give them jobs, families and a hope for the future instead of absolute poverty and a 'nothing to lose' life style.
Wow, how exactly do you do this? It's an example of something easy to say, but hard if not impossible to implement.
Ooh... ooh... I know this one! Teacher, pick me!!!
Start by increasing business opportunities in this country. Businesses start from innovation on infrastructure, so start by improving these.
A national internet and phone service that's fast and cheap. This is trivial to accomplish, just fix the maximum price that the telcos/providers can charge for usage and mandate that there can be no other restrictions. If you choose the price right, the telcos would make the same amount of money under the new rule... but now to make more profit they have to compete for coverage and price. (No early termination fees, no access fees, no roaming charges, choose provider at the time of phone call.)
National health care. Healthy people are happier and less likely to revolt, are less likely to turn to crime, are less likely to be bankrupt from health care bills. This is easy to implement - just copy one of the existing better systems, such as Canada or UK.
Repeal drug laws, get rid of the DEA, put 1/10 the money into education and treatment. (Education and treatment are more effective anyway.) Reduce our prison population by pardoning and/or paroling all non-violent drug offenders. Retroactively downgrade their offense to non-felony, so that they can get jobs. Do this in a graduated way, so as not to raise unemployment.
Revamp patent and copyright law so that creators can profit from and protect their works by starting businesses.
Free schooling through advanced degree for citizens (like Finland). An educated population is more likely to be innovative and take advantage of opportunities. Get rid of H1B visas altogether.
Revamp the tax code so that all businesses pay the same proportional tax with no exceptions. When big corps such as GE pay no taxes it's harder for people to start new businesses. Remove the personal income tax altogether and get revenue from businesses and economic growth (by printing more money, to keep inflation down). Keep inflation a close to zero as possible, so that people can save for big purchases instead of going into debt.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Government has to stop coddling special interests and start benefiting the general population, or else deal with an angry, armed revolt.
People have been predicting the wealth economy for some time, but have no clear plan on how to transition to that model.
Here's an opportunity: redefine "full time" to be less than 40 hours. Our productivity is now so high that fewer people need to work, but at the same time we need to employ everyone in order to prevent unrest and revolt.
Productivity is high, so we should have more leisure time. GDP per capita has skyrocketed, it's doubled since about 1990, and the average citizen would get $40,000 per year if output was distributed evenly. That's every man, woman and child - employed or not, and every year.
Corporations have to start spending money on the people instead of cutting people out of production. Better educated workers, happier workers, healthier workers make your business stronger and give better return on investment than rehiring. Much better return than "cost accounting", which aims to make the cheapest product people can tolerate.
Government has to start rerouting wealth from businesses to the people, by way of infrastructure benefits. Free health care and free education, as well as infrastructure projects (national system of renewable power generation, universal internet service, &c) enrich the population without coddling to the lazy.
Production is met by an ever-dwindling need for human interaction. We should embrace this trend in a way that doesn't require armed revolt.
As the span of time reaches infinity the probability of a global catastrophic event approaches 1. It *will* happen eventually.
This assumes a fixed probability over all time.
If the probability lowers over time, then the cumulative probability can be bounded to any chosen value.
Consider: is the probability of world-wide plague higher or lower than it was 300 years ago? The probability of large-scale crop failures? Nuclear war?
You could say that the probabilities are higher in each case, yet the historical statistical evidence shows that the number and severity of wars has decreased, plague vectors have been detected and averted (SARS, Bird flu), and crop productivity has skyrocketed beyond all projected yields.
Statistically speaking, we're much more secure in our civilization simply because we are more aware of our surroundings, are smarter, and have more technology to apply to problems.
We're even beginning to discuss and proposing solutions to asteroid impacts.
The probability of a global catastrophic event is decreasing. If it hasn't happened yet, it'll become ever less likely in the future.
The Burning Man festival noted that with all the Nevada rebates on solar panels, net was effectively the cost of installation.
Burning Man has access to a large amount of volunteer labor, so they can effectively put up solar panels for free. They setup panels to power parts of the event (the man), then move them to Gerlach once the festival is over. As I recall, the goal was to provide all the power for the towns nearest the festival.
I wish other states were as forward-looking. At this point the benefits (to the state) of encouraging the infrastructure probably outweigh the costs.
(Yes, I know. Just getting to burning man uses an enormous amount of fossil fuels. What's your point?)
Medical error ranks third among causes of death in the US.
Estimates of risk vary depending on which complications are counted, but it's always in the top 10. Any trip to the hospital results in a 1 in 300 chance of dying from medical mistake. For comparison, your chance of dying in an airplane accident is 1 in 10,000,000 per flight.
A rational plan would spend time and effort where it will do the most good. Instead of inventing new cures and treatments, perhaps we should be looking into ways to make our existing process safer?
For comparison, the risk of death by medical error is higher than the risk of death from diabetes. I'm not saying that diabetes research should be halted, but shouldn't higher risk factors be addressed as well?
The problem with this type of innovation is that it's a shot in the dark.
We haven't the first clue for the most effective way to teach people. We study things in HS because the subjects are "classics", not because they are useful (Geometry versus Probability, for instance). The "walk around lecturing in front of passive students" model doesn't fit with the need to be rambunctious. The fixed, level-based scale of achievement: "all children should be at this level of achievement at this age, else they are disabled" doesn't take into account variations in maturity or birth date. (Be born a day earlier, get put into a class where you're competing with class mates a year older.)
For reference, check out redirect. The author carefully details a large number of education techniques and social services which have no scientific basis whatsoever. Predictably, when actually studied, many of these ideas do more damage than good; for instance, regarding teen pregnancy, government teaching initiatives tend to increase the teen pregnancy rate.
There's simply no evidence that a) this system works to the degree of accuracy needed, b) doesn't have a high false-positive rate due to unforseen factors such as drapes waving in the background, c) can be used to any good effect (double-blind studies anyone?) as a teaching aid.
Our track record for using technology to help education is not good.
It makes for a good story, though. "We don't know the best way to teach, but here's something that should work!"
Here's another thought problem for you. Recall the 2009 Star Trek movie which shows a young Spock standing in a pit while a computer presents audio and video lessons. (I don't think the pit model works, but a student in front of a screen seems natural enough.)
Assume that you have control over this content, and can do double-blind studies of minor changes. Each video is a computer program, so any small piece can be redone without retaping the entire lesson. The program allows student interaction.
What features would your ideal teaching machine have, what sorts of things would you teach, what sorts of experiments could you do to home in on the optimum teaching method?
Modern humans descended from ape-like creatures on the order of 3 million years ago. Bonobos are further back on the evolutionary scale, call it 5 million years before they become intelligent (massive guesstimate).
Suppose we leave the planet. Would the Bonobos be able to determine that another intelligent species came before them? I can think of no place on the planet that wouldn't wear down and wash away the signs of our civilization.
Suppose we leave the planet, but would like to leave a message. Where should we put it, and in what form? I can think of no place on the planet that would be safe from erosion, and any satellite orbit would decay long before 5 million years had passed. (LAGEOS 1 was predicted to remain in orbit for 8.4 million years, but may only last a couple of hundred thousand years.)
Now consider the reverse. Suppose there was an intelligent species on Earth before us. Where could we look for evidence? If they left a message for us; assuming that they want it found, where would it be?
Here's some trends I've noticed. Every time some politically-charged issue springs up, certain predictable actions seem to bog down debate:
1) Pointing out typos in the article summary or parent poster
Especially when the respondent makes their own typos while picking apart the OP. The flurry of people jumping on board to correct this can be enormous, and push valuable discussion down below the screen, where it has little chance of being seen.
2) Revising someone's analogy
Someone makes an analogy, so someone *else* has to make a better one. If the revised analogy is flawed, again the flurry of people jumping on board to correct this can be enormous and push valuable discussion down the page.
(Maybe when someone makes a bad analogy we should just say "no, it's not like that" and let it go?)
2) Saying it's our fault
I really hate this one. Invariably, someone will come along and say "it's our own fault because we voted for these people". This completely exonerates the politicians involved and makes everyone feel a little bit guilty - and at the same time it defuses calls for action, suggestions for improvement, and the like. "The best way is to use the power of the vote", setting aside that a) much of the time it's an unelected bureaucrat, b) the vote has been hijacked by special interests, and c) even if it were true, we should also be discussion other possible options.
On another subject, from what you've heard and read, do you think the release of classified documents about the State Department and U.S. diplomacy by WikiLeaks serves the public interest or harms the public interest?
Do you think the United States should try to arrest the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange (Ah-SANGH), and charge him with a crime for releasing these documents, or do you think this is not a criminal matter?
Not blatantly misleading, but there is the distinct odor of bias in these questions, especially when asked one after the other.
The first question didn't directly ask what people thought, it asked them to conclude based on what the media presents. This is very different from an opinion poll. (From what *I've* heard and read, he is a criminal, but when I add experience, logic, and ethics I conclude that he is a hero.)
Then they present the second question in a leading manner by highlighting criminality several ways. "Arrest-Charge-Crime-or-Not-Crime - what do you think?" (A recent poll asked people if "Ben Ghazi" should be deported for his crimes, and many people said "yes, definitely!". It's easy to lead people into the position you want by framing it in the right way.)
Biasing the 1st question the other way might be something like:
Do you believe releasing the documents will make our country stronger?
An unbiased way to do the 2nd question might be something like:
Do you believe Julian Assange is a hero or a criminal?
I agree with the 1st reply-poster above: WaPo is a rag, and these polls hold little merit.
This seems a rather mercenary outlook to me. You are asking for suggestions on how to spend your spare time with the goal of keeping yourself employed, without regard to whether you would enjoy the subject or process.
I'm all for goal-driven careers, but studies show that the most successful people are the ones who like what they do. It largely doesn't matter whether the skill is the most "in demand", it only matters whether the skill is in demand "enough". This is illustrated by successful people in (what we would consider) pedestrian careers such as furniture sales, property rental, or owning the local laundromat (which, BTW, is the most common way to be successful).
The first step is discovering what you enjoy. The easiest way to do this is to spend 1 hour in quiet solitude. This is unexpressibly difficult if you've never tried it - you need a situation which has no interruptions whatsoever (kids, phone calls, other people), and you need to stick with it for the duration. Solo long road trips, long walks, hiking, and biking work well for this.
For the first 1/2 hour your head will be full of day-to-day thoughts, reminders, personal maintenance, reviewing memories, and so on. After awhile, this will quiet down and your mind will start to wander. Whatever you think about most is likely your source of joy.
Figure out some skill that feeds into your joy, choose a project that requires this skill and which also feeds into joy, and resolve to complete the project by the end of summer. Write the goal down (this part is important!) with as much detail as you can, stick it in an envelope, and put it away for later.
Your brain has likes and dislikes, as well as a goal-setting mechanism that you can use to your advantage. If you want to be happy, you should start the process of being happy right now, while you still have leisure to do so.
(Oh, and to answer your question: I'm writing a paper on hard AI.)
Studying (and trying to create) hard AI is my day job.
I just want to let people know that not everyone shares the opinions or urgency of the people in the story.
I for one am trying hard to condemn humanity to death and/or enslavement at the hands of intelligent machines, and I know a number of AI researchers trying to do the same.
So don't worry too much about these guys - they are definitely in the minority. Everyone will get their chance to (as individuals) welcome our new robotic overlords, however briefly.
We identify things by both their characteristics and their context.
For example, if something looks like a duck we are tempted to say that it's a duck, and without regard to context that's the most likely explanation.
But then consider the context: If the context doesn't match, we change our assessment accordingly. If it's on top of a mountain, we think it's a rock that resembles a duck. In a store window, we think it's a stuffed-doll resembling a duck. If it's in the MIT swimming pool, we think it's a robot resembling a duck.
Absent any context, Sweden's request for extradition is innocent and benign - how could he possibly refuse such a simple legal request?
But the context surrounding the extradition does not match. There's a number of contextual inconsistencies with the situation, all of which indicate that this is not an extradition, it's something different.
It is abundantly clear that we're not seeing an actual duck. You can argue the probability in various ways, but it's not 100%.
You might next consider "so what?" What's so bad about being extradited to the US?
Consider the risk/reward equation. Julian probably carries around in his head contact information for informants and associates which the US does not know about, and activities of various people which the US would consider evidence of espionage. Once on US soil, it would be nigh impossible to keep this information from the US authorities. He would be forced(*) to give up not only his own freedom, but the freedom of people who put their trust in him. (Not to mention the chilling effect this would have on future whistle-blowers.)
It's likely that the value of this information is so high that even a tiny risk of extradition multiplied by the value potentially lost results in a negative payout. Taking the chance is too risky, it's not a good bet.
... There's no actual evidence for that, and no real reason to believe it.
See previous link, or google for yourself. Plenty of evidence, you are stating an untruth.
This is an example of a "natural monopoly", where a limited community resource is owned as property by a corporation. In this case it's the easements and permission needed to run the phone lines, and the RF spectrum for cell-phone service.
If you treat the resource as property, you get the situation we have now: high fees for access and discouraged use. Phone service has high monthly fees (access) as well as data caps, fixed monthly "minutes", and roaming charges (discouraged use). Similarly for internet: high monthly fees (access), data caps, throttling, kicking off high-usage users, and so on (discouraged use).
As an alternative, take the revenues from the carriers and divide by the total minutes of service. I don't know what that figure actually is, but for purposes of discussion let's say it's 5 cents a minute. A similar calculation can be done per gigabyte of internet data.
Suppose the government mandated that carriers could only charge that amount or less, with no other restrictions. Any phone could be used with any carrier, and you choose a carrier at call time by scanning the available carriers like we scan wireless access points. (You wouldn't explicitly scan for each call. Most likely you choose one carrier as default, like we now do with wireless access points.)
Now instead of making money by getting people to sign up and not use the service, carriers make money the more people use the service. They have to encourage more people to use it, and for longer periods. They have an interest in putting unused capacity to work, and promoting innovative new uses. If a channel is overallocated, they have an interest in building out more capacity.
The reasoning can be applied to cable TV, internet, and phone service. If the cable company can only charge 15 cents per hour of viewing/downloading (whatever the fee structure works out as), then they will encourage more usage rather than throttling.
If this change is made, the existing players will make the same profit as now: initially the profits are the same, and no workers need be laid off. Their bottom line doesn't change, only their focus of service.
It's game theory: change the rules so that the outcome is more desirable.
Someone on this board pointed out that once we have autonomous cars, you can have them do errands for you. His example was grocery shopping. Do your shopping online a'la Amazon, then send the car to pick up the groceries once a week.
The implications weren't obvious at first, but consider: there's no need for a supermarket close to a population center where real estate is expensive (ie - it can be in the warehouse district), there's no need for public access (aisles, displays of product, open freezers), no need for cashiers. The entire process can be made into a Kiva order fulfillment system.
This frees up an enormous number of personal hours and resources, it essentially automates a labor-intensive process.
And that was one example. Sending the car to pick up the kids after school, or to take them to/from soccer practice. Automated FedEx delivery, all manner of trucking and delivery - the potential savings in time is enormous.
This would be yet another economic force pushing us to a wealth economy, something of which I'm wholly in favor.
(My idea): If people could band together and agree to vote out the incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close, so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
Someone added: Vote them out AND remove their lifetime, taxpayer-funded, free health care. See how fast the health care system gets fixed.
Someone added:You can start by letting your house and senate rep know how you feel about this issue / patriot act and encourage those you know to do the same.
If enough people let their representivies know how they feel obviously those officials who want to be reelected will tend to take notice. We have seen what happens when wikipedia and google go "dark", congressional switchboards melt and the 180's start to pile up.
I added: Fax is considered the best way to contact a congressperson,especially if it is on corporate letterhead.
Suggestion #2:
Tor, I2dP and the likes. Let's build a new common internet over the internet. Full strong anonymity and integrity. Transform what an eavesdropper would see in a huge cypherpunk clusterfuck.
Taking back what's ours through technology and educated practices.
Let's go back to the 90' where the internet was a place for knowledgeable and cooperative people.
Someone Added: Let's go full scale by deploying small wireless routers across the globe creating a real mesh network as internet was designed to be!
Suggestion #3:
A first step might be understanding the extent towards which the government actually disagrees with the people. Are we talking about a situation where the government is enacting unpopular policies that people oppose? Or are we talking about a situation where people support the policies? Because the solutions to those two situations are very different.
In many cases involving "national security", I think the situation is closer to the second one. "Tough on X" policies are quite popular, and politicians often pander to people by enacting them. The USA Patriot Act, for example, was hugely popular when it was passed. And in general, politicians get voted out of office more often for being not "tough" on crime and terrorism and whatever else, than for being too over-the-top in pursuing those policies.
Suggestion #4:
What I feel is needed is a true 3rd party, not 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th parties, such as Green, Tea Party, Libertarian; we need an agreeable third party that can compete against the two majors without a lot of interference from small parties. We need a consensus third party.
Suggestion #5:
Replace the voting system. Plurality voting will always lead to the mess we have now. The only contribution towards politics I'v
You're correct in that the programs should be tolerant of bad data, and much of the safety certification process addresses this issue. For example, as part of the certification process you need to show that buffer overflows cannot happen, that all cases of input data are covered (bad data is handled gracefully), and so on.
I believe the original article was referring to data transfer and firmware upgrades. These would be conveniently handled over the internet, if only we could guarantee the security and integrity of the data. This means that no one can snoop the data or synthesize false data.
The other thing is that when these machines are hacked it is very often due to reverse engineering the machines. These don't run windows or linux, there's no pre-built hacker kit available, the attackers have access to actual machines and have cracked them open, read the flash or monitored the bus to figure out what the software is doing or what style of OS it has, scanned through to find out if there's a recognizable file system type, etc.
Symmetric encryption handles this situation. If the private key is held by the company, the device can refuse firmware upgrade requests not correctly decrypted by the public key held in the device NVRAM. It does the attacker no good to discover the public key - without the private key, they still cannot form a correctly-encrypted upgrade command.
A similar situation exists for the device/recorder interface. If there were a symmetric key pair for each monitor/recorder, the hackers could only reverse-engineer the keys for each device they take apart. You could even use the "Sears Garage Door Opener" model where a monitor is brought near the logger, press the "learn" button on both machines, key exchange happens, and now the logger and monitor are linked and using secure communications.
(Some may balk at having a per-device key, but note that medical devices often have a per-device stored serial number.)
True security, and privacy, and the solution to a lot of the ills of the world we're seeing right now, is actually straightforward. We only lack the will to implement it.
For example, SMTP has "experimental" protocol headers (X-something). Way back before Google mail existed, the Mozilla mail reader was popular. If the designers had implemented a checkbox "keep message private if possible" which would handle key discovery and key logging between senders and recipients, and a green checked circle "this message is private" when a key exists between recipients, it would have been popular, causing other mail systems to implement it in order to be competitive. (No need to actually *store* mail encrypted, just encrypting the channel would bring an enormous boost to privacy.)
As it happened the designers didn't take that step, Google mail is now the popular model, and the government (and Google) reads all our mail.
(Compare with the current Mozilla policy on "do not track" (we'll implement it, but leave it off by default), or ask them whether the features of "ssh everywhere" or "ghostery" should be bundled with the system.)
Network security is an add-on, largely viewed as an externality by corporations.
I think that it's largely because of this (and that mostly due to Microsoft) that people don't use good security features.
Suppose the socket layer had a function to generate a key pair, and a function call to set the key used for encoding and decoding. (Possibly a bit in the protocol to send a message using or not-using encryption). If it was that simple most products would use it, certainly safety-certified products would use it.
One aspect of solar power is the question of where to put the collectors. Land area is expensive and in short supply around cities, and putting the collectors close to where the energy is needed makes better efficiency.
It occurred to me that we have lots of land in the medians between highways, many of which are enclosed by guard rails or Denver barriers. The road already has easements which could be used to run powerlines (metal conduits at ground level, no digging needed).
For example, highways in "fly over country" have long, unused stretches of median which could be tiled with solar collectors. With modern power conversion tech, these could add energy to integrated powerlines that run straight to the next city. (Adding guardrails as needed.)
Is it possible to get popular support and political will at the level that built the US federal highway system? The benefit from this infrastructure would be enormous.
The amount of stimulation is over two orders of magnitude lower than the amount needed to cause damage, as interpolated from studies in rats. This has scientists and medical professionals worried about potential dangers, as the effects of low-level stimulation have not been adequately studied.
Backscatter X-ray machines are estimated to cause 1 death by cancer every 200 million scans. The government has repeatedly assured us that these are safe, and were deployed with no regulation, no testing, and no quality control (as, for example, the dose-per-scan claims by the manufacturer).
It's getting to the point where crowd-sourced information is more accurate than the experts.
Imagine a world of scientific research guided by crowd-sourced anecdotal evidence: after masses of people try something and report positive effects, the research community gets onboard and tests the evidence.
If the medical community doesn't clean up its act, they'll find themselves marginalized into obscurity. Like buggy-whip manufacturers or the MPAA/RIAA, when you stand in the way of progress, progress will leave you behind.
(My idea): If people could band together and agree to vote out the incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close, so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
Someone added: Vote them out AND remove their lifetime, taxpayer-funded, free health care. See how fast the health care system gets fixed.
Someone added:You can start by letting your house and senate rep know how you feel about this issue / patriot act and encourage those you know to do the same.
If enough people let their representivies know how they feel obviously those officials who want to be reelected will tend to take notice. We have seen what happens when wikipedia and google go "dark", congressional switchboards melt and the 180's start to pile up.
I added: Fax is considered the best way to contact a congressperson, especially if it is on corporate letterhead.
Suggestion #2:
Tor, I2dP and the likes. Let's build a new common internet over the internet. Full strong anonymity and integrity. Transform what an eavesdropper would see in a huge cypherpunk clusterfuck.
Taking back what's ours through technology and educated practices.
Let's go back to the 90' where the internet was a place for knowledgeable and cooperative people.
Someone Added: Let's go full scale by deploying small wireless routers across the globe creating a real mesh network as internet was designed to be!
Suggestion #3:
A first step might be understanding the extent towards which the government actually disagrees with the people. Are we talking about a situation where the government is enacting unpopular policies that people oppose? Or are we talking about a situation where people support the policies? Because the solutions to those two situations are very different.
In many cases involving "national security", I think the situation is closer to the second one. "Tough on X" policies are quite popular, and politicians often pander to people by enacting them. The USA Patriot Act, for example, was hugely popular when it was passed. And in general, politicians get voted out of office more often for being not "tough" on crime and terrorism and whatever else, than for being too over-the-top in pursuing those policies.
Suggestion #4:
What I feel is needed is a true 3rd party, not 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th parties, such as Green, Tea Party, Libertarian; we need an agreeable third party that can compete against the two majors without a lot of interference from small parties. We need a consensus third party.
Suggestion #5:
Replace the voting system. Plurality voting will always lead to the mess we have now. The only contribution towards politics I've made in
Slashdot Mirror
give them jobs, families and a hope for the future instead of absolute poverty and a 'nothing to lose' life style.
Wow, how exactly do you do this? It's an example of something easy to say, but hard if not impossible to implement.
Ooh... ooh... I know this one! Teacher, pick me!!!
Start by increasing business opportunities in this country. Businesses start from innovation on infrastructure, so start by improving these.
A national internet and phone service that's fast and cheap. This is trivial to accomplish, just fix the maximum price that the telcos/providers can charge for usage and mandate that there can be no other restrictions. If you choose the price right, the telcos would make the same amount of money under the new rule... but now to make more profit they have to compete for coverage and price. (No early termination fees, no access fees, no roaming charges, choose provider at the time of phone call.)
National health care. Healthy people are happier and less likely to revolt, are less likely to turn to crime, are less likely to be bankrupt from health care bills. This is easy to implement - just copy one of the existing better systems, such as Canada or UK.
Repeal drug laws, get rid of the DEA, put 1/10 the money into education and treatment. (Education and treatment are more effective anyway.) Reduce our prison population by pardoning and/or paroling all non-violent drug offenders. Retroactively downgrade their offense to non-felony, so that they can get jobs. Do this in a graduated way, so as not to raise unemployment.
Revamp patent and copyright law so that creators can profit from and protect their works by starting businesses.
Free schooling through advanced degree for citizens (like Finland). An educated population is more likely to be innovative and take advantage of opportunities. Get rid of H1B visas altogether.
Revamp the tax code so that all businesses pay the same proportional tax with no exceptions. When big corps such as GE pay no taxes it's harder for people to start new businesses. Remove the personal income tax altogether and get revenue from businesses and economic growth (by printing more money, to keep inflation down). Keep inflation a close to zero as possible, so that people can save for big purchases instead of going into debt.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Government has to stop coddling special interests and start benefiting the general population, or else deal with an angry, armed revolt.
People have been predicting the wealth economy for some time, but have no clear plan on how to transition to that model.
Here's an opportunity: redefine "full time" to be less than 40 hours. Our productivity is now so high that fewer people need to work, but at the same time we need to employ everyone in order to prevent unrest and revolt.
Productivity is high, so we should have more leisure time. GDP per capita has skyrocketed, it's doubled since about 1990, and the average citizen would get $40,000 per year if output was distributed evenly. That's every man, woman and child - employed or not, and every year.
Corporations have to start spending money on the people instead of cutting people out of production. Better educated workers, happier workers, healthier workers make your business stronger and give better return on investment than rehiring. Much better return than "cost accounting", which aims to make the cheapest product people can tolerate.
Government has to start rerouting wealth from businesses to the people, by way of infrastructure benefits. Free health care and free education, as well as infrastructure projects (national system of renewable power generation, universal internet service, &c) enrich the population without coddling to the lazy.
Production is met by an ever-dwindling need for human interaction. We should embrace this trend in a way that doesn't require armed revolt.
As the span of time reaches infinity the probability of a global catastrophic event approaches 1. It *will* happen eventually.
This assumes a fixed probability over all time.
If the probability lowers over time, then the cumulative probability can be bounded to any chosen value.
Consider: is the probability of world-wide plague higher or lower than it was 300 years ago? The probability of large-scale crop failures? Nuclear war?
You could say that the probabilities are higher in each case, yet the historical statistical evidence shows that the number and severity of wars has decreased, plague vectors have been detected and averted (SARS, Bird flu), and crop productivity has skyrocketed beyond all projected yields.
Statistically speaking, we're much more secure in our civilization simply because we are more aware of our surroundings, are smarter, and have more technology to apply to problems.
We're even beginning to discuss and proposing solutions to asteroid impacts.
The probability of a global catastrophic event is decreasing. If it hasn't happened yet, it'll become ever less likely in the future.
Or are you one of those people that believe that "subsidy" is a magical source of free money?
Are you one of those people who think that the government would give back the money if there was no place to spend it?
Let's spend government money on tangible efforts to improve society. If not, what do you think they will do with the money?
The Burning Man festival noted that with all the Nevada rebates on solar panels, net was effectively the cost of installation.
Burning Man has access to a large amount of volunteer labor, so they can effectively put up solar panels for free. They setup panels to power parts of the event (the man), then move them to Gerlach once the festival is over. As I recall, the goal was to provide all the power for the towns nearest the festival.
I wish other states were as forward-looking. At this point the benefits (to the state) of encouraging the infrastructure probably outweigh the costs.
(Yes, I know. Just getting to burning man uses an enormous amount of fossil fuels. What's your point?)
Medical error ranks third among causes of death in the US.
Estimates of risk vary depending on which complications are counted, but it's always in the top 10. Any trip to the hospital results in a 1 in 300 chance of dying from medical mistake. For comparison, your chance of dying in an airplane accident is 1 in 10,000,000 per flight.
A rational plan would spend time and effort where it will do the most good. Instead of inventing new cures and treatments, perhaps we should be looking into ways to make our existing process safer?
For comparison, the risk of death by medical error is higher than the risk of death from diabetes. I'm not saying that diabetes research should be halted, but shouldn't higher risk factors be addressed as well?
The problem with this type of innovation is that it's a shot in the dark.
We haven't the first clue for the most effective way to teach people. We study things in HS because the subjects are "classics", not because they are useful (Geometry versus Probability, for instance). The "walk around lecturing in front of passive students" model doesn't fit with the need to be rambunctious. The fixed, level-based scale of achievement: "all children should be at this level of achievement at this age, else they are disabled" doesn't take into account variations in maturity or birth date. (Be born a day earlier, get put into a class where you're competing with class mates a year older.)
For reference, check out redirect. The author carefully details a large number of education techniques and social services which have no scientific basis whatsoever. Predictably, when actually studied, many of these ideas do more damage than good; for instance, regarding teen pregnancy, government teaching initiatives tend to increase the teen pregnancy rate.
There's simply no evidence that a) this system works to the degree of accuracy needed, b) doesn't have a high false-positive rate due to unforseen factors such as drapes waving in the background, c) can be used to any good effect (double-blind studies anyone?) as a teaching aid.
Our track record for using technology to help education is not good.
It makes for a good story, though. "We don't know the best way to teach, but here's something that should work!"
Here's another thought problem for you. Recall the 2009 Star Trek movie which shows a young Spock standing in a pit while a computer presents audio and video lessons. (I don't think the pit model works, but a student in front of a screen seems natural enough.)
Assume that you have control over this content, and can do double-blind studies of minor changes. Each video is a computer program, so any small piece can be redone without retaping the entire lesson. The program allows student interaction.
What features would your ideal teaching machine have, what sorts of things would you teach, what sorts of experiments could you do to home in on the optimum teaching method?
Here's a thought problem for you.
Modern humans descended from ape-like creatures on the order of 3 million years ago. Bonobos are further back on the evolutionary scale, call it 5 million years before they become intelligent (massive guesstimate).
Suppose we leave the planet. Would the Bonobos be able to determine that another intelligent species came before them? I can think of no place on the planet that wouldn't wear down and wash away the signs of our civilization.
Suppose we leave the planet, but would like to leave a message. Where should we put it, and in what form? I can think of no place on the planet that would be safe from erosion, and any satellite orbit would decay long before 5 million years had passed. (LAGEOS 1 was predicted to remain in orbit for 8.4 million years, but may only last a couple of hundred thousand years.)
Now consider the reverse. Suppose there was an intelligent species on Earth before us. Where could we look for evidence? If they left a message for us; assuming that they want it found, where would it be?
Here's some trends I've noticed. Every time some politically-charged issue springs up, certain predictable actions seem to bog down debate:
1) Pointing out typos in the article summary or parent poster
Especially when the respondent makes their own typos while picking apart the OP. The flurry of people jumping on board to correct this can be enormous, and push valuable discussion down below the screen, where it has little chance of being seen.
2) Revising someone's analogy
Someone makes an analogy, so someone *else* has to make a better one. If the revised analogy is flawed, again the flurry of people jumping on board to correct this can be enormous and push valuable discussion down the page.
(Maybe when someone makes a bad analogy we should just say "no, it's not like that" and let it go?)
2) Saying it's our fault
I really hate this one. Invariably, someone will come along and say "it's our own fault because we voted for these people". This completely exonerates the politicians involved and makes everyone feel a little bit guilty - and at the same time it defuses calls for action, suggestions for improvement, and the like. "The best way is to use the power of the vote", setting aside that a) much of the time it's an unelected bureaucrat, b) the vote has been hijacked by special interests, and c) even if it were true, we should also be discussion other possible options.
Great comeback!
+1 internets to you, sir!
The poll asks two questions:
On another subject, from what you've heard and read, do you think the release of classified documents about the State Department and U.S. diplomacy by WikiLeaks serves the public interest or harms the public interest?
Do you think the United States should try to arrest the founder of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange (Ah-SANGH), and charge him with a crime for releasing these documents, or do you think this is not a criminal matter?
Not blatantly misleading, but there is the distinct odor of bias in these questions, especially when asked one after the other.
The first question didn't directly ask what people thought, it asked them to conclude based on what the media presents. This is very different from an opinion poll. (From what *I've* heard and read, he is a criminal, but when I add experience, logic, and ethics I conclude that he is a hero.)
Then they present the second question in a leading manner by highlighting criminality several ways. "Arrest-Charge-Crime-or-Not-Crime - what do you think?" (A recent poll asked people if "Ben Ghazi" should be deported for his crimes, and many people said "yes, definitely!". It's easy to lead people into the position you want by framing it in the right way.)
Biasing the 1st question the other way might be something like:
Do you believe releasing the documents will make our country stronger?
An unbiased way to do the 2nd question might be something like:
Do you believe Julian Assange is a hero or a criminal?
I agree with the 1st reply-poster above: WaPo is a rag, and these polls hold little merit.
This seems a rather mercenary outlook to me. You are asking for suggestions on how to spend your spare time with the goal of keeping yourself employed, without regard to whether you would enjoy the subject or process.
I'm all for goal-driven careers, but studies show that the most successful people are the ones who like what they do. It largely doesn't matter whether the skill is the most "in demand", it only matters whether the skill is in demand "enough". This is illustrated by successful people in (what we would consider) pedestrian careers such as furniture sales, property rental, or owning the local laundromat (which, BTW, is the most common way to be successful).
The first step is discovering what you enjoy. The easiest way to do this is to spend 1 hour in quiet solitude. This is unexpressibly difficult if you've never tried it - you need a situation which has no interruptions whatsoever (kids, phone calls, other people), and you need to stick with it for the duration. Solo long road trips, long walks, hiking, and biking work well for this.
For the first 1/2 hour your head will be full of day-to-day thoughts, reminders, personal maintenance, reviewing memories, and so on. After awhile, this will quiet down and your mind will start to wander. Whatever you think about most is likely your source of joy.
Figure out some skill that feeds into your joy, choose a project that requires this skill and which also feeds into joy, and resolve to complete the project by the end of summer. Write the goal down (this part is important!) with as much detail as you can, stick it in an envelope, and put it away for later.
Your brain has likes and dislikes, as well as a goal-setting mechanism that you can use to your advantage. If you want to be happy, you should start the process of being happy right now, while you still have leisure to do so.
(Oh, and to answer your question: I'm writing a paper on hard AI.)
Studying (and trying to create) hard AI is my day job.
I just want to let people know that not everyone shares the opinions or urgency of the people in the story.
I for one am trying hard to condemn humanity to death and/or enslavement at the hands of intelligent machines, and I know a number of AI researchers trying to do the same.
So don't worry too much about these guys - they are definitely in the minority. Everyone will get their chance to (as individuals) welcome our new robotic overlords, however briefly.
We identify things by both their characteristics and their context.
For example, if something looks like a duck we are tempted to say that it's a duck, and without regard to context that's the most likely explanation.
But then consider the context: If the context doesn't match, we change our assessment accordingly. If it's on top of a mountain, we think it's a rock that resembles a duck. In a store window, we think it's a stuffed-doll resembling a duck. If it's in the MIT swimming pool, we think it's a robot resembling a duck.
Absent any context, Sweden's request for extradition is innocent and benign - how could he possibly refuse such a simple legal request?
But the context surrounding the extradition does not match. There's a number of contextual inconsistencies with the situation, all of which indicate that this is not an extradition, it's something different.
It is abundantly clear that we're not seeing an actual duck. You can argue the probability in various ways, but it's not 100%.
You might next consider "so what?" What's so bad about being extradited to the US?
Consider the risk/reward equation. Julian probably carries around in his head contact information for informants and associates which the US does not know about, and activities of various people which the US would consider evidence of espionage. Once on US soil, it would be nigh impossible to keep this information from the US authorities. He would be forced(*) to give up not only his own freedom, but the freedom of people who put their trust in him. (Not to mention the chilling effect this would have on future whistle-blowers.)
It's likely that the value of this information is so high that even a tiny risk of extradition multiplied by the value potentially lost results in a negative payout. Taking the chance is too risky, it's not a good bet.
... There's no actual evidence for that, and no real reason to believe it.
See previous link, or google for yourself. Plenty of evidence, you are stating an untruth.
(*)Ref: Bradley Manning's treatment
This is an example of a "natural monopoly", where a limited community resource is owned as property by a corporation. In this case it's the easements and permission needed to run the phone lines, and the RF spectrum for cell-phone service.
If you treat the resource as property, you get the situation we have now: high fees for access and discouraged use. Phone service has high monthly fees (access) as well as data caps, fixed monthly "minutes", and roaming charges (discouraged use). Similarly for internet: high monthly fees (access), data caps, throttling, kicking off high-usage users, and so on (discouraged use).
As an alternative, take the revenues from the carriers and divide by the total minutes of service. I don't know what that figure actually is, but for purposes of discussion let's say it's 5 cents a minute. A similar calculation can be done per gigabyte of internet data.
Suppose the government mandated that carriers could only charge that amount or less, with no other restrictions. Any phone could be used with any carrier, and you choose a carrier at call time by scanning the available carriers like we scan wireless access points. (You wouldn't explicitly scan for each call. Most likely you choose one carrier as default, like we now do with wireless access points.)
Now instead of making money by getting people to sign up and not use the service, carriers make money the more people use the service. They have to encourage more people to use it, and for longer periods. They have an interest in putting unused capacity to work, and promoting innovative new uses. If a channel is overallocated, they have an interest in building out more capacity.
The reasoning can be applied to cable TV, internet, and phone service. If the cable company can only charge 15 cents per hour of viewing/downloading (whatever the fee structure works out as), then they will encourage more usage rather than throttling.
If this change is made, the existing players will make the same profit as now: initially the profits are the same, and no workers need be laid off. Their bottom line doesn't change, only their focus of service.
It's game theory: change the rules so that the outcome is more desirable.
Someone on this board pointed out that once we have autonomous cars, you can have them do errands for you. His example was grocery shopping. Do your shopping online a'la Amazon, then send the car to pick up the groceries once a week.
The implications weren't obvious at first, but consider: there's no need for a supermarket close to a population center where real estate is expensive (ie - it can be in the warehouse district), there's no need for public access (aisles, displays of product, open freezers), no need for cashiers. The entire process can be made into a Kiva order fulfillment system.
This frees up an enormous number of personal hours and resources, it essentially automates a labor-intensive process.
And that was one example. Sending the car to pick up the kids after school, or to take them to/from soccer practice. Automated FedEx delivery, all manner of trucking and delivery - the potential savings in time is enormous.
This would be yet another economic force pushing us to a wealth economy, something of which I'm wholly in favor.
Thanks. I added it to the list:
Join the ACLU anti-surveillance petition.
Thanks. I've added that to the top of the list:
Join Senator Rand Paul's class action suit against the government for invading our privacy. (!!!)
From a previous post, here's the collected list of suggested actions people can take to help change the situation.
Have more ideas? Please post below.
Links worthy of attention:
http://anticorruptionact.org/
http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html
http://action.fairelectionsnow.org/fairelections
http://represent.us/
http://www.protectourdemocracy.com/
http://www.wolf-pac.com/
https://www.unpac.org/
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/
Suggestion #1:
(My idea): If people could band together and agree to vote out the incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close, so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
Someone added: Vote them out AND remove their lifetime, taxpayer-funded, free health care. See how fast the health care system gets fixed.
Someone added:You can start by letting your house and senate rep know how you feel about this issue / patriot act and encourage those you know to do the same.
If enough people let their representivies know how they feel obviously those officials who want to be reelected will tend to take notice. We have seen what happens when wikipedia and google go "dark", congressional switchboards melt and the 180's start to pile up.
I added: Fax is considered the best way to contact a congressperson,especially if it is on corporate letterhead.
Suggestion #2:
Tor, I2dP and the likes. Let's build a new common internet over the internet. Full strong anonymity and integrity. Transform what an
eavesdropper would see in a huge cypherpunk clusterfuck.
Taking back what's ours through technology and educated practices.
Let's go back to the 90' where the internet was a place for knowledgeable and cooperative people.
Someone Added: Let's go full scale by deploying small wireless routers across the globe creating a real mesh network as internet was designed to be!
Suggestion #3:
A first step might be understanding the extent towards which the government actually disagrees with the people. Are we talking about a situation where the government is enacting unpopular policies that people oppose? Or are we talking about a situation where people support the policies? Because the solutions to those two situations are very different.
In many cases involving "national security", I think the situation is closer to the second one. "Tough on X" policies are quite popular, and politicians often pander to people by enacting them. The USA Patriot Act, for example, was hugely popular when it was passed. And in general, politicians get voted out of office more often for being not "tough" on crime and terrorism and whatever else, than for being too over-the-top in pursuing those policies.
Suggestion #4:
What I feel is needed is a true 3rd party, not 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th parties, such as Green, Tea Party, Libertarian; we need an agreeable third party that can compete against the two majors without a lot of interference from small parties. We need a consensus third party.
Suggestion #5:
Replace the voting system. Plurality voting will always lead to the mess we have now. The only contribution towards politics I'v
You're correct in that the programs should be tolerant of bad data, and much of the safety certification process addresses this issue. For example, as part of the certification process you need to show that buffer overflows cannot happen, that all cases of input data are covered (bad data is handled gracefully), and so on.
I believe the original article was referring to data transfer and firmware upgrades. These would be conveniently handled over the internet, if only we could guarantee the security and integrity of the data. This means that no one can snoop the data or synthesize false data.
The other thing is that when these machines are hacked it is very often due to reverse engineering the machines. These don't run windows or linux, there's no pre-built hacker kit available, the attackers have access to actual machines and have cracked them open, read the flash or monitored the bus to figure out what the software is doing or what style of OS it has, scanned through to find out if there's a recognizable file system type, etc.
Symmetric encryption handles this situation. If the private key is held by the company, the device can refuse firmware upgrade requests not correctly decrypted by the public key held in the device NVRAM. It does the attacker no good to discover the public key - without the private key, they still cannot form a correctly-encrypted upgrade command.
A similar situation exists for the device/recorder interface. If there were a symmetric key pair for each monitor/recorder, the hackers could only reverse-engineer the keys for each device they take apart. You could even use the "Sears Garage Door Opener" model where a monitor is brought near the logger, press the "learn" button on both machines, key exchange happens, and now the logger and monitor are linked and using secure communications.
(Some may balk at having a per-device key, but note that medical devices often have a per-device stored serial number.)
True security, and privacy, and the solution to a lot of the ills of the world we're seeing right now, is actually straightforward. We only lack the will to implement it.
For example, SMTP has "experimental" protocol headers (X-something). Way back before Google mail existed, the Mozilla mail reader was popular. If the designers had implemented a checkbox "keep message private if possible" which would handle key discovery and key logging between senders and recipients, and a green checked circle "this message is private" when a key exists between recipients, it would have been popular, causing other mail systems to implement it in order to be competitive. (No need to actually *store* mail encrypted, just encrypting the channel would bring an enormous boost to privacy.)
As it happened the designers didn't take that step, Google mail is now the popular model, and the government (and Google) reads all our mail.
(Compare with the current Mozilla policy on "do not track" (we'll implement it, but leave it off by default), or ask them whether the features of "ssh everywhere" or "ghostery" should be bundled with the system.)
Network security is an add-on, largely viewed as an externality by corporations.
I think that it's largely because of this (and that mostly due to Microsoft) that people don't use good security features.
Suppose the socket layer had a function to generate a key pair, and a function call to set the key used for encoding and decoding. (Possibly a bit in the protocol to send a message using or not-using encryption). If it was that simple most products would use it, certainly safety-certified products would use it.
(There's Transport Layer Security, but it's not really simple to use.)
Since there is no simple universal way to use good security, everyone ends up having to implement their own version, which costs time and money.
Simple secure communications should be an OS feature.
One aspect of solar power is the question of where to put the collectors. Land area is expensive and in short supply around cities, and putting the collectors close to where the energy is needed makes better efficiency.
It occurred to me that we have lots of land in the medians between highways, many of which are enclosed by guard rails or Denver barriers. The road already has easements which could be used to run powerlines (metal conduits at ground level, no digging needed).
For example, highways in "fly over country" have long, unused stretches of median which could be tiled with solar collectors. With modern power conversion tech, these could add energy to integrated powerlines that run straight to the next city. (Adding guardrails as needed.)
Perhaps add a few liquid metal batteries for storage and load balancing.
Is it possible to get popular support and political will at the level that built the US federal highway system? The benefit from this infrastructure would be enormous.
The amount of stimulation is over two orders of magnitude lower than the amount needed to cause damage, as interpolated from studies in rats. This has scientists and medical professionals worried about potential dangers, as the effects of low-level stimulation have not been adequately studied.
Backscatter X-ray machines are estimated to cause 1 death by cancer every 200 million scans. The government has repeatedly assured us that these are safe, and were deployed with no regulation, no testing, and no quality control (as, for example, the dose-per-scan claims by the manufacturer).
It's getting to the point where crowd-sourced information is more accurate than the experts.
Imagine a world of scientific research guided by crowd-sourced anecdotal evidence: after masses of people try something and report positive effects, the research community gets onboard and tests the evidence.
If the medical community doesn't clean up its act, they'll find themselves marginalized into obscurity. Like buggy-whip manufacturers or the MPAA/RIAA, when you stand in the way of progress, progress will leave you behind.
Here is the company referenced in the article.
About $200 - $300, depending on the product and functionality. And best of all - it's completely [medical device] unregulated!
From a previous post, here's the collected list of suggested actions people can take to help change things.
Have more ideas? Please post below.
Links worthy of attention:
http://anticorruptionact.org/
http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_the_republic_we_must_reclaim.html
http://action.fairelectionsnow.org/fairelections
http://represent.us/
http://www.protectourdemocracy.com/
http://www.wolf-pac.com/
https://www.unpac.org/
http://www.thirty-thousand.org/
Suggestion #1:
(My idea): If people could band together and agree to vote out the incumbent (senator, representative, president) whenever one of these incidents crop up, there would be incentive for politicians to better serve the people in order to continue in office. This would mean giving up party loyalty and the idea of "lessor of two evils", which a lot of people won't do. Some congressional elections are quite close, so 2,000 or so petitioners might be enough to swing a future election.
Someone added: Vote them out AND remove their lifetime, taxpayer-funded, free health care. See how fast the health care system gets fixed.
Someone added:You can start by letting your house and senate rep know how you feel about this issue / patriot act and encourage those you know to do the same.
If enough people let their representivies know how they feel obviously those officials who want to be reelected will tend to take notice. We have seen what happens when wikipedia and google go "dark", congressional switchboards melt and the 180's start to pile up.
I added: Fax is considered the best way to contact a congressperson, especially if it is on corporate letterhead.
Suggestion #2:
Tor, I2dP and the likes. Let's build a new common internet over the internet. Full strong anonymity and integrity. Transform what an eavesdropper would see in a huge cypherpunk clusterfuck.
Taking back what's ours through technology and educated practices.
Let's go back to the 90' where the internet was a place for knowledgeable and cooperative people.
Someone Added: Let's go full scale by deploying small wireless routers across the globe creating a real mesh network as internet was designed to be!
Suggestion #3:
A first step might be understanding the extent towards which the government actually disagrees with the people. Are we talking about a situation where the government is enacting unpopular policies that people oppose? Or are we talking about a situation where people support the policies? Because the solutions to those two situations are very different.
In many cases involving "national security", I think the situation is closer to the second one. "Tough on X" policies are quite popular, and politicians often pander to people by enacting them. The USA Patriot Act, for example, was hugely popular when it was passed. And in general, politicians get voted out of office more often for being not "tough" on crime and terrorism and whatever else, than for being too over-the-top in pursuing those policies.
Suggestion #4:
What I feel is needed is a true 3rd party, not 3rd, 4th, 5th, and 6th parties, such as Green, Tea Party, Libertarian; we need an agreeable third party that can compete against the two majors without a lot of interference from small parties. We need a consensus third party.
Suggestion #5:
Replace the voting system. Plurality voting will always lead to the mess we have now. The only contribution towards politics I've made in