Humans dont have to choose between a suicide mission held together with duct tape and peanut shells on a death march that, **at best** ends with the people who land huddling in their glorified airstream trailers counting the days till they die and *nothing*
Mars One is a horrible mission plan that actually won't tell us anything we don't already know or could extrapolate. Their plan even states explicitly that they will use existing technology.
When we do space exploration we need to do it the right way or not at all.
Critics of Mars One are not criticizing the notion of human colonization of Mars purely from a "danger" perspective...
It's everything about ***how*** Mars One plans to do this...from the funding to the equipment they use to what they'll actually do when they get there. It just makes no sense to do it that way.
Sure there are some critics of human space exploration that think the whole notion of humans colonizing other worlds is just too dangerous, *no matter how it is done* but they are in the distinct minority, especially here on slashdot....this is much different.
It's that the mission is all wrong in its conception.
Think of it in terms of dinner, Mars One is hyping themselves like they are a steak dinner with all the trimmings, but in reality they are giving us reconstituted soy in the shape of a steak, giving us some survey data that says it tastes just like real steak, and expecting people to pay for a T-bone.
It's hype...some unscrupulous "entrepreneurs" launching a business project...because they are coming from that perspective everything down the line comes out wrong...and it doesn't take a NASA scientist to see that it's essentially a suicide mission.
In this case empty-headed, wild-eyed hype that takes advantage of people's dreams.
I have to admit that your points are valid. My problem was I didn't RTFA....I didn't realize this was about the 'metadata' gathering w/o warrant, so that's my bad.
Yeah good points all around, AC...I rushed to judgement a bit and my analogies were off. Probably deserved the downmod I got.
I like your google Translate analogy...but yeah, I guess chalk this up to my intense hatred of 'AI' hype, which I feel is hurting our industry in many ways.
TFA does not describe an advancement in AI technology whatsoever.
It is an external 'computer player'...We have had AI's that play video games virtually since we had video games.
Take good ol' Tecmo Bowl...you play against an AI opponent that does absolutely everything this AI did and more.
This is not an AI advancement, it is....an **application** of new and better **sensor inputs** for an external AI
I don't see anything in this that would indicate we are some kind of 'step' closer to having Terminator kill bots....it's just an application of visual pattern recognition to a particular task.
Another example of this tech being in use today is assembly line robots. They are programed to behave according to certain visual parameters input from visual sensors.
This is **application** of existing technology...engineering...not new science or AI evolution....this is HYPE
and even if it's true that only 3 were waterboarded (which just seems ridiculous), one of those was Kalid Sheik Mohammed, and they waterborded him **every day** for 200 days in order to get him to confess to masterminding 9/11
how fucking reliable is that confession?
its not
even if it was just once it's too much b/c it **doesn't work** and we know this, look at our interrogation manuals from WWII...the interrogation was like an intervention practically...they were all lawyers, all spoke fluent German...done in a professional setting.
You might be delighted to know that I was already planning my next issue to be about idiosyncratic rules for communication.
word.
i'm sure it will be pretty interesting...if you post a link I might even take a look
i'll use 'M$' as an abbreviation until the day I die and no blog, Oxford English Bullshit, or w/e will change that...
as for why, its part of how the internet allows for different modes of communication to layer meaning...i think it's cool, and I experiment with different things to see the effect
His charity also does a ton of good stuff in areas like public health and sanitation.
and other commenters have pointed out similar things...
first, i'll grant you that my comment did not mention some of the work they do for the neediest globally, it is an oversight that should matter in evaluating "tech billionaires" and how effective/self-serving their charity work proves to be.
I'm mostly frustrated that so much of what made M$ so bad is going into **how** they do the work in the developing world, on a macro scale, but this is off topic.
second, to my main criticism of "tech billionaires" and how they do charity is how self-serving and low-return *most* of it is.
I imagine the parts of the Gates Foundation that are the most effective correlate very closely with the parts where Gates & minions have the *least* input into decision making.
Delivering water to communities in Africa is more a problem you throw money at to the right people, because there are obviously already people trying to accomplish the task, the best option just doesn't have the resources.
That's still **good** but we can do much, much better. That's my point.
Why not start right in the Bay Area? Why not just start paying off family mortgages and boosting school budgets?
990 Million Dollars of that...seriously...i'm not an isolationist but have you ever heard of how in a commercial airliner emergency, the mother should put *her own air mask* on first b/c she needs to be coherent to help the baby?
TFA Headline was misleading...saying it like this:
"X gives [huge sum of money] to charity."
X being an often criticized figure and "charity" being the incongruent thing that supposedly makes the headline interesting.
But it buries the lead...the story isn't some tech/dork/genius/villain giving a huge sum of money away to needy people...it's about him transferring it to his own charity.
Huge difference.
Jerry Sandusky used the Second Mile Charity to find victims. Clinton uses his charity to maintain his personal/family brand and...I admit...do good things. Bill Gates, I think somewhere in his brain he wants to be altruistic for some philosophical reason, but his charity really just pumps M$ products and tries to make teachers be paid by performance.
IMHO, Gates and Zuck are bad models for tech chartiy. I would rather him take that money and pay off every home mortgage in the poor communities in his area....Oakland. The also need to stop all attempts to use his charity to get student data via "donating" some student info system and calling it some innovative name.
If you think Europe’s royal families had a limited gene pool after centuries of inbreeding, consider the Neandertals of Siberia.
later they also discuss inTERbreeding among other imaginary species that these guys invent to get more funding
these are modern humans...eventually this stuff will be disproven if anyone takes the time to really check out what's going on
this reminds me of Clovis Culture...it denied any trans oceanic contact beyond a Bering Straight migration that could have only happend once...all from some rock paintings and evidence of axe sharpening
BAM!
Clovis Culture took a giant shit on anthropology in the Americas for almost a Century...now polyneisian potatoes in Chile, Inuits recorded in Europe in 1000 AD, the whole Lief Ericson thing, and genetics of the Incas vs Africans shows that the Americas was progressively settled as long as humans have reached it
Science can be just as closed minded and dogmatic as religion on this stuff
word I looked at the process for getting "trusted" on Mt. Gox
I thought I'd use them if/when I ever did any BTC trading, but the fact that they are not based in the US was problematic.
As a business, if something went sour with BTC and the broker gets shut down in the US I might be able to sue or at least claim it as capital loss on my taxes.
I'm just curious about numbers...whatever you want to share
I always thought that your strategy, the "slow and steady wins the race" strategy would be foiled by the transfer fees
it's tricky to get back into USD without a little research
thanks for saying this...this is all I ever wanted to see acknowledge...I'm not a BTC hater but this "last mile" thing is overlooked in the conversation
as I said, I bought 1 BTC on a lark but lost my wallet info (probably on my laptop that died)...I'm looking at BTC now as a business owner who is considering taking BTC payments.
someone traded bitcoins for an Amazon gift card. It must truly be ready for the world to use
it's interesting because of all the BTC fanbois it was an actual story of actual evidence of how BTC made some one a profit, with full details
no one said it was 'ready for the world to use'...b/c **the world is already using it**
i'm the opposite of a BTC fanboi, but i think your perspective is wrong too
you should take an hour or two and learn how BTC actually works, because...something about knowledge...idk...power and knowledge...w/e nevermind just keep on moving...nothing to see here
Really...if I don't get it...if its all about variance...if it's so simple...fucking explain it and interact w/ my examples.
Don't just post some random shit and think you've contributed to the conversation.
This pisses me off because I get downmodded not for content but b/c people disagree w/ my opinions...i'm not trolling, many of my respondents, like HornWumpus, just toss off random bon mots, and of course my comment gets downmodded
But the value isn't important. If you are a value speculator...
exactly...**'I'M NOT A SPECULATOR**
you need to think about it from a system design perspective, not as a hacker
see, you're thinking like an outsider who is intruding on a system for an immediate personal gain
i'm evaluating BTC as part of the system looking to constantly improve on a sustainable long term path
that's why all the BTC fanbois arguments are so infuriating...you're coming from the perspective of a parasite not someone trying to make their own independent system
a storm with swells between 5-10 feet in variance is navigable
a storm with swells between 50-100 ft in variance is not navigable
does that make sense?
it's not abstract, the quantity the numbers represent changes how they are applied b/c of real world context...there is a fixed point at which the swells become too big and the boat will be innundated
or think of it this way...if you and your bro were watching the game on the couch and he said he'd give you $5 to get him a fresh beer, you'd at least consider it...b/c you can buy a beer at the bar later w/ it
if you refused, but he then offered you $50 to get him the beer, most ppl wouldn't turn that down!
now, imagine if he offered you $5 in Candy Bars...if you don't like candy bars, will going from 5->50 in quantity make you any more likely to get the beer?
Bitpay handles the conversion and the supplier of the cards gets paid in dollars (This is something I believe you said was just too difficult to implement in a previous thread
did I?
we're crossing implementation paths here...
I don't know which comment you're talking about but I definitely said that as a small business owner (which I am) taking BTC just doesnt make sense b/c of the 'last mile' where the BTC become $$$ in my biz bank account in real time.
Now as a global telecom/ecommerce/device maker (which I *hope* to be!) I would *still* not do it!
I think Amazon did the BTC thing more as marketing than for profit, but then again, Amazon could be **mining** BTC as an experimental business venture.
See, all this aside, it's still an **Amazon gift card**
I like GP's solution...but it's a hack of a hack of specie currency...not a criticism just wanting to clear up why I think his idea was cool but as a business owner I dont take BTC & the rest.
Every time I see it loose 50 rapidly, it bounces back and further
going from 100->50->100 is not the same as going from 1000->500->1000
see this isn't abstract numbers, this is $$$...money doesn't scale the same as flat abstract numbers
a 50 point swing vs a 500 point swing is an order of magnitude more **volitile**
also the timing of the drop is important, there are many new big name investors in BTC now, and in the past for the swings you cited there were none...the stakes are much higher now
right, I'm assuming you mean you bought at a low price and cashed out at a high price?
what I'm wondering is, which BTC to $$$ service you used (Mt Gox?), how often you were able to cash out, what the daily $$$ limits were, what the transfer fees cost, etc.
I've seen alot of people yammering about BTC but few claim to have made a profit...i'd like to know more about how
Slashdot Mirror
wrong...us critics want to colonize other worlds (as much or more than the Mars One people) and see it *work*
don't go into some mellodramatic tirade about dreams and the humans spirit...that's the trap!
this is a case of some businesspeople taking shortcuts and manipulating people and **using the language** of real science/exploration
You've bought into the hype.
Humans dont have to choose between a suicide mission held together with duct tape and peanut shells on a death march that, **at best** ends with the people who land huddling in their glorified airstream trailers counting the days till they die and *nothing*
Mars One is a horrible mission plan that actually won't tell us anything we don't already know or could extrapolate. Their plan even states explicitly that they will use existing technology.
When we do space exploration we need to do it the right way or not at all.
Critics of Mars One are not criticizing the notion of human colonization of Mars purely from a "danger" perspective...
It's everything about ***how*** Mars One plans to do this...from the funding to the equipment they use to what they'll actually do when they get there. It just makes no sense to do it that way.
Sure there are some critics of human space exploration that think the whole notion of humans colonizing other worlds is just too dangerous, *no matter how it is done* but they are in the distinct minority, especially here on slashdot....this is much different.
It's that the mission is all wrong in its conception.
Think of it in terms of dinner, Mars One is hyping themselves like they are a steak dinner with all the trimmings, but in reality they are giving us reconstituted soy in the shape of a steak, giving us some survey data that says it tastes just like real steak, and expecting people to pay for a T-bone.
It's hype...some unscrupulous "entrepreneurs" launching a business project...because they are coming from that perspective everything down the line comes out wrong...and it doesn't take a NASA scientist to see that it's essentially a suicide mission.
In this case empty-headed, wild-eyed hype that takes advantage of people's dreams.
hey thanks for the measured response...
I have to admit that your points are valid. My problem was I didn't RTFA....I didn't realize this was about the 'metadata' gathering w/o warrant, so that's my bad.
Sorry slashdot...
Yeah good points all around, AC...I rushed to judgement a bit and my analogies were off. Probably deserved the downmod I got.
I like your google Translate analogy...but yeah, I guess chalk this up to my intense hatred of 'AI' hype, which I feel is hurting our industry in many ways.
TFA does not describe an advancement in AI technology whatsoever.
It is an external 'computer player'...We have had AI's that play video games virtually since we had video games.
Take good ol' Tecmo Bowl...you play against an AI opponent that does absolutely everything this AI did and more.
This is not an AI advancement, it is....an **application** of new and better **sensor inputs** for an external AI
I don't see anything in this that would indicate we are some kind of 'step' closer to having Terminator kill bots....it's just an application of visual pattern recognition to a particular task.
Another example of this tech being in use today is assembly line robots. They are programed to behave according to certain visual parameters input from visual sensors.
This is **application** of existing technology...engineering...not new science or AI evolution....this is HYPE
This ruling was exactly what we all should have expected and it is obviously what *had* to happen...
Why?
Answer this question: Is there any data that you want to be **completely unavailable** to law enforcement with **proper warrant**?
Our military and law enforcement absolutely must be able to use all means to catch the bad guys.
The problem is *how* the data is collected and used....which is controlled by regulations.
The answer is **transparency** of the process, not allowing criminals a walled garden that law enforcement cannot have access to.
what about contractors?
foreign militaries like the Czech Republic?
and even if it's true that only 3 were waterboarded (which just seems ridiculous), one of those was Kalid Sheik Mohammed, and they waterborded him **every day** for 200 days in order to get him to confess to masterminding 9/11
how fucking reliable is that confession?
its not
even if it was just once it's too much b/c it **doesn't work** and we know this, look at our interrogation manuals from WWII...the interrogation was like an intervention practically...they were all lawyers, all spoke fluent German...done in a professional setting.
stop justifying and just accept what happened...
word.
i'm sure it will be pretty interesting...if you post a link I might even take a look
i'll use 'M$' as an abbreviation until the day I die and no blog, Oxford English Bullshit, or w/e will change that...
as for why, its part of how the internet allows for different modes of communication to layer meaning...i think it's cool, and I experiment with different things to see the effect
and other commenters have pointed out similar things...
first, i'll grant you that my comment did not mention some of the work they do for the neediest globally, it is an oversight that should matter in evaluating "tech billionaires" and how effective/self-serving their charity work proves to be.
I'm mostly frustrated that so much of what made M$ so bad is going into **how** they do the work in the developing world, on a macro scale, but this is off topic.
second, to my main criticism of "tech billionaires" and how they do charity is how self-serving and low-return *most* of it is.
I imagine the parts of the Gates Foundation that are the most effective correlate very closely with the parts where Gates & minions have the *least* input into decision making.
Delivering water to communities in Africa is more a problem you throw money at to the right people, because there are obviously already people trying to accomplish the task, the best option just doesn't have the resources.
That's still **good** but we can do much, much better. That's my point.
Why not start right in the Bay Area? Why not just start paying off family mortgages and boosting school budgets?
990 Million Dollars of that...seriously...i'm not an isolationist but have you ever heard of how in a commercial airliner emergency, the mother should put *her own air mask* on first b/c she needs to be coherent to help the baby?
Nation building begins at home!
TFA Headline was misleading...saying it like this:
"X gives [huge sum of money] to charity."
X being an often criticized figure and "charity" being the incongruent thing that supposedly makes the headline interesting.
But it buries the lead...the story isn't some tech/dork/genius/villain giving a huge sum of money away to needy people...it's about him transferring it to his own charity.
Huge difference.
Jerry Sandusky used the Second Mile Charity to find victims. Clinton uses his charity to maintain his personal/family brand and...I admit...do good things. Bill Gates, I think somewhere in his brain he wants to be altruistic for some philosophical reason, but his charity really just pumps M$ products and tries to make teachers be paid by performance.
IMHO, Gates and Zuck are bad models for tech chartiy. I would rather him take that money and pay off every home mortgage in the poor communities in his area....Oakland. The also need to stop all attempts to use his charity to get student data via "donating" some student info system and calling it some innovative name.
FTA, first sentence...
later they also discuss inTERbreeding among other imaginary species that these guys invent to get more funding
these are modern humans...eventually this stuff will be disproven if anyone takes the time to really check out what's going on
this reminds me of Clovis Culture...it denied any trans oceanic contact beyond a Bering Straight migration that could have only happend once...all from some rock paintings and evidence of axe sharpening
BAM!
Clovis Culture took a giant shit on anthropology in the Americas for almost a Century...now polyneisian potatoes in Chile, Inuits recorded in Europe in 1000 AD, the whole Lief Ericson thing, and genetics of the Incas vs Africans shows that the Americas was progressively settled as long as humans have reached it
Science can be just as closed minded and dogmatic as religion on this stuff
right, and for just a small percentage of my income & purchases, I get the privilege of not paying taxes...
thanks for the info but i remain unconvinced that it is worth my time
i will definitely reconsider if the situation improves
word I looked at the process for getting "trusted" on Mt. Gox
I thought I'd use them if/when I ever did any BTC trading, but the fact that they are not based in the US was problematic.
As a business, if something went sour with BTC and the broker gets shut down in the US I might be able to sue or at least claim it as capital loss on my taxes.
word thanks
I'm just curious about numbers...whatever you want to share
I always thought that your strategy, the "slow and steady wins the race" strategy would be foiled by the transfer fees
thanks for saying this...this is all I ever wanted to see acknowledge...I'm not a BTC hater but this "last mile" thing is overlooked in the conversation
as I said, I bought 1 BTC on a lark but lost my wallet info (probably on my laptop that died)...I'm looking at BTC now as a business owner who is considering taking BTC payments.
it's interesting because of all the BTC fanbois it was an actual story of actual evidence of how BTC made some one a profit, with full details
no one said it was 'ready for the world to use'...b/c **the world is already using it**
i'm the opposite of a BTC fanboi, but i think your perspective is wrong too
you should take an hour or two and learn how BTC actually works, because...something about knowledge...idk...power and knowledge...w/e nevermind just keep on moving...nothing to see here
http://xkcd.com/149/
no YOU don't get it
Hint: Stop thinking only in abstractions
Really...if I don't get it...if its all about variance...if it's so simple...fucking explain it and interact w/ my examples.
Don't just post some random shit and think you've contributed to the conversation.
This pisses me off because I get downmodded not for content but b/c people disagree w/ my opinions...i'm not trolling, many of my respondents, like HornWumpus, just toss off random bon mots, and of course my comment gets downmodded
exactly...**'I'M NOT A SPECULATOR**
you need to think about it from a system design perspective, not as a hacker
see, you're thinking like an outsider who is intruding on a system for an immediate personal gain
i'm evaluating BTC as part of the system looking to constantly improve on a sustainable long term path
that's why all the BTC fanbois arguments are so infuriating...you're coming from the perspective of a parasite not someone trying to make their own independent system
as of this writing you're properly rated at +5 Insightful
I think how your comment gets rated will be a good litmus test for the quality of /. commetors vs reddit
reddit is fine for what it is, but when I want to see discussion about something like Bitcoin or Snowden I need something more
I'm curious to see how this plays out.
ok think of a boat on the ocean
a storm with swells between 5-10 feet in variance is navigable
a storm with swells between 50-100 ft in variance is not navigable
does that make sense?
it's not abstract, the quantity the numbers represent changes how they are applied b/c of real world context...there is a fixed point at which the swells become too big and the boat will be innundated
or think of it this way...if you and your bro were watching the game on the couch and he said he'd give you $5 to get him a fresh beer, you'd at least consider it...b/c you can buy a beer at the bar later w/ it
if you refused, but he then offered you $50 to get him the beer, most ppl wouldn't turn that down!
now, imagine if he offered you $5 in Candy Bars...if you don't like candy bars, will going from 5->50 in quantity make you any more likely to get the beer?
did I?
we're crossing implementation paths here...
I don't know which comment you're talking about but I definitely said that as a small business owner (which I am) taking BTC just doesnt make sense b/c of the 'last mile' where the BTC become $$$ in my biz bank account in real time.
Now as a global telecom/ecommerce/device maker (which I *hope* to be!) I would *still* not do it!
I think Amazon did the BTC thing more as marketing than for profit, but then again, Amazon could be **mining** BTC as an experimental business venture.
See, all this aside, it's still an **Amazon gift card**
I like GP's solution...but it's a hack of a hack of specie currency...not a criticism just wanting to clear up why I think his idea was cool but as a business owner I dont take BTC & the rest.
Very interesting!
I like the Amazon gift card solution.
What exchange rate did Amazon use for the transaction? Was it based off Mt Gox?
going from 100->50->100 is not the same as going from 1000->500->1000
see this isn't abstract numbers, this is $$$...money doesn't scale the same as flat abstract numbers
a 50 point swing vs a 500 point swing is an order of magnitude more **volitile**
also the timing of the drop is important, there are many new big name investors in BTC now, and in the past for the swings you cited there were none...the stakes are much higher now
right, I'm assuming you mean you bought at a low price and cashed out at a high price?
what I'm wondering is, which BTC to $$$ service you used (Mt Gox?), how often you were able to cash out, what the daily $$$ limits were, what the transfer fees cost, etc.
I've seen alot of people yammering about BTC but few claim to have made a profit...i'd like to know more about how