Thanks for sharing that idea -- it's very interesting and thought provoking!
As soon as the ship exceeds its own launching velocity it will be unable to return the projectiles to base (they will be following it). These projectiles can of course be gathered when the ship starts declerating. During deceleration the projectiles will be launched away from base, to be lost in space forever. This would seem to be a one-way trip, unless the ship carries with it the ability to build another launching base at its destination. If a base already exists at the destination it can receive the deceleration projectiles, perhaps launching them toward other ships on established "shipping lanes".
Have you (or anyone else) written a detailed analysis of this system?
I see. Apparently you are under the mistaken impression that OLPC intends, or ever even considered for an instant, to include Windows software with the device.
The fact that the (open) device is capable of running Windows or other non-open software in no way implies endorsement of that software by the maker of the device. Your inferrence of some under-the-table collusion between OLPC and Microsoft is unwarranted and unsubstantiated. The projects goals remain clear and emphatic about the platform and software being open.
Maybe I'm dense, but I can't see the connection between the quotes and your response. Negroponte insists that the platform is open, and that all software included will be open. This means third-party developers cannot be prohibited from developing non-open software for it -- Microsoft (and Apple) are apparently doing so. The fact that the project turned down Apple has nothing to do with expense but with licensing, which is exactly the same reason they would turn down a similar offer from Microsoft. Nothing in the OLPC project so far contradicts this policy. Where is the co-opting? Where is the evidence that the 75% cost increase has anything to do with Windows? $100 was always considered a very optimistic price target; $175 is still pretty damn cheap, and possibly still unrealistic.
How many DVDs can you carry in a station wagon? 50000? That would be about 400 TB of data. At 9 Gbps they could push about 80 TB per day. They're pushing that data 20000 miles, which is farther than a station wagon can go in 5 days, so it's Internet2 FTW. Even for short trips I think the station wagon would lose once you add in the media transfer time, unless of course data on DVD was what you wanted anyway.
(My calculations suggest you'd hit the weight limit of the station wagon before filling it up with DVDs. Is there some more mass-efficient storage medium?)
Perhaps the point isn't to anthropomorphize random animals ("ooh look, he thinks he's people!") but to find overlap between "human" and "animal" behavior models. It's important to remember that humans are animals. If the human animal behavioral patterns that drive economics are present in other species as well, then that might lead to insights that make economics itself easier to model.
One way or another, we can usually trace most of our knowledge back to some authority figure telling us....
<spittake/>
Wow. I trace most of my knowledge back to first-hand experience or beyond-reasonable-doubt proof. Everything else is hearsay. Testimony, especially expert testimony, is of course a useful component of proof (along with physical or documentary evidence, and logic) but rarely stands on its own.
I don't mean to cast aspersions on hearsay — it has its uses — but you can't seriously call it "knowledge". Do you really believe things just because some "authority" told you to believe them, without any other evidence or reason?
Good point. The temperature differential between a chip and ambient air just isn't very great, maybe 300K vs 330K? On the one hand, you don't need a whole lot of power to run a CPU fan (maybe 1 or 2 watts) but on the other hand, hey, it's only 1 or 2 watts and you already have that nice 300W power supply handy. Even if the stirling-powered cooling system could be manufactured cheaply enough, the cost of integration would probably be too high. It's not something you can just slap on top of the chip (and easily replace later) like an electric fan.
I agree that governments are neither necessary nor just, but I believe they are inevitable. In any group of people some will lead and some will follow. When any leader accumulates enough followers, he is a de facto government. Such social structures become habitual and self-sustaining. How do you maintain anarchy? How do you manage collective projects without letting their administration evolve into a kind of government? How do you prevent the organized use of force without organizing force to oppose it?
I believe in anarchy both as an ideal and as a descriptive model of the real world, but I haven't really figured out how to deal with the persistent and pervasive delusion of "legitimate government". Completely ignore it? Actively fight it? Use its own rules to try to control and subvert it? The latter would seem to be what most people call "democracy" and involves buying into the system, being part of it and tacitly accepting its legitimacy.
Not in 1990 it couldn't. OS/2 1.x (the MS+IBM collaboration) was a very different beast from OS/2 3.x (IBM-only). 1.x used 16-bit (286) protect mode and couldn't even run one Windows program, only DOS and OS/2 programs. The OS/2 graphics layers was called "Presentation Manager" and had a completely separate API from Windows. There were really no similarities at all. There was certainly nothing like virtual machines in 1.x, aside from the extremely limited DOS-only single-session "Chernobyl box" (some called it the "penalty box").
I was an applications developer at MS 1988-1993. I remember an even earlier Balmer speech where he yelled "OS/2! OS/2! OS/2!" It seems to be a recurring theme.
There's never been anything wrong with replying to your own posting when you have something new to add, unless of course you use a sock puppet to do it.
... you wont be pinging marsbase.com..... they actually fancy adding a couple of levels to get some real TLDs.....
That's not how DNS works. First, the "com" domain is intended to be universal, not associated with any particular location. Second, you can't keep someone from putting whatever A RRs they want in the DNS zones for their domain. Whoever controls the marsbase.com domain can easily make it resolve to a Martian IP address. Some of the names in my domains resolve to IP addresses assigned to hosts far away from me.
Besides, we all know how well the geographically heirarchical domain systems worked out in practice. Remember org.city.st.us? The "us" registrar pushed that idea hard for years before finally giving up.
If time itself is finite then the universe can have a beginning with nothing pre-existing. Consider the universe as isomorphic to a closed N-dimensional manifold....
SSE first appeared in the Katmai (that's why SSE was also known as "KNI" or "Katmai New Instructions") which was produced in a 250 nm (0.25 micron) process. 250 nm was already pretty mature when the Katmai came out so I doubt they ever targeted the design for 350 nm production.
One thing to beware of is a corollary to plausible deniability which I'll call "impossible repudiation" (it probably has some better name among real cryptographers). Consider that they can prove the hidden volume exists by torturing you until you confess. If the hidden volume (or second hidden sub-volume, or third hidden sub-sub-volume) does not actually exist, you cannot prove it and cannot confess no matter how much you might want to. In such a case, where your data are less valuable than your personal well-being, it would be far better to have used a more thoroughly breakable encryption scheme, where you could hand over the keys and they could be sure they have all your data.
If your data are more valuable than your life then the plausible deniability is still worthwhile. You may scoff at the notion of some shadowy agents torturing you for the keys to your worthless data, but stranger things have happened. Cases of mistaken identity are not unheard-of.
"I posted as AC because I've already modded in this discussion."
[blink] When I tried that a while back, it unmodded all the mods I'd made!!
You probably stayed logged in and checked the "Post Anonymously" option. If you log out before posting it doesn't know who you are and can't undo your mods.
SPEWS is probably not relevant any more. There have been no changes to the published DNSBL zones since 2006-08-24; apparently the database is no longer being maintained.
Hi, slew! Here on planet Seattle we know all about shades of grey. I believe we're scheduled for another small patch of blue sky in about 3 months.
I haven't been on a high horse since that one tossed me off 30-some years ago. I switched to motorcycles, which seemed safer, or at least more predictable, and easier to maintain. As far as other people peeing in cups for their employers, that's up to them; it's none of my business. If Google required me to pee in a cup before returning results for my search query, then you bet I'd "boycott" them. I might even go ahead work for a company with the "pee in a cup" policy if they exempted me from it. How's that for a low horse?
Thanks for the Urban Dictionary pointer. I was hoping the poster could elucidate exactly how he intended the phrase in context, but I guess UD's definition #2 probably sums it up pretty well.
Do you know what that phrase means? Can you explain it to me? I'm trying to imagine someone climbing over himself but I can't quite fold space that way in my mind. Other definitions of "get over" don't make the phrase much more sensible to me either. Thanks.
(BTW, I've driven coast-to-coast several times to avoid the airport "security" insult. I don't pee for employers either.)
I'd rather have an excellent four-hour episode (like the pilot) once a year than a new hour of crappy filler every week. Of course it's a lot harder to sell soap on the once-a-year schedule, and that's the bottom line.
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for sharing that idea -- it's very interesting and thought provoking!
As soon as the ship exceeds its own launching velocity it will be unable to return the projectiles to base (they will be following it). These projectiles can of course be gathered when the ship starts declerating. During deceleration the projectiles will be launched away from base, to be lost in space forever. This would seem to be a one-way trip, unless the ship carries with it the ability to build another launching base at its destination. If a base already exists at the destination it can receive the deceleration projectiles, perhaps launching them toward other ships on established "shipping lanes".
Have you (or anyone else) written a detailed analysis of this system?
I see. Apparently you are under the mistaken impression that OLPC intends, or ever even considered for an instant, to include Windows software with the device.
The fact that the (open) device is capable of running Windows or other non-open software in no way implies endorsement of that software by the maker of the device. Your inferrence of some under-the-table collusion between OLPC and Microsoft is unwarranted and unsubstantiated. The projects goals remain clear and emphatic about the platform and software being open.
http://laptop.org/laptop/software/specs.shtml
It's a crisitunity !
Maybe I'm dense, but I can't see the connection between the quotes and your response. Negroponte insists that the platform is open, and that all software included will be open. This means third-party developers cannot be prohibited from developing non-open software for it -- Microsoft (and Apple) are apparently doing so. The fact that the project turned down Apple has nothing to do with expense but with licensing, which is exactly the same reason they would turn down a similar offer from Microsoft. Nothing in the OLPC project so far contradicts this policy. Where is the co-opting? Where is the evidence that the 75% cost increase has anything to do with Windows? $100 was always considered a very optimistic price target; $175 is still pretty damn cheap, and possibly still unrealistic.
How many DVDs can you carry in a station wagon? 50000? That would be about 400 TB of data. At 9 Gbps they could push about 80 TB per day. They're pushing that data 20000 miles, which is farther than a station wagon can go in 5 days, so it's Internet2 FTW. Even for short trips I think the station wagon would lose once you add in the media transfer time, unless of course data on DVD was what you wanted anyway.
(My calculations suggest you'd hit the weight limit of the station wagon before filling it up with DVDs. Is there some more mass-efficient storage medium?)
How is cow milk any less disgusting than human milk?
Perhaps the point isn't to anthropomorphize random animals ("ooh look, he thinks he's people!") but to find overlap between "human" and "animal" behavior models. It's important to remember that humans are animals. If the human animal behavioral patterns that drive economics are present in other species as well, then that might lead to insights that make economics itself easier to model.
Thank you. That is a much better example.
<spittake />
Wow. I trace most of my knowledge back to first-hand experience or beyond-reasonable-doubt proof. Everything else is hearsay. Testimony, especially expert testimony, is of course a useful component of proof (along with physical or documentary evidence, and logic) but rarely stands on its own.
I don't mean to cast aspersions on hearsay — it has its uses — but you can't seriously call it "knowledge". Do you really believe things just because some "authority" told you to believe them, without any other evidence or reason?
Good point. The temperature differential between a chip and ambient air just isn't very great, maybe 300K vs 330K? On the one hand, you don't need a whole lot of power to run a CPU fan (maybe 1 or 2 watts) but on the other hand, hey, it's only 1 or 2 watts and you already have that nice 300W power supply handy. Even if the stirling-powered cooling system could be manufactured cheaply enough, the cost of integration would probably be too high. It's not something you can just slap on top of the chip (and easily replace later) like an electric fan.
I agree that governments are neither necessary nor just, but I believe they are inevitable. In any group of people some will lead and some will follow. When any leader accumulates enough followers, he is a de facto government. Such social structures become habitual and self-sustaining. How do you maintain anarchy? How do you manage collective projects without letting their administration evolve into a kind of government? How do you prevent the organized use of force without organizing force to oppose it?
I believe in anarchy both as an ideal and as a descriptive model of the real world, but I haven't really figured out how to deal with the persistent and pervasive delusion of "legitimate government". Completely ignore it? Actively fight it? Use its own rules to try to control and subvert it? The latter would seem to be what most people call "democracy" and involves buying into the system, being part of it and tacitly accepting its legitimacy.
Not in 1990 it couldn't. OS/2 1.x (the MS+IBM collaboration) was a very different beast from OS/2 3.x (IBM-only). 1.x used 16-bit (286) protect mode and couldn't even run one Windows program, only DOS and OS/2 programs. The OS/2 graphics layers was called "Presentation Manager" and had a completely separate API from Windows. There were really no similarities at all. There was certainly nothing like virtual machines in 1.x, aside from the extremely limited DOS-only single-session "Chernobyl box" (some called it the "penalty box").
I was an applications developer at MS 1988-1993. I remember an even earlier Balmer speech where he yelled "OS/2! OS/2! OS/2!" It seems to be a recurring theme.
There's never been anything wrong with replying to your own posting when you have something new to add, unless of course you use a sock puppet to do it.
That's not how DNS works. First, the "com" domain is intended to be universal, not associated with any particular location. Second, you can't keep someone from putting whatever A RRs they want in the DNS zones for their domain. Whoever controls the marsbase.com domain can easily make it resolve to a Martian IP address. Some of the names in my domains resolve to IP addresses assigned to hosts far away from me.
Besides, we all know how well the geographically heirarchical domain systems worked out in practice. Remember org.city.st.us? The "us" registrar pushed that idea hard for years before finally giving up.
If time itself is finite then the universe can have a beginning with nothing pre-existing. Consider the universe as isomorphic to a closed N-dimensional manifold....
SSE first appeared in the Katmai (that's why SSE was also known as "KNI" or "Katmai New Instructions") which was produced in a 250 nm (0.25 micron) process. 250 nm was already pretty mature when the Katmai came out so I doubt they ever targeted the design for 350 nm production.
One thing to beware of is a corollary to plausible deniability which I'll call "impossible repudiation" (it probably has some better name among real cryptographers). Consider that they can prove the hidden volume exists by torturing you until you confess. If the hidden volume (or second hidden sub-volume, or third hidden sub-sub-volume) does not actually exist, you cannot prove it and cannot confess no matter how much you might want to. In such a case, where your data are less valuable than your personal well-being, it would be far better to have used a more thoroughly breakable encryption scheme, where you could hand over the keys and they could be sure they have all your data.
If your data are more valuable than your life then the plausible deniability is still worthwhile. You may scoff at the notion of some shadowy agents torturing you for the keys to your worthless data, but stranger things have happened. Cases of mistaken identity are not unheard-of.
Create a new user with UID=0 and GID=0. Now you can install software without being root. Problem solved!
You probably stayed logged in and checked the "Post Anonymously" option. If you log out before posting it doesn't know who you are and can't undo your mods.
SPEWS is probably not relevant any more. There have been no changes to the published DNSBL zones since 2006-08-24; apparently the database is no longer being maintained.
Hi, slew! Here on planet Seattle we know all about shades of grey. I believe we're scheduled for another small patch of blue sky in about 3 months.
I haven't been on a high horse since that one tossed me off 30-some years ago. I switched to motorcycles, which seemed safer, or at least more predictable, and easier to maintain. As far as other people peeing in cups for their employers, that's up to them; it's none of my business. If Google required me to pee in a cup before returning results for my search query, then you bet I'd "boycott" them. I might even go ahead work for a company with the "pee in a cup" policy if they exempted me from it. How's that for a low horse?
Thanks for the Urban Dictionary pointer. I was hoping the poster could elucidate exactly how he intended the phrase in context, but I guess UD's definition #2 probably sums it up pretty well.
Do you know what that phrase means? Can you explain it to me? I'm trying to imagine someone climbing over himself but I can't quite fold space that way in my mind. Other definitions of "get over" don't make the phrase much more sensible to me either. Thanks.
(BTW, I've driven coast-to-coast several times to avoid the airport "security" insult. I don't pee for employers either.)
You may have to switch to coat-hangers.
I'd rather have an excellent four-hour episode (like the pilot) once a year than a new hour of crappy filler every week. Of course it's a lot harder to sell soap on the once-a-year schedule, and that's the bottom line.
Do you pretend your car is a horse?
It serves the same purpose more efficiently with lower maintenance requirements. That's why we use machines instead of animals.