An operating system that can install itself, keep itself protected from harm, keep the user protected from harm, and keep the user's data up to date. A computer should be as close to self healing and reliable as possible, and whenever possible it should update and restore itself.
That just goes to show how slow technology adoption rates has become. Ever since compact flash's invention and continual adoption in hardware, Hard drive volumes have increased amazingly. We went from densities of around 10gb when CF became mainstreamed to now having 250GB hd's ship in computers, and 350GB hd's available for purchase.
That being said, none of the flash memory densities have really scaled like this, and are just being left in the dust, sadly. I'd love to have an iPod with a SD/MMC card reader so that I could exchange songs with a friend at school if they wanted me to listen to something really quickly, or so I could pull data off the iPod and put it into a computer.
Speaking of putting an SD/MMC card into a computer, when will Dell start shipping memory card readers in their machines that have dumped floppies, or are they just going to chalk it up to rewriteable CD drives and abandon solid state memory cells altogether?
Truthfully, your idea of iTunes Mobile is a HUGE possibility, but the question is, do you really want Microsoft Windows Media Player Mobile? Do you even want to say that, it takes forever to type... anyways, the more Apple monopolizes the market, the more Microsoft will see itself as losing, and will attepmt to move in and conquer. They're actually being really passive right now in not releasing their own brand media player *which, in a way I feel is what the DellPod was*.
But it would be neat to have the ability to play my iTunes music on my mobile phone, the only reason past the above I can think of them not wanting to would be the fact they're trying to sell iPods....... But it's still a novel idea.
How about a solar flare?
How about the Goldeneye project;)?
How about the US Military seeing that the enemy could possibly be targeting a bomb (even though, the possibilites are slim to nothing)?
How about a near miss by an asteroid that pulls a few of the satelites out of their correct orbits, sending them directly into the Earth?
How about... ad nauseum.
The point is, satelite-based communications revolutionized the planet, but now that we have the capabilities of building earth-bound, less risky versions of the same damned system, why not try? GPS is great, but it's not an end all, be all solution to the simple question of -earth navigation-. I have nothing against GPS, but I know it's far from perfect as it stands... why not allow some new technologies a chance at the throne?
I can trust other people.. that's not the issue here though...
Not only that, I've seen people here in my home in Berea being beaten to death with broomsticks *yeah, broomsticks can do a lot of damage when swung by baseball players*, and people do little more than sit and watch, or even just keep walking their ways.
It's not because it's New York, it's because people will be people no matter where you go. A person you can trust, but people are a cluster of chaos, and interaction with them should be intellegent.
well thanks for the insight, but I see the world in a different way than you. Sure, I'm more afraid of it, but that's because I haven't experienced it. And I'd love to have a guide there to help me experience it, be it digital or a person, or both.
It's not the idea of the area being scary, or even the people in it, it's the idea of intradependency verses interdependency. I'd rather be inrradependent simply because I do not always understand the people outside of my own scope, as you obviously don't understand me either.
This is quite interesting because you've seeminly proven my point on why this is good technology. In effect, by taking the picture, you ARE giving him a map, and asking where you are. Except the "Him", is a pictoral database with a lot of entries. And you get the luxury of it giving you directions to where to go that you can actually read in the langauge you know, all without ever speaking a word, simplying showing someone what you can see. It's by sharing a common vision that us humans are capable of understanding each other, why not share common views with a machine so that we can get closer to the technology we used to build our lives around?
Beautiful post orthogonal, didn't even consider that you could use this technology to show how things have changed, and possibly, virtual reality. *Thinks of star trek holodecks*... that could be very interesting.
the device itself should be resposible with keeping you up to date. when you go to the airport, the device could remind you to download the newest database from one of the terminals. After a week it should ask if the database is still needed, and if it is, it should be updated.
I would expect it to be cheaper than maintaining something in space, and more reliable once up and running. You've gotta remember that GPS is old technology and has a lot of it's bugs worked out, so it's obviously going to be cheaper and more reliable now. But just with all new technology, given the right incubator, it can be just as good as the last. Look at the Itanium processor; in one core revision *Itanium -> Itanium 2*, all kinds of performance enhancements happened, and the whole chip itself sped up. Nothing can be expected to be perfect when it ships...
Why does chromanance of an image have to be linked? It's just as easy to take a black and white picture and isolate points of references, as it is a color one. In fact, a color image would simply give you three layers of black and white images, and allow you to composite them, giving you a better look at what's actually there.
Updating something as silly as paint wouldn't effect much, but things like adding a new door or shutters might do the trick.. But once again, if enough of the points line up, then it can be considered the same. Think of it as digital fingerprinting. A 14 point match is virtually spot on, but what happens if I get a cut on that finger and three of the points are effected. Well, sure, it's more inaccurate, but it's still pretty much the same finger to the software, especially if the software can tell me exactly what's changed ("This is likely to be this location, but it seems as if this location has changed since the last time I've seen it. The area around the front door seems to be a different color, and the windows seem to have new points of references. I'll make a note of this in my journal, and if this comes up again, I'll commit it to my database.")
I really don't have any disagreements with what you're saying, but I believe a digital pictoral map could be a great help here as well. You don't really have to stop to take the picture, just point at an interesting building, snap the photo and wait for the processing. And as I've posted somewhere else, with devices like the iPod, you could carry a localized copy of the database around with you, so that as long as you aren't completely away from the area *say, a 100 mile block*, you should be able to find where you're going.
I just see this new technology as the next level of cartography, and one that should've been invented by now. The more ways you can tell a human how to get from point a, to point b, the more ways they can come up with to improve that method, tell others that method, and simply, innovate.
Street signs and talking to people in corner shops isn't always an option though, especially if you were in say, Tokyo, and you didn't speak japanese;).
All very valid discussion, I just believe it is far too early to discount a new technology, without seeing what all it can be capable of.
There are good people and bad people whereever you go. But I have been taught by my parents that in places like this, not to let down your guard and risk being taken advantage of. I assume a lot of people living there are the same way, so they don't want to get fooled into stepping over to your car and being pulled in and raped.
I'm sorry if I offended you, but not everyone out there is a good person, and most people in big cities aren't on the road because they want to be, they're there because they're heading somewhere else. People don't like to be disturbed, even if they would be willing to give a helping hand. I'd rather just use a technology that allowed me to be independent.
The growth of technology lends itself to being able to carry around these gigs and gigs of data in your back pocket. hell, iPods let us carry 40 gigs in our pocket, and we just burn that up for music and maybe some other data. Disconnectivity could be a problem, but what if your device simply synced before you went on the trip?
*I know I'm going to portugal, im landing in an hour fifteen. Let's go download the digital map of the region I'm going to be in, so that when I'm there, I have what I need. * This is the idea of a MAP.
I can accept the idea the military won't always control the GPS system, sure. But I know the military will always control a way of knocking it offline, and that's what scares me more.
But if we build a new global network where each phone has exactly the same hardware... then why not build our own GPS-like network instead.
GPS is flawed in that it's under governmental control, and it's outside of the world itself, where any number of things could go wrong.
The system being open-source is also not a big deal. Sure it'd be nice to have an OS library which could find similar images of buildings but the real value would be in the dataset which almost certainly wouldn't be free.
I'm speaking of the software to process the images being open sourced. This would allow the imaging software to get into different kinds of technology, and not be limited to place finding. Hell, we could use this in situations during interstellar travel to tell exactly where we are, and how far from a point of reference we are. Likely that WE won't be the ones on this kind of trip, but who knows.
Also this makes no consideration for similar buildings. The company i work for has a campus where 5 of the 7 buildings are cookie cutter - how would it deal with that situation.
This is a big flaw, but at the same time, even buildings built from a duplicated schematic won't be exactly the same. Typically if you're in an environment where buildings are this similar though, they're well demarcated (THIS IS THE BRUCE BUILDING!!!!!!)
Mirror glass buldings are also a technological problem, but anyone with this kind of technology should be told NOT to take pictures of Mirror glass buildings, when it's just as logical they could turn around to a building right beside it and take a picture. Typically, if you're that lost, then a few extra seconds of thinking would do you good.
Nah, think of it as a neighboring country, or even somewhere where the people aren't exactly friendly. Chances are you'll be in a car so that'll afford you a little protection from the wild beasties...
Imagine driving up to Quebec and trying to find your way around. Most everyone speaks french. I know enough to say, "help me im lost".. but I doubt i could intepret their directions.
To me, this technology would be best for navigating around a bigger city, like New York or Chicago, where the people aren't exactly friendly, where you have to worry about muggers and utterly rude people, and asking for directions is the last thing you'd want to do, let alone get out of your car.
In places like New York, London, Tokyo, etc, archetects take PRIDE in the fact their buildings are unique in the sky, and therefore, technology to help identify a building works extremely well.
In suburban areas, the streets are usually very well labeled, and places like MapQuest.com can help you get exactly where you're going fast, but an office building where an important meeting is being held, is not likely to be in one of these areas;).
As for photo recognition being MORE accurate, i cant see how. To get your position to within a few hundred feet you'd need to know the exact parameterization of the lens, the zoom, the angle of the camera... unlikely.
It's not more accurate now, but at least this kind of new technology gives us a renewed reason to MAKE it more accurate, and to give us some reason to keep going in the field of image processing. So just because something isn't perfectly convienent now, doesn't mean with a few years work and a few iterations of the software, that we couldn't have a really, viable, world-based *and not satelite based* positioning system. *imagine if it were open source*
As for GPRS working in other countries, no experiences. But, could not it be possible to build a new global network with specific hardware *more specifically, the same exact camera in each device, or some kind of card you can plug into current cameras, PDAs, etc like i've seen bluetooth cards* so that these aspects are always the same? Then you just have to deal with lighting, weather, and the like, which, when looking at a building, won't change too much you see, unless you can't see it at all.
Once again, as we saw in 2002, GPS quality can be degraded at any moment, even taken wholly offline. Not to mention the "Act of God" possibilities to knock it offline *metorites, solar flares, etc etc*.
Meanwhile, investing in this technology gives us a reason to improve image detection and image processing. It gives us a reason to build the technologies needed to digitially map our world, which could be useful for anything and everything, including finding the best way out of a highrise during a fire, or even police task forces on drug busts... there's really no end to what a Digital Map can do, that GPS just will never have the capability of doing.
Gotta remember one thing; Civilians aren't in control of GPS. GPS's accuracy can be degraded at any time on the US Military's whim. Same with any of the other networks that are currently being built by different government agencies. IF there were a Civilian GPS, then this would/almost/ always be a solution. But what if there's a solar flare? What if there's some other feature about the region blocking satelite traffic, but not wireless traffic (bad weather maybe?)?
I believe this could actually be really cool if we get it to work, especially in an urban environment, but not so much out in the desert or anywhere; it's not meant for that. Instead, it's for finding that office building in Portugal when you're about to be late for a business appointment, and yet you've never been to Portugal before.
Taking pictures of things that dont change much *except for lighting* would be best for a situation like this.. a tall building, a fountain, not the street you're walking on. A computer should be able to tell the same building from two pictures in two light settings.. we're way past this advanced I believe...
someone notices an overflow, or an off-by-one error in the source code, and makes a post to full-disclosure or BugTraq
In other words, putting the opposite spin on what you're saying of course, is that Open Source breeds more perfect software right? Not just more secure, but little bugs like this are fixed, which can lead to big issues down the road, right?
I can see what the article's saying, but at the same time, things that are very critical should be patched right away, and the patch should be applied by everyone right away. Minor things should be bunched collectively and released at one big patch. This is actually why I believe the old Service Pact archetecture worked better than patch patch patch patch, etc....
Either way, commercially developed programs have to be reverse engineeered to find security problems, and often, commercial patches have to be reverse engineered to find the same problem. Open Source allows anyone to fix the problem, before it becomes a bigger one. Can't think like a republican (~only the "now" matters~) on these things.
Who knows, in the future, it might be a quite lucrative business running an interplanetary junk yard. Not only would it be cheaper (and safer to humans) to run an incenerator on a huge rock with no atmosphere (just as long as the material you wanted to "burn" provided its own oxygen supply, or was destructable when HUGE doses of radiation are applied to it), it would be quite profitable in the long run. Hell, with the way we treat earth, we could almost start doing this today.
When space travel becomes cheap enough, I'm sure we'll this kind of thing popping up on lots of moons. The only thing moons are good for really are the fact that they're magnificent gravity wells, pretty to look at in the sky, most of the time are completely inhospitable (making them good junk locations), etc etc. I for one hate the idea of taking perfectly usable material and moving it to a location where it'll just sit unused, but in a location like space, we could find new ways to recycle the material and ship it back. The only thing stopping us now is the cost of the trip, which, with new technologies like space elevators and possible air breathing, horizonal launch vehicles, these costs should go down quickly. It's a shame we spent more time on innovation of the things we put in space, and not on the things we use to get it there.
Slashdot Mirror
An operating system that can install itself, keep itself protected from harm, keep the user protected from harm, and keep the user's data up to date. A computer should be as close to self healing and reliable as possible, and whenever possible it should update and restore itself.
The user should NOT be slave to the machine.
That just goes to show how slow technology adoption rates has become. Ever since compact flash's invention and continual adoption in hardware, Hard drive volumes have increased amazingly. We went from densities of around 10gb when CF became mainstreamed to now having 250GB hd's ship in computers, and 350GB hd's available for purchase.
That being said, none of the flash memory densities have really scaled like this, and are just being left in the dust, sadly. I'd love to have an iPod with a SD/MMC card reader so that I could exchange songs with a friend at school if they wanted me to listen to something really quickly, or so I could pull data off the iPod and put it into a computer.
Speaking of putting an SD/MMC card into a computer, when will Dell start shipping memory card readers in their machines that have dumped floppies, or are they just going to chalk it up to rewriteable CD drives and abandon solid state memory cells altogether?
Truthfully, your idea of iTunes Mobile is a HUGE possibility, but the question is, do you really want Microsoft Windows Media Player Mobile? Do you even want to say that, it takes forever to type... anyways, the more Apple monopolizes the market, the more Microsoft will see itself as losing, and will attepmt to move in and conquer. They're actually being really passive right now in not releasing their own brand media player *which, in a way I feel is what the DellPod was*.
But it would be neat to have the ability to play my iTunes music on my mobile phone, the only reason past the above I can think of them not wanting to would be the fact they're trying to sell iPods....... But it's still a novel idea.
How about a solar flare? ;)?
How about the Goldeneye project
How about the US Military seeing that the enemy could possibly be targeting a bomb (even though, the possibilites are slim to nothing)?
How about a near miss by an asteroid that pulls a few of the satelites out of their correct orbits, sending them directly into the Earth?
How about... ad nauseum.
The point is, satelite-based communications revolutionized the planet, but now that we have the capabilities of building earth-bound, less risky versions of the same damned system, why not try? GPS is great, but it's not an end all, be all solution to the simple question of -earth navigation-. I have nothing against GPS, but I know it's far from perfect as it stands... why not allow some new technologies a chance at the throne?
At least you wouldn't be hungry...
I can trust other people.. that's not the issue here though...
Not only that, I've seen people here in my home in Berea being beaten to death with broomsticks *yeah, broomsticks can do a lot of damage when swung by baseball players*, and people do little more than sit and watch, or even just keep walking their ways.
It's not because it's New York, it's because people will be people no matter where you go. A person you can trust, but people are a cluster of chaos, and interaction with them should be intellegent.
well thanks for the insight, but I see the world in a different way than you. Sure, I'm more afraid of it, but that's because I haven't experienced it. And I'd love to have a guide there to help me experience it, be it digital or a person, or both.
It's not the idea of the area being scary, or even the people in it, it's the idea of intradependency verses interdependency. I'd rather be inrradependent simply because I do not always understand the people outside of my own scope, as you obviously don't understand me either.
This is quite interesting because you've seeminly proven my point on why this is good technology. In effect, by taking the picture, you ARE giving him a map, and asking where you are. Except the "Him", is a pictoral database with a lot of entries. And you get the luxury of it giving you directions to where to go that you can actually read in the langauge you know, all without ever speaking a word, simplying showing someone what you can see. It's by sharing a common vision that us humans are capable of understanding each other, why not share common views with a machine so that we can get closer to the technology we used to build our lives around?
Beautiful post orthogonal, didn't even consider that you could use this technology to show how things have changed, and possibly, virtual reality. *Thinks of star trek holodecks*... that could be very interesting.
the device itself should be resposible with keeping you up to date. when you go to the airport, the device could remind you to download the newest database from one of the terminals. After a week it should ask if the database is still needed, and if it is, it should be updated.
I would expect it to be cheaper than maintaining something in space, and more reliable once up and running. You've gotta remember that GPS is old technology and has a lot of it's bugs worked out, so it's obviously going to be cheaper and more reliable now. But just with all new technology, given the right incubator, it can be just as good as the last. Look at the Itanium processor; in one core revision *Itanium -> Itanium 2*, all kinds of performance enhancements happened, and the whole chip itself sped up. Nothing can be expected to be perfect when it ships...
Why does chromanance of an image have to be linked? It's just as easy to take a black and white picture and isolate points of references, as it is a color one. In fact, a color image would simply give you three layers of black and white images, and allow you to composite them, giving you a better look at what's actually there.
Updating something as silly as paint wouldn't effect much, but things like adding a new door or shutters might do the trick.. But once again, if enough of the points line up, then it can be considered the same. Think of it as digital fingerprinting. A 14 point match is virtually spot on, but what happens if I get a cut on that finger and three of the points are effected. Well, sure, it's more inaccurate, but it's still pretty much the same finger to the software, especially if the software can tell me exactly what's changed ("This is likely to be this location, but it seems as if this location has changed since the last time I've seen it. The area around the front door seems to be a different color, and the windows seem to have new points of references. I'll make a note of this in my journal, and if this comes up again, I'll commit it to my database.")
I really don't have any disagreements with what you're saying, but I believe a digital pictoral map could be a great help here as well. You don't really have to stop to take the picture, just point at an interesting building, snap the photo and wait for the processing. And as I've posted somewhere else, with devices like the iPod, you could carry a localized copy of the database around with you, so that as long as you aren't completely away from the area *say, a 100 mile block*, you should be able to find where you're going.
;).
I just see this new technology as the next level of cartography, and one that should've been invented by now. The more ways you can tell a human how to get from point a, to point b, the more ways they can come up with to improve that method, tell others that method, and simply, innovate.
Street signs and talking to people in corner shops isn't always an option though, especially if you were in say, Tokyo, and you didn't speak japanese
All very valid discussion, I just believe it is far too early to discount a new technology, without seeing what all it can be capable of.
There are good people and bad people whereever you go. But I have been taught by my parents that in places like this, not to let down your guard and risk being taken advantage of. I assume a lot of people living there are the same way, so they don't want to get fooled into stepping over to your car and being pulled in and raped.
I'm sorry if I offended you, but not everyone out there is a good person, and most people in big cities aren't on the road because they want to be, they're there because they're heading somewhere else. People don't like to be disturbed, even if they would be willing to give a helping hand. I'd rather just use a technology that allowed me to be independent.
The growth of technology lends itself to being able to carry around these gigs and gigs of data in your back pocket. hell, iPods let us carry 40 gigs in our pocket, and we just burn that up for music and maybe some other data. Disconnectivity could be a problem, but what if your device simply synced before you went on the trip?
*I know I'm going to portugal, im landing in an hour fifteen. Let's go download the digital map of the region I'm going to be in, so that when I'm there, I have what I need. * This is the idea of a MAP.
I can accept the idea the military won't always control the GPS system, sure. But I know the military will always control a way of knocking it offline, and that's what scares me more.
But if we build a new global network where each phone has exactly the same hardware... then why not build our own GPS-like network instead.
GPS is flawed in that it's under governmental control, and it's outside of the world itself, where any number of things could go wrong.
The system being open-source is also not a big deal. Sure it'd be nice to have an OS library which could find similar images of buildings but the real value would be in the dataset which almost certainly wouldn't be free.
I'm speaking of the software to process the images being open sourced. This would allow the imaging software to get into different kinds of technology, and not be limited to place finding. Hell, we could use this in situations during interstellar travel to tell exactly where we are, and how far from a point of reference we are. Likely that WE won't be the ones on this kind of trip, but who knows.
Also this makes no consideration for similar buildings. The company i work for has a campus where 5 of the 7 buildings are cookie cutter - how would it deal with that situation.
This is a big flaw, but at the same time, even buildings built from a duplicated schematic won't be exactly the same. Typically if you're in an environment where buildings are this similar though, they're well demarcated (THIS IS THE BRUCE BUILDING!!!!!!)
Mirror glass buldings are also a technological problem, but anyone with this kind of technology should be told NOT to take pictures of Mirror glass buildings, when it's just as logical they could turn around to a building right beside it and take a picture. Typically, if you're that lost, then a few extra seconds of thinking would do you good.
Nah, think of it as a neighboring country, or even somewhere where the people aren't exactly friendly. Chances are you'll be in a car so that'll afford you a little protection from the wild beasties...
Imagine driving up to Quebec and trying to find your way around. Most everyone speaks french. I know enough to say, "help me im lost".. but I doubt i could intepret their directions.
To me, this technology would be best for navigating around a bigger city, like New York or Chicago, where the people aren't exactly friendly, where you have to worry about muggers and utterly rude people, and asking for directions is the last thing you'd want to do, let alone get out of your car.
;).
In places like New York, London, Tokyo, etc, archetects take PRIDE in the fact their buildings are unique in the sky, and therefore, technology to help identify a building works extremely well.
In suburban areas, the streets are usually very well labeled, and places like MapQuest.com can help you get exactly where you're going fast, but an office building where an important meeting is being held, is not likely to be in one of these areas
lol, *randomly thinks of a country.. Ooh, i'd like to go to Portugal, PORTUGAL IT IS!*..
my brain works in weird ways at night...
As for photo recognition being MORE accurate, i cant see how. To get your position to within a few hundred feet you'd need to know the exact parameterization of the lens, the zoom, the angle of the camera... unlikely.
It's not more accurate now, but at least this kind of new technology gives us a renewed reason to MAKE it more accurate, and to give us some reason to keep going in the field of image processing. So just because something isn't perfectly convienent now, doesn't mean with a few years work and a few iterations of the software, that we couldn't have a really, viable, world-based *and not satelite based* positioning system. *imagine if it were open source*
As for GPRS working in other countries, no experiences. But, could not it be possible to build a new global network with specific hardware *more specifically, the same exact camera in each device, or some kind of card you can plug into current cameras, PDAs, etc like i've seen bluetooth cards* so that these aspects are always the same? Then you just have to deal with lighting, weather, and the like, which, when looking at a building, won't change too much you see, unless you can't see it at all.
Once again, as we saw in 2002, GPS quality can be degraded at any moment, even taken wholly offline. Not to mention the "Act of God" possibilities to knock it offline *metorites, solar flares, etc etc*.
Meanwhile, investing in this technology gives us a reason to improve image detection and image processing. It gives us a reason to build the technologies needed to digitially map our world, which could be useful for anything and everything, including finding the best way out of a highrise during a fire, or even police task forces on drug busts... there's really no end to what a Digital Map can do, that GPS just will never have the capability of doing.
Gotta remember one thing; Civilians aren't in control of GPS. GPS's accuracy can be degraded at any time on the US Military's whim. Same with any of the other networks that are currently being built by different government agencies. IF there were a Civilian GPS, then this would /almost/ always be a solution. But what if there's a solar flare? What if there's some other feature about the region blocking satelite traffic, but not wireless traffic (bad weather maybe?)?
I believe this could actually be really cool if we get it to work, especially in an urban environment, but not so much out in the desert or anywhere; it's not meant for that. Instead, it's for finding that office building in Portugal when you're about to be late for a business appointment, and yet you've never been to Portugal before.
Taking pictures of things that dont change much *except for lighting* would be best for a situation like this.. a tall building, a fountain, not the street you're walking on. A computer should be able to tell the same building from two pictures in two light settings.. we're way past this advanced I believe...
someone notices an overflow, or an off-by-one error in the source code, and makes a post to full-disclosure or BugTraq
In other words, putting the opposite spin on what you're saying of course, is that Open Source breeds more perfect software right? Not just more secure, but little bugs like this are fixed, which can lead to big issues down the road, right?
I can see what the article's saying, but at the same time, things that are very critical should be patched right away, and the patch should be applied by everyone right away. Minor things should be bunched collectively and released at one big patch. This is actually why I believe the old Service Pact archetecture worked better than patch patch patch patch, etc....
Either way, commercially developed programs have to be reverse engineeered to find security problems, and often, commercial patches have to be reverse engineered to find the same problem. Open Source allows anyone to fix the problem, before it becomes a bigger one. Can't think like a republican (~only the "now" matters~) on these things.
times change my friend, what may not be affordable then, can be CHEAP ASS now.
Who knows, in the future, it might be a quite lucrative business running an interplanetary junk yard. Not only would it be cheaper (and safer to humans) to run an incenerator on a huge rock with no atmosphere (just as long as the material you wanted to "burn" provided its own oxygen supply, or was destructable when HUGE doses of radiation are applied to it), it would be quite profitable in the long run. Hell, with the way we treat earth, we could almost start doing this today.
When space travel becomes cheap enough, I'm sure we'll this kind of thing popping up on lots of moons. The only thing moons are good for really are the fact that they're magnificent gravity wells, pretty to look at in the sky, most of the time are completely inhospitable (making them good junk locations), etc etc. I for one hate the idea of taking perfectly usable material and moving it to a location where it'll just sit unused, but in a location like space, we could find new ways to recycle the material and ship it back. The only thing stopping us now is the cost of the trip, which, with new technologies like space elevators and possible air breathing, horizonal launch vehicles, these costs should go down quickly. It's a shame we spent more time on innovation of the things we put in space, and not on the things we use to get it there.