The Army plans to spend $14.78 billion on a new combat system over the next six years...
Enough to buy desalination plants with sufficient capacity to serve over 12 million households a year (
raw figures
). Enough to run the Spirit/Opportunity mission to Mars 18 more times (
raw figures). Enough to extend unemployment benefits for 2.5 million people for 1 year (raw figures). I could go on, but you get the picture. Will we be more secure? Will we generate more enemies and terrorists? Will this make war more humane or more savage? Will this reduce or increase collateral damage to civilians? Does this make us a better people, or a bunch of psychotic bastards? Do any of you people even give enough of a shit to write your congressional representatives? Will you even after you start seeing news reports of our robots killing and destroying?
The fallacious logic here astounds me. Wait, no it doesn't.
It's a sign of our times. The Straw Man is every public bulshitter's best friend. Like yesterday's Bushism to the effect of "but then after 9/11, we knew we couldn't trust Saddam Hussein." Not unlike "but then, after MyDoom, we knew we couldn't start deploying OpenOffice on everyone's desktop."
I'll spell it out...
C-A-N-O-P-Y-D-O-E-S-N-O-T-R-E-C-O-G-N-I-Z-E-T-H-E- G-.-P-.-L-.
By Jove, Holmes! You've got it! Thyey can pick and choose what licenses to abide by and which to ignore! By denying the existence of copyright law, they can do whatever they please! Brilliant, Holmes, Brilliant!
"1) C++ (Because I can do everything in C),
2) Qt,
3) A book about both, and
4) The opinion of someone who writes GUI in C++ with Qt and reads a book about it," grunted the malodorous little troll as he skillfully picked his nose with his left hand and masturbated with his right.
Seriously, though, how feasible or necessary is it to change the code SCO has claimed as theirs? Are their claims vast and allegedly Linux-crippling, or are they focal and refactorable in 2.7?
I second the motion! "Ignorant But Speaking Anyway" sounds like an excellent moderation tag. And yes, I have been guilty of it myself, for those who will post the usual "thank you oh enlightened smartass".
The max RAM you can put in is 512 MB. There are 4 memory slots, and they must be installed in pairs.
Then what's the point? When I get my hands on an Athlon64, that little bastard will have 8 or 16 Gb of RAM, and I will run some seriously large data analysis on it. That's what you need 64 bits for, not as "a way to woo the ladies."
I shudder to visualize such ladies as would start pooning at the sight of a Sparc 5.
How realistic was it to say "we'll send a man to the moon in 10 years" 45 years ago? But that sure happened.
I have three issues with this remark.
First, liquid-fueled rockets had already existed for a good 30 years or more, and had been successfuly used as long-range weapons about 20 years before Kennedy's famous speech. The Soviets had successfully put a satellite in orbit a few years earlier, and Yuri Gagarin into orbit only a month before. Going to the moon with such vehicles was a matter of bigger equipment and a few day's journey. The scale of the expense and the effort, while great, were within the nation's means. An interesting fictionalized account can be rented at your video store: From the earth to the Moon. The scale of the journey, the expense, and the vehicles, to name only the most obvious hurdles, is incomparably higher for Mars, even given today's resources.
The second issue I have is the glibness and superstition underlying your remark. In effect, you are claiming "Since we put a man on the moon 45 years ago, we should be able to put a man on Mars today." If A, then B in spite of the dubious comparability of A and B. There are laws in the physical world, that even lawyers must face up against. There is no magic, moving masses from here to there has a cost. The journey to Mars is long and dangerous, and the difficulty and cost of safely transporting human beings is as yet incomprehensible. We have many needs and attractive projects facing us, and this one seems vastly expensive with very little payoff. It may not even be possible given the practical constraints it will face. Note that I didn't say impossible per se, but impossible in practical terms.
Thirdly, your remark is as politically naive as it is popular. Why is this project being proposed? For its scientific value? To quench our thirst for exploration? Because it is a realistic goal for humanity to one day migrate to Mars? Because there will be a huge trickle down of technology that will solve our earthly problems? No. None of those are motivating reasons for those who are in a position to move the project forward. Frankly, I think those reasons are simplistic at best.
Much more banal reasons are at work: funneling money to companies that are part of the current administration's political power base, military rivalry with China, political trickery in an election year, and yes, Roman Circus.
My underlying point is that we should not allow ourselves to be deceived and robbed, and our future as a nation and as a planet mortgaged and foreclosed in exchange for political trinkets.
If I'm in the crowd, I can see those around me, no enlightenment needed. Just what is your point? Do you have one? Are you content to have our political elite fuck everything up? Will you somehow be magically saved as the rest of us perish?
Given Bush's track record as president and as a human being, I'm inclined to believe that he doesn't personally give a rat's ass whether we get back to the moon or Mars -- he knows that this is a simple campaigning trick (make a fantastic promise that you can't be held accountable for).
That's it. That's just about all there is, and yet millions of Americans are going to run around cheering at what a great idea it is. It doesn't matter how realistic a project it is, or whether there is any point in doing it. Nor does it matter that it will take money away from successful and cost-effective unmanned projects, let alone that we're already hundreds of billions of dollars in the red every year.
There is one more key reason for this proposal, aside from it being an electoral politics trick: it will pump hundreds of billions of dollars towards the same "defense" and aerospace companies that are currently being subsidized with the conquest of Iraq, itself a gift to energy trading companies looking to control the world petroleum market.
The American public, in the eyes of our heavy-hitting political elite, resembles the Roman public in the film Gladiator. Just provide enough circus, and the public will approve or believe anything, and apparently that means anything. For example, the alleged economic recovery we've been going through. Yup, nothing like prosperity. Pretty soon we'll all be rolling in the dough. Any minute now, yessir, the big economic indicators prove it! Don't pay any attention to the whiners and unemployed losers, they don't know what they're talking about. If there was no recovery, "they" wouldn't "let" the government say there was, right? Right?
The real Mindstorms showstopper for me was their pathetic 8-bit cpu with a tiny amount of RAM. Had it been a 32-bit cpu (MC68000 family? MIPS?) with a flat memory space and the ability to stick standard DIMMs or flash RAM cards into the RCX, I suspect the geek audience would have been much larger and more enthusiastic. They should have used a more off-the-shelf architecture instead of designing their own around such an obsolete chip.
Was anyone able to set up any neural network proccessing of sensory inputs and motor control on the RCX?
Check out this little gadget. $150 or so, holds 128 MB, you can only access the data if you put your finger on the built-in fingerprint reader, and it has an encrypted data directory.
And ours is FREE for everyone, which isn't at all true for the city in the article.
You goddamn communists! Who ever heard of consumers getting something for free? Is it saturated with ads? Is there a phantom charge on your water bill? Do your local politicians reward someone with inflated contracts ultimately paid for by you? There's got to be a catch.
Would I feel comfortable having microwaves going through my brain everywhere I go?
Well, have you felt at all uncomfortable at some point during the last 50 years or so? Bad news, my man: you have been irradiated with a wide variety of radio waves for your entire life. A little more or less shouldn't hurt, unless you have the transmitter strapped to your body day in and day out.
There are dozens of technological achievements that are greater than the ISS, and which have had and will have far more profound and lasting effects. 500 years from now the ISS will be seen as a quaint, quixotic, and rather baroque way to squander huge amounts of money. By then, of course, it will be OK to list the names of the privileged few in whose pockets the money ended up.
Will Ludovico the { Cheney | Lockheed-Martin | Bush | Carlysle | al Saud | etc } please stand up?
Those of you who claim it can't be done for reasons of economy of scale or emission regulations, among other things, are mistaken. Much of the work that would be required has already been done and has been on the market for decades. I was not thinking of the First World market. In the Third World, hand-made auto parts and Mom-and-Pop auto part factories are common. In that context, they are in effect pirating existing IP. To go the whole way and create an open-source design spec with easy to determine compliance tests would be the next logical step.
This represents a branch point from the First World industrial paradigm of economy of scale and elimination of manual labor, coupled with planned obsolescence and faddishness to ensure a short interval between new car purchases. An open-source car reverses this drastically. Low economy of scale and higher manual labor content coupled with an open-ended product lifetime shifts the focus from the manufacture of the car to that of its components. The car owner repairs the vehicle over a period of many years, possibly turning over the majority of its components one or more times over a long period of time. Small-scale manufacturers would build a mix of components based on demand for specific versions of a component. Clever management of the project should consciously support this. This business model is unsustainable by massive industrial concerns, but might work well in an economy with lower-skilled, small-scale enterprise. It would not be massively profitable, but may be a model for keeping large populations employed.
If the interconnection ot the automobile's components is carefully and thoughtfully evolved, a single vehicle might be an ever-changing machine, gradually absorbing better components over time. It would not be a static piece of technology that quickly becomes obsolete. This is a subtext of my original post.
How about the old VW sedan, especially the off-patent parts? Can an open-source automobile design based on, say, the 1980 VW sedan be set-up and evolved in poor countries?
In general, what problems would there be in creating open-source engineering designs for hardware of all kinds branched off from off-patent intellectual property? That, as it turns out, was the express purpose of the US Patent system as conceived by Benjamin Franklin, unless I am mistaken.
Sorry, "the market" isn't some omnipotent overpowering force that can't be controlled.
Hear, hear! I too am sick of people referring to the Market as if it were some mysterious natural force like magnetism or gravity.
... they are driving true innovation to other places like Inda and China, where a company can exist without the threat of being litigated into the ground for something absolutely outrageous as patenting a 20+ year old filesystem.
Actually, you're mistaken there. These countries are signatories to international treaties that protect IP, so they are subject to litigation in international venues. It's a lot harder, dicier, and more expensive, but you can sue entities in India and China for patent infringement.
From the go.com link: Especially encouraging was a 18.4 percent growth rate in business investment in new equipment and software in the third quarter. That was even stronger than the 15.4 percent pace previously estimated for the quarter and up from a 8.3 percent pace in the second quarter.
Spending on residential projects grew at a whopping 22.7 percent pace in the third quarter, also better than the sizable 20.4 percent growth rate first estimated and up from a 6.6 percent pace in the second quarter.
This looks really suspicious. Who is doing all this spending? What companies do you know of that are doing this? Could it be the few companies that are receiving the well over $100 billion already spent on fighting for Freedom, Justice, and The American Way in Iraq? I sure wouldn't mind if my employer bought me new equipment and software. Who is buying all these new houses, all of the unemployed with nothing else to do? I wish I could buy one.
I suspect there is quite a bit more than meets the eye in this bizarre statistical spike.
My only major objection to your otherwise lucid remarks is:
Oh undoubtably. Just like you never think beyond "Guns bad, guns hurt people, guns must die".
You may be surprised, but I am not anti-gun in the sense of believing all guns must disappear. I have no use for them, and I think we would all be better off without them, but it can't be done. Like illicit drugs, prostitution, and many, many other things, full prohibition is a mirage. Making things illegal is not the same as making them go away.
And of course, there are firearm sports such as hunting, marksmanship, etc.
As to personal defense, I think there is a gray area. I know of cases where people have successfully fended off attackers, sometimes with nothing more than the sound of chambering a round in the dark. I also know of many people who have died confronting a more skillful or more desperate armed assailant. There is really nothing that can be robustly claimed either way about owning firearms for self-defense. Frankly, the perceived need for owning them represents a failure of law and order, and the guaranteed existence of people who simply can't live peacefully and without attacking others.
My position is that firearms should be available more or less as they are now, with robust licensing and traceability in case they are used in crimes. Military-style weapons really don't have a place in civil society, in my opinion.
I see your point, but disprovability in practice is more of an ideal than a requirement, and yet science goes on. I remit you to the vast experimental biology and chemistry literature, where Popperian disprovability is much less comman than Sam Spade-style detective work. Both fields, though, have very large bodies of theory that are supported in great detail by experiment.
I also see your objection to my citing an authority, but please bear with me. I strongly suggest you examine that book, since you have concerns about rigor and logic in science. That book is a beautiful and rigorous treatment on how complexity can be easily generated from simple components. Whether you are a Creationist or not, it should prove both enlightening and disturbing.
Inherent rights are those humans are born with, whether the government in your shithole third-world country recognizes them or not.
Bad news, Bozo. You have no inherent rights. Not one. The rights you have are those we all agree you have. Nothing more. If we want to act like a bunch of petty psychotic storm troopers, your rights will be set accordingly. If enough of us agree to treat each other as equals, and decide that we should cooperate and make earthly life an enriching experience, that would also affect the list of rights you have.
By believing in the wacky concept of "inherent rights," you are in effect ratifying the next lunatic's wacky concepts. Include me out, Dude. I'd rather we all be rational and democratic about it.
And if you say that life arose from nonliving matter, with all its complexity, that's a theory, too. And by your standards, it's not provable either. So it's not scientific.
You didn't get what a scientific theory is. Provability is not a part of it, that would be mathematics. Positing a hypothesis, then performing experiments to see if it is consistent with the physical universe, that's science.
I don't suppose you could briefly let us know why you use the phrase "evolutionist dogma," could you?
Here is a book you might find interesting (or not):
Emergence: From Chaos to Order, John H. Holland (ISBN 0738201421).
I challenge you to show that Dr Holland is mistaken, and that complexity cannot arise spontaneously from nonliving matter in a setting such as the surface of the planet earth.
Slashdot Mirror
Always true. Always.
The Army plans to spend $14.78 billion on a new combat system over the next six years...
Enough to buy desalination plants with sufficient capacity to serve over 12 million households a year ( raw figures ). Enough to run the Spirit/Opportunity mission to Mars 18 more times ( raw figures). Enough to extend unemployment benefits for 2.5 million people for 1 year (raw figures). I could go on, but you get the picture. Will we be more secure? Will we generate more enemies and terrorists? Will this make war more humane or more savage? Will this reduce or increase collateral damage to civilians? Does this make us a better people, or a bunch of psychotic bastards? Do any of you people even give enough of a shit to write your congressional representatives? Will you even after you start seeing news reports of our robots killing and destroying?
It's a sign of our times. The Straw Man is every public bulshitter's best friend. Like yesterday's Bushism to the effect of "but then after 9/11, we knew we couldn't trust Saddam Hussein." Not unlike "but then, after MyDoom, we knew we couldn't start deploying OpenOffice on everyone's desktop."
C-A-N-O-P-Y-D-O-E-S-N-O-T-R-E-C-O-G-N-I-Z-E-T-H-E
By Jove, Holmes! You've got it! Thyey can pick and choose what licenses to abide by and which to ignore! By denying the existence of copyright law, they can do whatever they please! Brilliant, Holmes, Brilliant!
I second the motion! "Ignorant But Speaking Anyway" sounds like an excellent moderation tag. And yes, I have been guilty of it myself, for those who will post the usual "thank you oh enlightened smartass".
Then what's the point? When I get my hands on an Athlon64, that little bastard will have 8 or 16 Gb of RAM, and I will run some seriously large data analysis on it. That's what you need 64 bits for, not as "a way to woo the ladies."
I shudder to visualize such ladies as would start pooning at the sight of a Sparc 5.
I have three issues with this remark.
First, liquid-fueled rockets had already existed for a good 30 years or more, and had been successfuly used as long-range weapons about 20 years before Kennedy's famous speech. The Soviets had successfully put a satellite in orbit a few years earlier, and Yuri Gagarin into orbit only a month before. Going to the moon with such vehicles was a matter of bigger equipment and a few day's journey. The scale of the expense and the effort, while great, were within the nation's means. An interesting fictionalized account can be rented at your video store: From the earth to the Moon . The scale of the journey, the expense, and the vehicles, to name only the most obvious hurdles, is incomparably higher for Mars, even given today's resources.The second issue I have is the glibness and superstition underlying your remark. In effect, you are claiming "Since we put a man on the moon 45 years ago, we should be able to put a man on Mars today." If A, then B in spite of the dubious comparability of A and B. There are laws in the physical world, that even lawyers must face up against. There is no magic, moving masses from here to there has a cost. The journey to Mars is long and dangerous, and the difficulty and cost of safely transporting human beings is as yet incomprehensible. We have many needs and attractive projects facing us, and this one seems vastly expensive with very little payoff. It may not even be possible given the practical constraints it will face. Note that I didn't say impossible per se, but impossible in practical terms.
Thirdly, your remark is as politically naive as it is popular. Why is this project being proposed? For its scientific value? To quench our thirst for exploration? Because it is a realistic goal for humanity to one day migrate to Mars? Because there will be a huge trickle down of technology that will solve our earthly problems? No. None of those are motivating reasons for those who are in a position to move the project forward. Frankly, I think those reasons are simplistic at best.
Much more banal reasons are at work: funneling money to companies that are part of the current administration's political power base, military rivalry with China, political trickery in an election year, and yes, Roman Circus.
My underlying point is that we should not allow ourselves to be deceived and robbed, and our future as a nation and as a planet mortgaged and foreclosed in exchange for political trinkets.
That's it. That's just about all there is, and yet millions of Americans are going to run around cheering at what a great idea it is. It doesn't matter how realistic a project it is, or whether there is any point in doing it. Nor does it matter that it will take money away from successful and cost-effective unmanned projects, let alone that we're already hundreds of billions of dollars in the red every year.
There is one more key reason for this proposal, aside from it being an electoral politics trick: it will pump hundreds of billions of dollars towards the same "defense" and aerospace companies that are currently being subsidized with the conquest of Iraq, itself a gift to energy trading companies looking to control the world petroleum market.
The American public, in the eyes of our heavy-hitting political elite, resembles the Roman public in the film Gladiator. Just provide enough circus, and the public will approve or believe anything, and apparently that means anything. For example, the alleged economic recovery we've been going through. Yup, nothing like prosperity. Pretty soon we'll all be rolling in the dough. Any minute now, yessir, the big economic indicators prove it! Don't pay any attention to the whiners and unemployed losers, they don't know what they're talking about. If there was no recovery, "they" wouldn't "let" the government say there was, right? Right?
Cygwin has been around for how long?
Was anyone able to set up any neural network proccessing of sensory inputs and motor control on the RCX?
You goddamn communists! Who ever heard of consumers getting something for free? Is it saturated with ads? Is there a phantom charge on your water bill? Do your local politicians reward someone with inflated contracts ultimately paid for by you? There's got to be a catch.
Well, have you felt at all uncomfortable at some point during the last 50 years or so? Bad news, my man: you have been irradiated with a wide variety of radio waves for your entire life. A little more or less shouldn't hurt, unless you have the transmitter strapped to your body day in and day out.
Will Ludovico the { Cheney | Lockheed-Martin | Bush | Carlysle | al Saud | etc } please stand up?
This represents a branch point from the First World industrial paradigm of economy of scale and elimination of manual labor, coupled with planned obsolescence and faddishness to ensure a short interval between new car purchases. An open-source car reverses this drastically. Low economy of scale and higher manual labor content coupled with an open-ended product lifetime shifts the focus from the manufacture of the car to that of its components. The car owner repairs the vehicle over a period of many years, possibly turning over the majority of its components one or more times over a long period of time. Small-scale manufacturers would build a mix of components based on demand for specific versions of a component. Clever management of the project should consciously support this. This business model is unsustainable by massive industrial concerns, but might work well in an economy with lower-skilled, small-scale enterprise. It would not be massively profitable, but may be a model for keeping large populations employed.
If the interconnection ot the automobile's components is carefully and thoughtfully evolved, a single vehicle might be an ever-changing machine, gradually absorbing better components over time. It would not be a static piece of technology that quickly becomes obsolete. This is a subtext of my original post.
In general, what problems would there be in creating open-source engineering designs for hardware of all kinds branched off from off-patent intellectual property? That, as it turns out, was the express purpose of the US Patent system as conceived by Benjamin Franklin, unless I am mistaken.
Hear, hear! I too am sick of people referring to the Market as if it were some mysterious natural force like magnetism or gravity.
Actually, you're mistaken there. These countries are signatories to international treaties that protect IP, so they are subject to litigation in international venues. It's a lot harder, dicier, and more expensive, but you can sue entities in India and China for patent infringement.
Especially encouraging was a 18.4 percent growth rate in business investment in new equipment and software in the third quarter. That was even stronger than the 15.4 percent pace previously estimated for the quarter and up from a 8.3 percent pace in the second quarter.
Spending on residential projects grew at a whopping 22.7 percent pace in the third quarter, also better than the sizable 20.4 percent growth rate first estimated and up from a 6.6 percent pace in the second quarter.
This looks really suspicious. Who is doing all this spending? What companies do you know of that are doing this? Could it be the few companies that are receiving the well over $100 billion already spent on fighting for Freedom, Justice, and The American Way in Iraq? I sure wouldn't mind if my employer bought me new equipment and software. Who is buying all these new houses, all of the unemployed with nothing else to do? I wish I could buy one.
I suspect there is quite a bit more than meets the eye in this bizarre statistical spike.
Not the cuts, the Planetary Overlords.
Oh undoubtably. Just like you never think beyond "Guns bad, guns hurt people, guns must die".
You may be surprised, but I am not anti-gun in the sense of believing all guns must disappear. I have no use for them, and I think we would all be better off without them, but it can't be done. Like illicit drugs, prostitution, and many, many other things, full prohibition is a mirage. Making things illegal is not the same as making them go away. And of course, there are firearm sports such as hunting, marksmanship, etc.
As to personal defense, I think there is a gray area. I know of cases where people have successfully fended off attackers, sometimes with nothing more than the sound of chambering a round in the dark. I also know of many people who have died confronting a more skillful or more desperate armed assailant. There is really nothing that can be robustly claimed either way about owning firearms for self-defense. Frankly, the perceived need for owning them represents a failure of law and order, and the guaranteed existence of people who simply can't live peacefully and without attacking others.
My position is that firearms should be available more or less as they are now, with robust licensing and traceability in case they are used in crimes. Military-style weapons really don't have a place in civil society, in my opinion.
I also see your objection to my citing an authority, but please bear with me. I strongly suggest you examine that book, since you have concerns about rigor and logic in science. That book is a beautiful and rigorous treatment on how complexity can be easily generated from simple components. Whether you are a Creationist or not, it should prove both enlightening and disturbing.
Bad news, Bozo. You have no inherent rights. Not one. The rights you have are those we all agree you have. Nothing more. If we want to act like a bunch of petty psychotic storm troopers, your rights will be set accordingly. If enough of us agree to treat each other as equals, and decide that we should cooperate and make earthly life an enriching experience, that would also affect the list of rights you have.
By believing in the wacky concept of "inherent rights," you are in effect ratifying the next lunatic's wacky concepts. Include me out, Dude. I'd rather we all be rational and democratic about it.
You didn't get what a scientific theory is. Provability is not a part of it, that would be mathematics. Positing a hypothesis, then performing experiments to see if it is consistent with the physical universe, that's science.
I don't suppose you could briefly let us know why you use the phrase "evolutionist dogma," could you?
Here is a book you might find interesting (or not):
Emergence: From Chaos to Order, John H. Holland (ISBN 0738201421).
I challenge you to show that Dr Holland is mistaken, and that complexity cannot arise spontaneously from nonliving matter in a setting such as the surface of the planet earth.