Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea again... even from the perspective of anti piracy advocates because it would basically create something like the drug war.
We'd start filling our prisons with people that aren't really hardened criminals.
The piracy legislation should definitely be handled with kid gloves. But we do need to start coming up with alternative plans. Congress and the lobbying groups are making it pretty clear that simply stonewalling is not an effective political position.
My experience with them is that they're arrogant enough to assume they understand things they don't. And as to the consequences they seem to feel that if their intentions are good that the net results will be good. So on both counts, I just disagree...
Exactly... congress isn't evil on this issue... just ignorant.
And it doesn't help that the studios and content creators do have a legitimate issue here. We really are doing ourselves no favors by denying this point. I can't stress that enough. Every time I hear someone say that nothing should be done and it isn't a problem... I shake my head. Because when congress hears that they tend to ignore there after anyone that said that. It is a real issue. What we have to make clear here to congress is that SOPA while attempting to address a real problem is a horrible solution to that problem that will not only not solve the problem but create more problems while also pissing off lots of voters AND starting an international incident. They don't realize that at all.
And that's what we have to make clear. And it would help if we offered up some alternative to SOPA that helped address the piracy problem without causing all the damage of SOPA.
I know a lot of people are against that... but frankly I question whether they're just pirates out to protect their own interests. Content producers do deserve to get paid. That's just obvious. And there is piracy. So... lets come up with an informed and responsible way to address the problem so that congress doesn't feel so honor bound to enact bad ideas for lack of any good ones.
congress isn't so uniform. Use congress's factionalism.
Some republicans and democrats have started opposing it. I remember seeing something about Darrel Issa coming out against it. He's a fairly powerful member... If Bernie Sanders keeps supporting SOPA that will also cause many republicans to reflexively oppose it. They don't really understand the technology. You believe they do but they don't. What they do pay attention to is which way the wind blows. They like opposing things the other party is doing. They like supporter allied party members. And they do listen to voter outcries if it looks like the public ACTUALLY cares.
I think there's a good change the republicans will oppose SOPA in the end due to their "anti government regulation" position... but I expect we'll get a fair number of democrats and republicans on both sides.
In any case, it has to be broken down into political terms for congress. They have to understand who is for and who is against... and then they'll make a decision.
Oh, linux is getting better and MS is annoying people by breaking backward compatibility and ruining that consistency of interface across versions that gave users security.
By breaking backward compatibility they force companies to remake software and by changing interfaces they force users to learn new interfaces. In either case, it's just as easy to swap to a new OS. People stay with MS mostly because it's easier. All their old software works with it and the interface is consistent. Change both factors and they lose their primary selling point.
People have always been disinterested in continuous political engagement. We don't have the time for it. We have jobs. We have personal and local problems. We simply don't have the attention span or energy to manhandle the political powers that be all the time.
What is supposed to contain that issue is that the government... at least in the US... isn't supposed to be this powerful. It's been out of control for three generations so this is nothing new. But it's really well beyond anything the people can keep in check.
It's been said that the worst thing that ever happened to Washington DC was air conditioning. There was a time when it was just too hot and nasty to stay in the city throughout much of the year. Might as well add central heating to that as well. Congress just meets too often, passes too many laws, and doesn't particularly think about any of them very deeply.
Nearly all legislation should be state or city legislation where as the Federal government should be as minimalistic as possible if only because we can't really control or escape federal excesses as easily as state issues. If a state goes crazy we have 50 others. No critical harm if one of them goes broke or does something crazy. But the federal government is another matter.
Perhaps I'm showing my ideological stripes here, but I think this would be less of an issue if congress AND the presidency got their wings clipped a bit. They're too eager to involve themselves in our lives and too disinterested with doing their traditional jobs.
I think the president has more then enough to worry about with the economy and foreign policy. He really doesn't need to concern himself with anything else right now. And as to congress, anything that doesn't fix the budget problem should be sidelined. I don't want to hear ANYTHING from congress that doesn't either increase revenue or reduce spending. No new regulation. No new issues. NOTHING. Just balance the stupid budget.
The sad reality is that if it took a public outcry for them to realize this was a bad idea then they really have no grasp as to what is going on here at all.
Congress passes too many ill considered laws without thinking things through properly. I don't need a congress that passes lots of laws all the time if the price is that they won't actually understand what they're passing.
As much as possible, congress must be comfortable with the idea of taking things slow and not being hasty. Congress should really think about completely rewriting the whole thing from the start with a fresh understanding of what they're actually legislating.
We don't need grandstanding politicians full of their own self importance pushing on agenda or another. We need sober and mature statesmen that will investigate issues, hear all sides, and THEN craft legislation. Anything that comes expressly from one lobbying group or another will be a creature of that faction against every other.
And if all sides cannot agree to a final bill... let us all learn to love the deadlock for it is in the deadlock that our freedoms are truly kept safe.
drake's equation is less a tool then pseudo-science to make pure guess work look like some kind of scientific evaluation.
I've never seen it used anywhere to advance science.
It was used to predict that the galaxy is full of alien civilizations based on a single data point. And it then went on to predict how many species had gone extinct even though there was almost no data.
That is how drake's equation is used... it was never supposed to be seriously used and idiots and statistical con men keep using it to make unsupportable predictions.
We have some data points on exoplanets... that's great and you can probably start estimating the numbers in the galaxy from that.
Right now someone is trying to come up with a way to estimate life or even intelligent life or even star spanning civilizations. Don't do that until we have actual data... please... Drake's equation has done enough damage.
It's the CIA... I thought everyone knew that? And as to the government being iffy on that score... it's the CIA... they're going to be closed mouth on that.
Anyway... you still haven't said what you're worried about. Who do you think is flying them? Space aliens?
I think its' the CIA... and that doesn't really bother me. What could be worse?
You think the FAA knows the name of every pilot that flies an F-16?
Exactly what do you want to know and why? Just curious... I'm not seeing the point.
What would they possibly be hiding here? Give me your most extreme reason for wanting to know and I'll probably jump on board with you against it. But if you just want to know because you want to know... I think we have other things to worry about then that.
I don't see any reason why such licenses couldn't be sold to the general public. The plane has to meet FAA UAV standards which they'll have to make up as they go along... and some sort of background check and licensing procedure for the pilots will be important. But why shouldn't everyone get in on this thing? UAV crop dusters. UAV traffic helicopters. UAV medical helicopters. Any situation where we might use human pilots... consider if we need them. Maybe we can get skybuses. Big helicopters that take people across traffic congested cities to depots, train stations, or airports.
Only with robots... Chisels. Outfit the diggers with little spring loaded impact hammers. Then either have people controlling them from earth that know how to break up stone. Or program their AI evaluate stone geometry and determine where to hammer it.
As to boulders, how do you move large chunks of rock now that are too big to move by excavator? Drill, break the rock up into little bits, or blast it. I'm assuming it's more practical to just drill and cut the rock up. Fit the machine with little saws that work on stone and try to stick to regions where the stone is soft enough to break up without explosives.
As to breaking up frozen soil, yes it can... just a little bit at a time. Why do you need a huge machine to break up frozen soil? A child with a stick could do it. Not very quickly... but if the stick is harder then the ice then the ice will chip when hit... whack whack whack... How far do you think you can get with time? Maybe it takes a year to do a job that would take your earth bound machine an afternoon... so what. we have time.
As to where people land... If they don't land where the planners need them to land then that might mean death. I think it's reasonable to assume they land roughly within 100 miles of the site. Ideally, they'll land as close to it as possible but if they somehow land on the other side of the planet then they're probably dead or they have to leave immediately and go home... which might not be possible. Anyway... this is a contingency roughly along the lines of "what happens if the airplane lands into the side of a mountain"... well... it crashes, explodes, and everyone dies. Don't do that. The pilot has to land at an airfield... ideally the right one. The lander for the colonists needs to land near that site and ideally very close to it.
As to driving experience... we're going to have to make due with driving around on earth and pretending its mars. It's just not practical to test these things exhaustively given the expense of sending things to mars. If it makes you happy we can make the robots duel use so they do science along with everything else. We'll call them robotic probes... and send them to mars to do research. And while not doing research they'll be digging out the facility.
As to rescue... the first colonists from Europe to the Americas had very little in the way of rescue options. Obviously they were still on earth in very hospitable climates. But they were on their own. If we prepare for our colonists to have some kind of a habitate BEFORE they land then they can move right into it. And from there we can expect them to fend for themselves.
We can do a lot more research on earth. We need to make some self sustaining habitats on earth first. So far, the bio dome projects have all failed. Mostly because the concrete keeps eating all the oxygen. In any case, once we can build such a base on earth we should be able to send robots to build such a base on other worlds. Then we send our people there with the expectation of moving right in to a per-built facility.
I don't mind them setting it forward for various reasons but if we're to pretend it has any relation to reality then they need to set the clock WAY back before they start moving it forward.
We are not that close to global thermonuclear war. We're just not. Maybe we'll have a little engagement with Iran... maybe they'll even pop a SINGLE nuke off and we'll respond by annihilating them. But that isn't the doomsday clock. It has to be global war for it to be doomsday and Iran doesn't have that power.
It can be the size of a tonka truck for the sake of argument. Size just relates to time. Smaller means slower. Bigger means faster. Furthermore, on the moon especially the gravity is a lot lighter. An excavator on the moon could be built like a bird... hollow bones. The machine would mostly be moving around "volumes" of rock not any appreciable weights. The moon has about.16g so it's not like you'll have to build it that robustly. The whole thing could be build like a camping tent with stressed graphite rods.
As to control, I'm assuming all of this is done remotely from earth. Since I'm assuming these machines are going to be slow we need to have the base ready for human habitation BEFORE anyone even lands. That means a little army of robots crawling all over the area harvesting resources, refining, building, assembling, digging, moving, etc.
Why does everyone assume it has to be some giant excavator? Those machines are so large because they work QUICKLY. You can dig a HUGE hole with a modern excavator in very little time. Why do I need to work that fast on the moon or Mars? I don't. I'd be very happy if the same thing that would take an afternoon on earth took a few months on the moon or mars. What's the rush? We're having a robot do it.
And if that's what we're doing then we don't need a huge machine. We can have a little machine doing a faction of what the big machine does again and again over a longer period of time. Maybe a construction project that would take a month on earth takes ten years on mars. So what... We have the time.
Thus when the landers drop they'll find pre-dug habitats which may or may not already be equip and pressurized for human habitation.
Why would a programmer be designing an ebook rather then an editor or designer?
Maybe because they're the only ones that figured out the software to do it?
In any case, the editors could very easily check what the programmer did before publishing. If they're just publishing it sight unseen then again who's fault is that?
Editors are responsible even if they're not doing the work because they're the editors. If they delegate then they're responsible for what happens when they delegate.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah, that sounds like a bad idea again... even from the perspective of anti piracy advocates because it would basically create something like the drug war.
We'd start filling our prisons with people that aren't really hardened criminals.
The piracy legislation should definitely be handled with kid gloves. But we do need to start coming up with alternative plans. Congress and the lobbying groups are making it pretty clear that simply stonewalling is not an effective political position.
I thought that was most of it. What is left now?
Piracy was already illegal... how does the law change without the DNS issue?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KrkwgTBrW78
That's the best I can do for you...
My experience with them is that they're arrogant enough to assume they understand things they don't. And as to the consequences they seem to feel that if their intentions are good that the net results will be good. So on both counts, I just disagree...
Exactly... congress isn't evil on this issue... just ignorant.
And it doesn't help that the studios and content creators do have a legitimate issue here. We really are doing ourselves no favors by denying this point. I can't stress that enough. Every time I hear someone say that nothing should be done and it isn't a problem... I shake my head. Because when congress hears that they tend to ignore there after anyone that said that. It is a real issue. What we have to make clear here to congress is that SOPA while attempting to address a real problem is a horrible solution to that problem that will not only not solve the problem but create more problems while also pissing off lots of voters AND starting an international incident. They don't realize that at all.
And that's what we have to make clear. And it would help if we offered up some alternative to SOPA that helped address the piracy problem without causing all the damage of SOPA.
I know a lot of people are against that... but frankly I question whether they're just pirates out to protect their own interests. Content producers do deserve to get paid. That's just obvious. And there is piracy. So... lets come up with an informed and responsible way to address the problem so that congress doesn't feel so honor bound to enact bad ideas for lack of any good ones.
congress isn't so uniform. Use congress's factionalism.
Some republicans and democrats have started opposing it. I remember seeing something about Darrel Issa coming out against it. He's a fairly powerful member... If Bernie Sanders keeps supporting SOPA that will also cause many republicans to reflexively oppose it. They don't really understand the technology. You believe they do but they don't. What they do pay attention to is which way the wind blows. They like opposing things the other party is doing. They like supporter allied party members. And they do listen to voter outcries if it looks like the public ACTUALLY cares.
I think there's a good change the republicans will oppose SOPA in the end due to their "anti government regulation" position... but I expect we'll get a fair number of democrats and republicans on both sides.
In any case, it has to be broken down into political terms for congress. They have to understand who is for and who is against... and then they'll make a decision.
Oh, linux is getting better and MS is annoying people by breaking backward compatibility and ruining that consistency of interface across versions that gave users security.
By breaking backward compatibility they force companies to remake software and by changing interfaces they force users to learn new interfaces. In either case, it's just as easy to swap to a new OS. People stay with MS mostly because it's easier. All their old software works with it and the interface is consistent. Change both factors and they lose their primary selling point.
MS is frankly pissing their brand away on stuff like this...
All this just gives people an incentive to switch to linux.
People have always been disinterested in continuous political engagement. We don't have the time for it. We have jobs. We have personal and local problems. We simply don't have the attention span or energy to manhandle the political powers that be all the time.
What is supposed to contain that issue is that the government... at least in the US... isn't supposed to be this powerful. It's been out of control for three generations so this is nothing new. But it's really well beyond anything the people can keep in check.
It's been said that the worst thing that ever happened to Washington DC was air conditioning. There was a time when it was just too hot and nasty to stay in the city throughout much of the year. Might as well add central heating to that as well. Congress just meets too often, passes too many laws, and doesn't particularly think about any of them very deeply.
Nearly all legislation should be state or city legislation where as the Federal government should be as minimalistic as possible if only because we can't really control or escape federal excesses as easily as state issues. If a state goes crazy we have 50 others. No critical harm if one of them goes broke or does something crazy. But the federal government is another matter.
Perhaps I'm showing my ideological stripes here, but I think this would be less of an issue if congress AND the presidency got their wings clipped a bit. They're too eager to involve themselves in our lives and too disinterested with doing their traditional jobs.
I think the president has more then enough to worry about with the economy and foreign policy. He really doesn't need to concern himself with anything else right now. And as to congress, anything that doesn't fix the budget problem should be sidelined. I don't want to hear ANYTHING from congress that doesn't either increase revenue or reduce spending. No new regulation. No new issues. NOTHING. Just balance the stupid budget.
The sad reality is that if it took a public outcry for them to realize this was a bad idea then they really have no grasp as to what is going on here at all.
Congress passes too many ill considered laws without thinking things through properly. I don't need a congress that passes lots of laws all the time if the price is that they won't actually understand what they're passing.
As much as possible, congress must be comfortable with the idea of taking things slow and not being hasty. Congress should really think about completely rewriting the whole thing from the start with a fresh understanding of what they're actually legislating.
We don't need grandstanding politicians full of their own self importance pushing on agenda or another. We need sober and mature statesmen that will investigate issues, hear all sides, and THEN craft legislation. Anything that comes expressly from one lobbying group or another will be a creature of that faction against every other.
And if all sides cannot agree to a final bill... let us all learn to love the deadlock for it is in the deadlock that our freedoms are truly kept safe.
drake's equation is less a tool then pseudo-science to make pure guess work look like some kind of scientific evaluation.
I've never seen it used anywhere to advance science.
It was used to predict that the galaxy is full of alien civilizations based on a single data point. And it then went on to predict how many species had gone extinct even though there was almost no data.
That is how drake's equation is used... it was never supposed to be seriously used and idiots and statistical con men keep using it to make unsupportable predictions.
It's bad. Don't use it.
Fail at anything = Blame America.
Offer up some kind of evidence or we'll just respond that actually it was your mother.
That's right... your mom. There's just as much evidence backing that... eg none.
We have some data points on exoplanets... that's great and you can probably start estimating the numbers in the galaxy from that.
Right now someone is trying to come up with a way to estimate life or even intelligent life or even star spanning civilizations. Don't do that until we have actual data... please... Drake's equation has done enough damage.
It's the CIA... I thought everyone knew that? And as to the government being iffy on that score... it's the CIA... they're going to be closed mouth on that.
Anyway... you still haven't said what you're worried about. Who do you think is flying them? Space aliens?
I think its' the CIA... and that doesn't really bother me. What could be worse?
You think the FAA knows the name of every pilot that flies an F-16?
Exactly what do you want to know and why? Just curious... I'm not seeing the point.
What would they possibly be hiding here? Give me your most extreme reason for wanting to know and I'll probably jump on board with you against it. But if you just want to know because you want to know... I think we have other things to worry about then that.
... you say do the math like we could actually calculate that...
I don't see any reason why such licenses couldn't be sold to the general public. The plane has to meet FAA UAV standards which they'll have to make up as they go along... and some sort of background check and licensing procedure for the pilots will be important. But why shouldn't everyone get in on this thing? UAV crop dusters. UAV traffic helicopters. UAV medical helicopters. Any situation where we might use human pilots... consider if we need them. Maybe we can get skybuses. Big helicopters that take people across traffic congested cities to depots, train stations, or airports.
Here is an even better way to deal with boulders:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nTU7HbFNMc0
Only with robots... Chisels. Outfit the diggers with little spring loaded impact hammers. Then either have people controlling them from earth that know how to break up stone. Or program their AI evaluate stone geometry and determine where to hammer it.
As to boulders, how do you move large chunks of rock now that are too big to move by excavator? Drill, break the rock up into little bits, or blast it. I'm assuming it's more practical to just drill and cut the rock up. Fit the machine with little saws that work on stone and try to stick to regions where the stone is soft enough to break up without explosives.
As to breaking up frozen soil, yes it can... just a little bit at a time. Why do you need a huge machine to break up frozen soil? A child with a stick could do it. Not very quickly... but if the stick is harder then the ice then the ice will chip when hit... whack whack whack... How far do you think you can get with time? Maybe it takes a year to do a job that would take your earth bound machine an afternoon... so what. we have time.
As to where people land... If they don't land where the planners need them to land then that might mean death. I think it's reasonable to assume they land roughly within 100 miles of the site. Ideally, they'll land as close to it as possible but if they somehow land on the other side of the planet then they're probably dead or they have to leave immediately and go home... which might not be possible. Anyway... this is a contingency roughly along the lines of "what happens if the airplane lands into the side of a mountain"... well... it crashes, explodes, and everyone dies. Don't do that. The pilot has to land at an airfield... ideally the right one. The lander for the colonists needs to land near that site and ideally very close to it.
As to driving experience... we're going to have to make due with driving around on earth and pretending its mars. It's just not practical to test these things exhaustively given the expense of sending things to mars. If it makes you happy we can make the robots duel use so they do science along with everything else. We'll call them robotic probes... and send them to mars to do research. And while not doing research they'll be digging out the facility.
As to rescue... the first colonists from Europe to the Americas had very little in the way of rescue options. Obviously they were still on earth in very hospitable climates. But they were on their own. If we prepare for our colonists to have some kind of a habitate BEFORE they land then they can move right into it. And from there we can expect them to fend for themselves.
We can do a lot more research on earth. We need to make some self sustaining habitats on earth first. So far, the bio dome projects have all failed. Mostly because the concrete keeps eating all the oxygen. In any case, once we can build such a base on earth we should be able to send robots to build such a base on other worlds. Then we send our people there with the expectation of moving right in to a per-built facility.
I don't mind them setting it forward for various reasons but if we're to pretend it has any relation to reality then they need to set the clock WAY back before they start moving it forward.
We are not that close to global thermonuclear war. We're just not. Maybe we'll have a little engagement with Iran... maybe they'll even pop a SINGLE nuke off and we'll respond by annihilating them. But that isn't the doomsday clock. It has to be global war for it to be doomsday and Iran doesn't have that power.
If this is well done then it will be great. If not, then it will be a disaster.
So... here's hoping they don't cock it up.
It can be the size of a tonka truck for the sake of argument. Size just relates to time. Smaller means slower. Bigger means faster. Furthermore, on the moon especially the gravity is a lot lighter. An excavator on the moon could be built like a bird... hollow bones. The machine would mostly be moving around "volumes" of rock not any appreciable weights. The moon has about .16g so it's not like you'll have to build it that robustly. The whole thing could be build like a camping tent with stressed graphite rods.
As to control, I'm assuming all of this is done remotely from earth. Since I'm assuming these machines are going to be slow we need to have the base ready for human habitation BEFORE anyone even lands. That means a little army of robots crawling all over the area harvesting resources, refining, building, assembling, digging, moving, etc.
Why does everyone assume it has to be some giant excavator? Those machines are so large because they work QUICKLY. You can dig a HUGE hole with a modern excavator in very little time. Why do I need to work that fast on the moon or Mars? I don't. I'd be very happy if the same thing that would take an afternoon on earth took a few months on the moon or mars. What's the rush? We're having a robot do it.
And if that's what we're doing then we don't need a huge machine. We can have a little machine doing a faction of what the big machine does again and again over a longer period of time. Maybe a construction project that would take a month on earth takes ten years on mars. So what... We have the time.
Thus when the landers drop they'll find pre-dug habitats which may or may not already be equip and pressurized for human habitation.
you are very angry...
would you like a taco?
Why would a programmer be designing an ebook rather then an editor or designer?
Maybe because they're the only ones that figured out the software to do it?
In any case, the editors could very easily check what the programmer did before publishing. If they're just publishing it sight unseen then again who's fault is that?
Editors are responsible even if they're not doing the work because they're the editors. If they delegate then they're responsible for what happens when they delegate.