These engines use some sort of ionized gas as propellant. They give a lot more (kinetic) energy to every particle they thrust out, though, so they need only a fraction of the propellant that a chemical engine needs to reach similar speeds.
Somehow I doubt this engine will get anything into orbit. I believe the electrical engine in the SMART-1 mission referred to provides a thrust that is equal to the weight of a piece of a4 paper. So delivering many times more thrust would probably add up to a whole stack of paper.
These engines are usuful in space, though. Probes don't have to bring any fuel, just solar panels.
Also, an engine can not make something go faster than the speed at which it spews out stuff. The charged particles from on electrical engine are much faster than anything that comes out the back of a rocket, enabling much higher speeds.
I believe his view constitutes that morality is subjective. This does not support or counter his own ideas of what is moral in any way. However, the idea that one can force one's morals on another person is often based on the belief that morals are dictated by some outside source in the real world. The absence of such a source thus invalidates this view.
"What they need is goods produced in their own nation, made from local materials by locally-owned companies, so that the money they spend cycles back into their own economy."
I can't comment on the local materials, since I'm not sure what raw materials the machine would require. Otherwise that seems to be exactly what reprap is supposed to do, though.
Try the Spanish revolution. If you're interested "The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-management in the Spanish Revolution" by Sam Dolgoff is a very interesting book. During the Spanish civil war, for a few years, Anarcho Communism and other forms of libertarion organisation seemed to work very well. It didn't take long until they were crushed by the (Marxist) Communists and later the Fascists, though.
"Yes it would could then work, and there is already a name for this system...
Marxism"
Personally, I consider open source to be closer to the ideals of Libertarian Socialism, aka Anarchism. Marxism is usually about central management (let's forget about Libertarian Marxism for the sake of briefness), while Anarchism prefers decentralization of power and production.
I'm not especially knowledgeable about compilers, so maybe this is a silly question, but couldn't one cross-compile with GCC from another platform to the new one?
"The original source may not have the time or inclination to maintain his articles, so the biased view remains."
You seem to forget that anyone can look at previous versions of the article and change it back, not just the original author. There is no reason why the biased view would have to remain. In fact, in practice biased articles are often edited to become more balanced over time.
"I'm willing to believe that a 4.6 GHz chip with 8 ALUs and high bandwidth memory would be fast, but even in bulk, there's no way they can afford to put 4 of them in a sub-$500 game console."
Perhaps this could, at least partly, be explained by the fact that most console manufacturers actually make a loss on console sales, but make up for this by selling lots of games.
"What you argue is that they should all grow, equally. It's so a antithetical to...life, that you would have to redesign the universe from the ground up to support it."
Where did I argue that? First of all I was only trying to clarify the Anarchist's view which is not necessarily my own. Second, you seem to assume that said view implicitly contains arguments put forward by state socialists (eg communists, anarchism is also referred to as libertarian socialism).
When anarchists talk about "equality" they don't mean mathemaical, == equality. No one wants everyone to be exactly the same, not even communists. "Equality" in a political context usually refers to a more abstract notion, which is perhaps better expressed by the Dutch word "gelijkwaardigheid", which more or less translates to "equally-worthyness". In the view of most anarchists this equality should be expressed in equality (== in this case) of power. Anarchists believe an equal division of power will lead to the greatest amount of freedom for all.
The biggest gripe anarchists have with capitalism is that it puts the means of production and land into the hands of a small elite. The majority of the people will thus have to sell their labour and freedom to make money for people who don't do anything except own things.
Anarchists are thus opposed to property. They make a distinction between "property" and "personal posessions", though. People should be able to have personal posessions like combs, tvs, cars, a house. No one should own land or means of production, though. Such things should be used communally.
"Lastly, while capitalism achieves inequality (with some people rich, and some people poor), and socialism does create equality, it's not in the manner that you think. Socialism, after a run of many years, creates equality by MAKING EVERYONE POOR. The U.S.S.R (putting aside the political figures) may have been one of the most equal states to ever exist, but I doubt the people saw it as that."
First of all, you are once again referring to state socialism, which is most definetely worse than our current system of capitalism. Bakunin, an anarchist who lived around the same time as Marx, already predicted that Marx's state socialism would lead to an unworkable bureaucracy. State socialism is also called state capitalism by anarchists, because it's a lot like capitalism except the state is the only employer, which is even worse than non-state capitalism.
Anyway, if you want a more thorough explanation of anarchist opposition to capitalism go to www.anarchistfaq.org and read the section called "Why do anarchists oppose capitalism". It's a long read, but maybe you'll find it interesting. The site seems to be offline right now, but hopefully it'll be up by the time you read this.
"Less power to the government = more power to the people = free people."
Fot the sake of accuracy and nitpicking, it should be pointed out that traditionally anarchy is not only opposed to the state but also to capitalism, because capitalism creates inequality which creates unfreedom.
Your description is not entirely accurate. Comparing neurons with a cluster of computers suggests that the processing is done inside the neurons. In reality, though, most, if not all of the algorithm is implemented in the structure and strength of the connections between the neurons.
The problem is that brains work very, very differently from computers and I think it's hard to compare them speedwise. Unlike a universal computer like Blue Gene, the brain is a specialised device that performs very well at things like pattern recognition. I also believe that the fact that the brain is an analog system gives it a very big advatage in terms of speed with only a small pay-off in terms of precision.
My hypothesis is that the brain performs much better than any computer at the tasks that are important in "thinking", while computers might excel at things like doing lots and lots of very precise calculations.
They state that Blue Gene L has 16,000 processors, but it's a prototype for the real deal which is going to have 130,000 processors. So, how in god's name could a computer with that much power not be able to simulate a nuclear explosion? Is it just that it would do it too slowly to be useful?
My guess would be that it might have something to do with the fact that some problems don't scale well to clusters, simulations of nuclear explosions might be one of them. Some problems require a lot of calculations on relatively little data. Seti@home is a good example of this. Other problems require only a few calculations on lots and lots of data. In such cases every node needs to fetch a lot of data for every calculation. If the data/calculation ratio becomes too high, the connection between nodes can quickly become a bottleneck that supercomputers with fewer processors don't suffer from.
Slashdot Mirror
These engines use some sort of ionized gas as propellant. They give a lot more (kinetic) energy to every particle they thrust out, though, so they need only a fraction of the propellant that a chemical engine needs to reach similar speeds.
Somehow I doubt this engine will get anything into orbit. I believe the electrical engine in the SMART-1 mission referred to provides a thrust that is equal to the weight of a piece of a4 paper. So delivering many times more thrust would probably add up to a whole stack of paper.
These engines are usuful in space, though. Probes don't have to bring any fuel, just solar panels.
Also, an engine can not make something go faster than the speed at which it spews out stuff. The charged particles from on electrical engine are much faster than anything that comes out the back of a rocket, enabling much higher speeds.
Twice.
It might move less mass, but I bet all those moving parts encounter a lot more friction.
Hey, I think we've all seen Jerry Springer.
Plutocracy?
I believe his view constitutes that morality is subjective. This does not support or counter his own ideas of what is moral in any way. However, the idea that one can force one's morals on another person is often based on the belief that morals are dictated by some outside source in the real world. The absence of such a source thus invalidates this view.
I wonder if not watching television impairs one's sense of irony.
Make Linux, not war.
"What they need is goods produced in their own nation, made from local materials by locally-owned companies, so that the money they spend cycles back into their own economy."
I can't comment on the local materials, since I'm not sure what raw materials the machine would require. Otherwise that seems to be exactly what reprap is supposed to do, though.
"Can you be sued if you havn't downloaded any content, and havn't uploaded any content, but provide a website that hosts .torrent files?"
Well, not in Sweden. Not sure about other countries, though.
Well, they do usually cut out the commercials, which is what most networks get their money from.
Depends on the species.
Try the Spanish revolution. If you're interested "The Anarchist Collectives: Workers' Self-management in the Spanish Revolution" by Sam Dolgoff is a very interesting book. During the Spanish civil war, for a few years, Anarcho Communism and other forms of libertarion organisation seemed to work very well. It didn't take long until they were crushed by the (Marxist) Communists and later the Fascists, though.
"Yes it would could then work, and there is already a name for this system...
Marxism"
Personally, I consider open source to be closer to the ideals of Libertarian Socialism, aka Anarchism. Marxism is usually about central management (let's forget about Libertarian Marxism for the sake of briefness), while Anarchism prefers decentralization of power and production.
I'm not especially knowledgeable about compilers, so maybe this is a silly question, but couldn't one cross-compile with GCC from another platform to the new one?
"The original source may not have the time or inclination to maintain his articles, so the biased view remains."
You seem to forget that anyone can look at previous versions of the article and change it back, not just the original author. There is no reason why the biased view would have to remain. In fact, in practice biased articles are often edited to become more balanced over time.
It also said they make $100 million every day. You do the math.
"I'm willing to believe that a 4.6 GHz chip with 8 ALUs and high bandwidth memory would be fast, but even in bulk, there's no way they can afford to put 4 of them in a sub-$500 game console."
Perhaps this could, at least partly, be explained by the fact that most console manufacturers actually make a loss on console sales, but make up for this by selling lots of games.
Yes.
Late response, but what the heck..
"Is "unfreedom" a word?"
Probably not, but you know what I mean, right?
"What you argue is that they should all grow, equally. It's so a antithetical to...life, that you would have to redesign the universe from the ground up to support it."
Where did I argue that? First of all I was only trying to clarify the Anarchist's view which is not necessarily my own. Second, you seem to assume that said view implicitly contains arguments put forward by state socialists (eg communists, anarchism is also referred to as libertarian socialism).
When anarchists talk about "equality" they don't mean mathemaical, == equality. No one wants everyone to be exactly the same, not even communists. "Equality" in a political context usually refers to a more abstract notion, which is perhaps better expressed by the Dutch word "gelijkwaardigheid", which more or less translates to "equally-worthyness". In the view of most anarchists this equality should be expressed in equality (== in this case) of power. Anarchists believe an equal division of power will lead to the greatest amount of freedom for all.
The biggest gripe anarchists have with capitalism is that it puts the means of production and land into the hands of a small elite. The majority of the people will thus have to sell their labour and freedom to make money for people who don't do anything except own things.
Anarchists are thus opposed to property. They make a distinction between "property" and "personal posessions", though. People should be able to have personal posessions like combs, tvs, cars, a house. No one should own land or means of production, though. Such things should be used communally.
"Lastly, while capitalism achieves inequality (with some people rich, and some people poor), and socialism does create equality, it's not in the manner that you think. Socialism, after a run of many years, creates equality by MAKING EVERYONE POOR. The U.S.S.R (putting aside the political figures) may have been one of the most equal states to ever exist, but I doubt the people saw it as that."
First of all, you are once again referring to state socialism, which is most definetely worse than our current system of capitalism. Bakunin, an anarchist who lived around the same time as Marx, already predicted that Marx's state socialism would lead to an unworkable bureaucracy. State socialism is also called state capitalism by anarchists, because it's a lot like capitalism except the state is the only employer, which is even worse than non-state capitalism.
Anyway, if you want a more thorough explanation of anarchist opposition to capitalism go to www.anarchistfaq.org and read the section called "Why do anarchists oppose capitalism". It's a long read, but maybe you'll find it interesting. The site seems to be offline right now, but hopefully it'll be up by the time you read this.
"Less power to the government = more power to the people = free people."
Fot the sake of accuracy and nitpicking, it should be pointed out that traditionally anarchy is not only opposed to the state but also to capitalism, because capitalism creates inequality which creates unfreedom.
Your description is not entirely accurate. Comparing neurons with a cluster of computers suggests that the processing is done inside the neurons. In reality, though, most, if not all of the algorithm is implemented in the structure and strength of the connections between the neurons.
The problem is that brains work very, very differently from computers and I think it's hard to compare them speedwise. Unlike a universal computer like Blue Gene, the brain is a specialised device that performs very well at things like pattern recognition. I also believe that the fact that the brain is an analog system gives it a very big advatage in terms of speed with only a small pay-off in terms of precision.
My hypothesis is that the brain performs much better than any computer at the tasks that are important in "thinking", while computers might excel at things like doing lots and lots of very precise calculations.
They state that Blue Gene L has 16,000 processors, but it's a prototype for the real deal which is going to have 130,000 processors. So, how in god's name could a computer with that much power not be able to simulate a nuclear explosion? Is it just that it would do it too slowly to be useful?
My guess would be that it might have something to do with the fact that some problems don't scale well to clusters, simulations of nuclear explosions might be one of them. Some problems require a lot of calculations on relatively little data. Seti@home is a good example of this. Other problems require only a few calculations on lots and lots of data. In such cases every node needs to fetch a lot of data for every calculation. If the data/calculation ratio becomes too high, the connection between nodes can quickly become a bottleneck that supercomputers with fewer processors don't suffer from.