An insanely arcane registration methodology would make.geek TLD membership self-validating and highly trustworthy (...although not necessarily useful...)
As you state and I implied, human migrations to the Americas that occurred before there were historical records of the migrations are not well documented with historical records. Not only is that tautologically, it makes the case in favor of focussing the study on indigenous Americans, because (if the point of the research is to learn about human migrations) it makes sense to devote the most resources to the times about which the least is known: pre-historical migrations.
Far less new information would be derived from devoting the same amount of effort to studying historical migrations (more precisely: migrations for which we have historical records). For example, the Irish Potato famine migrations to the USA are heavily documented in Ellis Island records; DNA studies might uncover interesting errors in the documentation but doesn't seem likely to reveal that the Irish immigrants actually came from France. Of course, if funds are unlimited, it would be interesting to validate those records via DNA, but we live in a world of limited resources.
Does the "3 Applications" limit apply against spyware, virusses etc.?
If so... it would almost be useful! I abandoned Windows when trying to figure out which processes were bogus ate too deeply into my productive time.
Three is of course too small a limit, but I might not have invested the effort to flee Win if it had a feature like: "You have set your process limit to 54. A new process called 'dsaZombie' wants to start. Allow/Deny?"
The first question should be: "For what purpose do we want to know what 'indigenous' means?"
If what we are looking for is to sort out migration patterns, land claims, the ownership of ancestorial remains (e.g. Kennewick Man) and the like, then one useful definition of 'indigenous' is "the people in a particular place when history started being recorded in or of that place."
Once history starts being recorded, we can keep track of land ownership changes, human migrations, etc via those records (...acknowledging recording flaws of course....) For the time before records, then this idea of comparing human DNA may provide the best available evidence.
(Anglo-American common law uses a similar concept in its phrase "time immemorial".)
>There's probably DNA floating around EVERYWHERE by now!
Human skin flakes, a.k.a. dander, is everywhere that humans are. It just flakes off and floats away.
It's kinda creepy to think that every breathe we take may include a little bit of the person in the next cubicle. Remind me to hand out loofas at the next staff meeting.
Open-Source may help drive even the biggest software company toward a service model, by putting downward pressure on the market-determined price of software licenses.
A Seattle Times review of Microsoft's Linux lab boss ends with a comment by IDC's Al Gillen: "...open-source software is going to help drive the acquisition cost of software down toward zero," he [Gillen] said, a shift that will require software companies to move "over to a maintenance and support model."
... to deal with the situational problem, perhaps an fruitful approach would be to develop little robot factories instead of individual robots. Wait! -> this may not be quite as insane as it sounds.
Software updates we can send to mars easily. A couple thousand CPU chips, plus something to keep them out of the weather, would weigh a few kilograms. The hard part would be developing the gross anatomy of 'bots, e.g. framework, grasping claws, etc.
You've made a thoughtful response; so thoughtful that I feel compelled to reply
Speed: I think we have to consider the time-scales we're dealing with here. While it's true that a human can do individual tasks rapidly, the relevant measurement is not the individual task but the overall effort. It is necessary to factor the time and energy burned in getting that human onto Mars or Titan into the overhead for that individual task. It probably does not pencil out.
Strength & precision: The robots we've sent to Mars may be weak, but that's by choice. Humans have an upper limit to strength that robots don't. Precision has become less of an issue with the development of surgical robots.
Exploring caves: I don't think that's a wise use of astronauts. They are very, very expensive.
What technology would make it possible for us (in the sense of you, I or our great-grandchildren) to get off this "rock" in significant numbers?
Chemical rockets won't do it. Putting a couple of million people into space requires a *lot* of ergs and keeping them alive is not an insignificant problem. We need a radically new technologies that will take at best a couple of generations to develop.
To do that, we need to survive a few more generations. That means taking real good care of "this rock".
As for the route to China, I missed out on that decision but it's worth noting that Columbus brought his own air supply along and didn't go any further than the available food permitted.
I'll cool with tourism, but it should pay for itself. We don't need gov't subsidies to send tourists outside the USA.
If the Russians can make money sending millionaires into low orbit, that's great! Perhaps we can find a profitable use for our "Peacekeeper" missles after all!
But it's going to be difficult to go much farther out than the ISS profitablly only with chemical rocket technology.
>human decision making vs. silicon decision making
I certainly agree that 'artificial intelligence' has, so far, been an oxymoron
However, any really big project has to match its means to its objectives. The choice today is never human vs. silicon, but the appropriate mix of Human AND Silicon (SF fans cf Asimov's 'Robots of Dawn').
Let's get down to cases, in exploring, says, Mars or Pluto:
*Task: Map That World! Orbitting Robots can do this already, much better than humans. While human photos of Earth from space may have a slight advantages as to artistic and sentimental value, if you need a photo for business purposes, isn't it usually from a robot satellite?
*Task: Land and Pick Up That Rock: We can drop a couple hundred Rock-grabbing robots for the cost of 1 human. OTOH, if *I* get to be the person, I'd favor the human option. Otherwise, do I want to pay for 1 human to pick up a rock or for 100 robots to pick up 100 rocks?
*Task: Deal With Unexpected Event Involving Destruction of Explorer Humans are better than robots at dealing with unexpected events that threaten to destroy them. So what? Apollo 13-class disasters have happened to several unmanned missions and no-one makes a movie out of them because no-one cares that much when a robot dies.
*Task: Deal With Unexpected Event Not Involving Destruction of Explorer Now this is the canonical events for which SF fans cheer the human brain. "Look, a Face On Mars! Shall We Go Inside?"
In novels, the answer is "Yes" and we have adventures resulting in crowds of cheering women when we get home!!!.
In reality, here's what happens:
Astronaut: Houston, we've found a Lost Temple on Titan with a Beckoning Door.
Several Hours Go By
Houston: Ok. Send in a robot.
This is not because astronauts are not heroic. They are. It's because successful explorers have a fine sense of when to take a risk and when to send in the expendibles.
Why should Asian space efforts go for "manned" space flights?
I love Star Trek as much as anybody but the human body is a very difficult payload to sustain. If Japan is going to do serious planetary exploration (...and I wish them well at this...) then the first step should be to define goals and discard things with a low payoff
Apart from publicity stunts and tourism (... which should be self-funding...), what goals are served by putting humans on the moon or in cislunar space?
Robots can explore far more cheaply than humans, so for any particular amount of money, we can do more exploration with robots than with humans.
The idea that humans can make on-site decisions better than robots can is simply an artifact of time-scale. That is, while there is some necessary time-lag between a robot noticing a funny rock on Mars or Titan, reporting back to Mission Control on Earth, and then acting on directions... so what? The robot is patient, doesn't sleep, and if properly powered doesn't have to worry about food supplies.
Like I said, I love Star Trek but until we get really, really serious advances in technology, lunar and cislunar exploration is more sensibly done with robots.
The Free Market is all about people freely setting whatever price they want, and taking their chances on the outcome.
No-one is forced to use the GPL. Under the GPL, contributors voluntarily set the price of their contribution (at "free") and take their chance freely on somehow making a living. So what's the problem?
If Third-World nations, or individuals decide to take their chance, it's probably because they figure the alternatives don't work to their advantage. They may be right, they may be wrong, but it's really up to them to make the call.
Some you win, some you lose.... so why does Sun sing the blues?
If the issue is money, why aren't we eBaying old patent paperwork instead of pulping it?
If the International Star Registry can get $49.99 for "Naming A Star"... how very likely is it that the Patent Office could get as much that for GENUINE old patent paper? Surely some of the more interesting patents would get big bucks and/or donated to museums.
While this is not as good as professional preservation of historical documents, since preservation is not in the cards, at least eBaying would preserve most of the originals, admittedly in a hap-hazard fashion.
Biofuels may be considered a form of nuclear energy
See that big ol' fusion reactor in the sky?
We just have to figure out a way to use its output efficiently. Biofuels have a lot of advantages, one of which is that we already generate a lot of biowaste. Converting it to fuel instead of landfill would be doubly efficient.
Water released into the atmosphere from burning grass would nearly all be water that was previously captured from the atmosphere by that same grass (... there may be a miniscule amount of water being pumped from ancient aquifers, but that's a dwindling resource.) Net effect: no new water vapor.
More broadly, IIRC the net change in greenhouse effect from human efforts to add carbon to our atmosphere far exceeds the net change in greenhouse effect from human efforts to add water to our atmosphere. A little more water vapor may be a small price to pay in exchange for a lot less carbon.
But it will be expensive. For example, our civilization developed with a particular set of sea levels. Changing them by only one meter will impose large costs.
Hey, I *still* think yours was a good question (... thanks for the kind words though...) if for no other reason than it made me think about the problem. Now I'm getting enthusiastic on the subject.. which might not have happened if you hadn't raised the point. So, thanks again!
... grass biofuel pellets are much better for the environment because they emit up to 90 percent less greenhouse gases than oil, coal and natural gas do...."
So while grass may not be perfect, it is 90% better than what we've got, from a carbon-release standpoint.
Another consideration is that the carbon emitted from burning grass is carbon that the grass took out of our atmosphere while growing, so there would be no net increase in atmospheric carbon from its use. In contrast, carbon released by fossil fuels hasn't been in our atmosphere for millions of years, which is why re-releasing it into our atmosphere is problematic.
Slashdot Mirror
An insanely arcane registration methodology would make .geek TLD membership self-validating and highly trustworthy (...although not necessarily useful...)
Non sequitur.
As you state and I implied, human migrations to the Americas that occurred before there were historical records of the migrations are not well documented with historical records. Not only is that tautologically, it makes the case in favor of focussing the study on indigenous Americans, because (if the point of the research is to learn about human migrations) it makes sense to devote the most resources to the times about which the least is known: pre-historical migrations.
Far less new information would be derived from devoting the same amount of effort to studying historical migrations (more precisely: migrations for which we have historical records). For example, the Irish Potato famine migrations to the USA are heavily documented in Ellis Island records; DNA studies might uncover interesting errors in the documentation but doesn't seem likely to reveal that the Irish immigrants actually came from France. Of course, if funds are unlimited, it would be interesting to validate those records via DNA, but we live in a world of limited resources.
Does the "3 Applications" limit apply against spyware, virusses etc.?
If so ... it would almost be useful! I abandoned Windows when trying to figure out which processes were bogus ate too deeply into my productive time.
Three is of course too small a limit, but I might not have invested the effort to flee Win if it had a feature like: "You have set your process limit to 54. A new process called 'dsaZombie' wants to start. Allow/Deny?"
The first question should be: "For what purpose do we want to know what 'indigenous' means?"
If what we are looking for is to sort out migration patterns, land claims, the ownership of ancestorial remains (e.g. Kennewick Man) and the like, then one useful definition of 'indigenous' is "the people in a particular place when history started being recorded in or of that place."
Once history starts being recorded, we can keep track of land ownership changes, human migrations, etc via those records (...acknowledging recording flaws of course ... .) For the time before records, then this idea of comparing human DNA may provide the best available evidence.
(Anglo-American common law uses a similar concept in its phrase "time immemorial".)
Perhaps it's because migrations in historical times are somewhat documented via, uh, historical records
>There's probably DNA floating around EVERYWHERE by now!
Human skin flakes, a.k.a. dander, is everywhere that humans are. It just flakes off and floats away.
It's kinda creepy to think that every breathe we take may include a little bit of the person in the next cubicle. Remind me to hand out loofas at the next staff meeting.
... from platform to platform.
But I can't see why the National Geographic cares.
Open-Source may help drive even the biggest software company toward a service model, by putting downward pressure on the market-determined price of software licenses.
A Seattle Times review of Microsoft's Linux lab boss ends with a comment by IDC's Al Gillen: "...open-source software is going to help drive the acquisition cost of software down toward zero," he [Gillen] said, a shift that will require software companies to move "over to a maintenance and support model."
"Pluged in to Microsoft's biggest rival" - Seattle Times (May require no-cost signup to view.)
Software updates we can send to mars easily. A couple thousand CPU chips, plus something to keep them out of the weather, would weigh a few kilograms. The hard part would be developing the gross anatomy of 'bots, e.g. framework, grasping claws, etc.
Will Lego Mindstorms conquer the universe?
You've made a thoughtful response; so thoughtful that I feel compelled to reply
Speed: I think we have to consider the time-scales we're dealing with here. While it's true that a human can do individual tasks rapidly, the relevant measurement is not the individual task but the overall effort. It is necessary to factor the time and energy burned in getting that human onto Mars or Titan into the overhead for that individual task. It probably does not pencil out.
Strength & precision: The robots we've sent to Mars may be weak, but that's by choice. Humans have an upper limit to strength that robots don't. Precision has become less of an issue with the development of surgical robots.
Exploring caves: I don't think that's a wise use of astronauts. They are very, very expensive.
What technology would make it possible for us (in the sense of you, I or our great-grandchildren) to get off this "rock" in significant numbers?
Chemical rockets won't do it. Putting a couple of million people into space requires a *lot* of ergs and keeping them alive is not an insignificant problem. We need a radically new technologies that will take at best a couple of generations to develop.
To do that, we need to survive a few more generations. That means taking real good care of "this rock".
As for the route to China, I missed out on that decision but it's worth noting that Columbus brought his own air supply along and didn't go any further than the available food permitted.
I'll cool with tourism, but it should pay for itself. We don't need gov't subsidies to send tourists outside the USA.
If the Russians can make money sending millionaires into low orbit, that's great! Perhaps we can find a profitable use for our "Peacekeeper" missles after all!
But it's going to be difficult to go much farther out than the ISS profitablly only with chemical rocket technology.
>human decision making vs. silicon decision making
I certainly agree that 'artificial intelligence' has, so far, been an oxymoron
However, any really big project has to match its means to its objectives. The choice today is never human vs. silicon, but the appropriate mix of Human AND Silicon (SF fans cf Asimov's 'Robots of Dawn').
Let's get down to cases, in exploring, says, Mars or Pluto:
*Task: Map That World!
Orbitting Robots can do this already, much better than humans. While human photos of Earth from space may have a slight advantages as to artistic and sentimental value, if you need a photo for business purposes, isn't it usually from a robot satellite?
*Task: Land and Pick Up That Rock:
We can drop a couple hundred Rock-grabbing robots for the cost of 1 human. OTOH, if *I* get to be the person, I'd favor the human option. Otherwise, do I want to pay for 1 human to pick up a rock or for 100 robots to pick up 100 rocks?
*Task: Deal With Unexpected Event Involving Destruction of Explorer
Humans are better than robots at dealing with unexpected events that threaten to destroy them. So what? Apollo 13-class disasters have happened to several unmanned missions and no-one makes a movie out of them because no-one cares that much when a robot dies.
*Task: Deal With Unexpected Event Not Involving Destruction of Explorer
Now this is the canonical events for which SF fans cheer the human brain. "Look, a Face On Mars! Shall We Go Inside?"
In novels, the answer is "Yes" and we have adventures resulting in crowds of cheering women when we get home!!!.
In reality, here's what happens:
Astronaut: Houston, we've found a Lost Temple on Titan with a Beckoning Door.
Several Hours Go By
Houston: Ok. Send in a robot.
This is not because astronauts are not heroic. They are. It's because successful explorers have a fine sense of when to take a risk and when to send in the expendibles.
Nanotech may indeed be in its infancy, but isn't that a good reason to plan ahead?
IIRC, Apollo was planned in the punched-card era. Compared to the beloved IBM 1138, my cellphone is practially nanotech.
Why should Asian space efforts go for "manned" space flights?
I love Star Trek as much as anybody but the human body is a very difficult payload to sustain. If Japan is going to do serious planetary exploration (...and I wish them well at this...) then the first step should be to define goals and discard things with a low payoff
Apart from publicity stunts and tourism (... which should be self-funding ...), what goals are served by putting humans on the moon or in cislunar space?
Robots can explore far more cheaply than humans, so for any particular amount of money, we can do more exploration with robots than with humans.
The idea that humans can make on-site decisions better than robots can is simply an artifact of time-scale. That is, while there is some necessary time-lag between a robot noticing a funny rock on Mars or Titan, reporting back to Mission Control on Earth, and then acting on directions ... so what? The robot is patient, doesn't sleep, and if properly powered doesn't have to worry about food supplies.
Like I said, I love Star Trek but until we get really, really serious advances in technology, lunar and cislunar exploration is more sensibly done with robots.
But I'd be interested in contrary views.
The Free Market is all about people freely setting whatever price they want, and taking their chances on the outcome.
No-one is forced to use the GPL. Under the GPL, contributors voluntarily set the price of their contribution (at "free") and take their chance freely on somehow making a living. So what's the problem?
If Third-World nations, or individuals decide to take their chance, it's probably because they figure the alternatives don't work to their advantage. They may be right, they may be wrong, but it's really up to them to make the call.
Some you win, some you lose .... so why does Sun sing the blues?
If the issue is money, why aren't we eBaying old patent paperwork instead of pulping it?
If the International Star Registry can get $49.99 for "Naming A Star" ... how very likely is it that the Patent Office could get as much that for GENUINE old patent paper? Surely some of the more interesting patents would get big bucks and/or donated to museums.
While this is not as good as professional preservation of historical documents, since preservation is not in the cards, at least eBaying would preserve most of the originals, admittedly in a hap-hazard fashion.
>nuclear energy
Biofuels may be considered a form of nuclear energy
See that big ol' fusion reactor in the sky?
We just have to figure out a way to use its output efficiently. Biofuels have a lot of advantages, one of which is that we already generate a lot of biowaste. Converting it to fuel instead of landfill would be doubly efficient.
Well, yeah ... but the cute little bunnies ALREADY make pellets ...
cleaning grass smoke by bubbling through water...
To accomplish this on an industrial scale, can we make a really big hubble-bubble out of an old orbiting telescope?
> the primary greenhouse gas is water
Water released into the atmosphere from burning grass would nearly all be water that was previously captured from the atmosphere by that same grass (... there may be a miniscule amount of water being pumped from ancient aquifers, but that's a dwindling resource.) Net effect: no new water vapor.
More broadly, IIRC the net change in greenhouse effect from human efforts to add carbon to our atmosphere far exceeds the net change in greenhouse effect from human efforts to add water to our atmosphere. A little more water vapor may be a small price to pay in exchange for a lot less carbon.
Bioengineered Rabbits?
>Change is not neccearilly unpleasant.
But it will be expensive. For example, our civilization developed with a particular set of sea levels. Changing them by only one meter will impose large costs.
Hey, I *still* think yours was a good question (... thanks for the kind words though ...) if for no other reason than it made me think about the problem. Now I'm getting enthusiastic on the subject .. which might not have happened if you hadn't raised the point. So, thanks again!
Great question. According to the article
So while grass may not be perfect, it is 90% better than what we've got, from a carbon-release standpoint.
Another consideration is that the carbon emitted from burning grass is carbon that the grass took out of our atmosphere while growing, so there would be no net increase in atmospheric carbon from its use. In contrast, carbon released by fossil fuels hasn't been in our atmosphere for millions of years, which is why re-releasing it into our atmosphere is problematic.