The moon makes for an excellent platform for automated telescopes. People are going to bring up the tired "appolo for diamonds" argument but it doesn't have any bearing on this. The moon has no atmosphere to speak of, little radio interference from the earth and ample room to set up a large array.
This requires less investment than manned missions (which dictate a return and have a HUGE space/safety cost). It will allow us to see other things than what is suggested in the grant--Changra, hubble and the like all have been used for things that were not conceived of during the design phase.
TO be fair, the EFF is probably not likely to offer awards far outside of its purview.:) I know what you are talking about, but I feel that the EFF does a pretty good job with their money, litigation offers a somewhat better rate of return than do ads, especially for a populace that has basically made up its mind about NSA spying. As unfortunate as it might seem, we are basically split down ideological lines about spying. IF you feel that the primary goal of a government is to protect its citizens from harm, you are for spying. IF you feel that the power of goevernment stems from the just consent of the governed, you are gainst spying. I will not argue the legitimacy of either view now, but facts don't change the debate.
Move to northern VA. Your paranoia about unmarked, guarded buildings with cameras and razort wire will put you soundly in Mel Gibson (Conspiracy Theory) territory.
...someone complains about NSA/EFF/ATT wiretapping business and turns this whole thread into a debate over who we hate the most, america or the terrorists.
Eh. When I get mod points I am usually hesiant to mod outside my field of expertise and REALLY hesitant to mod up/down in an older story of about 100-200 posts. Who knows if a comment I modded insightful appears 1/2 dozen times a few inches below? I try to stick with newer stories and pick reasonably good comments that won't get +5 eventually, because those are going to get modded anyways.
Maybe. You are right in suggesting that visibly changing something from costly to free has negative signaling impacts. Some among us might get the impression that this is the 'lighter' version of some more powerful performance library out there, but I don't see it happening.
What I suspect will happen is that small firms using AMD processors for specific applications will have a tool to write better, lower level code. Larger software makers might not bite because this is another tailored portion o the codebase that would need to be checked but it is certainly possible (as has been mentioned here) that encoding/decoding of video could be made easier, at least for AMD.
I don't think it is magically a win-win. I think that it is likely to be a good thing for some, indifferent to others and an exceedingly small impact on the cache of AMD. All in all, we are better off.
It isn't the what that is the particular problem in ordering society. It is how much and for who. those are the important questions. The what is (if you'll take a small leap of logic) a subset of those two questions.
Companies decide how much to produce based on their costs. They decide WHO to give it to based on who can pay for it. An awful lot of efficient allocation occurs without the need for a survey. What we really mean when we say "survey" is this:
Would you like a car?
Yes/No
How much would you say a car is worth to you?
X,000's of dollars
Is there a special reason you need a car?
Grandma is sick, etc.
What is to stop people from lying? Do you create a HUGE govertment sector to enforce compliance? Isn't there an easier way? Hmmmmm.
It's not a random assertion at all. It's a foundation of economics. the world is full of information particular to place and time, on other words, the nitty-gritty. If you were to make a statistical model of part of the world, that stuff would get buried in the "other" term. Unfortunately, where there is a lot of "other" it becomes hard to model. Take for instance, who to give cars to. Should I have a survey and have the outcome determines who gets the car? Should I give the car to someone who needs it the most or will use it the most effectively? How do I judge that? how do I stop people from lying to me?
I could, alternately, just sell the car to someone for an agreed upon price. That means I learn at least how much it is worth to them (it may be worth more) and the car goes somewhere.
Prices transmit information and preferences better than any 5 year plan or government study.
Sometimes markets have failures and those need to be dealt with, but that is not what I am talking about.
the repair was done by military personell and the reason the wrong bolt was used was that controlled material wasn't segregated from uncontrolled material.
Right, but these tradeoffs exist everywhere. If the engineering team had been allowed to do their work appropriately they would have accessed the 2 pc o ring and rejected it based on safety concerns. The fact that it came from a lower bidder isn't really prima facia evidence that capitalism caused the challenger accident.:)
For critical applications, bottom up design is not impractical. It is impractical for non-critical applications. Even with physical applications, bottom up design has some clear advantages.
I do not personally feel that one of those advantages is overall cost savings. I think that most top-down design programs are cheaper overall than their bottom-up counterparts (all things being equal). However the benefit in terms of clear and understandable safety margins is almost impossible to replicate.
Easy examples I can think of that are physical:
Chemical engineering (starting from carefully chosen components and building up to a complete refinery system.
Nuclear power (Careful material selection, individual design for piping and control systems)
Oh absolutely. I can't read the article right now.:) But I'm not going to crucify you for making the parallels. I remember reading the chapters about NASA's flight software testing and getting goosebumps. It's THAT good. I think you are right for making that parallel and suggesting its relevance. There are a fair number of coders alive today who weren't adults when Mr. Feynman was alive, sadly.
It isn't really off-topic. I think the essay in question comes from the other volume (What do you care what other people think?). Both are outstanding books and well worth the shelf space.
This is true to an extent, but safety concerns can and should be engineered for. You are absolutely right that there exists no direct corollary between software debugging for some non-critical application and meeting safety margins for a critical product. However some software IS critical. Flight software (This portion of Feynman's essay about NASA's flight software is amazing), software for hosptial applications (pharmacy, PCA's, microsurgery), ABS/suspension control software. Those are applications with VERY critical outcomes. Safety conerns need to be built in to the process.
But I do agree that tradeoffs occur under any system. Those tradeoffs just let us make better decisions under capitalism whereas we can't allow the information from those tradeoffs to inform us economically in a socialist system.
This is a very good point. Feynman has the unique quality of startling intelligence, curiosity, and straightforwardness. Some authors need to be summarized. Feynman just needs to be trotted out every generation or so.
There are other disasters that don't stem from the profit motive:
Loss of the USS Thresher during initial sea trials.
Steam Line Rupture on the USS Iwo Jima.
Both of those were caused by engineering (the first) or procurement faults.
The thresher was lost with all hands due to (among other things) a failure in modeling the high pressure air system and inappropriate welds on seawater systems.
The Iwo Jima suffered a steam line rupture that killed a few guys because the wrong material was used on a high pres/temp steam line.
Neither of these were for profit ventures. Both were preventable.
Slashdot Mirror
right. It is just easier to say "very little" than it is to say "none" and have to explain that I mean "practically none".
Not really. 3.793 × 10^7 sq. km is a lot of space. And if it is covered, so what? All the better.
well, duh. I mean, you're either with us, or you're against us, right? That's what the man on the TeeVee said to me when I waas sad and scared.
The moon makes for an excellent platform for automated telescopes. People are going to bring up the tired "appolo for diamonds" argument but it doesn't have any bearing on this. The moon has no atmosphere to speak of, little radio interference from the earth and ample room to set up a large array.
This requires less investment than manned missions (which dictate a return and have a HUGE space/safety cost). It will allow us to see other things than what is suggested in the grant--Changra, hubble and the like all have been used for things that were not conceived of during the design phase.
TO be fair, the EFF is probably not likely to offer awards far outside of its purview. :) I know what you are talking about, but I feel that the EFF does a pretty good job with their money, litigation offers a somewhat better rate of return than do ads, especially for a populace that has basically made up its mind about NSA spying. As unfortunate as it might seem, we are basically split down ideological lines about spying. IF you feel that the primary goal of a government is to protect its citizens from harm, you are for spying. IF you feel that the power of goevernment stems from the just consent of the governed, you are gainst spying. I will not argue the legitimacy of either view now, but facts don't change the debate.
Move to northern VA. Your paranoia about unmarked, guarded buildings with cameras and razort wire will put you soundly in Mel Gibson (Conspiracy Theory) territory.
That's probably it. It's certainly my vision. When I think of web developers I can only think of this.
...someone complains about NSA/EFF/ATT wiretapping business and turns this whole thread into a debate over who we hate the most, america or the terrorists.
That's good to know. Even with that being the case, the release of these libraries is a marginally positive thing.
My wife said the exact same thing upon seeing her in a different news article. That was her only comment. Sort of odd, I guess.
Eh. When I get mod points I am usually hesiant to mod outside my field of expertise and REALLY hesitant to mod up/down in an older story of about 100-200 posts. Who knows if a comment I modded insightful appears 1/2 dozen times a few inches below? I try to stick with newer stories and pick reasonably good comments that won't get +5 eventually, because those are going to get modded anyways.
Maybe. You are right in suggesting that visibly changing something from costly to free has negative signaling impacts. Some among us might get the impression that this is the 'lighter' version of some more powerful performance library out there, but I don't see it happening.
What I suspect will happen is that small firms using AMD processors for specific applications will have a tool to write better, lower level code. Larger software makers might not bite because this is another tailored portion o the codebase that would need to be checked but it is certainly possible (as has been mentioned here) that encoding/decoding of video could be made easier, at least for AMD.
I don't think it is magically a win-win. I think that it is likely to be a good thing for some, indifferent to others and an exceedingly small impact on the cache of AMD. All in all, we are better off.
It isn't the what that is the particular problem in ordering society. It is how much and for who. those are the important questions. The what is (if you'll take a small leap of logic) a subset of those two questions.
Companies decide how much to produce based on their costs. They decide WHO to give it to based on who can pay for it. An awful lot of efficient allocation occurs without the need for a survey. What we really mean when we say "survey" is this:
Would you like a car?
Yes/No
How much would you say a car is worth to you?
X,000's of dollars
Is there a special reason you need a car?
Grandma is sick, etc.
What is to stop people from lying? Do you create a HUGE govertment sector to enforce compliance? Isn't there an easier way? Hmmmmm.
It's not a random assertion at all. It's a foundation of economics. the world is full of information particular to place and time, on other words, the nitty-gritty. If you were to make a statistical model of part of the world, that stuff would get buried in the "other" term. Unfortunately, where there is a lot of "other" it becomes hard to model. Take for instance, who to give cars to. Should I have a survey and have the outcome determines who gets the car? Should I give the car to someone who needs it the most or will use it the most effectively? How do I judge that? how do I stop people from lying to me? I could, alternately, just sell the car to someone for an agreed upon price. That means I learn at least how much it is worth to them (it may be worth more) and the car goes somewhere. Prices transmit information and preferences better than any 5 year plan or government study. Sometimes markets have failures and those need to be dealt with, but that is not what I am talking about.
the repair was done by military personell and the reason the wrong bolt was used was that controlled material wasn't segregated from uncontrolled material.
I am too, except I'm in nuclear power, not software engineering.
I love Carl Hiassen. But I think that between the two of us we can't spell his name right. :)
Right, but these tradeoffs exist everywhere. If the engineering team had been allowed to do their work appropriately they would have accessed the 2 pc o ring and rejected it based on safety concerns. The fact that it came from a lower bidder isn't really prima facia evidence that capitalism caused the challenger accident. :)
I'm moving to another country where crazy isn't an approved religion.
For critical applications, bottom up design is not impractical. It is impractical for non-critical applications. Even with physical applications, bottom up design has some clear advantages.
I do not personally feel that one of those advantages is overall cost savings. I think that most top-down design programs are cheaper overall than their bottom-up counterparts (all things being equal). However the benefit in terms of clear and understandable safety margins is almost impossible to replicate.
Easy examples I can think of that are physical:
Chemical engineering (starting from carefully chosen components and building up to a complete refinery system.
Nuclear power (Careful material selection, individual design for piping and control systems)
Oh absolutely. I can't read the article right now. :) But I'm not going to crucify you for making the parallels. I remember reading the chapters about NASA's flight software testing and getting goosebumps. It's THAT good. I think you are right for making that parallel and suggesting its relevance. There are a fair number of coders alive today who weren't adults when Mr. Feynman was alive, sadly.
It isn't really off-topic. I think the essay in question comes from the other volume (What do you care what other people think?). Both are outstanding books and well worth the shelf space.
This is true to an extent, but safety concerns can and should be engineered for. You are absolutely right that there exists no direct corollary between software debugging for some non-critical application and meeting safety margins for a critical product. However some software IS critical. Flight software (This portion of Feynman's essay about NASA's flight software is amazing), software for hosptial applications (pharmacy, PCA's, microsurgery), ABS/suspension control software. Those are applications with VERY critical outcomes. Safety conerns need to be built in to the process.
But I do agree that tradeoffs occur under any system. Those tradeoffs just let us make better decisions under capitalism whereas we can't allow the information from those tradeoffs to inform us economically in a socialist system.
This is a very good point. Feynman has the unique quality of startling intelligence, curiosity, and straightforwardness. Some authors need to be summarized. Feynman just needs to be trotted out every generation or so.
There are other disasters that don't stem from the profit motive:
Loss of the USS Thresher during initial sea trials.
Steam Line Rupture on the USS Iwo Jima.
Both of those were caused by engineering (the first) or procurement faults.
The thresher was lost with all hands due to (among other things) a failure in modeling the high pressure air system and inappropriate welds on seawater systems.
The Iwo Jima suffered a steam line rupture that killed a few guys because the wrong material was used on a high pres/temp steam line.
Neither of these were for profit ventures. Both were preventable.