They are already doing phase modulation. They are not doing amplitude modulation (i.e. they can't change color intensity), so image would be composed of primary colors and their combinations only.
Simply stacking several of these devices won't work. But I'm sure engineers will think of something later when we have nanotechnology.
There are several reasons: 1) Consumer is once-removed from producers. I.e. consumer doesn't really need to care about the price of healthcare since "my insurance coveres it". That leads to steady increases in premiums. 2) Producers are not interested in lowering their prices since they're in for profit. And the point of maximum return is often not at 'cheapest and highest volume' but at 'high price, medium volume'. 3) Growing administrative overheads because insurance companies need more staff to deal with 1) and 2).
"Insurance companies are rather interesting. Certainly, they've helped to keep health care prices low more than the sue-happy lawyers that advertise the service of turning symptoms and circumstances into winning cases and cash flows."
That's empirically not true. Healthcare costs have been rising in the US much faster than in other countries with socialized/regulated healthcare.
By the way, in most of the Western Europe higher education is either free or very cheap. In China it is also free (though you need to pass tests with high enough marks to qualify for it).
Where's nothing impossible in computed holograms. It's just that they are quite complex to implement - they require very precise engineering and lots of computational power.
It looks like in this case they've focused only on phase manipulation ignoring amplitude and used some shortcuts in computing. That limits the possibilities - there's no way to project real lifelike images, but it's more than enough for things like virtual keyboards with keys floating _above_ the surface on which they are projected.
"The way to introduce accountability is to push the loans onto the commercial space, where people are in it to make money, and for one person to make money another loses. Another who can't just jack up taxes and doesn't live on politics."
How well has this worked with medical insurance companies?
"Yes, if the gov't guarantees are cut the tuition prices will fall (as it should) and based on qualities a number colleges will fail and NOT as many people will go if they have to take a private loan and prove it's not a waste of time and money (and that's what you have to do, you have to prove that there is some value there, some asset, or that your degree will allow you to pay the interest and loan back)."
Or they will go up (since fewer people will be able to afford it) until a new equilibrium is established. Happens all the time.
Keeping OS on SSDs doesn't make any sense in for server applications. You don't need to worry about boot speed and all your code is usually in RAM anyway.
However, databases and SSDs are a natural fit. We accelerated our server code more than 10 times just by moving it to SSDs. And since we're storing critical data, RAID-1 are a must (backups are the last resort - you inevitably lose some data if you have to restore from backups).
Try my https://github.com/Cyberax/mdtrim/ , we use it to periodically TRIM empty space. Works fine with md RAIDs on raw devices, it won't work with LVM though.
Unfortunately, RAID on stock md devices does NOT work, even if LVM/dm TRIM works. You won't get any warnings from ext4, TRIM just silently won't work because md doesn't pass through TRIM requests. There's a thread (dated August of this year) on linux-raid where md maintainer says that TRIM is not his priority.
The problem is, price of all the small modules adds up quite fast. And you still need to solve the problem of flying humans to Mars - you can't just chop them up and fly in multiple pieces. And even after you're on Mars, what are you going to do? There's almost nothing you can do commercially there, except for publicity stunts.
Asteroid missions might be easier, but there's still a problem of doing it for commercial gain. You'll first have to do prospecting work - a typical asteroid is mostly iron/cobalt which are not expensive enough to bother with. While concentrations of heavy metals are significantly greater in asteroids, you'll still need to have some ways of extracting them and delivering extracted ore to Earth. So that means you'll need to build infrastructure for it.
And that's already in the range of perhaps trillions of dollars.
It's not easy to implement it completely correctly, even in software. My approach is to create a large file which takes almost all free space, then TRIM its content and then just remove this file. Obviously, it's a bit racy if you have services which could suddenly need several more gigabytes of disk. On the other hand, TRIM-ing 160Gb SSD drives takes about 5 seconds, so I don't worry about it.
Treaties can be changed and are changed all the time. Yet nobody shows significant interest in the other celestial bodies.
Treaties are not a problem where there is a real need for regulation in space. For example, a treaty distributing geostationary orbit slots has been quickly established once it became clear that some coordination is needed. And commercial satellite launches are quite profitable for launch companies.
And the surface of other bodies is not on a planet with breathable air and plenty of water. Is this hard for you to understand?
"Also, the US never built a rocket that could get to Mars for $100 million dollars."
Basically any rocket capable of lifting 3-4 tons to LEO is capable of delivering _something_ to Mars. And that's not a theory - the first Mars satellites ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_1M ) were launched by R7 rockets ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_(rocket) ). The launches of R7-derived rockets cost now less than $20 million.
"ANYONE could build one for a hundred billion dollars. The point is that the free market takes what is possible and lowers the price until individuals or collections of individuals can afford it."
With all respect to SpaceX, their rocket right now replicates what NASA did 55 years ago.
"No-one would pay for that". What the fuck are you talking about? There are quintillions of dollars of mineral wealth up there! multiple private companies would have competed against each other until the price was low enough that they could do it with just a few big investors."
There are even more quintillions of dollars in the Earth's mantle and nobody's stopping you from extracting them. Yet nobody is doing it.
I'm interested in phase-modulation technology since I've seen one of the first computed holograms in 90-s. It looked a bit like the original 'pong' game would look now. I.e. extremely crude.
If we've advanced to a level where it's possible to actually produce useful images - it'd be great.
From what I understood, they're planning to use phase shifters working in the optical range. How the hell they're going to do that is absolutely a mystery for me.
Creating 'holograms' in radio frequencies is easy, that's what phased arrays do. They're trying to adapt this for much shorter wavelengths - and this gets very hard.
"So wtf happens? Of course the banks do as required and make loans to people who really shouldn't be getting those loans, the government said they have to."
That's simply wrong. Nobody required banks to make bad loans. NOBODY. Government only required to use the same criteria for loans in 'bad' and 'good' areas.
And facts show that delinquency of loans in 'bad' areas is the same as for the loans in 'good' areas. So government had absolutely no part in it, apart from allowing banks to build CDO scams.
"According to Keynesian economic theory... but none of the others. The problem here is that Keynesian economics has been shown not to work"
'Shown'? By whom and when? Classic Keynesian economy missed the possibility of stagflation - that's about the only major flaw with it. Keynesian economy worked just fine during the current recession.
And I have also given you an empirical example. It's real. You can go to Russia and check it yourself (or just check the public economic statistic info). Russia has a very capitalistic economy, and has had it since 90-s. In fact, during the 90-s it was about as close to lazies-fair as it gets (pay for 'protection' and do whatever you want). And it certainly proves by example that at least in some cases inflation is not a big deal.
"And yet, during much of that period, the US still had a "robust" economy."
During the prewar gold era? Nope. It was prone to depressions and recessions, which actually happened more often and lasted longer than in post-WWII years (excluding the current recession).
Dude. Inflation IS NOT A PROBLEM. It's absolutely not a problem if there's a robust growth to compensate for it.
Example from my own life, back in 2001 the average salary in Russia was 3000 rubles a month (and mine was 10000 a month). A train ticket between Moscow and Saint-Petersburg was 700 rubles. A loaf of bread was 4 rubles. When I moved to Ukraine in 2007 the average salary in Russia was 20000 rubles. A train ticket between Moscow and Saint-Petersburg was 1800 rubles, a loaf of bread was 9 rubles.
So prices went up, about 2.5 times in 6 years - that's about 15% of annualized inflation. Horrible, isn't it? If I had stashed a wad of rubbles in a glass jar back in 2000 it'll be now worth just about 1/5 of its value.
Except for one small thing - people now earn in Russia about 10 times more than in 2000. So even with this horrible inflation people now earn about twice more in 'real' income than back in 2000.
So again, why should I care how much gold one dollar note can buy? Depression within hard-money economy is still a depression.
"No, you completely missed the point. The financial corporations get it before it has been inflated; at full value."
No, they don't.
"By the time the principle and interest on the loan are paid back, the money has been significantly inflated."
It's "principal", not "principle".
"But the original loaner doesn't care much, because they got those dollars for "free", anyway. Somewhat inflated interest is still profit to them. When money is inflated, it isn't a loss, it's just lower profits. "
Sure. But banks would get their interest in any case. So how do they benefit from the inflation?
"But whoever made the purchase with that loan is now looking at goods that are worth significantly less than what they originally paid, and I am not just talking about depreciation, but depreciation PLUS inflation. Their money wasn't "free", in the beginning, as it was to the financiers who get it from the Fed. Every bit of it cost them, all the more as time went on. To the loan-takers, inflation actually represents a monetary loss."
Uhm. WRONG! Goods would cost get more and more 'expensive' (in dollar value), so it's depreciation MINUS inflation. Of course, pure dollar value is irrelevant anyway.
"Which sounds pretty good, except that nothing of the sort occurred. The economy was actually extremely robust (which was one of the things that CAUSED the Revolutionary War in the first place), and it was steadily growing. "
That's simply a lie, there were lots of recessions. Like grinding recession of 1873 and depression of 1893 ( http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whitten.panic.1893 ).
And 19-th century economic growth was about annualized 0.5%, which now would be called stagnation.
I can only say that your economic knowledge is about on the level with first-grader's knowledge of calculus.
Slashdot Mirror
And what are you going to do in Europe where AmEx is unusable except in airports and boutiques?
Building a world-spanning network is complex and expensive. And not because of monopolies but because it's HARD.
They are already doing phase modulation. They are not doing amplitude modulation (i.e. they can't change color intensity), so image would be composed of primary colors and their combinations only.
Simply stacking several of these devices won't work. But I'm sure engineers will think of something later when we have nanotechnology.
There are several reasons:
1) Consumer is once-removed from producers. I.e. consumer doesn't really need to care about the price of healthcare since "my insurance coveres it". That leads to steady increases in premiums.
2) Producers are not interested in lowering their prices since they're in for profit. And the point of maximum return is often not at 'cheapest and highest volume' but at 'high price, medium volume'.
3) Growing administrative overheads because insurance companies need more staff to deal with 1) and 2).
"Insurance companies are rather interesting. Certainly, they've helped to keep health care prices low more than the sue-happy lawyers that advertise the service of turning symptoms and circumstances into winning cases and cash flows."
That's empirically not true. Healthcare costs have been rising in the US much faster than in other countries with socialized/regulated healthcare.
By the way, in most of the Western Europe higher education is either free or very cheap. In China it is also free (though you need to pass tests with high enough marks to qualify for it).
Where's nothing impossible in computed holograms. It's just that they are quite complex to implement - they require very precise engineering and lots of computational power.
It looks like in this case they've focused only on phase manipulation ignoring amplitude and used some shortcuts in computing. That limits the possibilities - there's no way to project real lifelike images, but it's more than enough for things like virtual keyboards with keys floating _above_ the surface on which they are projected.
Medical insurance is not an education. But why should it matter?
College tuition has increased faster than inflation. But medical care has increased even faster, mostly because of private insurance.
"The way to introduce accountability is to push the loans onto the commercial space, where people are in it to make money, and for one person to make money another loses. Another who can't just jack up taxes and doesn't live on politics."
How well has this worked with medical insurance companies?
"Yes, if the gov't guarantees are cut the tuition prices will fall (as it should) and based on qualities a number colleges will fail and NOT as many people will go if they have to take a private loan and prove it's not a waste of time and money (and that's what you have to do, you have to prove that there is some value there, some asset, or that your degree will allow you to pay the interest and loan back)."
Or they will go up (since fewer people will be able to afford it) until a new equilibrium is established. Happens all the time.
Keeping OS on SSDs doesn't make any sense in for server applications. You don't need to worry about boot speed and all your code is usually in RAM anyway.
However, databases and SSDs are a natural fit. We accelerated our server code more than 10 times just by moving it to SSDs. And since we're storing critical data, RAID-1 are a must (backups are the last resort - you inevitably lose some data if you have to restore from backups).
Try my https://github.com/Cyberax/mdtrim/ , we use it to periodically TRIM empty space. Works fine with md RAIDs on raw devices, it won't work with LVM though.
Unfortunately, RAID on stock md devices does NOT work, even if LVM/dm TRIM works. You won't get any warnings from ext4, TRIM just silently won't work because md doesn't pass through TRIM requests. There's a thread (dated August of this year) on linux-raid where md maintainer says that TRIM is not his priority.
'Float' is a misnomer here. They just relaxed controls on exchange rate a little, not nearly enough to make exchange rate reflect the real situation.
Not really. High inflation is a RESULT of foreign investment and fixed exchange policy.
The problem is, price of all the small modules adds up quite fast. And you still need to solve the problem of flying humans to Mars - you can't just chop them up and fly in multiple pieces. And even after you're on Mars, what are you going to do? There's almost nothing you can do commercially there, except for publicity stunts.
Asteroid missions might be easier, but there's still a problem of doing it for commercial gain. You'll first have to do prospecting work - a typical asteroid is mostly iron/cobalt which are not expensive enough to bother with. While concentrations of heavy metals are significantly greater in asteroids, you'll still need to have some ways of extracting them and delivering extracted ore to Earth. So that means you'll need to build infrastructure for it.
And that's already in the range of perhaps trillions of dollars.
It's not easy to implement it completely correctly, even in software. My approach is to create a large file which takes almost all free space, then TRIM its content and then just remove this file. Obviously, it's a bit racy if you have services which could suddenly need several more gigabytes of disk. On the other hand, TRIM-ing 160Gb SSD drives takes about 5 seconds, so I don't worry about it.
Here is a thread about it on linux-raid: http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.linux.raid/31941/focus=32022
As far as I know, there are no hardware RAIDs with TRIM support.
Not so fast!
You can use my https://github.com/Cyberax/mdtrim/ to periodically TRIM unused space on software RAID-1 on Linux (ext3/4 are supported right now).
Extending it for RAID-0/5/6 is not hard, but right now I don't have time for this.
You can, though not directly by using kerosene from coal gasification plants.
There is a diffference between delivering couple hundred kilograms and establishing a permanent base, don't you think?
Treaties can be changed and are changed all the time. Yet nobody shows significant interest in the other celestial bodies.
Treaties are not a problem where there is a real need for regulation in space. For example, a treaty distributing geostationary orbit slots has been quickly established once it became clear that some coordination is needed. And commercial satellite launches are quite profitable for launch companies.
And the surface of other bodies is not on a planet with breathable air and plenty of water. Is this hard for you to understand?
"Also, the US never built a rocket that could get to Mars for $100 million dollars."
Basically any rocket capable of lifting 3-4 tons to LEO is capable of delivering _something_ to Mars. And that's not a theory - the first Mars satellites ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_1M ) were launched by R7 rockets ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_(rocket) ). The launches of R7-derived rockets cost now less than $20 million.
"ANYONE could build one for a hundred billion dollars. The point is that the free market takes what is possible and lowers the price until individuals or collections of individuals can afford it."
Bullshit.
With all respect to SpaceX, their rocket right now replicates what NASA did 55 years ago.
"No-one would pay for that". What the fuck are you talking about? There are quintillions of dollars of mineral wealth up there! multiple private companies would have competed against each other until the price was low enough that they could do it with just a few big investors."
There are even more quintillions of dollars in the Earth's mantle and nobody's stopping you from extracting them. Yet nobody is doing it.
Some things are just too hard.
I'm interested in phase-modulation technology since I've seen one of the first computed holograms in 90-s. It looked a bit like the original 'pong' game would look now. I.e. extremely crude.
If we've advanced to a level where it's possible to actually produce useful images - it'd be great.
From what I understood, they're planning to use phase shifters working in the optical range. How the hell they're going to do that is absolutely a mystery for me.
Creating 'holograms' in radio frequencies is easy, that's what phased arrays do. They're trying to adapt this for much shorter wavelengths - and this gets very hard.
"So wtf happens? Of course the banks do as required and make loans to people who really shouldn't be getting those loans, the government said they have to."
That's simply wrong. Nobody required banks to make bad loans. NOBODY. Government only required to use the same criteria for loans in 'bad' and 'good' areas.
And facts show that delinquency of loans in 'bad' areas is the same as for the loans in 'good' areas. So government had absolutely no part in it, apart from allowing banks to build CDO scams.
"According to Keynesian economic theory... but none of the others. The problem here is that Keynesian economics has been shown not to work"
'Shown'? By whom and when? Classic Keynesian economy missed the possibility of stagflation - that's about the only major flaw with it. Keynesian economy worked just fine during the current recession.
And I have also given you an empirical example. It's real. You can go to Russia and check it yourself (or just check the public economic statistic info). Russia has a very capitalistic economy, and has had it since 90-s. In fact, during the 90-s it was about as close to lazies-fair as it gets (pay for 'protection' and do whatever you want). And it certainly proves by example that at least in some cases inflation is not a big deal.
"And yet, during much of that period, the US still had a "robust" economy."
During the prewar gold era? Nope. It was prone to depressions and recessions, which actually happened more often and lasted longer than in post-WWII years (excluding the current recession).
Dude. Inflation IS NOT A PROBLEM. It's absolutely not a problem if there's a robust growth to compensate for it.
Example from my own life, back in 2001 the average salary in Russia was 3000 rubles a month (and mine was 10000 a month). A train ticket between Moscow and Saint-Petersburg was 700 rubles. A loaf of bread was 4 rubles. When I moved to Ukraine in 2007 the average salary in Russia was 20000 rubles. A train ticket between Moscow and Saint-Petersburg was 1800 rubles, a loaf of bread was 9 rubles.
So prices went up, about 2.5 times in 6 years - that's about 15% of annualized inflation. Horrible, isn't it? If I had stashed a wad of rubbles in a glass jar back in 2000 it'll be now worth just about 1/5 of its value.
Except for one small thing - people now earn in Russia about 10 times more than in 2000. So even with this horrible inflation people now earn about twice more in 'real' income than back in 2000.
So again, why should I care how much gold one dollar note can buy? Depression within hard-money economy is still a depression.
"No, you completely missed the point. The financial corporations get it before it has been inflated; at full value."
No, they don't.
"By the time the principle and interest on the loan are paid back, the money has been significantly inflated."
It's "principal", not "principle".
"But the original loaner doesn't care much, because they got those dollars for "free", anyway. Somewhat inflated interest is still profit to them. When money is inflated, it isn't a loss, it's just lower profits. "
Sure. But banks would get their interest in any case. So how do they benefit from the inflation?
"But whoever made the purchase with that loan is now looking at goods that are worth significantly less than what they originally paid, and I am not just talking about depreciation, but depreciation PLUS inflation. Their money wasn't "free", in the beginning, as it was to the financiers who get it from the Fed. Every bit of it cost them, all the more as time went on. To the loan-takers, inflation actually represents a monetary loss."
Uhm. WRONG! Goods would cost get more and more 'expensive' (in dollar value), so it's depreciation MINUS inflation. Of course, pure dollar value is irrelevant anyway.
"Which sounds pretty good, except that nothing of the sort occurred. The economy was actually extremely robust (which was one of the things that CAUSED the Revolutionary War in the first place), and it was steadily growing. "
That's simply a lie, there were lots of recessions. Like grinding recession of 1873 and depression of 1893 ( http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/whitten.panic.1893 ).
And 19-th century economic growth was about annualized 0.5%, which now would be called stagnation.
I can only say that your economic knowledge is about on the level with first-grader's knowledge of calculus.