I suspect the thing X-Cup is optimizing for is participation from the competition racing shops like the NASCAR engineers. These guys are really good at optimizing a proven system design but they've been working within the racing rules for so long that they might have problems designing "outside the box" the way Carmack is.
Once some of the better racing engineers get a taste for the freedom and power of rocket engineering they'll start doing stuff outside the X-Cup -- sort of like a Baja 1000 for rockets. The X-Cup might decide to do something about it then.
John Carmack, author of the 3D first person shooter video games, Doom
and Quake, has put his money to good use by funding a small group to
build a reusable rocket. Is going to be running 3 flights an hour at
the up-coming X-Prize Cup:
Given that you aren't going to just chuck the whole thing and go for a quality of life more suited to human beings:
Find out who the big stockholders are. Most places with bad corporate politics have a disconnect between the executive suite and the stockholders -- which means most of the Fortune 1000. Get to know some of the stockholders.
Read Machiavelli's "Discourses". Note: I didn't say "The Prince". All your competitors will have read "The Prince". "The Prince" is more like his Cliff Notes version of "Discourses".
Get a good psychiatrist who can properly medicate you because you because you are entering Hell.
Things like buffer overflows are deviations from the API. They are noncompliant side effects. A Widely used API with insurance companies betting on it would have all kinds of bonded testing corporations going after the API with test suites that determined whether such noncompliant side effects operated in a given implementation.
All I'm saying about administrative tools/root-kits is that they are a secondary consideration to the fundamental security flaw: closed APIs supporting natural software monopoly such as MS's. The fact of the matter is that administrative tools should be considered applications. The subset of the system API they use merely differs from most applications.
Administrative tools being replaced by a root-kit happens after the hole has been discovered and penetrated. It is simply a way to make maximum use of the hole and cover the tracks. If there were no hole in the first place, because there were insurance companies paying real programmers real money to be real professionals -- the holes wouldn't be there.
The problem with MS-ware isn't so much that its closed-source as it is that it's closed-API. The Federal Trade Commission should have acted in the early 1980s to force MS to open up the API it used and rigorously check that no application level software was written to any new calls in advance of the public disclosure of those calls. Monkeying around with things like the packaging of things like the web browser as though that was dealing with the heart of the MS monopoly issue is just stupid.
If the API were opened up not only would it have made it possible for someone to do a work-alike competitor to Gates's natural horizontal and vertical monopoly, it would have made open analysis of the potential security holes practical so that insurance companies could get into the business of software quality assurance -- which would have dramatically raised the quality of software professinals and computer security.
Back in 1993, I had just come through a period of being one of the most visible opponents of NASA's big programs and determined that political activism was a losing battle for technologists. That's when I wrote the following, "modest proposal" defense of big science programs and which Griffin now admits were a big mistake:
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: j...@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1993 07:16:54 GMT
Local: Tues, Jun 29 1993 12:16 am
Subject: Who I am and why I support Big Science
There have been some questions about who I am and what my positions
are. Here are the relevant details for sci.space readers:
As chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce, I have, over the
last 5 or so years, been the principle activist promoting the Launch
Services Purchase Act of 1990 and the launch voucher provision of the
1992 NASA authorization.
To preempt some noise:
Allen Sherzer has yet to apologize to me for his repeated slanders
in this forum 2 years ago, declaring that my contributions to the
passage of the LSPA were insignificant compared to those of Glenn
Reynolds, then chairman of the legislative committee of the National
Space Society. However, during congressional hearings on space
commercialization, the LSPA's sponsor, Congressman Packard, gave me
a personal introduction (the only panelist out of over 10 to receive
such an introduction) and my organization credit for passage of the LSPA.
Congressman Packard did so with Glenn Reynolds sitting next to me on
the same panel -- and he did not mention Glenn Reynolds or the NSS.
This is in the Congressional Record and on video tape. Allen Sherzer's
words are in the sci.space archives of late spring to early summer
1991. I encourage those with access to the sci.space archives to
retrieve them and see exactly what Allen Sherzer said and the manner
in which he said it.
I've been involved in several other, as yet unsuccessful, legislative
efforts to reform NASA, DoE (primarily fusion), NSF and DARPA. In so
doing I've come across gross inefficiencies in technology development --
inefficiencies that some small high technology startups were ready to
fill with technical advances of great economic and social import.
The government agencies I just mentioned see these high technology
startups, not as vital partners, but as deadly political threats to the
credibility of those, within the agencies, that picked incorrect
technical directions. These government-funded individuals drive
funding away from those who would bring us critically needed technical
advances -- rather than working with and help them.
The dollars we spend on NASA, DoE, DARPA and NSF to promote technology
are actually used to suppress this country's technology in a frighteningly
effective manner. But when one looks at the political incentives of these
institutions, one wonders how anyone could believe it to be otherwise.
My first and most tragic experience in this area was George Koopman's
statement to me, made in person just before his untimely death, that
NASA had been relentlessly driving his suppliers and investors away
from doing business with his company, AMROC. NASA appeared to reverse
its behavior in a tokenistic manner just prior to Koopman's death. The
first test of an AMROC booster, shortly thereafter, failed and AMROC was
forced into capitulation with established aerospace firms. This pattern
of hostile behavior from NASA, combined with the means, motive and
opportunity, leave room for reasonable suspicions of murder against
individuals within or funded by NASA.
If you want to be rational about space elevators you have to face the fact that nanotube ribbons don't yet exist but ribbons made of materials like Dyneema or Spectra do. So what? Here's what.
The Soviet government's effectiveness in space activities can, in general,
be attributed to the fact that while our private sector is more effective
than the Soviet public sector, our public sector is LESS effective than
the Soviet public sector. Why this is so becomes obvious when you
consider that the Soviet public sector has no private sector to tax --
any costs are born by itself, directly, whereas in the US (and other
relatively free market economies) the governments have the luxury of
becoming fat and lazy at the expense of the private sector.
It is a simple matter of accountability, the US private sector is
most accountable for its costs, the Soviet system is next most
accountable for its costs and the US government is least accountable
for its costs.
A true anarcho-libertarian would have no problem with maintaining an association owning a territory within which there was no restriction on free trade but which would make decisions more restrictively about what things would be bought and sold, and who could enter the association. He would also have no problem with that associations bylaws requiring that shareholders vote about critical changes to such restrictions. When the IT industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy off the "proxies" of the shareholders -- otherwise known as representatives of the people -- to import huge numbers of H-1b programmers since the 1990s, a fraud was perpetrated against the shareholders.
Throughout its history, Microsoft had let thousands of programmers each produce their own piece of computer code, then stitched it together into one sprawling program. Now, Mr. Allchin argued, the jig was up. Microsoft needed to start over.
Yes, and Gates had just the solution: Hire MORE PROGRAMMERS AND PAY THEM LESS!
Gates Calls for Increase in Tech Labor Supply
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 27, @06:45PM
from the give-us-your-huddled-hackers dept.
[ United States ] Politics IT
Randeep Igochyorjob writes "Reuters is reporting that Bill Gates is asking for the removal of quotas for guest workers by removing the caps on non-immigrant alien workers. In a mild attempt at balance, buried near the end of the story, the article also says "Undersecretary of Commerce Phil Bond, a top Bush administration technology official, pointed out that the unemployment rate for engineers is above the national average." I'm wondering if raising wages might attract the "needed" workers from domestic sources or is Gate's request "necessary to remain competitive and innovative"."
SWEET, Randeep!.
Re:Unfortunately, Gates is right
(Score:5, Informative)
by NaruVonWilkins (844204) Neutral on Wednesday April 27, @10:16PM (#12368536)
I live in Seattle. I don't code, I'm a PM - but I know plenty of out-of-work coders who aren't even offered an interview because they don't have the right bullshit "keywords" on their resumes. Some of the people I know can write assembly, build synthesizers from scratch, and handle kernel mode Windows coding. Guess what? They aren't finding jobs. It's not because they "aren't looking hard enough", it's because they're being offered $40-50k for $70-80k worth of work, and they won't take that shit.
Back in 1992 I worked with a number of hot fusion (and "cold fusion") energy entrepreneurs to come up with a set of prizes that they considered a fair contest -- each for a major milestone toward environmentally benign and cheap energy. Although I submitted it to Congress that year and sought the support of a variety of people who had been active in legislation to reform NASA, I didn't have the political traction to make much headway. Robert W. Bussard, one of the founders of the US Tokamak program, submitted this legislation to Congress a few years later along with a letter detailing some rather astounding admissions of subterfuge during the founding of the Tokamak program.
The fair contest idea seems to have been picked up around that time by the X-Prize guys and taken to resounding success, for which we should all be grateful. The need for fusion prizes remains.
MSN could be what Windows could never be: a Net platform that allows developers to write and distribute their code quickly. Patches and upgrades that take weeks or longer to distribute with traditional software can be done overnight, simply because they're all under the same umbrella.
Perhaps MS is realising that the WinTel combo -- a software platform based on the 8086 family -- is threatened by a new foundation to which applications can be written: the "virtual machine" of Javascript/DHTML with XSLT (and other XML processing) based in the browser.
That was certainly the vision for TIBET(tm) when conceived 5 years ago.
PS: Yes -- Java applets have been out there all the time and failed for the very good reason that they aren't an integral part of the presentation engine of the browsers.
Geffen is looking to buy the LA Times which would explain why it is that the LA Times is running a story that totally ignores the degree to which mass media companies already "tell you what you like" and furthermore, tell you that you like what they like.
First of all, government is really bad at technical innovation. Its good at building things that require lots of monotonous application of the same well proven technique with measurable results available continuously -- like the interstate highway system. As soon as you start getting into technical innovation you are in "Well you just didn't give us enough money last budget and it was a really tough problem" land.
Secondly, if you want to be rational about space elevators you have to face the fact that nanotube fibers don't yet exist but fibers like Dyneema or Spectra do. So what? Here's what:
With existing fibers you can build Hans Moravec's Rotovator(tm) which picks up hypersonic (near mach 12)
payloads from an altitude of 100km and slings them to orbit.
Is there anything likely come along in the near future that could take
paylods to 100km and mach 12?
Probably the same thing that is driving the technosocialist pundits to make all
this noise about space elevators now:
The prospect that centralized space programs will
be left behind by the emergence of a competitive suborbital launch
industry with the emergence of suborbital space tourism and prizes like
the Ansari X-Prize.
A key to the Rotovator(tm) is getting hub mass in place to keep it out
of the atmosphere while it picks up mass from 100km@mach12 -- but that
mass can be any old space junk (what is the dry weight of the
International Space Station?) -- at least at the hub where it counts
the most for high strength materials like carbon nanotubes. However,
you can do a Rotovator(tm) with off-the-shelf commercially available
fibers and still have a factor of 2.
Nice thing about Rotovators(tm) is that they can be built with much
lower capitaliztion over a much shorter period of time using existing
commercial materials. All you need is a bunch of mass orbiting near
earth, some quite-doable tethers, and sufficient manuverability and
speed in the atmospheric leg to hook up with the tether as it reaches
the nadir.
Modest prize awards toward early milestones of a space elevator could end up enabling the Rotovator(tm) as well.
The topic isn't whether private space exploration is feasible but whether manned space flight and habitation -- as a given worth over $7B/year of taxpayer funds for the next 13 years -- is best accomplished by direct government managed expenditure or by incentives for private investment. The answer should be clear to any reasonable man.
If the topic is how best to go about space exploration -- again -- the question is why should the public interested in funding space exploration at all? Well, there are answers to that question that are a lot more rational than putting $100B of taxpayer money through government managed investments. For instance the US Geodedic Survy of the western States used a bounty system where private barnstormers could take aerial photographs of uncharted regions. One can argue that this was a mal investment of taxpayer funds but really it is a lot better investment than 99% of the public investments that are being made. Likewise, a space data purchase system could be set up similar to the Geodedic survey which would obviate the need for other incentives. The public gets just what it needs for a fair price and the ancillary systems, be they manned or robotic, get developed appropriately.
Althought it may be true that $100M in prizes could accomplish what NASA proposes to accomplish with $100B of expenditures -- I really did slip up by saying $100M rather than $100B.
How to privatize the manned space
on
NASA's New Shuttle
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
It used to be that NASA would excuse its competition with private sector launch services by pointing to its manned space missions as an example of what it was doing that couldn't be done by purchasing a launch service. However, now that manned space missions are receiving all this attention from space tourism investors, NASA is increasingly standing in naked competition with the private sector.
This is all quite unnecessary. The private sector is already chomping at the bit to invest in manned space. Griffin says $100M over 13 years is going to be spent within the existing NASA budget for this initiative but if that $100M were simply available as incentives, be they prizes, tax credits for manned space transport and habitation, there would be an explosion of alternatives in a highly competitive environment that would yeild results in a short time.
Here's a seat-of-the-pants outline of prizes that achieve the goal:
$5 billion:
$1 billion prize each for the first five launches, to earth orbit, of a mass equivalent to the LEO payload of the Saturn V.
$5 billion
$1 billion prize for each set of 5 successful consecutive launches for the same system, to earth orbit, of a mass equivalent to the LEO payload of the Saturn V. (That's $200M/reliable launch payout.)
$5 billion
$1 billion prize for each insertion into lunar swing-around trajectory of a mass at least equal to the fully loaded Apollo LEM+command module. A portion of the mass at least equivalent to the Apollo command module reentering the Earth's atmosphere and being recovered without burning up.
$5 billion
$1 billion prize for each of 5 soft landings on the moon of a mass equivlent to the fully loaded Apollo LEM.
$5 billion
$1 billion prize for each of 5 soft landings on the moon of a LEM mass equivalent and return, by a mass equivalent of the Apollo ascent module, to dock with a command module mass-equivalent.
$5 billion
$ billion prize for each of 5 returns to earth of the command module mass-equivalent after docking with the Apollo ascent module mass-equivalent returning from the lunar surface.
We're not even 1/3 of the way through the budget and we've got a system that can transport the mass equivalent of the Apollo missions.
...on to the manned prizes...
Where we go from here is a choice I leave to you...
New Orleans may be rebuilt but there are good reasons to continue the trend and empty the cities. A pandemic in the coming weeks may make this all too obvious. Information technology has largely changed the neolithic basis of civilization and additional innovations will usher in a postcivil era of much richer human choice and sustainability. Postcivil society is coming. The transition will be rough. Empty the cities now to minimize human suffering during the transition...
This means, let me spell it out very carefully for now, is:
"The infamous retroviruses you've heard so much about, like Human Immunodeficiency Virus, aka HIV, aka 'the AIDS virus', are viruses that carry their germ-line code -- their ultimate biological authority -- in RNA rather than DNA."
Now, since the topic of the article is that RNA's role has been underestimated, it seems relevant to discuss RNA viruses aka retroviruses, which are their own authorities within the cells of organisms -- particularly if, as Kari Mullis (thanks to the spell checkers -- you're very good at that), RNA viruses aka retroviruses are a lot more pervasive than we had heretofore thought.
The implications of this are profound: Genetic evolution may be driven less by the germ-line replicators of our own cells (DNA nucleus) than by RNA virus aka retrovirus symbionts in the environment. In other words a lot of what our DNA is designed to do may be to work with the RNA viruses in our environment to create us. That would mean that if we alter the RNA viruses in our environment we are essentially causing mutations in our genetic code.
IIRC Kerry Mullis (the guy who invented PCR and got virtually zip royalties for it) had this idea that we're all stewing in seething pile of RNA viruses (retroviruses) that do all sorts of strange things to us.
He thinks AIDS might not be caused by HIV but by some critical mass/combination of retroviruses.
If that's a strange thought, consider the possiblity that retroviruses alter social structure after reading this about AIDS neuropathy:
As with rabies, it appears some sexually transmitted diseases have evolved the ability to alter the amygdala of their victims so as to facilitate their transmission. In the case of rabies, the amygdala alterations generate aggressive behavior, matching the mode of transmission of the virus which tends to be via bites. Sexually transmitted diseases should produce different changes in the amygdala enhancing, not aggressive, but rather sexual behavior.
Here is evidence that increased indiscriminate sexual behavior is an extended phenotype of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus affected by amygdalar damage in the infected population:
Kluver-Bucy syndrome is described below as involving: "a profound reduction in the animals aggression and fear, a hypoemotionality, a tendency to over react to any visual stimulus, hypersexuality and an excessive oral tendency (i.e. mouthing any objects). The monkeys also tended to eat meat and feces." Note further that "destruction of the amygdala alone was sufficient enough to produce the symptoms of the Kluver-Bucy syndrome."
Finally note although the full hypersexuality component of Kluver-Bucy syndrome in humans is rare and may require damage to tissues adjacent to the amygdala, as well as the amygdala, that damage from HIV (HTLV-III) infection focuses on the amygdala, radiating outward in its degenerative effect to include all tissues destroyed in the 1930's experiments of Kluver and Bucy.
http://www.aegis.com/pubs/aidsline/1987/jul/M87702 77.html "Subacute encephalomyelitis of AIDS and its relation to HTLV-III infection." ...
Subacute encephalitis was mainly distributed in the frontal (58%) and temporal (69%) lobes, basal ganglia (77%), amygdala (80%), and hippocampus (64%).
http://neuroscience.ucdavis.edu/amaral/Emery_Home_ Page.html "I recently joined the lab of Dr David Amaral, Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, where I am further investigating the role of the amygdala in monkey social behavior. We are looking at whether excitotoxic lesions (ibotenic acid) of the whole amygdala disrupt normal social behavior and communication in rhesus monkeys. The link between the amygdala and social behavior began with the work of Kluver and Bucy in the 1930's, when they lesioned the entire anterior temporal lobe (including temporal pole, amygdala, hippocampal formation and basal ganglia). They found a profound reduction in the animals aggression and fear, a hypoemotionality, a tendency to over react to any visual stimulus, hypersexuality and an excessive oral tendency (i.e. mouthing any objects). The monkeys also tended to eat meat and feces. These results were replicated many times and it was found that destruction of the amygdala alone was sufficient e
The SCOTUS ruling is that increasing tax revenue is justification for eminent domain exercise. If you undervalue your assets you are decreasing tax revenue and the government can simply call your bluff by buying your asset out from under you and selling it at a profit.
Slashdot Mirror
If you don't prevent the literati from becoming editors you end up with literature biased toward the literati.
This is a general problem with literacy of course but it is seriously amplified when the literati can act as an anonymous mob at a moment's notice.
Once some of the better racing engineers get a taste for the freedom and power of rocket engineering they'll start doing stuff outside the X-Cup -- sort of like a Baja 1000 for rockets. The X-Cup might decide to do something about it then.
From: jim_bow...@hotmail.com
0 5_09_27_hoverTest.mpg
Newsgroups: rec.autos.sport.nascar
Subject: X-Prize Cup
Date: 30 Sep 2005 12:11:18 -0700
John Carmack, author of the 3D first person shooter video games, Doom and Quake, has put his money to good use by funding a small group to build a reusable rocket. Is going to be running 3 flights an hour at the up-coming X-Prize Cup:
http://www.xpcup.com/index.cfm
You might want to see his latest test at:
http://media.armadilloaerospace.com/2005_09_24/20
So my question to the NASCAR guys is this:
Are you going to let this geek make you look like pussies or are you going to show him how power engineering gets done?
All I'm saying about administrative tools/root-kits is that they are a secondary consideration to the fundamental security flaw: closed APIs supporting natural software monopoly such as MS's. The fact of the matter is that administrative tools should be considered applications. The subset of the system API they use merely differs from most applications.
Administrative tools being replaced by a root-kit happens after the hole has been discovered and penetrated. It is simply a way to make maximum use of the hole and cover the tracks. If there were no hole in the first place, because there were insurance companies paying real programmers real money to be real professionals -- the holes wouldn't be there.
If the API were opened up not only would it have made it possible for someone to do a work-alike competitor to Gates's natural horizontal and vertical monopoly, it would have made open analysis of the potential security holes practical so that insurance companies could get into the business of software quality assurance -- which would have dramatically raised the quality of software professinals and computer security.
Newsgroups: sci.space
From: j...@pnet01.cts.com (Jim Bowery)
Date: Tue, 29 Jun 1993 07:16:54 GMT
Local: Tues, Jun 29 1993 12:16 am
Subject: Who I am and why I support Big Science
There have been some questions about who I am and what my positions are. Here are the relevant details for sci.space readers:
As chairman of the Coalition for Science and Commerce, I have, over the last 5 or so years, been the principle activist promoting the Launch Services Purchase Act of 1990 and the launch voucher provision of the 1992 NASA authorization.
To preempt some noise:
Allen Sherzer has yet to apologize to me for his repeated slanders in this forum 2 years ago, declaring that my contributions to the passage of the LSPA were insignificant compared to those of Glenn Reynolds, then chairman of the legislative committee of the National Space Society. However, during congressional hearings on space commercialization, the LSPA's sponsor, Congressman Packard, gave me a personal introduction (the only panelist out of over 10 to receive such an introduction) and my organization credit for passage of the LSPA. Congressman Packard did so with Glenn Reynolds sitting next to me on the same panel -- and he did not mention Glenn Reynolds or the NSS. This is in the Congressional Record and on video tape. Allen Sherzer's words are in the sci.space archives of late spring to early summer 1991. I encourage those with access to the sci.space archives to retrieve them and see exactly what Allen Sherzer said and the manner in which he said it.
I've been involved in several other, as yet unsuccessful, legislative efforts to reform NASA, DoE (primarily fusion), NSF and DARPA. In so doing I've come across gross inefficiencies in technology development -- inefficiencies that some small high technology startups were ready to fill with technical advances of great economic and social import. The government agencies I just mentioned see these high technology startups, not as vital partners, but as deadly political threats to the credibility of those, within the agencies, that picked incorrect technical directions. These government-funded individuals drive funding away from those who would bring us critically needed technical advances -- rather than working with and help them.
The dollars we spend on NASA, DoE, DARPA and NSF to promote technology are actually used to suppress this country's technology in a frighteningly effective manner. But when one looks at the political incentives of these institutions, one wonders how anyone could believe it to be otherwise.
My first and most tragic experience in this area was George Koopman's statement to me, made in person just before his untimely death, that NASA had been relentlessly driving his suppliers and investors away from doing business with his company, AMROC. NASA appeared to reverse its behavior in a tokenistic manner just prior to Koopman's death. The first test of an AMROC booster, shortly thereafter, failed and AMROC was forced into capitulation with established aerospace firms. This pattern of hostile behavior from NASA, combined with the means, motive and opportunity, leave room for reasonable suspicions of murder against individuals within or funded by NASA.
This is only one story and I wasn't even inv
If you want to be rational about space elevators you have to face the fact that nanotube ribbons don't yet exist but ribbons made of materials like Dyneema or Spectra do. So what? Here's what.
As I said when I was young and more prone to believe the system might work:
The Soviet government's effectiveness in space activities can, in general, be attributed to the fact that while our private sector is more effective than the Soviet public sector, our public sector is LESS effective than the Soviet public sector. Why this is so becomes obvious when you consider that the Soviet public sector has no private sector to tax -- any costs are born by itself, directly, whereas in the US (and other relatively free market economies) the governments have the luxury of becoming fat and lazy at the expense of the private sector.
It is a simple matter of accountability, the US private sector is most accountable for its costs, the Soviet system is next most accountable for its costs and the US government is least accountable for its costs.
A true anarcho-libertarian would have no problem with maintaining an association owning a territory within which there was no restriction on free trade but which would make decisions more restrictively about what things would be bought and sold, and who could enter the association. He would also have no problem with that associations bylaws requiring that shareholders vote about critical changes to such restrictions. When the IT industry spent hundreds of millions of dollars to buy off the "proxies" of the shareholders -- otherwise known as representatives of the people -- to import huge numbers of H-1b programmers since the 1990s, a fraud was perpetrated against the shareholders.
You aren't for a free market. You're for fraud.
Yes, and Gates had just the solution: Hire MORE PROGRAMMERS AND PAY THEM LESS!
Gates Calls for Increase in Tech Labor Supply
Posted by samzenpus on Wednesday April 27, @06:45PM
from the give-us-your-huddled-hackers dept. [ United States ] Politics IT
Randeep Igochyorjob writes "Reuters is reporting that Bill Gates is asking for the removal of quotas for guest workers by removing the caps on non-immigrant alien workers. In a mild attempt at balance, buried near the end of the story, the article also says "Undersecretary of Commerce Phil Bond, a top Bush administration technology official, pointed out that the unemployment rate for engineers is above the national average." I'm wondering if raising wages might attract the "needed" workers from domestic sources or is Gate's request "necessary to remain competitive and innovative"."
SWEET, Randeep!.
Re:Unfortunately, Gates is right
(Score:5, Informative)
by NaruVonWilkins (844204) Neutral on Wednesday April 27, @10:16PM (#12368536)
I live in Seattle. I don't code, I'm a PM - but I know plenty of out-of-work coders who aren't even offered an interview because they don't have the right bullshit "keywords" on their resumes. Some of the people I know can write assembly, build synthesizers from scratch, and handle kernel mode Windows coding. Guess what? They aren't finding jobs. It's not because they "aren't looking hard enough", it's because they're being offered $40-50k for $70-80k worth of work, and they won't take that shit.
IDIOT!!!
The fair contest idea seems to have been picked up around that time by the X-Prize guys and taken to resounding success, for which we should all be grateful. The need for fusion prizes remains.
Perhaps MS is realising that the WinTel combo -- a software platform based on the 8086 family -- is threatened by a new foundation to which applications can be written: the "virtual machine" of Javascript/DHTML with XSLT (and other XML processing) based in the browser.
That was certainly the vision for TIBET(tm) when conceived 5 years ago.
PS: Yes -- Java applets have been out there all the time and failed for the very good reason that they aren't an integral part of the presentation engine of the browsers.
Talk about narrow tastes!
Secondly, if you want to be rational about space elevators you have to face the fact that nanotube fibers don't yet exist but fibers like Dyneema or Spectra do. So what? Here's what:
With existing fibers you can build Hans Moravec's Rotovator(tm) which picks up hypersonic (near mach 12) payloads from an altitude of 100km and slings them to orbit.
Current proposals for implementation of the Moravec's design rely on a hypersonic air-breather of advanced aerodynamic design like the Boeing DF-9 (that exists only on paper).
Is there anything likely come along in the near future that could take paylods to 100km and mach 12?
Probably the same thing that is driving the technosocialist pundits to make all this noise about space elevators now:
A key to the Rotovator(tm) is getting hub mass in place to keep it out of the atmosphere while it picks up mass from 100km@mach12 -- but that mass can be any old space junk (what is the dry weight of the International Space Station?) -- at least at the hub where it counts the most for high strength materials like carbon nanotubes. However, you can do a Rotovator(tm) with off-the-shelf commercially available fibers and still have a factor of 2.
Nice thing about Rotovators(tm) is that they can be built with much lower capitaliztion over a much shorter period of time using existing commercial materials. All you need is a bunch of mass orbiting near earth, some quite-doable tethers, and sufficient manuverability and speed in the atmospheric leg to hook up with the tether as it reaches the nadir.
Modest prize awards toward early milestones of a space elevator could end up enabling the Rotovator(tm) as well.
If the topic is how best to go about space exploration -- again -- the question is why should the public interested in funding space exploration at all? Well, there are answers to that question that are a lot more rational than putting $100B of taxpayer money through government managed investments. For instance the US Geodedic Survy of the western States used a bounty system where private barnstormers could take aerial photographs of uncharted regions. One can argue that this was a mal investment of taxpayer funds but really it is a lot better investment than 99% of the public investments that are being made. Likewise, a space data purchase system could be set up similar to the Geodedic survey which would obviate the need for other incentives. The public gets just what it needs for a fair price and the ancillary systems, be they manned or robotic, get developed appropriately.
Althought it may be true that $100M in prizes could accomplish what NASA proposes to accomplish with $100B of expenditures -- I really did slip up by saying $100M rather than $100B.
This is all quite unnecessary. The private sector is already chomping at the bit to invest in manned space. Griffin says $100M over 13 years is going to be spent within the existing NASA budget for this initiative but if that $100M were simply available as incentives, be they prizes, tax credits for manned space transport and habitation, there would be an explosion of alternatives in a highly competitive environment that would yeild results in a short time.
Here's a seat-of-the-pants outline of prizes that achieve the goal:
$5 billion:
$5 billion
$5 billion $5 billion $5 billion $5 billion We're not even 1/3 of the way through the budget and we've got a system that can transport the mass equivalent of the Apollo missions.Where we go from here is a choice I leave to you...
Q: How does a full-partner lawyer protect his 10th story corner office from a nuclear holocaust?
A: Boilerplate.
New Orleans may be rebuilt but there are good reasons to continue the trend and empty the cities. A pandemic in the coming weeks may make this all too obvious. Information technology has largely changed the neolithic basis of civilization and additional innovations will usher in a postcivil era of much richer human choice and sustainability. Postcivil society is coming. The transition will be rough. Empty the cities now to minimize human suffering during the transition...
The implications of this are profound: Genetic evolution may be driven less by the germ-line replicators of our own cells (DNA nucleus) than by RNA virus aka retrovirus symbionts in the environment. In other words a lot of what our DNA is designed to do may be to work with the RNA viruses in our environment to create us. That would mean that if we alter the RNA viruses in our environment we are essentially causing mutations in our genetic code.
He thinks AIDS might not be caused by HIV but by some critical mass/combination of retroviruses.
If that's a strange thought, consider the possiblity that retroviruses alter social structure after reading this about AIDS neuropathy:
As with rabies, it appears some sexually transmitted diseases have evolved the ability to alter the amygdala of their victims so as to facilitate their transmission. In the case of rabies, the amygdala alterations generate aggressive behavior, matching the mode of transmission of the virus which tends to be via bites. Sexually transmitted diseases should produce different changes in the amygdala enhancing, not aggressive, but rather sexual behavior.
Here is evidence that increased indiscriminate sexual behavior is an extended phenotype of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus affected by amygdalar damage in the infected population:
Kluver-Bucy syndrome is described below as involving: "a profound reduction in the animals aggression and fear, a hypoemotionality, a tendency to over react to any visual stimulus, hypersexuality and an excessive oral tendency (i.e. mouthing any objects). The monkeys also tended to eat meat and feces." Note further that " destruction of the amygdala alone was sufficient enough to produce the symptoms of the Kluver-Bucy syndrome."
Finally note although the full hypersexuality component of Kluver-Bucy syndrome in humans is rare and may require damage to tissues adjacent to the amygdala, as well as the amygdala, that damage from HIV (HTLV-III) infection focuses on the amygdala, radiating outward in its degenerative effect to include all tissues destroyed in the 1930's experiments of Kluver and Bucy .
http://www.aegis.com/pubs/aidsline/1987/jul/M87702 77.html
"Subacute encephalomyelitis of AIDS and its relation to HTLV-III infection."
...
Subacute encephalitis was mainly distributed in the frontal (58%) and temporal (69%) lobes, basal ganglia (77%), amygdala (80%) , and hippocampus (64%).
(It should be noted that Simon LeVay also observed systematic differences in the brain structures of homosexuals who died of AIDS although he did not attribute such differences to HIV infection per se but rather to congenital homosexual orientation. LeVay appears not to consider the possibility that changes in brain structure might be due to a pathogen in addition to HIV.)
http://neuroscience.ucdavis.edu/amaral/Emery_Home_ Page.html
"I recently joined the lab of Dr David Amaral, Center for Neuroscience, University of California, Davis, where I am further investigating the role of the amygdala in monkey social behavior. We are looking at whether excitotoxic lesions (ibotenic acid) of the whole amygdala disrupt normal social behavior and communication in rhesus monkeys. The link between the amygdala and social behavior began with the work of Kluver and Bucy in the 1930's, when they lesioned the entire anterior temporal lobe (including temporal pole, amygdala, hippocampal formation and basal ganglia). They found a profound reduction in the animals aggression and fear, a
hypoemotionality, a tendency to over react to any visual stimulus, hypersexuality and an excessive oral tendency (i.e. mouthing any objects). The monkeys also tended to eat meat and feces. These results were replicated many times and it was found that destruction of the amygdala alone was sufficient e
The SCOTUS ruling is that increasing tax revenue is justification for eminent domain exercise. If you undervalue your assets you are decreasing tax revenue and the government can simply call your bluff by buying your asset out from under you and selling it at a profit.