The "humans colonizing space" concept can be rewritten as "primates in a can". It assumes that human beings will continue to exist in biological bodies that are extremely fault prone, use brains that are horrendously noisy and short-lived, with embarassingly poor performance. Isn't going to happen. I'm of the school of thought that homo sapiens will NEVER colonize space. Won't ever happen. Long before we ever launch enough rockets and space missions to actually have a self sufficient colony, we will develop artificial intelligence and nanotechnology and the means to either transform ourselves or our successors will take over. Either way, the beings that explore space won't be humans. They will be sentient, self repairing, atomically precise bundles of hardware that have no lifespan limits other than the need for constant input of energy and a small of amount of matter. Hopefully, these beings WILL be us. They'll remember what it was like to be human, to feel hopes and dreams and love and pain and loss. Compared to the lifespan of the universe, the speed of light is plenty fast. We don't need FTL (though it would certainly be convenient). The only reason for even the concept of FTL...the reason why our species is obsessed with it...is that science fiction writers a certain era could perceive no other means by which we could explore the stars. The distances are vast, and sci-fi writers of that era did not know what we know today regarding biology.
That sounds exactly like what USians have to put up with...except our consumer watchdog is far weaker, so we pay out the ass for roaming, incoming, and SMS messaging as WELL as various nasty fees. There are about 3 major carriers as well.
Insects can't talk and we suspect they are biological robots. Again, our singularity overlord could probably store the data states of everything in the biofilm with no more mass than the biofilm currently occupies. (so the overlord would almost the same resources for the computational apparatus it wanted)
Not to mention interstellar probes....if the calculation is going to take that long, the overlord could send instellar seeds to set up computing systems in nearby star systems. Many of those places are presumably dead and boring. A distributed computing system with years of latency...
Your scenario basically assumes that a super-intelligent being created by us could arise that was not intelligent enough to remember who created it or to understand anything we have accomplished.
Or what if they conclude that to fulfill their innermost desires of protecting you from all danger, the best way would be to decompile you (for your own good) and back your molecular configuration up on a regular basis. (they would put you back together after cutting you apart). It's for your own good, and they would presumably deal with those humans that resist the decompiling the same way parents deal with children who won't eat their vegetables....
If we're lucky, they'll save compressed copies of everything (and everyone) they find interesting. Presumably with decent data compression you could store the memory states of every human being alive, every animal, every plant, every living creature on the entire planet earth with no more matter in computronium memory cells than the living creatures current use today.
In fact, with sufficiently advanced technology and a broader view of ethics, our future overlords might forcibly grab us and decompile us to PROTECT US from future dangers. After all, a data file can be backed up...a living breathing human cannot. (they would reinstatiate us at their whi
I don't know. But if I, say, invent a new algorithm for engine control that lets a car save 1% on gas...I couldn't demand a $10,000 per car license fee. The fee has to be less than 100% of the value added by the invention itself. How much is 1% better gas mileage worth vs. the sale price of a car? It is possible to estimate that.
Nice theory, but wrong. You are not factoring in differing drivetrain efficiencies. Gas driven internal combustion engines are less than 30% efficient, electric drivetrains do 80 or 90% efficiency. Furthermore, electric drivetrains can store energy during braking. And there's a bunch of other factors I won't go in to. Rest assured, if the battery and maintainence cost were the same as a gas engine costs to build and maintain, then electric cars would be far cheaper to own and drive.
Alas, that isn't the case : most batteries (except for the best, newest technology ones) wear at unacceptably high rates, take too long to charge, and most importantly : cost about 5-10x too much.
The way IP SHOULD work is this : first of all, compulsory licensing. If you patent any idea, or ask for government protection against unauthorized people who pirate or create a knockoff of your product, then you MUST
1. Offer terms for a license to the technology, with rates proportional to the industry and the value of the product 2. Provide the technical details needed for someone else who licenses your idea to begin work within 30 days of payment of initial fees for licensing.
Any terrorist with 3 brain cells could choose a cell phone that has a menu option to only ring/vibrate when specific numbers are calling. Dozens of models of phones have this feature, and it's just a matter of finding one in the local market where terrorists shop I guess. (I don't think they have ebay which would make the task trivial)
You know, when we use a drone aircraft to conduct an airstrike on someone we THINK is bad (but quite often is just innocent people " in their 20s, 30s, 40s, whatever, hanging out at a restaurant getting something to eat, having a business meeting, talking about saving the environment, talking about destroying the environment, getting ready to proposition someone for steady dating, etc")
Using a drone aircraft, we are true cowards - we aren't losing anything but a little money which our civilization produces in abundance.
Sure, we INTENDED to kill bad people (while suicide bombers intentionally target people they know are innocent) but we also intentionally push the button when we know there is a significant chance that innocent people will be killed by the blast.
I don't like spammers either, but to charge the spammer with anything you have to show at least some culpability. The spammer had to know there was a non-negligible chance his junk messages could cause direct harm to someone as a result of the message.
The bomb didn't go off as a result of the message - it went off because the bomb builder was an idiot and didn't go to the trouble of writing a simple cell phone app or setting the phone to only ring when messages from a certain sender telephone number arrived at the phone. Any remotely competent and or marginally educated bomb builder would have taken precautions like this.
Don't carbon fiber flywheels in a vacuum chamber have a higher energy density? (and very high cost)
I read about special extremely long life (but lower energy density) nickle-iron batteries that last an extremely long time. And the electrolyte in them can be swapped after they do wear out to rejuvenate them.
Have you tried those? How well do they work for your off-grid system.
Motion blur can just be re-added digitally while retaining 60 fps. And if you don't project film, the light intensity problem you mention is not a problem.
Get yourself cryogenically frozen if you can afford it.
There's plausible, well researched reasons why it would work. Yes, there are many things that could go wrong, but nothing known to science today says that a person's frozen brain could not be rebuild with technology with the same control of matter that living cells have.
It's also a case of Pascal's dilemna. If/when you die from pancreatic cancer, at the moment after your death you will either be in the afterlife (if there is one) or instantaneously in the future when you have been revived. The only 'loss' is that your relatives won't inherit the money you spent on it (about 50-80k). Since there's a possibility that there is no afterlife (there is no scientific evidence at all for one) I say spending the money for a better chance is better than taking the chance of eternal oblivion.
Not how it works, my friend. One basic misunderstanding that fuels the arguments of pundits is that money reinvested in a business isn't taxed AT ALL. It's the money that a rich owner takes OUT of the business as income in order to blow it on mansions, golf courses, and hookers that gets taxed at very low rates.
No, but it doesn't have to be. To evade something like this would take more money and effort than a minimum wage job picking produce or mowing lawns is worth.
Umm, trickle down refers to allowing the rich (people with higher incomes than 99% or more of the population) to enjoy low taxes. Theoretically, by increasing the amount of money people at the top of the pay scale receive for their services, they will perform more of these services and reinvest the money into the businesses they lead.
This is completely and utterly wrong, of course, and is not supported by any evidence at all. There's tons of problems with this theory and the net effect is it concentrates the wealth of the country into the hands of a few people. Average people don't benefit at all, in fact they are harmed.
That's exactly what the officer in charge of Manning's confinement has acknowledged publically : on nearly every day, Manning spends 23 hours alone with no stimuli at all. Just a cell, a bed, and an exposed toilet. Nothing to read or do, and he is not allowed to exercise in his cell.
Assuming these conditions are accurate, Manning is slowly and irrevocably becoming insane.
Actually, according to most studies, prolonged solitary confinement is as bad or worse than torture. No cable TV is one thing, prolonged sensory deprivation is another. In the natural world humans didn't evolve in an environment that didn't have constant stimulation.
That's the 100% surefire way to end up with the fate above.
The problem is control of information : anything the Man doesn't like the media will portray in the worst possible light. Leak some evidence that our government has been doing wicked bad stuff? That's treason. Etc etc.
Is this literally possible? Can you build a device with powerful enough (but still very power efficient) cpus and gpus to have the same power as the PS3? And ideally, be instruction set compatible?
With an adequate battery life? I would guess that 4-6 hours is the realistic minimum battery life for a handheld console with a rechargable battery back. And it has to not be too heavy for a japanese girl to hold, and it has to have reasonable heat dissipation levels.
Any engineers in the mobile phone industry reading this who can comment?
Here's what they can do to get Assange, and part of the reason his organization is paying some of Manning's legal bills :
After giving Manning 'protective solitary confinment' (aka coercive torture) for enough time, they'll get Manning to claim that Assange and him worked together to get those government documents. Manning will be offered a deal for a limited amount of prison time if he serves as a 'government witness' against Assange. Given the last 7 months have been hell on earth for Manning, turning such an offer down would be incredibly difficult. Even if there is no actual communication logs showing this, the mere testimony of Manning (under duress) is a "witness statement" that a grand jury can use.
Once they get Assange dragged into U.S. custody, they can lock him up in jail for years while federal prosecutors file motions for extensions and things. Then, finally, they can give him a show trial where the jury is stacked with people who hate sex criminals. (even though Assange would not be accused of such crime, the jurors would think of him as a rapist).
Even if he were acquitted (the case as I outlined it is very weak) he would be out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal defense fees and years off his natural lifespan. The Federal government cannot be sued to reclaim either of these things unless Assange were able to show that the government KNEW he was innocent. (which if they have a coerced statement from Manning, above, the government doesn't have to pay)
So in a nutshell : they can punish Assange severely for his actions even if they are never able to convict him of a crime. And imagine the mental anguish : Assange won't know for months or years during this process if he is going to be convicted and made to rot in prison for decades.
This kind of thing happens day in and day out in the U.S. We make more people rot in confinement than the worst despotic regimes in history. And there are many effective ways to get around the protections offered by your 'rights', making them nearly meaningless in practice.
Apparently they can. How else would they extradite him? If Federal prosecutors can convince a grand jury to indict Assange (not hard to do...the grand jury system is rigged heavily in favor of prosecutors) they can ask whichever country he is in to arrest and extradite him. Even if Assange has never stepped foot on U.S. soil.
They just have to show he committed a crime against the U.S. over the internet...such as 'conspiracy to commit espionage'. After giving Manning 'protective solitary confinment' (aka coercive torture) for enough time, they'll get Manning to claim that Assange and him worked together to get those government documents. Manning will be offered a deal for a limited amount of prison time if he serves as a 'government witness' against Assange. Given the last 7 months have been hell on earth for Manning, turning such an offer down would be incredibly difficult. Even if there is no actual communication logs showing this, the mere testimony of Manning (under duress) is a "witness statement" that a grand jury can use.
Once they get Assange dragged into U.S. custody, they can lock him up in jail for years while federal prosecutors file motions for extensions and things. Then, finally, they can give him a show trial where the jury is stacked with people who hate sex criminals. (even though Assange would not be accused of such crime, the jurors would think of him as a rapist).
Even if he were acquitted (the case as I outlined it is very weak) he would be out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal defense fees and years off his natural lifespan. The Federal government cannot be sued to reclaim either of these things unless Assange were able to show that the government KNEW he was innocent. (which if they have a coerced statement from Manning, above, the government doesn't have to pay)
So in a nutshell : they can punish Assange severely for his actions even if they are never able to convict him of a crime. And imagine the mental anguish : Assange won't know for months or years during this process if he is going to be convicted and made to rot in prison for decades.
This kind of thing happens day in and day out in the U.S. We make more people rot in confinement than the worst despotic regimes in history. And there are many effective ways to get around the protections offered by your 'rights', making them nearly meaningless in practice.
That's what a temporary inflatable space-ball is for. Children on mars, or even long term adults, would cost enormous resources- but sufficient space suits is not the main problem.
Besides, EVAs are so dangerous that space suits will probably be rarely used. EVA robots controlled by telepresence are a much better idea.
Slashdot Mirror
The "humans colonizing space" concept can be rewritten as "primates in a can". It assumes that human beings will continue to exist in biological bodies that are extremely fault prone, use brains that are horrendously noisy and short-lived, with embarassingly poor performance. Isn't going to happen. I'm of the school of thought that homo sapiens will NEVER colonize space. Won't ever happen. Long before we ever launch enough rockets and space missions to actually have a self sufficient colony, we will develop artificial intelligence and nanotechnology and the means to either transform ourselves or our successors will take over. Either way, the beings that explore space won't be humans. They will be sentient, self repairing, atomically precise bundles of hardware that have no lifespan limits other than the need for constant input of energy and a small of amount of matter. Hopefully, these beings WILL be us. They'll remember what it was like to be human, to feel hopes and dreams and love and pain and loss. Compared to the lifespan of the universe, the speed of light is plenty fast. We don't need FTL (though it would certainly be convenient). The only reason for even the concept of FTL...the reason why our species is obsessed with it...is that science fiction writers a certain era could perceive no other means by which we could explore the stars. The distances are vast, and sci-fi writers of that era did not know what we know today regarding biology.
That sounds exactly like what USians have to put up with...except our consumer watchdog is far weaker, so we pay out the ass for roaming, incoming, and SMS messaging as WELL as various nasty fees. There are about 3 major carriers as well.
Insects can't talk and we suspect they are biological robots. Again, our singularity overlord could probably store the data states of everything in the biofilm with no more mass than the biofilm currently occupies. (so the overlord would almost the same resources for the computational apparatus it wanted)
Not to mention interstellar probes....if the calculation is going to take that long, the overlord could send instellar seeds to set up computing systems in nearby star systems. Many of those places are presumably dead and boring. A distributed computing system with years of latency...
Your scenario basically assumes that a super-intelligent being created by us could arise that was not intelligent enough to remember who created it or to understand anything we have accomplished.
Or what if they conclude that to fulfill their innermost desires of protecting you from all danger, the best way would be to decompile you (for your own good) and back your molecular configuration up on a regular basis. (they would put you back together after cutting you apart). It's for your own good, and they would presumably deal with those humans that resist the decompiling the same way parents deal with children who won't eat their vegetables....
If we're lucky, they'll save compressed copies of everything (and everyone) they find interesting. Presumably with decent data compression you could store the memory states of every human being alive, every animal, every plant, every living creature on the entire planet earth with no more matter in computronium memory cells than the living creatures current use today.
In fact, with sufficiently advanced technology and a broader view of ethics, our future overlords might forcibly grab us and decompile us to PROTECT US from future dangers. After all, a data file can be backed up...a living breathing human cannot. (they would reinstatiate us at their whi
I don't know. But if I, say, invent a new algorithm for engine control that lets a car save 1% on gas...I couldn't demand a $10,000 per car license fee. The fee has to be less than 100% of the value added by the invention itself. How much is 1% better gas mileage worth vs. the sale price of a car? It is possible to estimate that.
Nice theory, but wrong. You are not factoring in differing drivetrain efficiencies. Gas driven internal combustion engines are less than 30% efficient, electric drivetrains do 80 or 90% efficiency. Furthermore, electric drivetrains can store energy during braking. And there's a bunch of other factors I won't go in to. Rest assured, if the battery and maintainence cost were the same as a gas engine costs to build and maintain, then electric cars would be far cheaper to own and drive.
Alas, that isn't the case : most batteries (except for the best, newest technology ones) wear at unacceptably high rates, take too long to charge, and most importantly : cost about 5-10x too much.
The way IP SHOULD work is this : first of all, compulsory licensing. If you patent any idea, or ask for government protection against unauthorized people who pirate or create a knockoff of your product, then you MUST
1. Offer terms for a license to the technology, with rates proportional to the industry and the value of the product
2. Provide the technical details needed for someone else who licenses your idea to begin work within 30 days of payment of initial fees for licensing.
Any terrorist with 3 brain cells could choose a cell phone that has a menu option to only ring/vibrate when specific numbers are calling. Dozens of models of phones have this feature, and it's just a matter of finding one in the local market where terrorists shop I guess. (I don't think they have ebay which would make the task trivial)
You know, when we use a drone aircraft to conduct an airstrike on someone we THINK is bad (but quite often is just innocent people " in their 20s, 30s, 40s, whatever, hanging out at a restaurant getting something to eat, having a business meeting, talking about saving the environment, talking about destroying the environment, getting ready to proposition someone for steady dating, etc")
Using a drone aircraft, we are true cowards - we aren't losing anything but a little money which our civilization produces in abundance.
Sure, we INTENDED to kill bad people (while suicide bombers intentionally target people they know are innocent) but we also intentionally push the button when we know there is a significant chance that innocent people will be killed by the blast.
I don't like spammers either, but to charge the spammer with anything you have to show at least some culpability. The spammer had to know there was a non-negligible chance his junk messages could cause direct harm to someone as a result of the message.
The bomb didn't go off as a result of the message - it went off because the bomb builder was an idiot and didn't go to the trouble of writing a simple cell phone app or setting the phone to only ring when messages from a certain sender telephone number arrived at the phone. Any remotely competent and or marginally educated bomb builder would have taken precautions like this.
Don't carbon fiber flywheels in a vacuum chamber have a higher energy density? (and very high cost)
I read about special extremely long life (but lower energy density) nickle-iron batteries that last an extremely long time. And the electrolyte in them can be swapped after they do wear out to rejuvenate them.
Have you tried those? How well do they work for your off-grid system.
How do you live without A/C?
Motion blur can just be re-added digitally while retaining 60 fps. And if you don't project film, the light intensity problem you mention is not a problem.
Get yourself cryogenically frozen if you can afford it.
There's plausible, well researched reasons why it would work. Yes, there are many things that could go wrong, but nothing known to science today says that a person's frozen brain could not be rebuild with technology with the same control of matter that living cells have.
It's also a case of Pascal's dilemna. If/when you die from pancreatic cancer, at the moment after your death you will either be in the afterlife (if there is one) or instantaneously in the future when you have been revived. The only 'loss' is that your relatives won't inherit the money you spent on it (about 50-80k). Since there's a possibility that there is no afterlife (there is no scientific evidence at all for one) I say spending the money for a better chance is better than taking the chance of eternal oblivion.
Not how it works, my friend. One basic misunderstanding that fuels the arguments of pundits is that money reinvested in a business isn't taxed AT ALL. It's the money that a rich owner takes OUT of the business as income in order to blow it on mansions, golf courses, and hookers that gets taxed at very low rates.
No, but it doesn't have to be. To evade something like this would take more money and effort than a minimum wage job picking produce or mowing lawns is worth.
Umm, trickle down refers to allowing the rich (people with higher incomes than 99% or more of the population) to enjoy low taxes. Theoretically, by increasing the amount of money people at the top of the pay scale receive for their services, they will perform more of these services and reinvest the money into the businesses they lead.
This is completely and utterly wrong, of course, and is not supported by any evidence at all. There's tons of problems with this theory and the net effect is it concentrates the wealth of the country into the hands of a few people. Average people don't benefit at all, in fact they are harmed.
How can the rest of us live in freedom if we live under near perpetual duress that we too will be taken away and left to rot?
That's exactly what the officer in charge of Manning's confinement has acknowledged publically : on nearly every day, Manning spends 23 hours alone with no stimuli at all. Just a cell, a bed, and an exposed toilet. Nothing to read or do, and he is not allowed to exercise in his cell.
Assuming these conditions are accurate, Manning is slowly and irrevocably becoming insane.
Actually, according to most studies, prolonged solitary confinement is as bad or worse than torture. No cable TV is one thing, prolonged sensory deprivation is another. In the natural world humans didn't evolve in an environment that didn't have constant stimulation.
That's the 100% surefire way to end up with the fate above.
The problem is control of information : anything the Man doesn't like the media will portray in the worst possible light. Leak some evidence that our government has been doing wicked bad stuff? That's treason. Etc etc.
Is this literally possible? Can you build a device with powerful enough (but still very power efficient) cpus and gpus to have the same power as the PS3? And ideally, be instruction set compatible?
With an adequate battery life? I would guess that 4-6 hours is the realistic minimum battery life for a handheld console with a rechargable battery back. And it has to not be too heavy for a japanese girl to hold, and it has to have reasonable heat dissipation levels.
Any engineers in the mobile phone industry reading this who can comment?
Here's what they can do to get Assange, and part of the reason his organization is paying some of Manning's legal bills :
After giving Manning 'protective solitary confinment' (aka coercive torture) for enough time, they'll get Manning to claim that Assange and him worked together to get those government documents. Manning will be offered a deal for a limited amount of prison time if he serves as a 'government witness' against Assange. Given the last 7 months have been hell on earth for Manning, turning such an offer down would be incredibly difficult. Even if there is no actual communication logs showing this, the mere testimony of Manning (under duress) is a "witness statement" that a grand jury can use.
Once they get Assange dragged into U.S. custody, they can lock him up in jail for years while federal prosecutors file motions for extensions and things. Then, finally, they can give him a show trial where the jury is stacked with people who hate sex criminals. (even though Assange would not be accused of such crime, the jurors would think of him as a rapist).
Even if he were acquitted (the case as I outlined it is very weak) he would be out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal defense fees and years off his natural lifespan. The Federal government cannot be sued to reclaim either of these things unless Assange were able to show that the government KNEW he was innocent. (which if they have a coerced statement from Manning, above, the government doesn't have to pay)
So in a nutshell : they can punish Assange severely for his actions even if they are never able to convict him of a crime. And imagine the mental anguish : Assange won't know for months or years during this process if he is going to be convicted and made to rot in prison for decades.
This kind of thing happens day in and day out in the U.S. We make more people rot in confinement than the worst despotic regimes in history. And there are many effective ways to get around the protections offered by your 'rights', making them nearly meaningless in practice.
Apparently they can. How else would they extradite him? If Federal prosecutors can convince a grand jury to indict Assange (not hard to do...the grand jury system is rigged heavily in favor of prosecutors) they can ask whichever country he is in to arrest and extradite him. Even if Assange has never stepped foot on U.S. soil.
They just have to show he committed a crime against the U.S. over the internet...such as 'conspiracy to commit espionage'. After giving Manning 'protective solitary confinment' (aka coercive torture) for enough time, they'll get Manning to claim that Assange and him worked together to get those government documents. Manning will be offered a deal for a limited amount of prison time if he serves as a 'government witness' against Assange. Given the last 7 months have been hell on earth for Manning, turning such an offer down would be incredibly difficult. Even if there is no actual communication logs showing this, the mere testimony of Manning (under duress) is a "witness statement" that a grand jury can use.
Once they get Assange dragged into U.S. custody, they can lock him up in jail for years while federal prosecutors file motions for extensions and things. Then, finally, they can give him a show trial where the jury is stacked with people who hate sex criminals. (even though Assange would not be accused of such crime, the jurors would think of him as a rapist).
Even if he were acquitted (the case as I outlined it is very weak) he would be out hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal defense fees and years off his natural lifespan. The Federal government cannot be sued to reclaim either of these things unless Assange were able to show that the government KNEW he was innocent. (which if they have a coerced statement from Manning, above, the government doesn't have to pay)
So in a nutshell : they can punish Assange severely for his actions even if they are never able to convict him of a crime. And imagine the mental anguish : Assange won't know for months or years during this process if he is going to be convicted and made to rot in prison for decades.
This kind of thing happens day in and day out in the U.S. We make more people rot in confinement than the worst despotic regimes in history. And there are many effective ways to get around the protections offered by your 'rights', making them nearly meaningless in practice.
That's what a temporary inflatable space-ball is for. Children on mars, or even long term adults, would cost enormous resources- but sufficient space suits is not the main problem.
Besides, EVAs are so dangerous that space suits will probably be rarely used. EVA robots controlled by telepresence are a much better idea.