Sadly technology will not mitigate against poor business practice, which set the level of supply at the wrong level of availability. The statistically unlikely demand level has exceeded the economically desireable level of supply availability.
In other words if this is not an event due to a military action against the power grid, it is because your supply is built down to a price which the competitive market has set and that price is low enough for the system to fail occasionally.
It is not a problem that would appear to be amenable to solving without an external force (such as government regulation) setting the power availabilty against demand statistics to be calculated by a rule which reduces the likelyhood of this happening again. (In other words free markets still need regulations imposed upon them, whatever the appararant logic of progress through unfettered free market competition)
Complex events like this are proof positive that the social organisation of American society is not something which other societies would necessarily choose despite its historical economic sucess. Of course one event does not prove that the entire system is sick, but it should raise some debate about what it is that let this happen to you.
I type this stuff in from the land (UK) where the railways and subways are in a terrible state and people are often late for work because their train was late. So there is obviously something wrong here - and there is no consensus on how this state of affairs can be corrected. So you are not alone in having problems.
I hope its all sorted quickly before the hospital generators run down. Mayor Bloomberg speaking now says that it will take a few hours. The cascade of power failure is currently inexplicable but one hospital in Brooklyn has suffered a complete power failure. Drink plenty of water, take it easy and switch the air con off so that when the power comes back on it doesnt trip out again.
your extraordinary standard of living is in large part due to the availabilty of poor people to exploit and your good fortune in living in a sophisticated economy capable of of doing the exploitation.
I imagine that the better off in every fortunate empire from the Romans to the Victorians have regarded their better standard of living as a direct result of their personal moral superiority.
Luckily your fabulous civilisation is in the midst of "a jobless recovery" which should be enough to bring home to most intelligent members of it, the realisation that although not a zero sum game - economics is not a subject that can be summed up by simplistic quasi religious meme's like "we are the choosen ones and therefore rightfully inherit the earth". Same goes for meaningless crap like "reinvestment of profit into capital is what has caused a tremendous increase in productivity". I take it that the dot com bust is a good example of how well the economy invests in productivity gains - just because your economy has done well in the past following a certain set of rules is no indication that it will do well in the future. Particularly as the Chinese for example will probably be better at this game than the Americans. Winning the battle against communism does not mean that the war has been won and sticking to tired old thinking will lose the war.
I am sure that the cultural inclinations of the people who work for NASA has very little to do with the quality of the work that they do. If you investigate the science that is visable on the web from NASA it all looks to be of excellent quality. The question you raise might more usefully be addressed to what the goals of NASA are and whether it is funded to achieve them.
We all look back with great admiration to to time when NASA put people on the moon (still room for first woman on the moon incidentally). It was a teriffic spectacle and the general population got a great buzz out of it. However I suspect that we get a lot more usefull science out of NASA's current activities, they just dont look very exciting in a ten second news slot.
Take a look at the results of the mapping work being done on Mars and the papers being written on the geology and water, I cant tell whether the authors listen to hip-hop (yeah I detest it too) or opera, but the science is brilliant.
I agree that it would be nice to have spirited public support for space exploration. But as you point out we did the engineering in the 50's and it still appears to be too expensive to bring it up to date.
I think in this case it would be a bit tough to expect much debate only on how sad / not sad we feel about the demise of Pioneer. It has been posted as a topic before and its death is not unexpected.
You complain about a branch discussion which is about the wow factor that Pioneer generates. I would say that the wow factor is an important part of what Pioneer means to us and is therefore not off topic. Could you clarify what you think we could be debating on the announcement of Pioneers demise and I would be happy to contribute my thoughts in reply.
Yes I echo your sentiment, I would like to see some more progress
I still think wow! and enjoy all the wonderfull toys we have to play with these days - but its been a mixed experience since I first started taking notice of the world around me in the mid 70's.
Sadly since walking on the moon things have fizzled out a bit in the space exploration area. It did cost a lot of money and mars would be even more expensive. It seems to me that things have stood still somewhat since the 60's. I dont see much evidence that anything has changed since then, except for incremental improvements in ideas that had already been thought of.
Please somebody give me an example of a major breakthrough in ideas, politics, religion or lifestyle that has happened since the 60's
Even the Internet and the personal computer is only being used as a metaphore for something we already had - library, sheet of paper, telephone, junk mail etc etc. Admittedly it is the greatest library, sheet of paper, telephone ever, I have more access to knowledge information and tools to do things than the most priviledged people in history. But I am not smarter than Julius Caeser, Napoleon whatever and certainly will not achieve a fraction of what they did in their lifetimes - even though I know more than them.
Pioneer is an aspirational monument to the 20C, our first steps into space
What is the monument to the 21C going to be? Radically longer lifespan? Environmental meltdown? Bio weapon plagues? The US / China cold war? Clean drinking water for the whole population of Earth? Artificial life software? Money becomes the only motivation? Its all up for grabs, which one is your bet on?
I am not optomistic about the long view of the begining of space exploration, to me it seems very likely that it is about to end for the forseeable future.
After Caesar's first half decent attempt, it took different Kings, Empires and the Catholic church over 1000 years to fix the calender so that dates didnt drift against the solstices.
Recently humans walked upon the surface of another world
But I wouldnt like to give the odds against it being another 1000 years until a human walks on Mars.
We are way too primitive to get into space, the technology is there but our political maturity is barely in advance of the Roman Empire. We have (generally speaking) decided that obvious slavery might be a bad idea. Other than that I can think of no significant political advance over the last 2000 years.
Land on Mars within your lifetime. The idea is laughable, our politics has lost all idealism and is now completely ruled by pragmatism. It was only that crazy post world war 60s idealism and the youthfull foolishness of Kennedy that put someone on the moon. America is incapable of going to Mars now, those times are gone.
And if you want proof that we are too primitive then just consider that our leaders are still fighting the crusades, a re-run of a 1300 year old dispute.
However there may be some hope in the Chinese reaching out as you say, after all this is going to be their century.
If you think I'm going to risk share holder value by putting a large Koka Kola sticker on the side of one of these July 5th NASA built exploding-firecracker nerd-buckets then youv'e got another think comming.
I'm not touching any of this space exploration trash until we get some decent management running the thing, Walt Disney comes to mind. And whilst we are at it, lets farm out the actual construction work and flying stuff to some third world monkeys - like the Indians, Pakistanis or the Chinese. I dont want the infrastructure costs of owning all that dirty expensive hardware and manufacturing facilities either. Besides which if the monkeys do the flying bit we can always keep the bad flights out of the news. Just screen the best video and make out that its happening now.
Yes what we need is a monopoly on the Intellectual Property rights to the Space Exploration Brand. A lean agile business with the minimum of capital investment required. Hell, I can flog a ton of Astronaut brand deodorant off the back of the tv spin off - Big Brother in Space. We can have semi naked contestants living in a virtual space station with full footage of them making out together in zero G (at least on the pay per view channels) and each week you get to vote for and see one of the crew pushed out of the airlock into the vaccuum of space with no suit on. Yeah the explosive decompression is gonna get terrific ratings. I can see it now...
Thats what this NASA thing needs to sort it out - full exposure to market forces. Give me the rights to the brand and I'll turn it into a better place to invest your pension than a Medelline drug cartel.
Failing that maybe we should ask the Illuminati to run the thing...
I for one would be very impressed by the confidence of America - if the cost of swatting Sadam Hussain could be spent on NASA instead.
If the current big stick waving suceeds in persuading Iraq to prove to the weapons inspectors that they really are disposing of their weapons then this could even be possible. After all the Iraqis must be aware by now that they will lose the war.
If you want to be proud of your civilisation then bear in mind that what we regard as the crowning achievements of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Abbasid civilisation are generally thought to be their scientific and philosophical achievements. Not the area of the world over which they ruled.
It will be a sad day for the history of American culture if this accident is taken as a cost saving opportunity to abandon the new frontier. I do hope that your president is as single minded in preserving American cultural achievement as he is in keeping the American Empire strong and stable.
SQL Server is great, its easy to use, easy to set up and easy to get at.
What is wrong with making a tool easier to use? SQL Server is a useful gadget for storing information. Not everybody who uses a database actually needs to have strong programming skills or wants to be a database administrator.
Take for example the humble spreadsheet, used by millions of end users and a fantastic boost to productivity in visulising and manipulating numerical and certain kinds of textual data. Is it reasonable to expect all information users have to learn how to program in C++ before they can add up a column of numbers?
Back end 'Databases' still belong largely to the domain of programming experts only because no one has dreamed up an interface that a manager or engineer finds easy to use. Microsofts Access though comes very close to being just that, SQL Server happens to work quite well with Access and provides a much better bucket to keep your data in than Access.
If IT management spent more time empowering users by giving them better tools to get at the business information currently hidden in 'Databases' then we might truely have arrived in the information age. Meanwhile I feel no qualms about buying SQL Server and warehousing some departmental ERP data in it - at least the users get direct access to their own information without a 'C++' programmer getting in the way because of the information end users inability to grock Oracle.
Information wants to be free! is an oft quoted maxim of today, its too bad the anti-Microsoft brigade dont recognise that part of the appeal of Redmonds loathsome SQL Server - is that it goes some way to satisfying this mantra.
Sadly I believe the tug on the string would become a compression / expansion in the string, which is a sound wave, and they move rather slowly.
Even a totally rigid string made out of a long thin black hole would warp space around itself as a gravity wave which moves at the speed of light.
No, what you need is an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters on call, just ask them to keep typing and the message will appear in the text they produce. Then all you need is a Beowulf cluster of slashdot readers to find the important bit in all the infinite pages of gibberish.
This of course happens every day, right now, on this web site, its just that the story never gets past the three headed alien moderators and submitted as a news story...
And if you dont believe me just wait and see how long the whole of this post remains - I list below the contents of the message I detected in a posting yesterday -
"Message from Xarg command to Cowbo£$ SD£$"£"DFS...
You say that 'observer' is difficult to define because the spectrum of observers is not computable. This is only a problem because we think that we are some special kind of observer and have more significance than the rabbit.
This is an assumption on your part and I suspect that if there is indeed a qualitative difference in the status of an observer in defining the quantum mechanical state of the universe - A difference between a chlorophyll molecule absorbing a photon and my mind seeing the photon pass through a spectrometer and reveal its wavelength - then I think we would be well on our way to using hard science to answer some metaphysical questions.
However even apart from this interesting question, is it not the case that all observers - be they molecules, people or plants receive information about the universe and respond to it in a simple deterministic manner which is well explained by mechanics chemistry and physics? Thus a network of 'observers' are in fact merely the objects within the universe acting on the physical laws which are in operation - which come into operation because the 'observers' respond the way that they do? And the universe is the way it is because the 'observers' respond the way that they do.
Does this also mean that something outside my light cone may well be subject to different physical laws?
On the face of it both messages need the same ammount of energy I agree.
However in the realm of quantum mechanics we say that the wave function collapses when we observe it. Therefore the act of observing has somehow changed the state of the universe from indeterminate to deterministic, hence my interest in the act of observation and the establishment of meaning - I want to know whether my act of observation has any additional calculateable significance in establishing the state of the universe.
"Cabbage crates over the briney" "Sorry old boy, dont understand your banter"
Whoops right over my head, I have some studying to do to catch up.
You appear to know what you are talking about though, so I have a question that you might be able to help me with.
Talking about the measurement problem - stuff only resolves its state if you look at it. Solutions : multiple instances of branching universes etc etc.
What bugs me though is that the standard model used to talk about this question is only half complete.
You say I observe and the photon tells me where the thing was but not when, or it tells me when the thing was but not where. Something like this anyway, momentum and energy blah blah. So the wavefunction collapses in the act of observation and we get half the story, curtesy of the uncertainty principal.
What I want to know though is the energy involved in me looking at the printout or not looking at the printout that describes the photon we got out of the experiment. Is there another part of the equation we can ascribe to my understanding of the result?
What is the implication of my consciousness understanding a signal, is there an energy associated with meaning? This has been bugging me for decades, ever since I learned that it took a certain ammount of energy to code a message but no one seemed to be able to tell me how much energy it took to code meaning.
If meaning had an associated energy - however difficult it was to codify. It seems to me that you should be able to fit the observer and the observation together without wondering where all the other universes went.
I have no knowledge myself of the models humanoira of which you speak, oh earthman
However it does seem relevant to ask the question whether significant scientific advances have an affect on what we think we are.
Examples Darwinian Evolution Earth is a globe Sun centered universe Nuclear weapons Gene science Quantum mechanics Relativity
Also I think it is fair game to use what we understand about the physics of the universe in order to help explain structures and patterns in the soft sciences. After all we exspend a lot of effort in learning structures and patterns in hard science by using analogies to our experiental life.
I would agree though, that the validity of a model is not verified by the cuteness of its analogies.
One question that interests me is, if the Universe as a whole is subject to quantum uncertainty - does that mean that if my light cone does not intersect with someone elses - that they may be living in a universe with different physical laws and constants?
Also when looking at the quantum problem of existance and observation -
What amazes me as an electronics engineer, is that no one anywhere seems to be thinking about the implications of the energy content of the meaning of a message.
Shannons law explains how much energy is needed to encode a certain message. But it never seems to be extended into thinking about the realm of meaning.
How much, if any, energy does it take to encode the meaning of a message - When I read a message and it means something, is that a different situation from reading a message which does not mean anything. Its too long ago since I did my maths and quantum mechanics for me to figure out if this is a silly question, I'd love to know the answer though.
I continue sitting here looking at the box with my cat in it. Wondering whether the text message it just sent me from its mobile phone asking for more food - means that it is still alive:-)
Cooking is a noble profession, just ask any French chef. Typecasting culinary art as the province of one gender is a mistake.
What this physicist brings to the party, apart from some interesting work, is a refreshing attitude towards making the concepts of fundamental physics available to our minds in a more arts based analogy than we are used to.
As fundamental physics is mindboggling skeins of mathematical language that resonate more with philosophy than engineering and the experience of our senses, this makes a lot of sense to me.
What I wonder though is the implication that the Universe as a whole may be subject to quantum mechanical uncertainty. Does that mean that we all create our own universes in the act of observing. And does that mean that I live in a different universe to you if my light cone doesnt intersect with yours? - For example are the fundamental laws and constants of physics different?
Totally agree, the visual appearance of anime characters is very much appreciated. The style is leaking out of the films and back into real life through Cosplay.
Even here on the streets in Stockholm Sweden its beginning to look like a Cosplay convention must be in town from the number of people walking around with primary colour hair, and they look great. It seems that anime has just as great a cultural impact world-wide as live action movies.
However it is obvious that the author of the article does not like anime and only dwells on its questionable aspects.
It would be just as easy to criticise Hollywood for producing anodyne pap with shallow meaningless characters and a tendency for cultural imperialism. However that would miss the point, if you want to see an art movie with real characters and emotional depth then you don't go to see "Terminator II". However lots of people do go to see "Terminator II" to be entertained.
Anime probably reflects the mostly suppressed desire for rebellion or escape in the Japanese character. After a decade of low growth and further erosion of traditional Japanese virtues, it is hardly surprising that there is a thriving industry in fantasy escapist-entertainment. What better medium than animation to express unfulfilled desires and potentialities.
What is maybe more surprising, is that these films have such a strong following in the west. It may be that even some of us would rather not conform to the current Hollywood zeitgeist and find welcome relief in the fantasy world of anime.
The author complains that the characters in anime are not Japanese, whilst by default being unable to give us an example of a live action movie containing stars that the Japanese would like to emulate. It must be a reality then, that the Japanese people are floating without a strong sense of who they are. If they are culturally drifting, then it is totally appropriate that the films they see contain imaginary people, not "as a rejection of who they are" but more of a question "who could we be?". No doubt the characters will change over time as fashion and new ideas dictate.
Anime is a fascinating art form and for once I think a cliché is totally appropriate "Fiendishly clever these Japanese!"
Seriously though there are probably a great many companies who put a pc on peoples desktops and will be able to model the cost of using the IBM managed service as being cheaper.
Sadly though this move towards the office computer as an appliance is going to take all the fun out. No more customised desktops, streaming mp3's or reading slashdot. Down with IBM and cost effectiveness!
On the contrary, dinking with word and paint are far more important than understanding how the machine works.
I have no interest in whether the driver of the car in front of me can change the oil or clean the sparkplugs, still less whether they understand how a racing cam works. What I want to know is whether they can steer the thing and obey the traffic regulations that prevent us from killing each other.
So comprehending the possible uses of computing power perfectly entitle joe public to have an opinion on technological law.
(Incidentaly I assume that most people have a view on the legality of cloning without a detailed knowledge of genetics).
The problems the world faces with respect to laws and new technology are in my opinion - actualy the problems that the individual faces when confronted by business interests. Whilst arguing the fine details of what is technically possible may persuade the legislators to adjust the laws more towards the interests of the individual in society it is unlikely. What you realy need to do is get some political buy in on the idea of limiting the rights of big business to enslave their customers.
Sadly as the primary religion of the US is "making money is good" you havent got a cats chance in hell of getting reasonable laws.
However I agree with you, courses which raise the issues of our times are very worthwhile to equip students with an understanding of their world.
There are still people around who dont understand computers, this problem will go away when they are all dead and Microsoft windows 2040 actualy replaces most humans in the workplace.
However I would rather be living around now at the dawn of the computer revolution when I understand them better than they understand me, especialy as there are plenty of people who have some respect for my skills.
I'm not looking forward to retraining as a basket weaver in 2039....
I agree, you make a fair point about timewasters who are absorbing too much of your valuable resource. I dont know how the medical profession deals with hypercondriacs but I guess they have found some way. On reflection I do know how they do it - they hired my mom as receptionist, try getting an appointment out of her with your third cold in two weeks:-)
The pro life group has been associated with the murder of doctors.
Of course interestingly you would have to add the Animal Liberation Front in the UK too if censorship were similarly applied.
Some of the ALF members have such fanatical views that they try and kill people who are involved in various kinds of research involving the use of animals.
You could say that the groups involved in this ban might be deffined collectively as organisations known to be or suspected to be engaged in terroist activities.
The main reason why everything to do with them isnt banned - appart from the weak outrage that might be generated over "government thought control" amongst the general population - is that if they are in the open, then they are easy to catch.
Drive seriously antisocial people underground and you cant catch them when they step out of line and start killing people. We can all wonder what wacky group the Washington sniper either belongs to or would belong to if it was legal - and if a member of that group might give the sod away if the pile of dead children gets too high...
The ban in Germany and France on Nazi propaganda is a slightly different local issue which recognises a historical problem that many people have fond memories of the Nazi party and it is not the political policy of the majority to allow that view to be passed on to new generations. This is sadly part of modern life - it used to be called "thought control" in the time of the cold war, but we now recognise it as a necessary social evil and call it "political correctness" - reinforcing an intellectualy acceptable idea which society is moving towards but has not yet accepted universally.
Whatever, almost no one in Europe has any time for the Nazi party. After all whatever the validity of Nazi policy, in the end they were proved complete arseholes who failed and destroyed europe in the process. So we dont want them back thankyou very much. Or the websites of their misguided fans who could pick someone more politically acceptible like Alexander the Great, to hero worship - who incidentaly suceeded.
Its interesting to reflect that the Pro Life people are now being seen as very little different to Osma Bin Ladins Al Quaida. It used to be a topic of conversation that the far right were very little different to the far left though I dont hear that debate much these days.
Sounds like the major political issue of our time is not about how we are Govern'ed. Now its about what tolerance and accomodations are made for differences within societies and between societies.
I totaly agree that patent law probably needs reviewing though I would suggest that constitutional principles alone would not be enough.
The use of patents to allow a mature economy to prosper is unquestionable. The frivilous abuse of the patent system to defraud businesses is also unquestionably wrong and should be stopped - and this is not a big deal as many posters point out there are methods to prevent it.
However I also see two other problems with the current patent system.
The questionable validity of genetic patents - the consequences of which are currently unknown - and therefore are not necessarily going to add to either the economy or human happiness.
But an even bigger problem lies in the third and the developing world. Poor countries with underdeveloped economies cannot afford medicines, software or farming technology because of patents.
For example the idea that we can develop drugs that stop people with AIDS from dying but cannot sell them in Africa because the pharmacutical companies are recouping the development costs and the Africans cannot afford the royalties is absurd. Fine, we pay $500 a week in the west including development costs for the drugs and the Africans pay the $1 a week it actualy costs to manufacture the chemicals.
In software it has been a difficult struggle to make a sucessfull business model out of free trial software which you then have to pay for later. Similarly it would be tough to administer a trade and patent system which gave underdeveloped economies royalty free medicine, software and farming technology and then introduced patent protection in stages as the economies catch up.
However if you realy have any interest in the long term growth of the world economy and giving the opportunity to everybody on the planet to ejoy the standard of living that we enjoy in the west then this would appear to be the optimum fast track solution to gain that goal.
Never mind paying cash from taxes to aid funds or shipping food to starving people, just let them use our best ideas for free - until they can afford to pay for them.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly technology will not mitigate against poor business practice, which set the level of supply at the wrong level of availability. The statistically unlikely demand level has exceeded the economically desireable level of supply availability.
In other words if this is not an event due to a military action against the power grid, it is because your supply is built down to a price which the competitive market has set and that price is low enough for the system to fail occasionally.
It is not a problem that would appear to be amenable to solving without an external force (such as government regulation) setting the power availabilty against demand statistics to be calculated by a rule which reduces the likelyhood of this happening again. (In other words free markets still need regulations imposed upon them, whatever the appararant logic of progress through unfettered free market competition)
Complex events like this are proof positive that the social organisation of American society is not something which other societies would necessarily choose despite its historical economic sucess. Of course one event does not prove that the entire system is sick, but it should raise some debate about what it is that let this happen to you.
I type this stuff in from the land (UK) where the railways and subways are in a terrible state and people are often late for work because their train was late. So there is obviously something wrong here - and there is no consensus on how this state of affairs can be corrected. So you are not alone in having problems.
I hope its all sorted quickly before the hospital generators run down. Mayor Bloomberg speaking now says that it will take a few hours. The cascade of power failure is currently inexplicable but one hospital in Brooklyn has suffered a complete power failure. Drink plenty of water, take it easy and switch the air con off so that when the power comes back on it doesnt trip out again.
your extraordinary standard of living is in large part due to the availabilty of poor people to exploit and your good fortune in living in a sophisticated economy capable of of doing the exploitation.
I imagine that the better off in every fortunate empire from the Romans to the Victorians have regarded their better standard of living as a direct result of their personal moral superiority.
Luckily your fabulous civilisation is in the midst of "a jobless recovery" which should be enough to bring home to most intelligent members of it, the realisation that although not a zero sum game - economics is not a subject that can be summed up by simplistic quasi religious meme's like "we are the choosen ones and therefore rightfully inherit the earth". Same goes for meaningless crap like "reinvestment of profit into capital is what has caused a tremendous increase in productivity". I take it that the dot com bust is a good example of how well the economy invests in productivity gains - just because your economy has done well in the past following a certain set of rules is no indication that it will do well in the future. Particularly as the Chinese for example will probably be better at this game than the Americans. Winning the battle against communism does not mean that the war has been won and sticking to tired old thinking will lose the war.
"Morale is your own responsibility"
I presume that you would offer the same advice to the soldiers currently fighing in the Gulf?
A statement like this is a clear indication that Western society could be in imminent danger of collapse.
Any organisation where "Morale is your own responsibility" will be eaten by another organization that thinks differently.
I suggest you re-evaluate your mindset before evolution takes its natural course.
I am sure that the cultural inclinations of the people who work for NASA has very little to do with the quality of the work that they do. If you investigate the science that is visable on the web from NASA it all looks to be of excellent quality. The question you raise might more usefully be addressed to what the goals of NASA are and whether it is funded to achieve them.
We all look back with great admiration to to time when NASA put people on the moon (still room for first woman on the moon incidentally). It was a teriffic spectacle and the general population got a great buzz out of it. However I suspect that we get a lot more usefull science out of NASA's current activities, they just dont look very exciting in a ten second news slot.
Take a look at the results of the mapping work being done on Mars and the papers being written on the geology and water, I cant tell whether the authors listen to hip-hop (yeah I detest it too) or opera, but the science is brilliant.
I agree that it would be nice to have spirited public support for space exploration. But as you point out we did the engineering in the 50's and it still appears to be too expensive to bring it up to date.
Nuclear powered propulsion anyone?
I think in this case it would be a bit tough to expect much debate only on how sad / not sad we feel about the demise of Pioneer. It has been posted as a topic before and its death is not unexpected.
You complain about a branch discussion which is about the wow factor that Pioneer generates. I would say that the wow factor is an important part of what Pioneer means to us and is therefore not off topic. Could you clarify what you think we could be debating on the announcement of Pioneers demise and I would be happy to contribute my thoughts in reply.
Yes I echo your sentiment, I would like to see some more progress
I still think wow! and enjoy all the wonderfull toys we have to play with these days - but its been a mixed experience since I first started taking notice of the world around me in the mid 70's.
Sadly since walking on the moon things have fizzled out a bit in the space exploration area. It did cost a lot of money and mars would be even more expensive. It seems to me that things have stood still somewhat since the 60's. I dont see much evidence that anything has changed since then, except for incremental improvements in ideas that had already been thought of.
Please somebody give me an example of a major breakthrough in ideas, politics, religion or lifestyle that has happened since the 60's
Even the Internet and the personal computer is only being used as a metaphore for something we already had - library, sheet of paper, telephone, junk mail etc etc. Admittedly it is the greatest library, sheet of paper, telephone ever, I have more access to knowledge information and tools to do things than the most priviledged people in history. But I am not smarter than Julius Caeser, Napoleon whatever and certainly will not achieve a fraction of what they did in their lifetimes - even though I know more than them.
Pioneer is an aspirational monument to the 20C, our first steps into space
What is the monument to the 21C going to be? Radically longer lifespan? Environmental meltdown? Bio weapon plagues? The US / China cold war? Clean drinking water for the whole population of Earth? Artificial life software? Money becomes the only motivation? Its all up for grabs, which one is your bet on?
I am not optomistic about the long view of the begining of space exploration, to me it seems very likely that it is about to end for the forseeable future.
After Caesar's first half decent attempt, it took different Kings, Empires and the Catholic church over 1000 years to fix the calender so that dates didnt drift against the solstices.
Recently humans walked upon the surface of another world
But I wouldnt like to give the odds against it being another 1000 years until a human walks on Mars.
We are way too primitive to get into space, the technology is there but our political maturity is barely in advance of the Roman Empire. We have (generally speaking) decided that obvious slavery might be a bad idea. Other than that I can think of no significant political advance over the last 2000 years.
Land on Mars within your lifetime. The idea is laughable, our politics has lost all idealism and is now completely ruled by pragmatism. It was only that crazy post world war 60s idealism and the youthfull foolishness of Kennedy that put someone on the moon. America is incapable of going to Mars now, those times are gone.
And if you want proof that we are too primitive then just consider that our leaders are still fighting the crusades, a re-run of a 1300 year old dispute.
However there may be some hope in the Chinese reaching out as you say, after all this is going to be their century.
Now just a minute there,
If you think I'm going to risk share holder value by putting a large Koka Kola sticker on the side of one of these July 5th NASA built exploding-firecracker nerd-buckets then youv'e got another think comming.
I'm not touching any of this space exploration trash until we get some decent management running the thing, Walt Disney comes to mind. And whilst we are at it, lets farm out the actual construction work and flying stuff to some third world monkeys - like the Indians, Pakistanis or the Chinese. I dont want the infrastructure costs of owning all that dirty expensive hardware and manufacturing facilities either. Besides which if the monkeys do the flying bit we can always keep the bad flights out of the news. Just screen the best video and make out that its happening now.
Yes what we need is a monopoly on the Intellectual Property rights to the Space Exploration Brand. A lean agile business with the minimum of capital investment required. Hell, I can flog a ton of Astronaut brand deodorant off the back of the tv spin off - Big Brother in Space. We can have semi naked contestants living in a virtual space station with full footage of them making out together in zero G (at least on the pay per view channels) and each week you get to vote for and see one of the crew pushed out of the airlock into the vaccuum of space with no suit on. Yeah the explosive decompression is gonna get terrific ratings. I can see it now...
Thats what this NASA thing needs to sort it out - full exposure to market forces. Give me the rights to the brand and I'll turn it into a better place to invest your pension than a Medelline drug cartel.
Failing that maybe we should ask the Illuminati to run the thing...
I for one would be very impressed by the confidence of America - if the cost of swatting Sadam Hussain could be spent on NASA instead.
If the current big stick waving suceeds in persuading Iraq to prove to the weapons inspectors that they really are disposing of their weapons then this could even be possible. After all the Iraqis must be aware by now that they will lose the war.
If you want to be proud of your civilisation then bear in mind that what we regard as the crowning achievements of Egyptian, Greek, Roman and Abbasid civilisation are generally thought to be their scientific and philosophical achievements. Not the area of the world over which they ruled.
It will be a sad day for the history of American culture if this accident is taken as a cost saving opportunity to abandon the new frontier. I do hope that your president is as single minded in preserving American cultural achievement as he is in keeping the American Empire strong and stable.
SQL Server is great, its easy to use, easy to set up and easy to get at.
What is wrong with making a tool easier to use? SQL Server is a useful gadget for storing information. Not everybody who uses a database actually needs to have strong programming skills or wants to be a database administrator.
Take for example the humble spreadsheet, used by millions of end users and a fantastic boost to productivity in visulising and manipulating numerical and certain kinds of textual data. Is it reasonable to expect all information users have to learn how to program in C++ before they can add up a column of numbers?
Back end 'Databases' still belong largely to the domain of programming experts only because no one has dreamed up an interface that a manager or engineer finds easy to use. Microsofts Access though comes very close to being just that, SQL Server happens to work quite well with Access and provides a much better bucket to keep your data in than Access.
If IT management spent more time empowering users by giving them better tools to get at the business information currently hidden in 'Databases' then we might truely have arrived in the information age. Meanwhile I feel no qualms about buying SQL Server and warehousing some departmental ERP data in it - at least the users get direct access to their own information without a 'C++' programmer getting in the way because of the information end users inability to grock Oracle.
Information wants to be free! is an oft quoted maxim of today, its too bad the anti-Microsoft brigade dont recognise that part of the appeal of Redmonds loathsome SQL Server - is that it goes some way to satisfying this mantra.
Sadly I believe the tug on the string would become a compression / expansion in the string, which is a sound wave, and they move rather slowly.
.. .
Even a totally rigid string made out of a long thin black hole would warp space around itself as a gravity wave which moves at the speed of light.
No, what you need is an infinite number of monkeys with typewriters on call, just ask them to keep typing and the message will appear in the text they produce. Then all you need is a Beowulf cluster of slashdot readers to find the important bit in all the infinite pages of gibberish.
This of course happens every day, right now, on this web site, its just that the story never gets past the three headed alien moderators and submitted as a news story...
And if you dont believe me just wait and see how long the whole of this post remains - I list below the contents of the message I detected in a posting yesterday -
"Message from Xarg command to Cowbo£$ SD£$"£"DFS
You say that 'observer' is difficult to define because the spectrum of observers is not computable. This is only a problem because we think that we are some special kind of observer and have more significance than the rabbit.
This is an assumption on your part and I suspect that if there is indeed a qualitative difference in the status of an observer in defining the quantum mechanical state of the universe - A difference between a chlorophyll molecule absorbing a photon and my mind seeing the photon pass through a spectrometer and reveal its wavelength - then I think we would be well on our way to using hard science to answer some metaphysical questions.
However even apart from this interesting question, is it not the case that all observers - be they molecules, people or plants receive information about the universe and respond to it in a simple deterministic manner which is well explained by mechanics chemistry and physics? Thus a network of 'observers' are in fact merely the objects within the universe acting on the physical laws which are in operation - which come into operation because the 'observers' respond the way that they do? And the universe is the way it is because the 'observers' respond the way that they do.
Does this also mean that something outside my light cone may well be subject to different physical laws?
If I am wrong then it would be in the spirit of slashdot to explain why I am wrong. Please enlighten me.
On the face of it both messages need the same ammount of energy I agree.
However in the realm of quantum mechanics we say that the wave function collapses when we observe it. Therefore the act of observing has somehow changed the state of the universe from indeterminate to deterministic, hence my interest in the act of observation and the establishment of meaning - I want to know whether my act of observation has any additional calculateable significance in establishing the state of the universe.
"Cabbage crates over the briney"
"Sorry old boy, dont understand your banter"
Whoops right over my head, I have some studying to do to catch up.
You appear to know what you are talking about though, so I have a question that you might be able to help me with.
Talking about the measurement problem - stuff only resolves its state if you look at it. Solutions : multiple instances of branching universes etc etc.
What bugs me though is that the standard model used to talk about this question is only half complete.
You say I observe and the photon tells me where the thing was but not when, or it tells me when the thing was but not where. Something like this anyway, momentum and energy blah blah. So the wavefunction collapses in the act of observation and we get half the story, curtesy of the uncertainty principal.
What I want to know though is the energy involved in me looking at the printout or not looking at the printout that describes the photon we got out of the experiment. Is there another part of the equation we can ascribe to my understanding of the result?
What is the implication of my consciousness understanding a signal, is there an energy associated with meaning? This has been bugging me for decades, ever since I learned that it took a certain ammount of energy to code a message but no one seemed to be able to tell me how much energy it took to code meaning.
If meaning had an associated energy - however difficult it was to codify. It seems to me that you should be able to fit the observer and the observation together without wondering where all the other universes went.
I have no knowledge myself of the models humanoira of which you speak, oh earthman
However it does seem relevant to ask the question whether significant scientific advances have an affect on what we think we are.
Examples
Darwinian Evolution
Earth is a globe
Sun centered universe
Nuclear weapons
Gene science
Quantum mechanics
Relativity
Also I think it is fair game to use what we understand about the physics of the universe in order to help explain structures and patterns in the soft sciences. After all we exspend a lot of effort in learning structures and patterns in hard science by using analogies to our experiental life.
I would agree though, that the validity of a model is not verified by the cuteness of its analogies.
Great references thank you.
:-)
One question that interests me is, if the Universe as a whole is subject to quantum uncertainty - does that mean that if my light cone does not intersect with someone elses - that they may be living in a universe with different physical laws and constants?
Also when looking at the quantum problem of existance and observation -
What amazes me as an electronics engineer, is that no one anywhere seems to be thinking about the implications of the energy content of the meaning of a message.
Shannons law explains how much energy is needed to encode a certain message. But it never seems to be extended into thinking about the realm of meaning.
How much, if any, energy does it take to encode the meaning of a message - When I read a message and it means something, is that a different situation from reading a message which does not mean anything. Its too long ago since I did my maths and quantum mechanics for me to figure out if this is a silly question, I'd love to know the answer though.
I continue sitting here looking at the box with my cat in it. Wondering whether the text message it just sent me from its mobile phone asking for more food - means that it is still alive
Stereotype?
No I dont think so
Cooking is a noble profession, just ask any French chef. Typecasting culinary art as the province of one gender is a mistake.
What this physicist brings to the party, apart from some interesting work, is a refreshing attitude towards making the concepts of fundamental physics available to our minds in a more arts based analogy than we are used to.
As fundamental physics is mindboggling skeins of mathematical language that resonate more with philosophy than engineering and the experience of our senses, this makes a lot of sense to me.
What I wonder though is the implication that the Universe as a whole may be subject to quantum mechanical uncertainty. Does that mean that we all create our own universes in the act of observing. And does that mean that I live in a different universe to you if my light cone doesnt intersect with yours? - For example are the fundamental laws and constants of physics different?
Put the 'fun' back in Physics I say!
Totally agree, the visual appearance of anime characters is very much appreciated. The style is leaking out of the films and back into real life through Cosplay.
Even here on the streets in Stockholm Sweden its beginning to look like a Cosplay convention must be in town from the number of people walking around with primary colour hair, and they look great. It seems that anime has just as great a cultural impact world-wide as live action movies.
However it is obvious that the author of the article does not like anime and only dwells on its questionable aspects.
It would be just as easy to criticise Hollywood for producing anodyne pap with shallow meaningless characters and a tendency for cultural imperialism. However that would miss the point, if you want to see an art movie with real characters and emotional depth then you don't go to see "Terminator II". However lots of people do go to see "Terminator II" to be entertained.
Anime probably reflects the mostly suppressed desire for rebellion or escape in the Japanese character. After a decade of low growth and further erosion of traditional Japanese virtues, it is hardly surprising that there is a thriving industry in fantasy escapist-entertainment. What better medium than animation to express unfulfilled desires and potentialities.
What is maybe more surprising, is that these films have such a strong following in the west. It may be that even some of us would rather not conform to the current Hollywood zeitgeist and find welcome relief in the fantasy world of anime.
The author complains that the characters in anime are not Japanese, whilst by default being unable to give us an example of a live action movie containing stars that the Japanese would like to emulate. It must be a reality then, that the Japanese people are floating without a strong sense of who they are. If they are culturally drifting, then it is totally appropriate that the films they see contain imaginary people, not "as a rejection of who they are" but more of a question "who could we be?". No doubt the characters will change over time as fashion and new ideas dictate.
Anime is a fascinating art form and for once I think a cliché is totally appropriate "Fiendishly clever these Japanese!"
And you can sack your system adminstrators too !
Seriously though there are probably a great many companies who put a pc on peoples desktops and will be able to model the cost of using the IBM managed service as being cheaper.
Sadly though this move towards the office computer as an appliance is going to take all the fun out. No more customised desktops, streaming mp3's or reading slashdot. Down with IBM and cost effectiveness!
On the contrary, dinking with word and paint are far more important than understanding how the machine works.
I have no interest in whether the driver of the car in front of me can change the oil or clean the sparkplugs, still less whether they understand how a racing cam works. What I want to know is whether they can steer the thing and obey the traffic regulations that prevent us from killing each other.
So comprehending the possible uses of computing power perfectly entitle joe public to have an opinion on technological law.
(Incidentaly I assume that most people have a view on the legality of cloning without a detailed knowledge of genetics).
The problems the world faces with respect to laws and new technology are in my opinion - actualy the problems that the individual faces when confronted by business interests. Whilst arguing the fine details of what is technically possible may persuade the legislators to adjust the laws more towards the interests of the individual in society it is unlikely. What you realy need to do is get some political buy in on the idea of limiting the rights of big business to enslave their customers.
Sadly as the primary religion of the US is "making money is good" you havent got a cats chance in hell of getting reasonable laws.
However I agree with you, courses which raise the issues of our times are very worthwhile to equip students with an understanding of their world.
There are still people around who dont understand computers, this problem will go away when they are all dead and Microsoft windows 2040 actualy replaces most humans in the workplace.
However I would rather be living around now at the dawn of the computer revolution when I understand them better than they understand me, especialy as there are plenty of people who have some respect for my skills.
I'm not looking forward to retraining as a basket weaver in 2039....
I agree, you make a fair point about timewasters who are absorbing too much of your valuable resource. I dont know how the medical profession deals with hypercondriacs but I guess they have found some way. On reflection I do know how they do it - they hired my mom as receptionist, try getting an appointment out of her with your third cold in two weeks :-)
The pro life group has been associated with the murder of doctors.
Of course interestingly you would have to add the Animal Liberation Front in the UK too if censorship were similarly applied.
Some of the ALF members have such fanatical views that they try and kill people who are involved in various kinds of research involving the use of animals.
You could say that the groups involved in this ban might be deffined collectively as organisations known to be or suspected to be engaged in terroist activities.
The main reason why everything to do with them isnt banned - appart from the weak outrage that might be generated over "government thought control" amongst the general population - is that if they are in the open, then they are easy to catch.
Drive seriously antisocial people underground and you cant catch them when they step out of line and start killing people. We can all wonder what wacky group the Washington sniper either belongs to or would belong to if it was legal - and if a member of that group might give the sod away if the pile of dead children gets too high...
The ban in Germany and France on Nazi propaganda is a slightly different local issue which recognises a historical problem that many people have fond memories of the Nazi party and it is not the political policy of the majority to allow that view to be passed on to new generations. This is sadly part of modern life - it used to be called "thought control" in the time of the cold war, but we now recognise it as a necessary social evil and call it "political correctness" - reinforcing an intellectualy acceptable idea which society is moving towards but has not yet accepted universally.
Whatever, almost no one in Europe has any time for the Nazi party. After all whatever the validity of Nazi policy, in the end they were proved complete arseholes who failed and destroyed europe in the process. So we dont want them back thankyou very much. Or the websites of their misguided fans who could pick someone more politically acceptible like Alexander the Great, to hero worship - who incidentaly suceeded.
Its interesting to reflect that the Pro Life people are now being seen as very little different to Osma Bin Ladins Al Quaida. It used to be a topic of conversation that the far right were very little different to the far left though I dont hear that debate much these days.
Sounds like the major political issue of our time is not about how we are Govern'ed. Now its about what tolerance and accomodations are made for differences within societies and between societies.
I totaly agree that patent law probably needs reviewing though I would suggest that constitutional principles alone would not be enough.
The use of patents to allow a mature economy to prosper is unquestionable. The frivilous abuse of the patent system to defraud businesses is also unquestionably wrong and should be stopped - and this is not a big deal as many posters point out there are methods to prevent it.
However I also see two other problems with the current patent system.
The questionable validity of genetic patents - the consequences of which are currently unknown - and therefore are not necessarily going to add to either the economy or human happiness.
But an even bigger problem lies in the third and the developing world. Poor countries with underdeveloped economies cannot afford medicines, software or farming technology because of patents.
For example the idea that we can develop drugs that stop people with AIDS from dying but cannot sell them in Africa because the pharmacutical companies are recouping the development costs and the Africans cannot afford the royalties is absurd. Fine, we pay $500 a week in the west including development costs for the drugs and the Africans pay the $1 a week it actualy costs to manufacture the chemicals.
In software it has been a difficult struggle to make a sucessfull business model out of free trial software which you then have to pay for later. Similarly it would be tough to administer a trade and patent system which gave underdeveloped economies royalty free medicine, software and farming technology and then introduced patent protection in stages as the economies catch up.
However if you realy have any interest in the long term growth of the world economy and giving the opportunity to everybody on the planet to ejoy the standard of living that we enjoy in the west then this would appear to be the optimum fast track solution to gain that goal.
Never mind paying cash from taxes to aid funds or shipping food to starving people, just let them use our best ideas for free - until they can afford to pay for them.