services are as freely flowing as possible. That is why net neutrality is so important and that municipally owned Fiber is starting to make sense with stagnating roll outs in the telecom controlled market which is more concerned about getting a cut of everyone's business than it is concerned about providing good service to everyone.
For years "The Telephone Company" used the government to actually make it illegal for anyone to do anything but circuit switched voice communications over the telephone network. Yes for a long while it was a crime to hook up a computer modem or anything other than equipment owned and manufactured by the telephone company... no modems, no answering machines, nothing. Eventually after years of bridling against such restrictions, the telephone companies would provide a very expensive ISDN service with up to 128kb of bandwidth. So, more often than not it is powerful companies using government regulation to stamp out competition to help them exercise market control and to pad margins.
Some people at the big telcos probably remember those days fondly when 'ma bell' was made king by the US government and every bit was sacred (and very expensive.)
And yet, Slashdot in general lauds the takeover of medicine by government.
Medicine was taken over by government decades ago. At this point I'd settle for them doing a better job at it and if that means admitting that the government is in control then so be it.
Personally, though I believe in the power of the purse... let people control the spending of their own healthcare dollars directly and you will get people making better decisions on cost and quality. And if people don't want to make their own decisions then lets pay for healthcare with an equitable income tax instead of taxing health insurance and medical devices and all these insidious taxes that appear to increase prices instead of letting people know what they are actually paying for.
No not wrong. What has been done before is 3D mapping using cameras. And even putting those cameras on a quad-rotor. And yes the first post about building the functionality into a quad-rotor was also a bit ignorant of recent work that has put cameras onto quad-rotors to do 3D mapping, but the underlying enthusiasm about what new capability is being provided is still valid if you consider it a bit less narrowly.
If you could just strap a smartphone that had a 3D camera onto a quad-rotor or ground robot and get 3D mapping capability "out of the box", then you have just reduced the cost and complexity (or DIY time) of 3D mapping down by an order of magnitude and that does open up new possibilities.
Yes, but this appears to just use a pair of cameras on the back of a regular phone. Most accurate 3D mapping for robotics is being done with expensive and more energy intensive (battery draining) LIDARs. Cameras are cheap and don't use a lot of power so using cameras could drive down the cost of mapping 3D environments or mapping an object for 3D printing if it is something that gets included in new phones... again sure it has been done, but not in something that could just be added as a feature to everyone's phone for a few bucks.
I think the point is that giving anyone (including the NSA) the NSA's current "duties" is a bad idea, but if the government still needs to spy on particular communications within the US as part of a criminal investigation, then it should be done using the government's police powers under a constitutionally valid warrant.
Only if there was an ongoing shooting war (not periodic acts of terrorism) should the government be using its war fighting authority to monitor domestic communications, which is essentially what it is doing now long after 9-11 and where we have been fighting wars overseas and not on US soil.
The fact that people in government cling to emergency powers long after the emergency is nothing new or novel in history. It just needs to be stopped no matter what label or acronym you put on the agency doing it.
So getting slapped down in court means they'll do it anyway?
The judge actually ruled that they could impose net neutrality, but only if they first labeled the companies as common carriers... which they most certainly are. All along the FCC should have been regulating these Internet network providers as telecommunication services and not merely as "Information Services". That designation made sense when companies like AOL were providing "Information Services" over existing telephone wires and thousands of ISPs were setting up shop with modem banks that used existing telecommunications networks for their communications, but it was always the case that the underlying infrastructure that connected these ISPs and connected the ISPs to the customers was regulated as a common carrier. Fast forward twenty years and we don't really have ISPs in the 1990s sense, at least not ones that are separate from the telecoms anymore.
and consequently would be willing to pay the ISP more for access
Personally I am willing to pay less for an already overpriced service. Google Fiber has demonstrated economical Gibabit speeds at the same prices that are being charged by Verizon FiOS and Comcast for much lower quality of service. What we have now is price gauging by local monopolies who are then using their market power to promote their own vertically integrated products and services. Yes the infrastructure has to be paid for, but we are already paying for it several times over what it actually costs to build, maintain and support.
And Troll sirens... I mean this is Slashdot, so it isn't exactly friendly territory for a monopolist telecom company that is trying to destroy Freedom on the Internet.
Pro-Comcast apologists point out that ESPN (owned by Disney) is so expensive and exerts so much market control, but fail to mention the fact that Comcast owned Weather Channel has actually been dropped by DirecTV because Comcast wanted too much money for it. So Comcast is providing its own example of what the world will be like when Content and Cable are vertically aligned. The Comcast and Time/Warner Merger means less choice for consumers. Where non-Comcast cable and satellite providers won't be able to afford Comcast's content and Comcast will disadvantage non-Comcast produced content.
And as far as I know Disney doesn't actually own any Cable Networks, but Comcast does have its own alternative sports channel that competes directly with ESPN. So Comcast can give its own content a leg up, placing it right next to ESPN in the lineup. All this combined market power is just too much and really should be restrained more effectively by regulators who seem asleep at the wheel.
I would mod up your post if I had mod points. We really should be able to mod up and down the original post. Since they are overhauling Slashdot.org anyway, I think now would be a good time to introduce this feature. Sure the owners/managers/admins might not always like the results, but it should give them a useful metric about what works, what doesn't and what the community finds useful for starting discussion.
You had me at fusion...
All those other things are all well and good, but are much more land and resource intensive than fusion or even fission. I think rooftop solar for running the fridge and lights or even for producing the energy to charge your car sounds great, but for the industrial scale power that will still be required nuclear is the way to go. Most of those other power production technologies sound more like jobs programs than efficient ways to produce and distribute fuel and energy.
If the degree doesn't prepare you to make a living, then of what value was it to the student? If a judge determines that a person can't pay back a student loan because of the circumstances of their life then so be it. The original justification for not allowing students to discharge student loans in bankruptcy was because students are just starting out and getting jobs in the first few years after college so letting them declare bankruptcy right after school would have undermined the point of the loan in the first place.. But if they are 5 years out and unable to get a job that can support their living expenses and a student loan then it should at least be partially discharged and I would put the University on the hook for part of the loan in that case.