Remember: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills". That is why we'll send people to Mars: not despite the challenges that endeavour poses, but because of them, and because of what we'll learn from overcoming them.
With that said, feasibility of the mission and the sense in spending large amounts of money on it are valid questions, and I don't think at this stage we should just give the money to NASA and step back. However I do feel we're coming to the point where it no longer makes sense to ignore the challenge as too hard. Set the goal and commit to spending the money, ask NASA to design a mission, then start working on the missing components.
Picking up an unnatural, focused emission of energy from another planet would already be pretty good, even if we cannot decode the signal or even recognize it as such.
If there are civilizations with the same level of advancement as us, we'll find them.
I've always wondered about that, and about the idea that we're "carelessly advertising our presence" as some put it. How would another civilisation detect us? Radio is often mentioned, but our own transmissions are decidedly low power (on an interstellar scale). Would even our stronger transmissions aimed at our spacecraft or planets be detectable from a couple of light years away, and are we able to pick up signals sent between planets in another solar system?
Re:I'd rather code COBOL or FORTRAN
on
PHP Next Generation
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
PHP is great for prototyping, throwaway scripts, or other quick & dirty stuff. But if any of that kind of code makes it into a critical production environment and turns it into a maintenance nightmare, blame the manager who allowed or ordered that, not the language.
PHP can be used for production stuff as well, if you're careful. I was involved in building a mission critical system for a large corporation, and we selected PHP since the client already had a sizable pool of experienced PHP developers. We built the system relatively quickly and had little trouble handing it over to the team handling maintenance and enhancements, and it's been running happily ever since. What helped was applying good common coding sense, such as extensive error handling, and comprehensive unit testing against the documented functionality of each module / function. I've used far worse languages...
Instant transactions would be ideal but they are not really necessary for the currency to function properly. If it takes, say, a day for a transaction to clear, and the exchange has a good reputation, then the odds are very good that they won't make off with your cryptocoins or dollars while the transaction is being cleared. And if you do use it as an exchange rather than an online wallet, your exposure is likely to be rather limited.
First heavier-than-air flight, first sustained man-powered flight, and pretty impressive flight capabilities given that the "aircraft" was built in captivity, using whatever lay to hand. Icarus failed for not heeding his dad's warning about exceeding the flight envelope, but the aircraft itself was pretty successful.
Very real. The USS Macon and USS Acron were built as flying aircraft carriers, carrying 5 fighters. Not just carry them under the airship's belly, Last Crusade style, but inside the airship. Fascinating aircraft, something out of a steampunky SF story.
I'm not talking about criminal wrong-doing; if a corporation engages in activity we wouldn't tolerate from an individual, or causes significant harm to society, it should be held accountable, as should the individuals who made the decision to break the law. What I mean is making moral choices within the bounds of the law.
First of all, a corporation cannot make those, it's the leadership. And faced with a choice between something that benefits the community they are in vs. their shareholders, they could argue that the right moral choice is to go for shareholder value, since they are directly (and by law) charged with looking after the interests of those shareholders, not the community at large. If you, as a CEO, have the opportunity to shift your earnings to an overseas holding so you'll end up paying less corporate tax, should you not do so to benefit your shareholders? And if we do not want that sort of behaviour from corporations, we should not expect corporations hold themselves to some ethical standards higher than the law, we should set those standards into law, and/or exercise our rights as customers and shareholders.
Corporations will follow the ethical decisions made by their leadership, or else hold themselves only to the minimum social / ethical requirements demanded by the law, the shareholders, and society inasmuch it influences their ability to do business. It is true that the world would be a better place if the people who ran those corporations would aspire to higher ethical standards, but that is true of people in any capacity, and a pipe dream. That's why we have laws.
You need to assume that a business will first and foremost look after its own interests, which is to make money. Companies by nature are not immoral, but amoral (though there's plenty of immoral people amongst their senior leadership); it is not their role to be nice to society, unless we make them. That is why we have rules and politicians to make those rules. In that sense I agree with GP: I do not blame business for furthering their own goals by legal means; if I find those means to be immoral or undesirable, I can choose not to do business with them. If we as society share that opinion, then we can change the rules companies play by. That's where politicians have dropped the ball.
Great news indeed. For a long time, traffic fines in the Netherlands did not appear on the budget; the revenues were just dumped into the treasury without being earmarked for anything, they just reduced the deficit a little, and thus had no real political or bureaucratic worth. But a few years ago that changed, and traffic fines are a budget item. And it shows: the fines have skyrocketed, far outpacing inflation, and they are finding ever more ingenious ways to catch people at violations. Not where it does the most good, safety-wise, but where it brings in the most ready cash.
Like cars in general, it's now just another cow to be milked. Appeals to the tough-on-crime crowd, and the rest will just tell you "f.u., you shouldn't be speeding then". Which is fair if the punishment fits the crime, not if going 20 over the limit is now punished harsher than shoplifting.
Actually, avoiding certain words makes sense if those words bolster a legal case against GM, as a partial admission of guilt. Same reason your side mirrors still bear that stupid warning about objects being closer than they appear. Fix your silly legal system that allows anyone to sue anyone over anything, and if their case has any merit, gives them a chance to win the damages or out of court settlement lottery.
Our own legal system mostly awards actual damages (which can still be quite high in injury suits), and orders only small awards for stuff like "mental anguish". Moreover, we do not have the notion of punitive damages, instead companies can be fined, with the proceeds going to the state, the object being to punish, not arbitrarily reward a wronged party.
True, though you could argue that being locked up with other dangerous criminals, ensuring your security can only be assured by a decrease in privacy (frisking, cell inspections). And once you're a ward of the state, the state assumes a much larger than normal responsibility for your security.
Also, punishment works pretty well to prevent criminals from committing crimes while in jail (sure, not 100%, as others pointed out before). That's not about being hard on crime; it's about applying the most beneficial (to society) and just (to the criminal) consequence of crime, recidivism as well as the seriousness of the offense being other factors. A warning for first timers, correction for repeaters, and if you make it clear that you won't listen to reason, society will be better off with you behind bars for a few years.
I also love that they changed the name from the British Dragon's Den to Shark Tank, because - what - too satanic sounding for middle America?
Maybe it's because of that lady with the car rental business (and famous for what has to be the worst business website); she came for capital to expand her successful business, which the "dragons" were willing to provide with much reservation. After hearing their offer she replied that for giving up 40% of her company to them she'd be better off just going to a bank, and to the surprised reactions to her turning down the offer on the table, she scoffed: "I'm Chinese. We eat dragons for breakfast".
We already have a universal and totally unreasonable energy surcharge. The 3 year revenues from this tax alone (from the population of our small country) could bankroll another ITER. Only problem is: we're spending it on other stuff, not on energy research or even renewables.
For those things to happen we need to lower launch costs dramatically and come up with better closed loop systems or ways to use resources already in space or other worlds, i.e. making colonies more or less elf-sufficient, at least for basic necessities (air, food & water, fuel & power). We'll still need this even if we can reduce the trip to mere days, and once we have this, a trip time of several months would be inconvenient but not a blocker.
Seriously, I'm happy to through some cash their way, but you'd think that for something this significant they'd be able to find $200k from actual investors or research funds to take the next step, especially since they are apparently already funded by JPL.
If ACTA is anything to go by, I'm not at all convinced about these "broad economic advantages"; ACTA was full of advantages for narrow special interests, and they weren't our interests.
The problem with secret negotiations is political realities: once a compromise has been reached, it is pretty much set in stone: no one will want to go back to the table to propose further amendments (effectively restarting the negotiation), and no government who was involved in the proceedings will agree to the deal and then allow it to tank in their national democratic process. Besides, most of the countries involved have no democratic process to directly influence the acceptance or rejection of trade agreements. The government has already been appointed, usually with a house majority, and in most cases a ratification will sail through with perhaps a couple of rider bills to get the opposition to agree.
Open negotiations however provide more democratic control, especially over nasty rider bills in the treaty itself. If you know what is being negotiated, protesters and voters can at least tell their governments: "We will not ever allow you to agree to that part".
It makes sense to harmonize some of this stuff, sure, especially things like patents or where it is needed to level the playing field. But in other cases it may be better to have no regulations at all, especially when rules are somewhat arbitrary and/or designed to protect interests in certain member states. We've seen plenty of throughtless rules that put an undue administrative or other burden on companies, especially smaller ones. In a lot of cases they are the ones complaining.
Give us free trade and let us write our own law and the EU is just fine.
This. Back to the EEC instead of the current undemocratic "transfer union". Of course if we do revert to the old trade union, where will our national politicians find their well earned, lavishly paying jobs with zero accountability, and where will they find similar jobs for friends and family? I find the support for the EC from politicians of all stripes somewhat baffling... until you realise many of them hope to "retire" to Brussels at some point. Plus the EC is a good way to shift blame even for pro EC parties: we frequently see them voting against a certain unpopular measure in national parliaments, then voting in favour of getting the same measure enacted through the euro parliament.
Nice try. For one, both the Netherlands and the UK are net contributors. NL managed to get its payments reduced after being the largest (per capita) sponsor of the EU for years, but they still contribute. Also, there is no reason why we shouldn't have the advantages without the drawbacks. That's what the so called eurosceptics are after, not necessarily a complete departure from the EC, but a saner Europe that concerns itself with important transborder stuff, and leaves the rest to national governments. We want a Europe with economic, legislative and military collaboration, but without the legislation on the curvature of bananas, the lavish subsidies to farms in France and Poland, the projects that are essentially just burning money for the hell of it, and yes, without net neutrality too. I am glad the EC is pushing for it, but isn't that something that we could leave to national governments?
In short, we were happy with the old EEC. Anything further should start with rebuilding the EC into something that actually resembles a functioning democracy, with strict limits on the mandate of this superstate.
Musk appears to want to create innovative products, and turn seemingly established markets on their heads. While he appears to be happy enough to sell parts of his tech to other companies (E-drivetrains to Toyota), and even if making only the batteries would be the smart economic choice, I very much doubt that's where is heart wants him to go.
Bought in? In the early days, the coins for that trip to space would have come at the cost of the electricity required to run a miner on your laptop for a few weeks.
A functioning democracy doesn't need people voting on every single issue, but it does need accountable representatives who haven't forgotten who they represent. An honest politician is one who knows that he represents the people, looking after their interests without pandering to their every whim. And a clever politician is one who understands the importance of business, but also knows that corporations aren't much interested in people's interests: looking after those is the politician's job.
No shit. For a lot of music, I'd love to buy MP3s of the studio masters made vor vinyl. I don't believe that vinyl is a superior medium compared to CD or MP3/FLAC, but in many cases there's a huge difference between the masters produced for vinyl and for digital media. And in a lot of cases, those "digitally remastered" recordings are crap even compared to the old digital masters, with a lot of "loudness war" added. Sadly it is hard to come by a digital file produced from a good master.
Very true. It's not a reason FOSS will not work in your organisation, but it is an issue that needs to be addressed. If something goes bad, who is accountable? Make sure it is not the manager signing off on it. Companies like RedHat do not just exist to package and provide support on Linux installations, they also exist as a "blame buffer". Start with a low risk project that will not have huge repercussions if it fails, be honest about both short and long term risks in using FOSS, and address these risks. For instance: don't assume 100% effective and timely community support, and don't leave maintenance to Ted in the boiler room either; get a real support team in place. Treat it like you would in-house developed software, but without the risks associated with development. Once you have demonstrated the benefits, work with management to arrive at a sensible policy for FOSS.
Another area that management may be particularly sensitive to is liability for IP infringements. If Microsoft steal someone else's software, the IP owners go after MS. In case of FOSS, the IP owners go after the users with deep pockets. I could name a few cases where this has happened. This is a manageable risk, but again: it needs to be addressed up front.
Slashdot Mirror
Remember: "We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills". That is why we'll send people to Mars: not despite the challenges that endeavour poses, but because of them, and because of what we'll learn from overcoming them.
With that said, feasibility of the mission and the sense in spending large amounts of money on it are valid questions, and I don't think at this stage we should just give the money to NASA and step back. However I do feel we're coming to the point where it no longer makes sense to ignore the challenge as too hard. Set the goal and commit to spending the money, ask NASA to design a mission, then start working on the missing components.
IF we can recognize the signals as such.
Picking up an unnatural, focused emission of energy from another planet would already be pretty good, even if we cannot decode the signal or even recognize it as such.
If there are civilizations with the same level of advancement as us, we'll find them.
I've always wondered about that, and about the idea that we're "carelessly advertising our presence" as some put it. How would another civilisation detect us? Radio is often mentioned, but our own transmissions are decidedly low power (on an interstellar scale). Would even our stronger transmissions aimed at our spacecraft or planets be detectable from a couple of light years away, and are we able to pick up signals sent between planets in another solar system?
PHP is great for prototyping, throwaway scripts, or other quick & dirty stuff. But if any of that kind of code makes it into a critical production environment and turns it into a maintenance nightmare, blame the manager who allowed or ordered that, not the language.
PHP can be used for production stuff as well, if you're careful. I was involved in building a mission critical system for a large corporation, and we selected PHP since the client already had a sizable pool of experienced PHP developers. We built the system relatively quickly and had little trouble handing it over to the team handling maintenance and enhancements, and it's been running happily ever since. What helped was applying good common coding sense, such as extensive error handling, and comprehensive unit testing against the documented functionality of each module / function. I've used far worse languages...
Instant transactions would be ideal but they are not really necessary for the currency to function properly. If it takes, say, a day for a transaction to clear, and the exchange has a good reputation, then the odds are very good that they won't make off with your cryptocoins or dollars while the transaction is being cleared. And if you do use it as an exchange rather than an online wallet, your exposure is likely to be rather limited.
First heavier-than-air flight, first sustained man-powered flight, and pretty impressive flight capabilities given that the "aircraft" was built in captivity, using whatever lay to hand. Icarus failed for not heeding his dad's warning about exceeding the flight envelope, but the aircraft itself was pretty successful.
Very real. The USS Macon and USS Acron were built as flying aircraft carriers, carrying 5 fighters. Not just carry them under the airship's belly, Last Crusade style, but inside the airship. Fascinating aircraft, something out of a steampunky SF story.
I'm not talking about criminal wrong-doing; if a corporation engages in activity we wouldn't tolerate from an individual, or causes significant harm to society, it should be held accountable, as should the individuals who made the decision to break the law. What I mean is making moral choices within the bounds of the law.
First of all, a corporation cannot make those, it's the leadership. And faced with a choice between something that benefits the community they are in vs. their shareholders, they could argue that the right moral choice is to go for shareholder value, since they are directly (and by law) charged with looking after the interests of those shareholders, not the community at large. If you, as a CEO, have the opportunity to shift your earnings to an overseas holding so you'll end up paying less corporate tax, should you not do so to benefit your shareholders? And if we do not want that sort of behaviour from corporations, we should not expect corporations hold themselves to some ethical standards higher than the law, we should set those standards into law, and/or exercise our rights as customers and shareholders.
Corporations will follow the ethical decisions made by their leadership, or else hold themselves only to the minimum social / ethical requirements demanded by the law, the shareholders, and society inasmuch it influences their ability to do business. It is true that the world would be a better place if the people who ran those corporations would aspire to higher ethical standards, but that is true of people in any capacity, and a pipe dream. That's why we have laws.
You need to assume that a business will first and foremost look after its own interests, which is to make money. Companies by nature are not immoral, but amoral (though there's plenty of immoral people amongst their senior leadership); it is not their role to be nice to society, unless we make them. That is why we have rules and politicians to make those rules. In that sense I agree with GP: I do not blame business for furthering their own goals by legal means; if I find those means to be immoral or undesirable, I can choose not to do business with them. If we as society share that opinion, then we can change the rules companies play by. That's where politicians have dropped the ball.
Great news indeed. For a long time, traffic fines in the Netherlands did not appear on the budget; the revenues were just dumped into the treasury without being earmarked for anything, they just reduced the deficit a little, and thus had no real political or bureaucratic worth. But a few years ago that changed, and traffic fines are a budget item. And it shows: the fines have skyrocketed, far outpacing inflation, and they are finding ever more ingenious ways to catch people at violations. Not where it does the most good, safety-wise, but where it brings in the most ready cash.
Like cars in general, it's now just another cow to be milked. Appeals to the tough-on-crime crowd, and the rest will just tell you "f.u., you shouldn't be speeding then". Which is fair if the punishment fits the crime, not if going 20 over the limit is now punished harsher than shoplifting.
Actually, avoiding certain words makes sense if those words bolster a legal case against GM, as a partial admission of guilt. Same reason your side mirrors still bear that stupid warning about objects being closer than they appear. Fix your silly legal system that allows anyone to sue anyone over anything, and if their case has any merit, gives them a chance to win the damages or out of court settlement lottery.
Our own legal system mostly awards actual damages (which can still be quite high in injury suits), and orders only small awards for stuff like "mental anguish". Moreover, we do not have the notion of punitive damages, instead companies can be fined, with the proceeds going to the state, the object being to punish, not arbitrarily reward a wronged party.
True, though you could argue that being locked up with other dangerous criminals, ensuring your security can only be assured by a decrease in privacy (frisking, cell inspections). And once you're a ward of the state, the state assumes a much larger than normal responsibility for your security.
Also, punishment works pretty well to prevent criminals from committing crimes while in jail (sure, not 100%, as others pointed out before). That's not about being hard on crime; it's about applying the most beneficial (to society) and just (to the criminal) consequence of crime, recidivism as well as the seriousness of the offense being other factors. A warning for first timers, correction for repeaters, and if you make it clear that you won't listen to reason, society will be better off with you behind bars for a few years.
I also love that they changed the name from the British Dragon's Den to Shark Tank, because - what - too satanic sounding for middle America?
Maybe it's because of that lady with the car rental business (and famous for what has to be the worst business website); she came for capital to expand her successful business, which the "dragons" were willing to provide with much reservation. After hearing their offer she replied that for giving up 40% of her company to them she'd be better off just going to a bank, and to the surprised reactions to her turning down the offer on the table, she scoffed: "I'm Chinese. We eat dragons for breakfast".
We already have a universal and totally unreasonable energy surcharge. The 3 year revenues from this tax alone (from the population of our small country) could bankroll another ITER. Only problem is: we're spending it on other stuff, not on energy research or even renewables.
For those things to happen we need to lower launch costs dramatically and come up with better closed loop systems or ways to use resources already in space or other worlds, i.e. making colonies more or less elf-sufficient, at least for basic necessities (air, food & water, fuel & power). We'll still need this even if we can reduce the trip to mere days, and once we have this, a trip time of several months would be inconvenient but not a blocker.
So at what pledge tier do I get a Mr. Fusion?
Seriously, I'm happy to through some cash their way, but you'd think that for something this significant they'd be able to find $200k from actual investors or research funds to take the next step, especially since they are apparently already funded by JPL.
If ACTA is anything to go by, I'm not at all convinced about these "broad economic advantages"; ACTA was full of advantages for narrow special interests, and they weren't our interests.
The problem with secret negotiations is political realities: once a compromise has been reached, it is pretty much set in stone: no one will want to go back to the table to propose further amendments (effectively restarting the negotiation), and no government who was involved in the proceedings will agree to the deal and then allow it to tank in their national democratic process. Besides, most of the countries involved have no democratic process to directly influence the acceptance or rejection of trade agreements. The government has already been appointed, usually with a house majority, and in most cases a ratification will sail through with perhaps a couple of rider bills to get the opposition to agree.
Open negotiations however provide more democratic control, especially over nasty rider bills in the treaty itself. If you know what is being negotiated, protesters and voters can at least tell their governments: "We will not ever allow you to agree to that part".
Good thing I'm from the Netherlands then.
It makes sense to harmonize some of this stuff, sure, especially things like patents or where it is needed to level the playing field. But in other cases it may be better to have no regulations at all, especially when rules are somewhat arbitrary and/or designed to protect interests in certain member states. We've seen plenty of throughtless rules that put an undue administrative or other burden on companies, especially smaller ones. In a lot of cases they are the ones complaining.
Give us free trade and let us write our own law and the EU is just fine.
This. Back to the EEC instead of the current undemocratic "transfer union". Of course if we do revert to the old trade union, where will our national politicians find their well earned, lavishly paying jobs with zero accountability, and where will they find similar jobs for friends and family? I find the support for the EC from politicians of all stripes somewhat baffling... until you realise many of them hope to "retire" to Brussels at some point. Plus the EC is a good way to shift blame even for pro EC parties: we frequently see them voting against a certain unpopular measure in national parliaments, then voting in favour of getting the same measure enacted through the euro parliament.
Nice try. For one, both the Netherlands and the UK are net contributors. NL managed to get its payments reduced after being the largest (per capita) sponsor of the EU for years, but they still contribute. Also, there is no reason why we shouldn't have the advantages without the drawbacks. That's what the so called eurosceptics are after, not necessarily a complete departure from the EC, but a saner Europe that concerns itself with important transborder stuff, and leaves the rest to national governments. We want a Europe with economic, legislative and military collaboration, but without the legislation on the curvature of bananas, the lavish subsidies to farms in France and Poland, the projects that are essentially just burning money for the hell of it, and yes, without net neutrality too. I am glad the EC is pushing for it, but isn't that something that we could leave to national governments?
In short, we were happy with the old EEC. Anything further should start with rebuilding the EC into something that actually resembles a functioning democracy, with strict limits on the mandate of this superstate.
Musk appears to want to create innovative products, and turn seemingly established markets on their heads. While he appears to be happy enough to sell parts of his tech to other companies (E-drivetrains to Toyota), and even if making only the batteries would be the smart economic choice, I very much doubt that's where is heart wants him to go.
Bought in? In the early days, the coins for that trip to space would have come at the cost of the electricity required to run a miner on your laptop for a few weeks.
A functioning democracy doesn't need people voting on every single issue, but it does need accountable representatives who haven't forgotten who they represent. An honest politician is one who knows that he represents the people, looking after their interests without pandering to their every whim. And a clever politician is one who understands the importance of business, but also knows that corporations aren't much interested in people's interests: looking after those is the politician's job.
labels aren't letting us buy what we want.
No shit. For a lot of music, I'd love to buy MP3s of the studio masters made vor vinyl. I don't believe that vinyl is a superior medium compared to CD or MP3/FLAC, but in many cases there's a huge difference between the masters produced for vinyl and for digital media. And in a lot of cases, those "digitally remastered" recordings are crap even compared to the old digital masters, with a lot of "loudness war" added. Sadly it is hard to come by a digital file produced from a good master.
Very true. It's not a reason FOSS will not work in your organisation, but it is an issue that needs to be addressed. If something goes bad, who is accountable? Make sure it is not the manager signing off on it. Companies like RedHat do not just exist to package and provide support on Linux installations, they also exist as a "blame buffer". Start with a low risk project that will not have huge repercussions if it fails, be honest about both short and long term risks in using FOSS, and address these risks. For instance: don't assume 100% effective and timely community support, and don't leave maintenance to Ted in the boiler room either; get a real support team in place. Treat it like you would in-house developed software, but without the risks associated with development. Once you have demonstrated the benefits, work with management to arrive at a sensible policy for FOSS.
Another area that management may be particularly sensitive to is liability for IP infringements. If Microsoft steal someone else's software, the IP owners go after MS. In case of FOSS, the IP owners go after the users with deep pockets. I could name a few cases where this has happened. This is a manageable risk, but again: it needs to be addressed up front.