Despite the performance issues, Python is still useful for a huge number of things. The performance issues are generally only a problem for HPC, high-throughput server programs, and high-end gaming. I would be less worried about that and more worried about what impact it will have on the students.
In this context, the main advantage of Python over C/C++ is that it's a relatively fun language and will be more likely to catch the attention of the students. It will allow them to take on more complex (and interesting) projects in a shorter time. It would also be more valuable to future non-programmers, who could use it for scripting.
On the other hand, it seems to me that those students that are going to be programmers in the future would be better off being exposed to things like static typing and pointers. C would be much better in this regard, so if the students are being tracked towards programming majors then it would probably be a better choice.
Perhaps. By that analogy, I'm just making sure he knows that he can get the old pieces he's looking for and some needed adapters at a specialty shop before he makes them on his own.
That way, if his objective is just to preserve the old set exactly (as he says in his journal), he can just get the old pieces working together with his new equipment. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, he can then make a billion copies of it so it never dies out.
Then he can spend his creative efforts on something new that will be more impressive when it's done. Time is a preciously limited resource and he can't spend the same time on two different projects.
That said, it's not like he has to follow my advice. If making a replica of the old game with modern tools is his passion then he should do that.
How do you know if it's "really not worth it", when you never even finished the game you said you were making?
I got to the point where it was essentially done. It took me two years, but it was a playable clone of the original game with networking capabilities. It's still out there if you know what to look for.
However, it lacked AI and it needed a huge amount of polish to be successful. The community that had gathered around the project was very demanding. They wanted polish, AI, and several new features.
I got worried about lawsuits if the project became more visible. I started to wish I had a made an original project I could show off without people always bringing up the copyright issues.
It was also a pain to work with the code, because I was a bit of a newbie when I started. It needed a redesign badly. However, because of the above factors I felt it would be a better use of my time to make something new.
It wasn't a total loss though. I learned a lot in the process (mostly what not to do), so I'm glad I did it. Still, it would have been better if I had something nice to show for all that effort.
In the video he specifically addresses these concerns.
It's not an exile. You can go outside into the surrounding sea and to the surface (either by swimming there directly or taking a vehicle).
Not everything needs to be made underwater. Trade between land and sea will be important. The goal is merely to make that capacity available. Furthermore, even if everything is made underwater it won't be a single habitat that is self-sufficient, but rather a whole community of habitats. Friends, jobs, shopping, etc. will be available within the undersea community.
It would certainly be very different, but I'm sure some people will like that a lot. Others may be willing to put up with the differences for other reasons, such as getting away from a government regime they strongly disagree with.
The lack of sunshine issue you mention is a concern, but it does not seem insurmountable. Perhaps a sun lamp and vitamin D supplements would do the trick?
I don't understand why you want to create an exact port of the original game.
If you want to preserve the original game, then use an emulator like DOSBox on the original executables. It will save you a load of time.
If you want to popularize the game, then contact the owners to see if they'll sell it to you or put it under an open license. That way you can redistribute the game for use on emulators without legal worries.
If you want to make something new, then you should really put your energies into a new game inspired by the old one.
By the way, I once made a game that was a clone of a game on a portable system (with the intent of adding Internet play). It was an unexpectedly massive undertaking and by the end I was wondering why I was pouring so much energy into a derivative project that I might have to worry about lawsuits over when I finished it. It's really not worth it. You'll feel better in the end if you spend that time making something new that you can proudly take credit for.
A good teacher is extremely valuable and it certainly makes the process a lot easier.
However, the teacher is less important than the student in determining the quality of their education. Compared to books, a teacher adds expert interactivity to the learning experience which is nice but not essential. A good teacher can also improve the quality of their students by sparking interest in them, but it's ultimately up to the students to learn.
Additionally, being able to teach yourself effectively is a crucial skill for a programmer. You can't rely on teachers to always be there, and sometimes you just have to sit down and learn something from a book (or even worse without one).
I've learned many of my most valuable lessons from books and from my successes and failures. Books in particular are the key to effective self-teaching of an established skill. They contain much of the wisdom that a teacher would impart upon you, and are often written by the top experts on the subject instead of whoever is available to teach the equivalent class. Of course, book learning by itself is a very poor way to attain a skill. A self-taught student must combine what was learned from the book with experience doing it themselves. The trials of experience are the exams of the self-taught. One more ingredient to add in when possible is to find a guru that one can go to for help. They fill the same role as the teacher, but without the formalities or the regular class times.
The first language I learned was Javascript. Well, actually I tried to learn QBASIC but it was just so horrible that I lost interest and nearly didn't become a programmer. I don't think any of that made a difference in the long run.
What's really important is learning more than just the language you started with. Learning many different ways to express yourself will really get you thinking about problems in a way that is not tethered to the specific syntax of your favorite language (not to mention introduce you to many different features that you might otherwise be ignorant of). Additionally, truly learning those extra languages will generate a lot of mental exercise. How you've spent the bulk of your time is far more important than where you started out.
Essentially, the author is trying to rationalize his start with BASIC by turning into some sort of advantage...either that or he's joking.
In the long run, socialized medicine in other countries will begin to encounter the same expense problems as the US if they cannot curb the growth of their own health care expenses.
By the way, from that second article: I wonder why US health care spending surged during the 70's oil crisis, the late 80's-early 90's recession, and just after the tech bubble burst. There's probably an important relation there.
The US is a massive country. It has a low population density. Geometrically it is roughly rectangular, but the skinny part of the rectangle is very wide, leading to a large area compared to its perimeter. Politically, there is a great deal of internal division but the smaller divisions are relatively weak. This is a horrible combination for building infrastructure.
The size, low population density, and geometry of the country mean that everything is spread out. Even worse, everything is spread out in all directions. Attaining coverage of a significant fraction of the population is a massive project and it should come as no surprise that new infrastructure technologies are slow to be implemented in this situation.
Politically, the internal divisions mean that not everyone gets on board with big projects, but the weakness of the smaller divisions mean that while they have the power to be obstructionist when they disagree, those divisions that agree are generally unable to take the initiative and build the infrastructure themselves.
All of these problems have been clearly visible in every major infrastructure project in the history of the US. The US highway system was a massive and expensive project and many local governments were obstructionist. Cell phones took far longer to catch on in the US because poor geographic coverage meant that cell phones were unreliable for a longer time. etc. Every time the system needs a major overhaul due to new technology a whole new infrastructure needs to be built, and the same problems apply.
These problems also harm other infrastructure proposals that have worked well in other countries. For instance, rail works well in countries like Japan but (re)building the rail infrastructure in the US would be a massive undertaking.
If you look at countries that have excellent infrastructure, you'll notice that they have the opposite attributes. Japan is a great example. They are a small country with a very high population density. 10% of their population is even more densely packed into their capital city. Their nation has a very elongated shape. Even better, the center of the country is mountainous and nearly all of the population lives along their very long coastline, which means that when building infrastructure they can focus on that area. Although they are split into four islands, they are all close enough to be connected by bridges and tunnels. They have a very strong national government.
With all this taken into account, I find it highly unsurprising that the US is lagging in this area. The bottom line is that infrastructure will take longer to build and be more expensive to operate in the US than other countries because we have to build (and maintain) more of it to achieve the same effect.
The greed problem you talk about in your post is paradoxically mostly caused by the government today. In a healthy capitalist society, degradation of quality or restriction on freedom of use would cause the company to suffer after some (relatively short) length of time as their customers leave for competitors that offer better goods with fewer restrictions at a lower cost. However, quality can degrade safely for a company when the government will bail out failing companies. Freedom will degrade when the government gives out and enforces eternal monopolies on intangible ideas (well, freedom for everyone except the owners of the ideas).
To fix these things we simply need to make it illegal for the government to give out corporate welfare and drastically reduce the time that people are granted a monopoly on their ideas. I doubt either will happen for political reasons.
It should be noted that although the government causes these problems, it is essential to maintaining the same balance. Without it, monopolies would start to form on their own and fiercely guard their territory against competitors with tactics that good government wards against. So we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
The current problem arises from the watchmen being in collusion with those that they are charged with watching, but how do we prevent that? If we make watchers that watch the watchers then who watches them? Even if we form triangles, who's to prevent them all from becoming good buddies with each other? Rules and institutions that are meant to prevent this will eventually bend and be broken by the people that implement them. When it comes down to it, these are age-old problems stretching back to the time Ancient Greece and beyond. Good governance is a precious and fleeting thing and no present system can reliably deliver it in the long term. Much like other problems that have always been part of the human condition (like aging and death), we are powerless to truly fix them today no matter how much we'd like to. Perhaps in the future human knowledge and technology will improve to the point where we can finally fix such problems for good. For now though, we simply need to do the best we can with what we have and accept that there will be serious problems with the results.
Their lawn actually looks pretty good in that photo. It's got to be pretty low maintenance, and it saves them water money too. All of these things are desirable attributes.
I'm not an environmentalist myself, but it seems to me that their lawn is a very good fit for their local environment. It is well designed and integrated.
I wonder why the city is freaking out so badly. Do they consider it a fire hazard? Did the couple piss off somebody at city hall? Is the city administration just very strict about implementing its regulations?
In general, pharma companies benefit from heavy use of antibiotics: immediately because they can sell more, but also in the long run because it makes their old products (for which they no longer hold a government-issued monopoly) obsolete faster, improving the market for newly developed drugs that fix old problems.
On the other hand, when it comes to these gram-negative bacteria the above idea does not hold true. They can't benefit from it if they don't have a product to sell that fixes the problem.
Well, I have to admit that there's an electronic security hole that will be difficult or even impossible to close completely, but it's not what you're talking about. SCADA controllers and such will not be connected to an electronic network accessible from Earth, even in NASA's control room (at least for actuation, possibly for view).
The real hole is the robots, as they are remote controlled. If a hacker can get a robot to obey its commands then they will have a physical presence in the lunar base, which will be very difficult to guard against fully, and especially if the robot in question occupies an important position (such as manning the control room).
On the other hand, such an attack can be made nigh impossible to successfully carry out. I'm not a security expert, but here are some ideas I have. The system will be split into many different independent bases, and taking over one base will probably not be particularly useful while taking over several will take a large team of coordinated attackers. Signals coming from areas of Earth other than designated control points could be ignored, though of course this does not protect against the control points being subverted...but these control points could be disconnected like Earth-based power plants. Any system that can should be completely automated to avoid subversion, and such systems can ignore potentially dangerous control inputs (a good strategy would be to have them shut down in such an event, so they can be shut down and repaired if they themselves go haywire but preventing easy subversion). The transmitter could require a constant signal from the base station on Earth, causing it to shut down automatically if it is directed elsewhere even by accident. Optionally, a similar secondary system could be required to keep the entire plant up and running, and stopping that signal would cause the plant to SCRAM.
By the time a potential hacker could get in and make enough changes to control the system to fire on ground targets, the people on the ground would have had enough time to figure out what they were doing and take back control. Needless to say, the legal penalties for such an attempt would be extremely steep.
Even if someone was able to completely subvert a single base and alter it to fire its beam on ground targets...it would not be all that impressive a weapon. By the time the beam reaches earth it is something like 10km in diameter at a low energy density (about 2 times the OSHA standard for indefinite workplace exposure). It would not be powerful enough to kill people or destroy buildings. That said, several bases could combine their beams to cause more significant damage. If I were you, I'd be more concerned about the possibility of it being used as a weapon by the legitimate owners...
That said, there's no mature technology for doing this kind of processing of regolith and, even when there is, it's unlikely to be something that could be tended by robots or weigh so little that it can be sent up on an existing booster.
Indeed, this is the main technical challenge for such a project. Is it possible with present-day technology at a reasonable weight or not?
The robot part can definitely be handled because it doesn't require AI, as they can be remotely controlled by human operators and any AI will merely simplify the process.
The weight issue seems more promising than the solar satellite idea, which requires millions of tons of material lifted into orbit to cover our energy needs. While there is still no guarantee that we can develop refineries and factories that can meet the needs of such a project at a reasonable overall cost and weight, it should be noted that the project does not need to be lifted in large indivisible pieces. Unlike manned space flight which needs a heavy lifter booster to carry all the essential equipment up in one go, the factories can be lifted in many small pieces in many smaller flights and assembled on-site by the human-controlled robots. The biggest single piece may be an assembler robot.
Additionally, the returns on the investment could be staggering. Let's say for the sake of discussion that the US carried out the program at a cost of $1 trillion USD (NASA's 2010 budget for 53 years or 7 International Space Stations) and it delivered 5TW of power (covering roughly 0.25%-0.5% of the moon's surface area). At current electricity rates it would generate something like $400 billion USD a month, which would mean it would pay for itself in roughly three months. After three years of operation it would have generated enough revenue to pay off the US public debt (what other trillion dollar program can even consider doing this?). Afterwards there would be a trillion dollar surplus even with taxes reduced to 0%.
Of course realistically it would cause energy prices to plummet, but the overall benefits would be on the same order of magnitude. The above is merely meant to illustrate the enormity of impact a success would have.
Also, the above scenario is probably quite pessimistic, as $1 trillion is pretty insane for a space program (would a moon factory really cost seven times as much as the ISS to develop, build, and launch?) and after the concept was proven it would keep expanding beyond its initial capacity as long as it was economical to do so. Getting an accurate figure will require more in-depth research.
If such extreme returns are reasonably possible, then shouldn't we at least consider the idea very seriously? It's not like we need to start with the part where we lift the equipment to the moon: an in-depth study would iron out the details and if it still looks promising then an Earth-based demonstration of the technology would remove all doubt before we start pouring billions into launches.
In addition to sending human-controlled robots to the moon, lets send along refineries and factories to produce solar panels.
Yeah, right. Back around 1985, I went to a conference where some AI professors were mouthing off about putting self-replicating factories on the Moon within 20 years. I asked "How soon can you do it in Arizona?" They didn't like that.
This idea does not require AI or self-replication. The intelligence could be provided by humans remotely controlling the robots on the moon.
While self-replication would be nice because it would allow the project to grow without bound at a very low cost, it is not needed as long as we can lift enough robots, bases, and other materials that can't be created on-site to the moon. Self-replication might even be realistically achievable with something like a fab lab staffed by remote controlled robots.
I think a trial run in Arizona is a fantastic idea. If we couldn't get it working in a desert on Earth then there would be no point in spending all that money lifting it to the moon.
In addition to sending human-controlled robots to the moon, lets send along refineries and factories to produce solar panels. Then we can build thousands of square kilometers of the stuff on the moon from local materials at a very low cost and beam the energy back to Earth. Covering roughly 1% of the moon's surface area with present-day solar tech would yield on the order of 20TW, worth tens of trillions at today's energy rates and capable of meeting the world's energy needs.
I'm not sure how good this paper is, but it has some more details on the basic idea: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i28_kumar.html Certainly a more detailed study would be needed before really doing this to ensure there weren't any show-stopping problems (such as the one DOE/NASA undertook on the solar satellite idea, where they concluded it was not economically worthwhile with the lifting costs http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/doe.htm).
This path would be even better for science too, as it would create a permanent human presence on the moon instead of probably being a one-off mission. There would also be interest in creating a self-sufficient lunar economy so that Earth wouldn't have to keep supplying it. A robotic lunar colony capable of launching solar satellites and other craft would be of great value to both science and the economy.
We can do this with today's technology, as it's essentially a different approach to the old solar satellite idea.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course they acquire new abilities as they progress, that's what education is all about.
Despite the performance issues, Python is still useful for a huge number of things. The performance issues are generally only a problem for HPC, high-throughput server programs, and high-end gaming. I would be less worried about that and more worried about what impact it will have on the students.
In this context, the main advantage of Python over C/C++ is that it's a relatively fun language and will be more likely to catch the attention of the students. It will allow them to take on more complex (and interesting) projects in a shorter time. It would also be more valuable to future non-programmers, who could use it for scripting.
On the other hand, it seems to me that those students that are going to be programmers in the future would be better off being exposed to things like static typing and pointers. C would be much better in this regard, so if the students are being tracked towards programming majors then it would probably be a better choice.
Perhaps. By that analogy, I'm just making sure he knows that he can get the old pieces he's looking for and some needed adapters at a specialty shop before he makes them on his own.
That way, if his objective is just to preserve the old set exactly (as he says in his journal), he can just get the old pieces working together with his new equipment. Thanks to the magic of the Internet, he can then make a billion copies of it so it never dies out.
Then he can spend his creative efforts on something new that will be more impressive when it's done. Time is a preciously limited resource and he can't spend the same time on two different projects.
That said, it's not like he has to follow my advice. If making a replica of the old game with modern tools is his passion then he should do that.
How do you know if it's "really not worth it", when you never even finished the game you said you were making?
I got to the point where it was essentially done. It took me two years, but it was a playable clone of the original game with networking capabilities. It's still out there if you know what to look for.
However, it lacked AI and it needed a huge amount of polish to be successful. The community that had gathered around the project was very demanding. They wanted polish, AI, and several new features.
I got worried about lawsuits if the project became more visible. I started to wish I had a made an original project I could show off without people always bringing up the copyright issues.
It was also a pain to work with the code, because I was a bit of a newbie when I started. It needed a redesign badly. However, because of the above factors I felt it would be a better use of my time to make something new.
It wasn't a total loss though. I learned a lot in the process (mostly what not to do), so I'm glad I did it. Still, it would have been better if I had something nice to show for all that effort.
In the video he specifically addresses these concerns.
It's not an exile. You can go outside into the surrounding sea and to the surface (either by swimming there directly or taking a vehicle).
Not everything needs to be made underwater. Trade between land and sea will be important. The goal is merely to make that capacity available. Furthermore, even if everything is made underwater it won't be a single habitat that is self-sufficient, but rather a whole community of habitats. Friends, jobs, shopping, etc. will be available within the undersea community.
It would certainly be very different, but I'm sure some people will like that a lot. Others may be willing to put up with the differences for other reasons, such as getting away from a government regime they strongly disagree with.
The lack of sunshine issue you mention is a concern, but it does not seem insurmountable. Perhaps a sun lamp and vitamin D supplements would do the trick?
I don't understand why you want to create an exact port of the original game.
If you want to preserve the original game, then use an emulator like DOSBox on the original executables. It will save you a load of time.
If you want to popularize the game, then contact the owners to see if they'll sell it to you or put it under an open license. That way you can redistribute the game for use on emulators without legal worries.
If you want to make something new, then you should really put your energies into a new game inspired by the old one.
By the way, I once made a game that was a clone of a game on a portable system (with the intent of adding Internet play). It was an unexpectedly massive undertaking and by the end I was wondering why I was pouring so much energy into a derivative project that I might have to worry about lawsuits over when I finished it. It's really not worth it. You'll feel better in the end if you spend that time making something new that you can proudly take credit for.
A good teacher is extremely valuable and it certainly makes the process a lot easier.
However, the teacher is less important than the student in determining the quality of their education. Compared to books, a teacher adds expert interactivity to the learning experience which is nice but not essential. A good teacher can also improve the quality of their students by sparking interest in them, but it's ultimately up to the students to learn.
Additionally, being able to teach yourself effectively is a crucial skill for a programmer. You can't rely on teachers to always be there, and sometimes you just have to sit down and learn something from a book (or even worse without one).
I've learned many of my most valuable lessons from books and from my successes and failures. Books in particular are the key to effective self-teaching of an established skill. They contain much of the wisdom that a teacher would impart upon you, and are often written by the top experts on the subject instead of whoever is available to teach the equivalent class. Of course, book learning by itself is a very poor way to attain a skill. A self-taught student must combine what was learned from the book with experience doing it themselves. The trials of experience are the exams of the self-taught. One more ingredient to add in when possible is to find a guru that one can go to for help. They fill the same role as the teacher, but without the formalities or the regular class times.
The first language I learned was Javascript. Well, actually I tried to learn QBASIC but it was just so horrible that I lost interest and nearly didn't become a programmer. I don't think any of that made a difference in the long run.
What's really important is learning more than just the language you started with. Learning many different ways to express yourself will really get you thinking about problems in a way that is not tethered to the specific syntax of your favorite language (not to mention introduce you to many different features that you might otherwise be ignorant of). Additionally, truly learning those extra languages will generate a lot of mental exercise. How you've spent the bulk of your time is far more important than where you started out.
Essentially, the author is trying to rationalize his start with BASIC by turning into some sort of advantage...either that or he's joking.
I'd like to point out that health care costs are growing exponentially in almost all developed nations, and in fact faster than GDP which is already exponential. The US simply started higher than most and has grown more strongly than the others that started out near the same level. http://www.kff.org/insurance/snapshot/chcm010307oth.cfm http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/08/us-health-spending-breaks-from-the-pack/
In the long run, socialized medicine in other countries will begin to encounter the same expense problems as the US if they cannot curb the growth of their own health care expenses.
By the way, from that second article: I wonder why US health care spending surged during the 70's oil crisis, the late 80's-early 90's recession, and just after the tech bubble burst. There's probably an important relation there.
The US is a massive country. It has a low population density. Geometrically it is roughly rectangular, but the skinny part of the rectangle is very wide, leading to a large area compared to its perimeter. Politically, there is a great deal of internal division but the smaller divisions are relatively weak. This is a horrible combination for building infrastructure.
The size, low population density, and geometry of the country mean that everything is spread out. Even worse, everything is spread out in all directions. Attaining coverage of a significant fraction of the population is a massive project and it should come as no surprise that new infrastructure technologies are slow to be implemented in this situation.
Politically, the internal divisions mean that not everyone gets on board with big projects, but the weakness of the smaller divisions mean that while they have the power to be obstructionist when they disagree, those divisions that agree are generally unable to take the initiative and build the infrastructure themselves.
All of these problems have been clearly visible in every major infrastructure project in the history of the US. The US highway system was a massive and expensive project and many local governments were obstructionist. Cell phones took far longer to catch on in the US because poor geographic coverage meant that cell phones were unreliable for a longer time. etc. Every time the system needs a major overhaul due to new technology a whole new infrastructure needs to be built, and the same problems apply.
These problems also harm other infrastructure proposals that have worked well in other countries. For instance, rail works well in countries like Japan but (re)building the rail infrastructure in the US would be a massive undertaking.
If you look at countries that have excellent infrastructure, you'll notice that they have the opposite attributes. Japan is a great example. They are a small country with a very high population density. 10% of their population is even more densely packed into their capital city. Their nation has a very elongated shape. Even better, the center of the country is mountainous and nearly all of the population lives along their very long coastline, which means that when building infrastructure they can focus on that area. Although they are split into four islands, they are all close enough to be connected by bridges and tunnels. They have a very strong national government.
With all this taken into account, I find it highly unsurprising that the US is lagging in this area. The bottom line is that infrastructure will take longer to build and be more expensive to operate in the US than other countries because we have to build (and maintain) more of it to achieve the same effect.
The greed problem you talk about in your post is paradoxically mostly caused by the government today. In a healthy capitalist society, degradation of quality or restriction on freedom of use would cause the company to suffer after some (relatively short) length of time as their customers leave for competitors that offer better goods with fewer restrictions at a lower cost. However, quality can degrade safely for a company when the government will bail out failing companies. Freedom will degrade when the government gives out and enforces eternal monopolies on intangible ideas (well, freedom for everyone except the owners of the ideas).
To fix these things we simply need to make it illegal for the government to give out corporate welfare and drastically reduce the time that people are granted a monopoly on their ideas. I doubt either will happen for political reasons.
It should be noted that although the government causes these problems, it is essential to maintaining the same balance. Without it, monopolies would start to form on their own and fiercely guard their territory against competitors with tactics that good government wards against. So we're damned if we do and damned if we don't.
The current problem arises from the watchmen being in collusion with those that they are charged with watching, but how do we prevent that? If we make watchers that watch the watchers then who watches them? Even if we form triangles, who's to prevent them all from becoming good buddies with each other? Rules and institutions that are meant to prevent this will eventually bend and be broken by the people that implement them. When it comes down to it, these are age-old problems stretching back to the time Ancient Greece and beyond. Good governance is a precious and fleeting thing and no present system can reliably deliver it in the long term. Much like other problems that have always been part of the human condition (like aging and death), we are powerless to truly fix them today no matter how much we'd like to. Perhaps in the future human knowledge and technology will improve to the point where we can finally fix such problems for good. For now though, we simply need to do the best we can with what we have and accept that there will be serious problems with the results.
Their lawn actually looks pretty good in that photo. It's got to be pretty low maintenance, and it saves them water money too. All of these things are desirable attributes.
I'm not an environmentalist myself, but it seems to me that their lawn is a very good fit for their local environment. It is well designed and integrated.
I wonder why the city is freaking out so badly. Do they consider it a fire hazard? Did the couple piss off somebody at city hall? Is the city administration just very strict about implementing its regulations?
In general, pharma companies benefit from heavy use of antibiotics: immediately because they can sell more, but also in the long run because it makes their old products (for which they no longer hold a government-issued monopoly) obsolete faster, improving the market for newly developed drugs that fix old problems.
On the other hand, when it comes to these gram-negative bacteria the above idea does not hold true. They can't benefit from it if they don't have a product to sell that fixes the problem.
Well, I have to admit that there's an electronic security hole that will be difficult or even impossible to close completely, but it's not what you're talking about. SCADA controllers and such will not be connected to an electronic network accessible from Earth, even in NASA's control room (at least for actuation, possibly for view).
The real hole is the robots, as they are remote controlled. If a hacker can get a robot to obey its commands then they will have a physical presence in the lunar base, which will be very difficult to guard against fully, and especially if the robot in question occupies an important position (such as manning the control room).
On the other hand, such an attack can be made nigh impossible to successfully carry out. I'm not a security expert, but here are some ideas I have. The system will be split into many different independent bases, and taking over one base will probably not be particularly useful while taking over several will take a large team of coordinated attackers. Signals coming from areas of Earth other than designated control points could be ignored, though of course this does not protect against the control points being subverted...but these control points could be disconnected like Earth-based power plants. Any system that can should be completely automated to avoid subversion, and such systems can ignore potentially dangerous control inputs (a good strategy would be to have them shut down in such an event, so they can be shut down and repaired if they themselves go haywire but preventing easy subversion). The transmitter could require a constant signal from the base station on Earth, causing it to shut down automatically if it is directed elsewhere even by accident. Optionally, a similar secondary system could be required to keep the entire plant up and running, and stopping that signal would cause the plant to SCRAM.
By the time a potential hacker could get in and make enough changes to control the system to fire on ground targets, the people on the ground would have had enough time to figure out what they were doing and take back control. Needless to say, the legal penalties for such an attempt would be extremely steep.
Even if someone was able to completely subvert a single base and alter it to fire its beam on ground targets...it would not be all that impressive a weapon. By the time the beam reaches earth it is something like 10km in diameter at a low energy density (about 2 times the OSHA standard for indefinite workplace exposure). It would not be powerful enough to kill people or destroy buildings. That said, several bases could combine their beams to cause more significant damage. If I were you, I'd be more concerned about the possibility of it being used as a weapon by the legitimate owners...
That said, there's no mature technology for doing this kind of processing of regolith and, even when there is, it's unlikely to be something that could be tended by robots or weigh so little that it can be sent up on an existing booster.
Indeed, this is the main technical challenge for such a project. Is it possible with present-day technology at a reasonable weight or not?
The robot part can definitely be handled because it doesn't require AI, as they can be remotely controlled by human operators and any AI will merely simplify the process.
The weight issue seems more promising than the solar satellite idea, which requires millions of tons of material lifted into orbit to cover our energy needs. While there is still no guarantee that we can develop refineries and factories that can meet the needs of such a project at a reasonable overall cost and weight, it should be noted that the project does not need to be lifted in large indivisible pieces. Unlike manned space flight which needs a heavy lifter booster to carry all the essential equipment up in one go, the factories can be lifted in many small pieces in many smaller flights and assembled on-site by the human-controlled robots. The biggest single piece may be an assembler robot.
Additionally, the returns on the investment could be staggering. Let's say for the sake of discussion that the US carried out the program at a cost of $1 trillion USD (NASA's 2010 budget for 53 years or 7 International Space Stations) and it delivered 5TW of power (covering roughly 0.25%-0.5% of the moon's surface area). At current electricity rates it would generate something like $400 billion USD a month, which would mean it would pay for itself in roughly three months. After three years of operation it would have generated enough revenue to pay off the US public debt (what other trillion dollar program can even consider doing this?). Afterwards there would be a trillion dollar surplus even with taxes reduced to 0%.
Of course realistically it would cause energy prices to plummet, but the overall benefits would be on the same order of magnitude. The above is merely meant to illustrate the enormity of impact a success would have.
Also, the above scenario is probably quite pessimistic, as $1 trillion is pretty insane for a space program (would a moon factory really cost seven times as much as the ISS to develop, build, and launch?) and after the concept was proven it would keep expanding beyond its initial capacity as long as it was economical to do so. Getting an accurate figure will require more in-depth research.
If such extreme returns are reasonably possible, then shouldn't we at least consider the idea very seriously? It's not like we need to start with the part where we lift the equipment to the moon: an in-depth study would iron out the details and if it still looks promising then an Earth-based demonstration of the technology would remove all doubt before we start pouring billions into launches.
In addition to sending human-controlled robots to the moon, lets send along refineries and factories to produce solar panels.
Yeah, right. Back around 1985, I went to a conference where some AI professors were mouthing off about putting self-replicating factories on the Moon within 20 years. I asked "How soon can you do it in Arizona?" They didn't like that.
This idea does not require AI or self-replication. The intelligence could be provided by humans remotely controlling the robots on the moon.
While self-replication would be nice because it would allow the project to grow without bound at a very low cost, it is not needed as long as we can lift enough robots, bases, and other materials that can't be created on-site to the moon. Self-replication might even be realistically achievable with something like a fab lab staffed by remote controlled robots.
I think a trial run in Arizona is a fantastic idea. If we couldn't get it working in a desert on Earth then there would be no point in spending all that money lifting it to the moon.
In addition to sending human-controlled robots to the moon, lets send along refineries and factories to produce solar panels. Then we can build thousands of square kilometers of the stuff on the moon from local materials at a very low cost and beam the energy back to Earth. Covering roughly 1% of the moon's surface area with present-day solar tech would yield on the order of 20TW, worth tens of trillions at today's energy rates and capable of meeting the world's energy needs.
I'm not sure how good this paper is, but it has some more details on the basic idea: http://www.acm.org/ubiquity/views/v7i28_kumar.html Certainly a more detailed study would be needed before really doing this to ensure there weren't any show-stopping problems (such as the one DOE/NASA undertook on the solar satellite idea, where they concluded it was not economically worthwhile with the lifting costs http://www.nss.org/settlement/ssp/library/doe.htm).
This path would be even better for science too, as it would create a permanent human presence on the moon instead of probably being a one-off mission. There would also be interest in creating a self-sufficient lunar economy so that Earth wouldn't have to keep supplying it. A robotic lunar colony capable of launching solar satellites and other craft would be of great value to both science and the economy.
We can do this with today's technology, as it's essentially a different approach to the old solar satellite idea.