Is The Kitty Big Enough?
on
After the X Prize
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· Score: 4, Interesting
I think this is a great idea, but is the prize money enough? NASA should pony up another 50 mil -- they could use the help delivering supplies to the space station, and it's a no-lose proposition for them.
Rutan has already talked about going orbital, and there is a lot of buzz about this subject from all sorts of people. It is a good time to be alive!
Checks and balances at the case-by-case, individual level. Of course the system still works overall, but that misses the point. Last I checked, everybody wasn't either deserving of data collection or not, it was much more complicated than that.
That's why the database itself may be perfectly fine if it is completely maintained by some independent organization not capable of criminal prosecution. Police can get warrants for specific information and have a judge review them. That's all I'm saying.
Making this into some kind of simplistic discussion doesn't do much for either side. There are some fairly smart people on/. -- I'm sure there are ways to make sure the need for security is balanced with the need to maintain individual sovreignty.
I understand that when I am in a public venue I have no right to privacy. I think everybody understands that.
But what bothers me is that I am losing my anonynimity. The founding fathers never thought this one through, because there were no such things as databases that could keep images of all public spaces, faces, and events and allow cross-checking. That bothers me. If I decide to go down to the visit some local political nut-job to hear what they have to say, I don't expect to be catalogued and cross-referenced, even though I am performing a public act.
No, I have nothing to hide. And yes, I understand that everybody is nice and the government is here to help me. But last I checked, our system of government in the USA was not built upon "Aw Shucks", but a system of checks and balances that assumed that power corrupts. We seem to be forgetting this somehow.
Once USB drives reach 20-30GB for ten bucks or so, who's going to need a bigger optical format?
Isn't the unit of storage the movie? Or the CD collection? Once I can put all of that on a hardware device for the cost of a cheeseburger, what the heck do I want to be carrying around disks for?
This is good news, for sure, but so far it's all hype and little reality. I would want to see the marketing numbers that support the idea of such expensive and short-duration flights.
I suppose that until somebody offers truely orbital flights of several hours or more -- then maybe somebody could drop the cost of a house to take a ride.
Not that I'm complaining. If I won the lottery I'd take every ride like this I could buy. But if it looked like a few more years until I could go orbital, I might wait a bit.
"Tiny demons invade a mars space station in 'DOOM Jr.'" "Run the life of ant-people in 'SIMS, the phone version'" "Guess at words in 'Optomotrist 1.0'" "Curse at strangers when you play 'Tiny BSOD', comning to a phone near you!" "Paint mustaches on your far away friends with 'Microphotoshop'" "Yes, that was Pam Anderson, not a booger. Try 'Surfing For Little People', the game Michael Jackson started.
LOL! Never ask on slashdot for people to correct you if you are wrong! Lesson learned.
Sorry -- I read your reply and I don't think we are connecting. Whether you describe physics or math, both are built of postulates connected together by logic. Last I checked, connecting strings of postulates together is a basic tenet of philosophy, whether you're doing that in mathematical terms (using formal logic), or in experimental terms, using a common perception of reality (and associated issues dealing with observers and reality)
And I would disaagree that we "have a good understanding" of gravity and electromagnetism. If anything, perhaps we could agree that to the limit of our current knowledge, we know a lot about them. But that's akin to saying 3000 years ago that the world is flat as far as we can see. While the system is interesting and self-consistant, it may or may not provide value to the user.
"Just because you can't explain a phenomenon doesn't automatically mean there is something wrong with your fundamentals." -- well, it may or it may not. I think by definition you can't tell one way or another. And Occam's razor would not seem to apply, because the definition of changing systems means changing the perception of what is likely. Understanding a phenomenon is obviously different than understanding a new theorem, which is also fundamentally different than understanding the model itself may be incorrectly formed. 3 different subjects here.
I meant symbology. A system of symbols in support of an associated system of logic (or philosophical reasoning, if you prefer)
I didn't mention Godel, I simply pointed out that there are many observable things in the universe that after close analysis do not fit into our current model of everything. Heck, our current model of everything doesn't even fit together. Sure, arithmetic is complete -- but I know you're not extrapolating having a symbolic system of counting integers into a GUT.
Physics is not based on math (thinking about that one). I understand what you are saying but would tend to disagree. Math and physics (in human terms) are so closely linked to be inexorably tied together, which ironically may be one of our problems. Observations in physics, from apples falling from trees on out, are quickly modeled in math and the math "checked" to make sure it describes the physical system. Then observations in the mathematical system are made and physics experiements are done to "check" the physics. To say one comes before or after the other seems a little simplistic to me.
But hey, not only do I not know this stuff I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn last night. All I have experience with is lots of complex, human created systems or all sorts: self-consistant, complete, none of the above, etc. To me, this is just more of it, with people running around in the weeds wondering where the trees are.
But isn't physics built on math? And isn't math built on philosophy? And don't we still not have a good understanding of how gravity and electromagnetic radiation act? (take dark energy for one example, or the gravitational anomalies dealing with eclipses)
So what we have is a complex system of symbology that is demonstrably incomplete? Why wouldn't I just want the easy version until somebody starts basing a calculus on something that may do better?
BTW, does anybody know of a computer system that can create a calculus randomly and see where it goes, a la genetic programming, for instance? Might make a neat science fair project.
I didn't remember reading anywhere that anonymous voting is a right.
In fact, didn't it used to be that people would walk into a voting booth, announce their name and address, and who they voted for? The secret ballot has been a fairly recent thing in politics.
As for me, I don't have a problem announcing who I vote for. After all, it is the one thing that I do that affects the country the most, why would I want to hide when I do it? Who should I be afraid of?
If you ask my opinion, which you didn't, you're mixing a bunch of concepts up.
Political free speech is the most highly protected speech of all. Therefore, MoralMajority, Fallwell's old political group, could be parodied like this. Commercial free speech, as recognized by a trademark, is the protected image of a corporation, and to infringe on it would do damage to the business. Religious free speech, a combination of commercial and political (once again, in my opinion) could go either way. The difference, as you point out, would seem to be the trademark.
Interestingly, I am sure Fallwell and all his associated names are trademarked to prevent this very thing from occuring.
I agree that our constitutional freedoms are eroding away, but I think it is important to clearly define what you are talking about. As court after court has ruled, there is no one thing as "free speech". It's a mixed bag. You can't yell "theater" in a crowded fire house.
He's selling his brand of Jesus. Been in business for a long time.
Now if somebody capitalizes on his name to lure people on a site that hurts his business, that's unfair competition.
JerrySucks.Com would be fine with me, as would JerryIsALoser.com. But not what the guy used. It's clearly outside the bounds.
A more interesting question would be: what if there were another person named Jerry Fallwell who, for instance, believed that Jesus came from a UFO? Could HE register the site? Wasn't there some guy, Mike Rowe, who registered MikeRoweSoft.com last year? Does the first public person with a name get it for all time?
Let's assume for the sake of argument that we've reduced cost to orbit to $100 per ton.
Wouldn't universities build the Hubble? I mean, instead of the new telescope they are building in South America (with better resolution than Hubble, BTW) wouldn't they just build the same scope in low earth orbit?
In other words, how much of this debate about what to spend our money on is based on the actual cost of the instrument, and how much on just launching and maintaining the thing?
Solve the main problem. Don't get stuck out in the weeds. -- Ender Strikes Back, Vol 4
By ignoring the consequences of politics, scientists are unable to receive funding for things I think we would all find valuable.
So instead of sitting around complaining about how people just don't understand the value of real science, why not do something about it? For years people with other political views have managed to get trillions of dollars from the government. What is lacking here is a single vision that everyone can push for -- there are simply too many fields of scientific endeavor to sell at the same time. Hence my point that NASA should do two things and two things only: 1) promote space travel, and 2) Lower cost to orbit by any means necessary.
This is easy to remember and can be made into a party platform plank.
Science promoters need to wise up: politics makes the world go around. People who are better in politics get more money than those who aren't, no matter how noble and valuable their cause.
What we need is more politics, and less science. Politics makes the world go around, and politics is what is going to pay for all of the pure research we like so much. We've had too many years of wonderfully smart people trying to sell super-colliders to lawyers -- we should have learned something by now.
Focus on promoting space travel and lowering cost-to-orbit, and the rest will work itself out.
I was a person who loved to read and learn, and enjoyed figuring things out.
So I found out that no matter what I did, I always ended up writing code for somebody else. I went into business as a consultant, and that was over 15 years ago.
A lot of this "degrees are necessary" and "who needs 'em" talk is basically people just repeating what they have experienced. I think the real questions to ask are "What have you done lately?"
Positive attitude and desire to learn outside of work will take you a long ways further than anything else I've seen. When interviewing coders, I used to ask them "How do you make a class in language X?" Usually most of them got the answer. Then I would ask them "Ok. Now WHY would you write a class? What conditions would you require to make a new class when you are making a program?"
The first question required education. The second required some sort of wisdom and practical experience.
He's got to be in his 60s, right? I wonder what they would do if they made all these big announcements and suddenly his health took a bad turn? How do series deal with signing really old actors, anyway?
And sign me up for CGI kirk with Shatner doing the voice-overs. I don't think I have the stomach (or maybe he has too much of one) to see Bill jumping around the stage with a ripped shirt fighting some rubber lizard over a great-looking woman.
Heck -- just get rid of all of them except the great-looking women. We could do a new show, sort of a cross between Baywatch and Trek. Something like "Nebula-Watch"
Laws are based on structures built around the application of force (hence the phrase "force of law"). You just can't dream up a bunch of silly utopian-sounding dim-witted platitudes and have that become some sort of interstellar law.
One of the laws mentioned in the article was signed off by only five countries.
I'm afraid that this well-meaning, yet groundless search for universal fairness will only do harm -- as many posters have pointed out, why seek to commercialize space if there is no ownership?
Look. I want to live in a world where there is no war, everybody loves one another, and we all sing kumbaya -- but that ain't going to happen. Economic progress is built on the chaos of individual freedom and property. That means along with nice TVs and BMWs we get greed, wars, and lawyers. That's just the nature of commerce. And by golly, I want to drive a new BMW spaceship before I croak!
First of all, your question sounds a lot like "What's your favorite color?"
Secondly, where do you want to put your cycles at? For larger applications, that's an important question.
I've done this and seen this a dozen ways from Sunday. For every bad implementation of SPs I can show you a good one. Good coders write good code. Bad coders write crap. Sorry, but there is no one answer. For a compentent code mechanic, you can put it here or there or anywhere. All the same. (lots of "devil in the details" goes here)
Having said that, tiering is a great thing. Use it when you can for better code maintainability. But at the end of the day, you usually end up with business rules all over the place anyway. If you stick the business rules locked into the database, and lock out access otherwise, at least you know they'll always be executed. And that, of course, is the entire reason for having business rules in the first place.
I can argue this from every angle, which probably makes it a great slashdot topic! Endless speculating without any conclusion! (grin)
Some guy in his own homebuilt plane, flying in unrestrcited airspace VFR trying to work out answers to questions a lot of pilots have.
If the Wright brothers were alive today, they'd still be completing the paperwork to build an airplane.
Seems like I remember Boeing taking up one of their planes loaded with electronics equipment, trying to test out this interference issue. They got zero interference. But it is always possible. Somebody needs to put this whole line of fear-mongering to rest. Godspeed to the guy.
Slashdot Mirror
I think this is a great idea, but is the prize money enough? NASA should pony up another 50 mil -- they could use the help delivering supplies to the space station, and it's a no-lose proposition for them.
Rutan has already talked about going orbital, and there is a lot of buzz about this subject from all sorts of people. It is a good time to be alive!
I've got a lot of faith in political discourse. That's what makes us such a great country.
I'm not outraged, simply explaining why I care.
I see no special skills granted to senators and judges that the average man does not have, and my politics are my own business.
We'll work it out.
Checks and balances at the case-by-case, individual level. Of course the system still works overall, but that misses the point. Last I checked, everybody wasn't either deserving of data collection or not, it was much more complicated than that.
/. -- I'm sure there are ways to make sure the need for security is balanced with the need to maintain individual sovreignty.
That's why the database itself may be perfectly fine if it is completely maintained by some independent organization not capable of criminal prosecution. Police can get warrants for specific information and have a judge review them. That's all I'm saying.
Making this into some kind of simplistic discussion doesn't do much for either side. There are some fairly smart people on
I understand that when I am in a public venue I have no right to privacy. I think everybody understands that.
But what bothers me is that I am losing my anonynimity. The founding fathers never thought this one through, because there were no such things as databases that could keep images of all public spaces, faces, and events and allow cross-checking. That bothers me. If I decide to go down to the visit some local political nut-job to hear what they have to say, I don't expect to be catalogued and cross-referenced, even though I am performing a public act.
No, I have nothing to hide. And yes, I understand that everybody is nice and the government is here to help me. But last I checked, our system of government in the USA was not built upon "Aw Shucks", but a system of checks and balances that assumed that power corrupts. We seem to be forgetting this somehow.
Once USB drives reach 20-30GB for ten bucks or so, who's going to need a bigger optical format?
Isn't the unit of storage the movie? Or the CD collection? Once I can put all of that on a hardware device for the cost of a cheeseburger, what the heck do I want to be carrying around disks for?
This is good news, for sure, but so far it's all hype and little reality. I would want to see the marketing numbers that support the idea of such expensive and short-duration flights.
I suppose that until somebody offers truely orbital flights of several hours or more -- then maybe somebody could drop the cost of a house to take a ride.
Not that I'm complaining. If I won the lottery I'd take every ride like this I could buy. But if it looked like a few more years until I could go orbital, I might wait a bit.
"Tiny demons invade a mars space station in 'DOOM Jr.'"
"Run the life of ant-people in 'SIMS, the phone version'"
"Guess at words in 'Optomotrist 1.0'"
"Curse at strangers when you play 'Tiny BSOD', comning to a phone near you!"
"Paint mustaches on your far away friends with 'Microphotoshop'"
"Yes, that was Pam Anderson, not a booger. Try 'Surfing For Little People', the game Michael Jackson started.
LOL! Never ask on slashdot for people to correct you if you are wrong! Lesson learned.
Sorry -- I read your reply and I don't think we are connecting. Whether you describe physics or math, both are built of postulates connected together by logic. Last I checked, connecting strings of postulates together is a basic tenet of philosophy, whether you're doing that in mathematical terms (using formal logic), or in experimental terms, using a common perception of reality (and associated issues dealing with observers and reality)
And I would disaagree that we "have a good understanding" of gravity and electromagnetism. If anything, perhaps we could agree that to the limit of our current knowledge, we know a lot about them. But that's akin to saying 3000 years ago that the world is flat as far as we can see. While the system is interesting and self-consistant, it may or may not provide value to the user.
"Just because you can't explain a phenomenon doesn't automatically mean there is something wrong with your fundamentals." -- well, it may or it may not. I think by definition you can't tell one way or another. And Occam's razor would not seem to apply, because the definition of changing systems means changing the perception of what is likely. Understanding a phenomenon is obviously different than understanding a new theorem, which is also fundamentally different than understanding the model itself may be incorrectly formed. 3 different subjects here.
I meant symbology. A system of symbols in support of an associated system of logic (or philosophical reasoning, if you prefer)
I didn't mention Godel, I simply pointed out that there are many observable things in the universe that after close analysis do not fit into our current model of everything. Heck, our current model of everything doesn't even fit together. Sure, arithmetic is complete -- but I know you're not extrapolating having a symbolic system of counting integers into a GUT.
Physics is not based on math (thinking about that one). I understand what you are saying but would tend to disagree. Math and physics (in human terms) are so closely linked to be inexorably tied together, which ironically may be one of our problems. Observations in physics, from apples falling from trees on out, are quickly modeled in math and the math "checked" to make sure it describes the physical system. Then observations in the mathematical system are made and physics experiements are done to "check" the physics. To say one comes before or after the other seems a little simplistic to me.
But hey, not only do I not know this stuff I didn't even stay at a Holiday Inn last night. All I have experience with is lots of complex, human created systems or all sorts: self-consistant, complete, none of the above, etc. To me, this is just more of it, with people running around in the weeds wondering where the trees are.
But isn't physics built on math? And isn't math built on philosophy? And don't we still not have a good understanding of how gravity and electromagnetic radiation act? (take dark energy for one example, or the gravitational anomalies dealing with eclipses)
So what we have is a complex system of symbology that is demonstrably incomplete? Why wouldn't I just want the easy version until somebody starts basing a calculus on something that may do better?
BTW, does anybody know of a computer system that can create a calculus randomly and see where it goes, a la genetic programming, for instance? Might make a neat science fair project.
I didn't remember reading anywhere that anonymous voting is a right.
In fact, didn't it used to be that people would walk into a voting booth, announce their name and address, and who they voted for? The secret ballot has been a fairly recent thing in politics.
As for me, I don't have a problem announcing who I vote for. After all, it is the one thing that I do that affects the country the most, why would I want to hide when I do it? Who should I be afraid of?
If you ask my opinion, which you didn't, you're mixing a bunch of concepts up.
Political free speech is the most highly protected speech of all. Therefore, MoralMajority, Fallwell's old political group, could be parodied like this. Commercial free speech, as recognized by a trademark, is the protected image of a corporation, and to infringe on it would do damage to the business. Religious free speech, a combination of commercial and political (once again, in my opinion) could go either way. The difference, as you point out, would seem to be the trademark.
Interestingly, I am sure Fallwell and all his associated names are trademarked to prevent this very thing from occuring.
I agree that our constitutional freedoms are eroding away, but I think it is important to clearly define what you are talking about. As court after court has ruled, there is no one thing as "free speech". It's a mixed bag. You can't yell "theater" in a crowded fire house.
He's selling his brand of Jesus. Been in business for a long time.
Now if somebody capitalizes on his name to lure people on a site that hurts his business, that's unfair competition.
JerrySucks.Com would be fine with me, as would JerryIsALoser.com. But not what the guy used. It's clearly outside the bounds.
A more interesting question would be: what if there were another person named Jerry Fallwell who, for instance, believed that Jesus came from a UFO? Could HE register the site? Wasn't there some guy, Mike Rowe, who registered MikeRoweSoft.com last year? Does the first public person with a name get it for all time?
I'm waiting for the first 4-D monitor!
Then I can see how this DOOM level is going to end before I spend all that time playing it.
I don't see how you can say that.
Let's assume for the sake of argument that we've reduced cost to orbit to $100 per ton.
Wouldn't universities build the Hubble? I mean, instead of the new telescope they are building in South America (with better resolution than Hubble, BTW) wouldn't they just build the same scope in low earth orbit?
In other words, how much of this debate about what to spend our money on is based on the actual cost of the instrument, and how much on just launching and maintaining the thing?
Solve the main problem. Don't get stuck out in the weeds. -- Ender Strikes Back, Vol 4
I think you just proved my point, QED.
By ignoring the consequences of politics, scientists are unable to receive funding for things I think we would all find valuable.
So instead of sitting around complaining about how people just don't understand the value of real science, why not do something about it? For years people with other political views have managed to get trillions of dollars from the government. What is lacking here is a single vision that everyone can push for -- there are simply too many fields of scientific endeavor to sell at the same time. Hence my point that NASA should do two things and two things only: 1) promote space travel, and 2) Lower cost to orbit by any means necessary.
This is easy to remember and can be made into a party platform plank.
Science promoters need to wise up: politics makes the world go around. People who are better in politics get more money than those who aren't, no matter how noble and valuable their cause.
I don't think so.
What we need is more politics, and less science. Politics makes the world go around, and politics is what is going to pay for all of the pure research we like so much. We've had too many years of wonderfully smart people trying to sell super-colliders to lawyers -- we should have learned something by now.
Focus on promoting space travel and lowering cost-to-orbit, and the rest will work itself out.
I was a person who loved to read and learn, and enjoyed figuring things out.
So I found out that no matter what I did, I always ended up writing code for somebody else. I went into business as a consultant, and that was over 15 years ago.
A lot of this "degrees are necessary" and "who needs 'em" talk is basically people just repeating what they have experienced. I think the real questions to ask are "What have you done lately?"
Positive attitude and desire to learn outside of work will take you a long ways further than anything else I've seen. When interviewing coders, I used to ask them "How do you make a class in language X?" Usually most of them got the answer. Then I would ask them "Ok. Now WHY would you write a class? What conditions would you require to make a new class when you are making a program?"
The first question required education. The second required some sort of wisdom and practical experience.
Shatner runs under Apache. Didn't you see the episode where he turned into a Native American and got married?
But alas, he doesn't scale so well. The only chick in the galaxy he hasn't made a move on is that Poly Morphism.
He's got to be in his 60s, right? I wonder what they would do if they made all these big announcements and suddenly his health took a bad turn? How do series deal with signing really old actors, anyway?
And sign me up for CGI kirk with Shatner doing the voice-overs. I don't think I have the stomach (or maybe he has too much of one) to see Bill jumping around the stage with a ripped shirt fighting some rubber lizard over a great-looking woman.
Heck -- just get rid of all of them except the great-looking women. We could do a new show, sort of a cross between Baywatch and Trek. Something like "Nebula-Watch"
This is great advice. I'm going to put it in the next powerpoint presentation I put together.
Thanks!
(Sound of gunfire)
Where do they get the people for these stories?
Laws are based on structures built around the application of force (hence the phrase "force of law"). You just can't dream up a bunch of silly utopian-sounding dim-witted platitudes and have that become some sort of interstellar law.
One of the laws mentioned in the article was signed off by only five countries.
I'm afraid that this well-meaning, yet groundless search for universal fairness will only do harm -- as many posters have pointed out, why seek to commercialize space if there is no ownership?
Look. I want to live in a world where there is no war, everybody loves one another, and we all sing kumbaya -- but that ain't going to happen. Economic progress is built on the chaos of individual freedom and property. That means along with nice TVs and BMWs we get greed, wars, and lawyers. That's just the nature of commerce. And by golly, I want to drive a new BMW spaceship before I croak!
Last I checked, it was the QWERTY keyboard.
Knowing how to type means knowing how to input computer information faster: whether it is programming, word processing, or slashdotting.
For at least the next decade or so, touch-typing will be a critical skill for all information workers. That's just common sense, right?
First of all, your question sounds a lot like "What's your favorite color?"
Secondly, where do you want to put your cycles at? For larger applications, that's an important question.
I've done this and seen this a dozen ways from Sunday. For every bad implementation of SPs I can show you a good one. Good coders write good code. Bad coders write crap. Sorry, but there is no one answer. For a compentent code mechanic, you can put it here or there or anywhere. All the same. (lots of "devil in the details" goes here)
Having said that, tiering is a great thing. Use it when you can for better code maintainability. But at the end of the day, you usually end up with business rules all over the place anyway. If you stick the business rules locked into the database, and lock out access otherwise, at least you know they'll always be executed. And that, of course, is the entire reason for having business rules in the first place.
I can argue this from every angle, which probably makes it a great slashdot topic! Endless speculating without any conclusion! (grin)
The next technological invention will be a google service to search through all of those files from the web.
When that happens, more people will get smart about security. Right now, one person can only make so much noise.
Some guy in his own homebuilt plane, flying in unrestrcited airspace VFR trying to work out answers to questions a lot of pilots have.
If the Wright brothers were alive today, they'd still be completing the paperwork to build an airplane.
Seems like I remember Boeing taking up one of their planes loaded with electronics equipment, trying to test out this interference issue. They got zero interference. But it is always possible. Somebody needs to put this whole line of fear-mongering to rest. Godspeed to the guy.