If there is a fusion breakthrough large enough to make oil prices crash in a year or two, the whole economy will change dramatically. Everything will change price. If that kind of thing is actually possible, the only policy that matters is trying to make it happen as soon as possible, even if we wreck the environment in the process. We could always fix it afterwards or terraform Mars or whatever we decide is cool.
the trust of which you speak is not the trust in which root CAs tell everyone whom to trust.
Correct, that is not the trust I speak of. I trust a policeman because he has a government-issued ID. That is inherited trust. I don't trust him unconditionally, but I do get out of the car when he asks me to. Trust DOES inherit.
Of course, sometimes that trust is abused. Sometimes even by a mass murderer. Nevertheless, society can't function without it, because we can't form deep bonds with everyone before we do transactions with them.
Ok, so you're on the road and you access your bank. You get a warning that the certificate is untrusted even though you previously let the browser save the certificate. Now there are two options: Either the bank changed the certificate or you're hitting a man-in-the-middle.
You can only trust what you can see with your own eyes; trust does not inherit, plain and simple. Any system that relies on inherited trust is broken before it starts.
Our whole society is reliant on inherited trust. Feel free to try to escape from it.
It doesn't work. If a web site you need uses a CA you don't trust, you're screwed. Unless you can get through to major banks and governments and tell them who to buy their certificates from...
Which is why we need to allow multiple signatures, so you can remove trust from a bad CA without losing access to major sites.
Multiple certificates do not work today. You don't know which one you can present to the client. You need to extend the protocol to allow multiple signatures on the same certificate or allow the client to request a specific certificate. I don't like the latter option; the client should get to see all the certificates so it can notice if a major web site suddenly has only one signature.
At some point, you're gonna have to trust someone else, and invariably that trust will be broken at some point. So, how do we fix us broken humans?
For instance you design the protocol so that e.g. 2 or 5 or however many you want humans have to be untrustworthy for the protocol to fail. Allowing multiple signatures on certificates would be a good first step towards that goal.
Energy getting scarce is not something they can do anything about, except the Bush Jr. solution: make a crisis large enough to make production fall dramatically. That particular solution does not actually preserve the value of the currency unless all you buy is fuel.
You have to save in the currency you care about, the currency you eventually plan to spend your money in. Otherwise you're doing currency speculation which is a zero-sum gamble.
Of course, bills under the mattress are losing value every day.
But very slowly right now. The alternatives could easily lose value much faster. So could the cash of course, but right now the central banks are scared to death of inflation while recession strangles us.
After briefly introducing himself as a visitor from MIT, Stallman requested a copy of the laser-printer source code so that he could port it to the PDP-11. To his surprise, the professor refused to grant his request. "He told me that he had promised not to give me a copy," Stallman says.
And so Stallman could not improve the printer. Perhaps a small innovation that time, but having to constantly reinvent the wheel is certainly holding the software industry back.
Now, we have physicists insisting that their theory is correct, even though they have to keep adding "fudge factors" to it to make it fit the facts.
From what I have read, the physicists aren't insisting very strongly. If anything they seem somewhat embarrassed about the state of affairs in cosmology right now.
You can say that they are wrong as much as you want but that does not help unless you provide a better theory.
There are plenty of scientists out there with pet theories that they will fight for to the bitter end.
True. But they rarely manage to spread their beliefs to the next generation, so theories tend to survive only one generation after they have been superseded.
You can't escape this though, otherwise they wouldn't do it. AMD does the same except without the software unlock. Price discrimination like this only works if competition is bad -- which it is, because there are only 2 manufacturers of PC chips right now (plus a few others with small slices of the market). Entering the x86 market is extremely expensive, so this sorry state of affairs is unlikely to change.
Solid fuel rockets are a bit of a mess. There are a lot of things which can go wrong, and failure tends to be catastrophic. Liquid fuelled rockets are much easier to deal with because you can just turn them off in an emergency. You have to be really really unlucky to get an explosion, especially if you pick a relatively easily handled oxidizer like liquid oxygen.
All you are saving with a ramjet is carrying the oxidizer, with all the downsides you mention.
Well, if you need to shoot down a satellite, I suppose launching a missile from something that's already going at 13000mph is easier than launching it from the ground.
You wouldn't really need a missile, you could just pick a trajectory which would intersect the satellite, let go of something, and change trajectory. At 13000mph you can actually get quite high on a parabolic orbit.
Slashdot Mirror
If there is a fusion breakthrough large enough to make oil prices crash in a year or two, the whole economy will change dramatically. Everything will change price. If that kind of thing is actually possible, the only policy that matters is trying to make it happen as soon as possible, even if we wreck the environment in the process. We could always fix it afterwards or terraform Mars or whatever we decide is cool.
The company is saving extra energy by employing a strict lower-case policy. Lower case for higher altitude.
the trust of which you speak is not the trust in which root CAs tell everyone whom to trust.
Correct, that is not the trust I speak of. I trust a policeman because he has a government-issued ID. That is inherited trust. I don't trust him unconditionally, but I do get out of the car when he asks me to. Trust DOES inherit.
Of course, sometimes that trust is abused. Sometimes even by a mass murderer. Nevertheless, society can't function without it, because we can't form deep bonds with everyone before we do transactions with them.
Ok, so you're on the road and you access your bank. You get a warning that the certificate is untrusted even though you previously let the browser save the certificate. Now there are two options: Either the bank changed the certificate or you're hitting a man-in-the-middle.
Yes, I absolutely agree that multiple signatures are the way to go and that we need to get the protocol extended.
I think we even agreed in a previous thread :)
You can only trust what you can see with your own eyes; trust does not inherit, plain and simple. Any system that relies on inherited trust is broken before it starts.
Our whole society is reliant on inherited trust. Feel free to try to escape from it.
It doesn't work. If a web site you need uses a CA you don't trust, you're screwed. Unless you can get through to major banks and governments and tell them who to buy their certificates from...
Which is why we need to allow multiple signatures, so you can remove trust from a bad CA without losing access to major sites.
Storing and updating the certificates for a small number of notaries is a lot easier than doing it for millions of sites.
Multiple certificates do not work today. You don't know which one you can present to the client. You need to extend the protocol to allow multiple signatures on the same certificate or allow the client to request a specific certificate. I don't like the latter option; the client should get to see all the certificates so it can notice if a major web site suddenly has only one signature.
If multiple entities in your web of trust have to say that a particular certificate is ok, it gets a lot more difficult to forge a certificate.
At some point, you're gonna have to trust someone else, and invariably that trust will be broken at some point. So, how do we fix us broken humans?
For instance you design the protocol so that e.g. 2 or 5 or however many you want humans have to be untrustworthy for the protocol to fail. Allowing multiple signatures on certificates would be a good first step towards that goal.
Energy getting scarce is not something they can do anything about, except the Bush Jr. solution: make a crisis large enough to make production fall dramatically. That particular solution does not actually preserve the value of the currency unless all you buy is fuel.
Of course, but as I said, the central banks are scared to death of inflation. They'd rather have 50% unemployment than 3% inflation.
You have to save in the currency you care about, the currency you eventually plan to spend your money in. Otherwise you're doing currency speculation which is a zero-sum gamble.
Of course, bills under the mattress are losing value every day.
But very slowly right now. The alternatives could easily lose value much faster. So could the cash of course, but right now the central banks are scared to death of inflation while recession strangles us.
From Free as in Freedom
After briefly introducing himself as a visitor from MIT, Stallman requested a copy of the laser-printer source code so that he could port it to the PDP-11. To his surprise, the professor refused to grant his request. "He told me that he had promised not to give me a copy," Stallman says.
And so Stallman could not improve the printer. Perhaps a small innovation that time, but having to constantly reinvent the wheel is certainly holding the software industry back.
Why not deliver this rover the same way the other rovers were delivered?
Because it would make a nice crater that way. Nature is not scale-free.
I don't think anyone thinks that copyright hold back innovation...
You would be wrong then. At least one person thinks that copyright holds back innovation. Me.
Now, we have physicists insisting that their theory is correct, even though they have to keep adding "fudge factors" to it to make it fit the facts.
From what I have read, the physicists aren't insisting very strongly. If anything they seem somewhat embarrassed about the state of affairs in cosmology right now.
You can say that they are wrong as much as you want but that does not help unless you provide a better theory.
There are plenty of scientists out there with pet theories that they will fight for to the bitter end.
True. But they rarely manage to spread their beliefs to the next generation, so theories tend to survive only one generation after they have been superseded.
You can't escape this though, otherwise they wouldn't do it. AMD does the same except without the software unlock. Price discrimination like this only works if competition is bad -- which it is, because there are only 2 manufacturers of PC chips right now (plus a few others with small slices of the market). Entering the x86 market is extremely expensive, so this sorry state of affairs is unlikely to change.
Because Emacs is one big copyright infringement
Only the FSF can sue, and they are unlikely to do so for a mistake they themselves are responsible for.
Solid fuel rockets are a bit of a mess. There are a lot of things which can go wrong, and failure tends to be catastrophic. Liquid fuelled rockets are much easier to deal with because you can just turn them off in an emergency. You have to be really really unlucky to get an explosion, especially if you pick a relatively easily handled oxidizer like liquid oxygen.
All you are saving with a ramjet is carrying the oxidizer, with all the downsides you mention.
Well, if you need to shoot down a satellite, I suppose launching a missile from something that's already going at 13000mph is easier than launching it from the ground.
You wouldn't really need a missile, you could just pick a trajectory which would intersect the satellite, let go of something, and change trajectory. At 13000mph you can actually get quite high on a parabolic orbit.
Ah, you require that the humans do the work. Does burning human fat in an engine count?