There's a black hole. Quantum vacuum fluctuations create a particle-antiparticle pair near it, both with positive mass. One falls in, the other escapes. Thanks to quantum weirdnesses, the mass for the escaping one gets stolen from the black hole. Half the time it will be the antiparticle escaping, and half the time the particle. (Overall, though, they'll mostly do the same thing and both fall toward it or away from it, and annihilate each other with no net effect. But on the rare occasion when they get created in the right spot with the right energy, one will fall in and the other will escape.)
Yes, but what if instead of having him covered or not covered, you had the option of having him covered with a low deductible vs a high deductible? That's certainly one I'd consider; no need for the good deductible on things I'm exceedingly unlikely to get.
It's not the end, but it is the first step on that road.
How long until we see companies that offer policies that don't cover specific highly testable conditions? Sure, they can't test for the condition, but you can -- and choose the policy accordingly. Then the "generic" policies cost more because all the people *with* the genetic markers buy those, and the people without buy the other policies. If the consumer has access to the information, they will try to use it to reduce their insurance costs. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, useful information like this *will* get used.
I predict the next law will be one mandating that any health insurance policy cover certain sorts of conditions, specifically to prevent the above. The collection of patches to the insurance system will grow and grow, until it finally becomes untenable and something major changes.
At some point, there is a fundamental problem. Even after you magically remove all the various waste, corruption, and frivolous lawsuits, you get to a point where we know how to spend more money keeping people alive in the face of nast diseases than we can afford to, at a national level. When that happens, you have to either start rationing healthcare in some fashion, or the country *will* go bankrupt.
That's not to say we shouldn't have national healthcare; I think it would be an improvement, and that we should do it. But it is in no way a complete answer to the problems.
The relevant ones aren't the particles that fall in, but the ones that leave. Externally, they appear to have been created from nothing; but the mass has to come from somewhere, and it comes from the black hole. The details of why are not something I fully understand (IANAP either).
Antiparticles have positive mass, but opposite charge (and in the case of things like proton vs antiproton, the internal quarks are changed to antiquarks, etc). So yes, the black hole does lose mass, even though half of the radiation is antimatter.
Well, large black holes don't evaporate -- even the cosmic background radiation is enough to add more mass than they lose to Hawking radiation. The CMB is at ~2.7K, and a 1 solar mass black hole has a temperature of 60nK from the Hawking radiation.
So, what have you done today to help make science fiction closer to reality?
I worked on the board layout for my rocket test stand data acquisition system. Sure, it's far removed from a trip to Mars, but you have to start somewhere. I'll bet you can't even say that much.
If you're unwilling to put forth any effort, quit bitching at those who are.
You could, of course, update the technology a bit: Rosetta Project. High density, readable with a high quality microscope, and partially readable with the naked eye -- the spiral of shrinking text should make the usage instructions obvious: "get a magnifying glass, there's more here."
Generally such concentrations have a negative impact on the total amount of wealth created in the transaction. Look at the economics of monopolies for a good example -- they move some of the economic surplus from consumer surplus to producer surplus, but there is less total. Combine that with sublinear value of wealth (the first $1000 is worth more to me than the next $1000), and you find that injustice to concentrate wealth is not only most likely to hurt any one individual, but will do so on average as well (even after you account for the one "lottery winner").
Ostensibly, we're trying to promote freedom and democracy in Iraq. We cannot do that while being unwilling practice our freedoms and exercise our democratic power back home.
You cannot simultaneously save and destroy the village.
It sounds to me like he is saying that subpoena is mildly burdensome, and that it would not be granted if the information was simply useful and not mandatory for the lawsuit. The same amount of burden could very reasonably be seen as reasonable and unreasonable in two different contexts, depending on how much the parties to the suit actually needed the information.
The interesting thing about the Great Filter argument isn't that it restates the Drake equation; it's the corollary that it proceeds to draw. If, from the observed lack of other races out there (not great data, obviously, but not zero data either) you conclude that there aren't all that many, then you're forced to draw one of three conclusions. It might be that life evolving to where we are today is hard. Or, it might be that we couldn't detect advanced neighbors for one reason or another. Or lastly, our own life expectancy is short -- this, of course, being the interesting one. It's also a potentially very important result in terms of our long-term survival -- if we believe our odds are poor, perhaps we should be putting more effort into improving them.
It's a hard problem, no doubt about it. But open source vs closed source is completely irrelevant if you're the government trying to perform an audit -- you get access to it either way.
I'm not trying to argue that open source isn't a good thing; I think this stuff should be open source. All I'm saying is that "proprietary software can't be audited" is a specious argument when talking about government agencies with national security concerns.
Very true. All I'm saying is, open source doesn't help much here -- the government has the same level of access for auditing purposes anyway. (Well, it might help find bugs, but the concern is about bugs that aren't present in the source but appear in the manufacturing.)
How much more tax money are you willing to spend? 10x? 100x? What about for the stuff that's important, but not national security important? Are you willing to live with the fact that the results will cost 100x as much and be 1/10th the speed? The government has been there and done that, at least for some sorts of components, and decided it couldn't afford to. Now, they might be wrong, but they might not be. It might be cheaper and easier to attempt to make the commercial gear secure, realize that won't completely work, and deal with the occasional problem -- even at a national security level. After all, there are national security implications to being unable to afford as much equipment as you can make use of... and it's entirely possible it's better to have the occasional huge security problem than to have nothing worth securing.
The right solution is defense in depth, multiple vendors, and a whole host of other, more mundane techniques. As long as one security hole, even widespread, can cause only limited damage, it's possible to contemplate dealing with it when it appears.
If you're a government customer with national security concerns, you can audit the source to commercial products as well. It's frequently a requirement, and the government is too large a customer. Of course, the code stays closed to the general public.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a black hole. Quantum vacuum fluctuations create a particle-antiparticle pair near it, both with positive mass. One falls in, the other escapes. Thanks to quantum weirdnesses, the mass for the escaping one gets stolen from the black hole. Half the time it will be the antiparticle escaping, and half the time the particle. (Overall, though, they'll mostly do the same thing and both fall toward it or away from it, and annihilate each other with no net effect. But on the rare occasion when they get created in the right spot with the right energy, one will fall in and the other will escape.)
Of course, you could just read the Wikipedia article.
Yes, but what if instead of having him covered or not covered, you had the option of having him covered with a low deductible vs a high deductible? That's certainly one I'd consider; no need for the good deductible on things I'm exceedingly unlikely to get.
It's not the end, but it is the first step on that road.
How long until we see companies that offer policies that don't cover specific highly testable conditions? Sure, they can't test for the condition, but you can -- and choose the policy accordingly. Then the "generic" policies cost more because all the people *with* the genetic markers buy those, and the people without buy the other policies. If the consumer has access to the information, they will try to use it to reduce their insurance costs. You can't put the genie back in the bottle, useful information like this *will* get used.
I predict the next law will be one mandating that any health insurance policy cover certain sorts of conditions, specifically to prevent the above. The collection of patches to the insurance system will grow and grow, until it finally becomes untenable and something major changes.
Talk about experiments you don't want to try at home!
At some point, there is a fundamental problem. Even after you magically remove all the various waste, corruption, and frivolous lawsuits, you get to a point where we know how to spend more money keeping people alive in the face of nast diseases than we can afford to, at a national level. When that happens, you have to either start rationing healthcare in some fashion, or the country *will* go bankrupt.
That's not to say we shouldn't have national healthcare; I think it would be an improvement, and that we should do it. But it is in no way a complete answer to the problems.
How do you know it didn't work? Perhaps those jets will be reconstructed ;)
The relevant ones aren't the particles that fall in, but the ones that leave. Externally, they appear to have been created from nothing; but the mass has to come from somewhere, and it comes from the black hole. The details of why are not something I fully understand (IANAP either).
Antiparticles have positive mass, but opposite charge (and in the case of things like proton vs antiproton, the internal quarks are changed to antiquarks, etc). So yes, the black hole does lose mass, even though half of the radiation is antimatter.
Physicists have black holes, mathematicians have the Hairy Ball Theorem.
Well, large black holes don't evaporate -- even the cosmic background radiation is enough to add more mass than they lose to Hawking radiation. The CMB is at ~2.7K, and a 1 solar mass black hole has a temperature of 60nK from the Hawking radiation.
That's one of my all time favorite short stories. Up there with Asimov's The Last Question.
Fair enough, you have to start somewhere. But given your own results, what makes you think the physicists aren't making progress at a reasonable pace?
So, what have you done today to help make science fiction closer to reality?
I worked on the board layout for my rocket test stand data acquisition system. Sure, it's far removed from a trip to Mars, but you have to start somewhere. I'll bet you can't even say that much.
If you're unwilling to put forth any effort, quit bitching at those who are.
You could, of course, update the technology a bit: Rosetta Project. High density, readable with a high quality microscope, and partially readable with the naked eye -- the spiral of shrinking text should make the usage instructions obvious: "get a magnifying glass, there's more here."
Generally such concentrations have a negative impact on the total amount of wealth created in the transaction. Look at the economics of monopolies for a good example -- they move some of the economic surplus from consumer surplus to producer surplus, but there is less total. Combine that with sublinear value of wealth (the first $1000 is worth more to me than the next $1000), and you find that injustice to concentrate wealth is not only most likely to hurt any one individual, but will do so on average as well (even after you account for the one "lottery winner").
Ostensibly, we're trying to promote freedom and democracy in Iraq. We cannot do that while being unwilling practice our freedoms and exercise our democratic power back home.
You cannot simultaneously save and destroy the village.
It sounds to me like he is saying that subpoena is mildly burdensome, and that it would not be granted if the information was simply useful and not mandatory for the lawsuit. The same amount of burden could very reasonably be seen as reasonable and unreasonable in two different contexts, depending on how much the parties to the suit actually needed the information.
They could always secede, like Key West did, for much the same reasons...
The interesting thing about the Great Filter argument isn't that it restates the Drake equation; it's the corollary that it proceeds to draw. If, from the observed lack of other races out there (not great data, obviously, but not zero data either) you conclude that there aren't all that many, then you're forced to draw one of three conclusions. It might be that life evolving to where we are today is hard. Or, it might be that we couldn't detect advanced neighbors for one reason or another. Or lastly, our own life expectancy is short -- this, of course, being the interesting one. It's also a potentially very important result in terms of our long-term survival -- if we believe our odds are poor, perhaps we should be putting more effort into improving them.
It's a hard problem, no doubt about it. But open source vs closed source is completely irrelevant if you're the government trying to perform an audit -- you get access to it either way.
Not all applications are IO bound. Some people are actually using their CPUs, and would like to offload the encryption.
I'm not trying to argue that open source isn't a good thing; I think this stuff should be open source. All I'm saying is that "proprietary software can't be audited" is a specious argument when talking about government agencies with national security concerns.
Very true. All I'm saying is, open source doesn't help much here -- the government has the same level of access for auditing purposes anyway. (Well, it might help find bugs, but the concern is about bugs that aren't present in the source but appear in the manufacturing.)
How much more tax money are you willing to spend? 10x? 100x? What about for the stuff that's important, but not national security important? Are you willing to live with the fact that the results will cost 100x as much and be 1/10th the speed? The government has been there and done that, at least for some sorts of components, and decided it couldn't afford to. Now, they might be wrong, but they might not be. It might be cheaper and easier to attempt to make the commercial gear secure, realize that won't completely work, and deal with the occasional problem -- even at a national security level. After all, there are national security implications to being unable to afford as much equipment as you can make use of... and it's entirely possible it's better to have the occasional huge security problem than to have nothing worth securing.
The right solution is defense in depth, multiple vendors, and a whole host of other, more mundane techniques. As long as one security hole, even widespread, can cause only limited damage, it's possible to contemplate dealing with it when it appears.
If you're a government customer with national security concerns, you can audit the source to commercial products as well. It's frequently a requirement, and the government is too large a customer. Of course, the code stays closed to the general public.