As TWiTfan implied, this is one of those extremely rare examples where trickle-down economics actually works. Someone has figured out a way besides "Art" to get wealthy people to trickle some of their money out.
Seems to me it's more the opposite; instead of this money going into general circulation, it's being frozen:D
These things are a menace. I lived in Colorado and they would routinely plant themselves into our apartment complex public space, making it unusable for long stretches of winter.
If *you* think it's unusable now, how do you think the Geese feel about an apartment complex taking over *their* public space?
If you were stupid enough to wander into the park area, a host of them would waddle up to you and attack, and they left a huge amount of green goose crap all over the place. If I had thought of using one of those little toy helicopters at the time to scare em off, I would have.
I think the problem with the drone plan is that just like how the Geese got used to humans in your apartment complex and now show no fear of them, they'll eventually get used to the drones unless the drones start attacking and killing them.
Actually, they probably won't. The reason for this is that the drone is using a standard bird of prey flight attack vector. This should also be fairly successful against seagulls and pigeons (although due to the lack of flocking of those two birds, others will quickly return to take the place of those who left).
Non-sequitur: all the current BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and any other derivatives are FOSS, even if not GPL, and so BigDaveyL is right - one could get, say, FreeBSD at a fraction of the cost of HP/UX, either on the same Itanium hardware, or on cheaper x64 boxes. For that matter, even the Linux Foundation could, if they cared, get Linux certified by the Open Group. But neither have thought that it's worth it.
Exactly -- the real thing that's dying is the certification and the licensing, not the technology.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the other part: if they did revive your body, you'd likely wake up to find your body only had weeks to live, as your it would be defenseless against the "modern" microorganisms it would encounter.
Because evolution happens so fast in 500 years? Yeah the microorganisms might change, but I highly doubt that 10 generations is that big of a deal for humans. ie: It's a long time with respect to technology, but not a long time with respect to human genetic drift.
What does human physiology have to do with it? If people 10 generations ago were exposed to the pathogens we take for granted, they'd kill them... the "common cold" would likely wipe out anyone from the 1800's in short order. The issue isn't human genetic shift, but viral mutation.
Let me pull out a rhetorical stick I've been beaten with more than once: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
Show me the evidence that ressurecting a dead organism of any kind -- even a bacterium, even a plant -- will ever be possible. *Ever.*
(crickets chirp...)
On the other hand, if the brain can be scanned, it may be possible in the future to model the body in a new container. This information could still possibly be extracted from the existing popsicle, even with cellular degeneration due to crystallization (computers of the future could trace back the degeneration to reconstruct the original state).
I know people that read the Bible and are now dead. Do they get a refund or what?
Probably not; the people who wrote the Bible were long dead before it was compiled. I think the refund would be void based on "breach of warranty" anyway.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the other part: if they did revive your body, you'd likely wake up to find your body only had weeks to live, as your it would be defenseless against the "modern" microorganisms it would encounter.
I'm not seeing an advantage here. If I wake up in an age with a lobster, cyclops, rastafarian bureaucrat and obnoxious robot, I might be inclined to exclaim, "Excellent news everyone!"
More likely you'll wake up to find you're now Holly, as that process is a tad cheaper than full biological revival.
Last I've checked, VLIW isn't even in desktop CPUs. And Intel's Itanium failed EPICly. In embedded, VLIW are purely an Intel thing and minor ARM dominance. As for your "old 32 and 64-bit RISC code", can you post a snippet? I've only seen MIPS64 so far but I'm a little curious about ARMv7's if that's what you're referring to... Or is it something different altogether?
I was actually referring to PowerPC 970 bog-standard code. You're right though; I'm mixing my desktop and mobile chipsets.
It has become pretty obvious that doing anything to help out DARPA is just going to be used against all of us, one way or another.
I can't believe people are still willing to participate in this stuff.
This.
Knowing what we know now, anyone who assists DARPA or any TLA is actively working against their own people, and should be regarded as a traitorous persona non grata.
Indeed I can't believe all the people who are still willing to participate in DARPA programs like, say, the Internet. Give them their tubes back already!
I fully agree with you, including the Continuum part, but couldn't you put a spoiler alert before saying it? If I hadn't watched it I would be pretty much pissed off.
S/Continuum/Matrix/
That better?
Or do we still need a spoiler alert for that one too?
Windows is POSIX compliant, although not a certified UNIX. Other than Linux/GNU, there are only a few niche OSes out there these days that AREN'T (or couldn't be, if someone applied for certification) UNIX.
Errol Rasit, research director at Gartner, concurs that the primary cause of Unix weakness over the past decade is migration from the RISC platform to x86-processor based alternatives, which can run many Unix workloads, usually at attractive price/performance ratios.
x86 has been implemented on a RISC based core ever since the PentiumPro. RISC won. It didn't wither away. That transition made possible a performance boost allowing Intel to compete against the home-grown processors of the traditional Unix vendors who lacked the cash to invest in fab advancements needed to match pace.
Such are the fools pandering their vaunted "analysis" to the media these days.
Sorry, but it didn't win. RISC didn't get clobbered by CISC or vice versa; rather, they both got consumed by VLIW. VLIW pipelining made the debate over instruction set complexity meaningless, as you get custom sets based on which pipeline is used, due to long instruction chains. You could argue that at the core of each VLIW chip you have a RISC; but you could also argue that the result is really an extremely CISC. It's kind of like arguing about Toyota vs Ford, when in reality, they both have components made by Honda and Mazda, as well as each other these days.
So Errol Rasit's observation is valid. There was a migration -- I know, because my old 32 and 64-bit RISC code is a headache to port to x64, unless it is abstracted. The current registers however handle old CISC x86 code just fine.
Yeah; I've been wondering what exactly they mean by UNIX here -- are we talking POSIX compliant OS (they almost all are these days), something based on BSD/AT&T code (BSD derivatives like OS X and FreeBSD, plus SVr3+ derivatives like HP:UX) are are we talking purely SVR 4+, and thereby mean SCO offerings when we say UNIX?
See http://www.levenez.com/unix/ for a nice list of UNIXes. Interestingly, Windows NT isn't there, even though it is POSIX compliant.
Yes, but the FCC has already been slapped down for this kind of action in the past decade; it's way outside their purview. This should belong to the FTC or the ITU.
If the suddenly lifespan tripled, and people died at the same rate as born, then the population would triple before it would stabilize. If lifespan tripling was also accompanied by our current population growth, then it would much more than triple. And if lifespan tripling also meant reproductive years tripled, then woah, we really have a huge population crisis on hand.
Lifespan tripling could mean reproductive years tripled for men, but women have a limited number of eggs. There's have to be more going on than just cellular preservation to create more eggs during embryonic development.
And tripled possible lifespan doesn't mean everyone living to fulfill that lifespan; the average human lifespan is currently sitting at 67, even though people can comfortably live into their 90's given the right conditions. This kind of points to the fact that roughly 70% of the world's population isn't dying of "old age". Of course, many are already dying of starvation and treatable ailments, and that may increase with the longer potential lifespan.
Wrong. We don't even have the logistics in place to feed half of this planet. You think doubling or tripling the lifespan is going to fix that problem? You're sorely mistaken. Source: I'm a horticultural research director, and I do this globally. You're so off base it's not even funny.
I agree about the logistics about feeding the planet; sustaining is a different issue in my idea. The problem isn't food shortage, it's logistics and politics. However, my comment was assuming the logistics issue was fixed, as in order to provide the entire population with this miracle cure for aging, the same logistics would have to be overcome in the distribution network. What I was saying is that doubling or tripling lifespan isn't really going to make a difference.
Something else I mentioned in one of my other comments: doubling or tripling cellular lifespan won't make much of a difference to generational population anyway, as most people will die before they're 130 irrespective of cellular lifespan. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate -- as people get older, the odds of dying catch up with them, whether it be by externally imposed death or internal complications. Most likely, aging is tied to cancer, and is also related to strokes and heart failure -- so if we "cure" aging, those other illnesses will also be fully understood and treatable (assuming people are willing to undergo the treatment, which will likely consist of gene therapy combined with diet and exercise regimen).
So doubling or tripling the lifespan won't fix the problem, but neither will it impact it in any meaningful way, other than possibly to make people think more about long-range consequences of their actions (which may help or hinder the logistics issue).
As much as I like the idea of a longer life, there is simply no way our planet will support it. Which means it would be a perk for the wealthy and influential, rather than the unwashed masses. Nothing good could come from that.
How many people do you know that "live out their years"? Longer life really wouldn't affect us much; most people would still die by heart disease/stroke/cancer/car crash/etc. And as you live longer, the law of averages catches up with you. Longer cellular life just means a higher chance of death by violence or suffering. You'll still see very few people live past 130.
Actually, if people continue to have the same number of children they do now, and our lifespan doubled (or tripled), we'd have a brief period of doubling or tripling the population, and then the rate of growth would fall back to original levels as people started dying again.
For most longer-living and/or higher educated cultures, the birth rate is already closely tracking the death rate. For those with a shorter lifespan, women are already limited to the number of children they can have in their lifetime, and the number wouldn't change.
Short story: the sooner we expand our lives, the better, as we can sustain doubling the population _now_, but that might not be the case after we travel further along the growth curve.
Slashdot Mirror
Care to explain immortality after death to me? Just how does that work? I die, yet I'm immortal?
You're right; immortal is a misnomer. Maybe multimortal? But this could already be claimed by reincarnationalists.... demortalized?
As TWiTfan implied, this is one of those extremely rare examples where trickle-down economics actually works. Someone has figured out a way besides "Art" to get wealthy people to trickle some of their money out.
Seems to me it's more the opposite; instead of this money going into general circulation, it's being frozen :D
seems like this might not be very well thought out...
Canada's Really Big
These things are a menace. I lived in Colorado and they would routinely plant themselves into our apartment complex public space, making it unusable for long stretches of winter.
If *you* think it's unusable now, how do you think the Geese feel about an apartment complex taking over *their* public space?
If you were stupid enough to wander into the park area, a host of them would waddle up to you and attack, and they left a huge amount of green goose crap all over the place. If I had thought of using one of those little toy helicopters at the time to scare em off, I would have.
I think the problem with the drone plan is that just like how the Geese got used to humans in your apartment complex and now show no fear of them, they'll eventually get used to the drones unless the drones start attacking and killing them.
Actually, they probably won't. The reason for this is that the drone is using a standard bird of prey flight attack vector. This should also be fairly successful against seagulls and pigeons (although due to the lack of flocking of those two birds, others will quickly return to take the place of those who left).
Non-sequitur: all the current BSDs - FreeBSD, OpenBSD, NetBSD and any other derivatives are FOSS, even if not GPL, and so BigDaveyL is right - one could get, say, FreeBSD at a fraction of the cost of HP/UX, either on the same Itanium hardware, or on cheaper x64 boxes. For that matter, even the Linux Foundation could, if they cared, get Linux certified by the Open Group. But neither have thought that it's worth it.
Exactly -- the real thing that's dying is the certification and the licensing, not the technology.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the other part: if they did revive your body, you'd likely wake up to find your body only had weeks to live, as your it would be defenseless against the "modern" microorganisms it would encounter.
Because evolution happens so fast in 500 years? Yeah the microorganisms might change, but I highly doubt that 10 generations is that big of a deal for humans. ie: It's a long time with respect to technology, but not a long time with respect to human genetic drift.
What does human physiology have to do with it? If people 10 generations ago were exposed to the pathogens we take for granted, they'd kill them... the "common cold" would likely wipe out anyone from the 1800's in short order. The issue isn't human genetic shift, but viral mutation.
Let me pull out a rhetorical stick I've been beaten with more than once: "extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof."
Show me the evidence that ressurecting a dead organism of any kind -- even a bacterium, even a plant -- will ever be possible. *Ever.*
(crickets chirp ...)
On the other hand, if the brain can be scanned, it may be possible in the future to model the body in a new container. This information could still possibly be extracted from the existing popsicle, even with cellular degeneration due to crystallization (computers of the future could trace back the degeneration to reconstruct the original state).
I know people that read the Bible and are now dead. Do they get a refund or what?
Probably not; the people who wrote the Bible were long dead before it was compiled. I think the refund would be void based on "breach of warranty" anyway.
Oh, and I forgot to mention the other part: if they did revive your body, you'd likely wake up to find your body only had weeks to live, as your it would be defenseless against the "modern" microorganisms it would encounter.
I'm not seeing an advantage here. If I wake up in an age with a lobster, cyclops, rastafarian bureaucrat and obnoxious robot, I might be inclined to exclaim, "Excellent news everyone!"
More likely you'll wake up to find you're now Holly, as that process is a tad cheaper than full biological revival.
Last I've checked, VLIW isn't even in desktop CPUs. And Intel's Itanium failed EPICly. In embedded, VLIW are purely an Intel thing and minor ARM dominance.
As for your "old 32 and 64-bit RISC code", can you post a snippet? I've only seen MIPS64 so far but I'm a little curious about ARMv7's if that's what you're referring to... Or is it something different altogether?
I was actually referring to PowerPC 970 bog-standard code. You're right though; I'm mixing my desktop and mobile chipsets.
It has become pretty obvious that doing anything to help out DARPA is just going to be used against all of us, one way or another.
I can't believe people are still willing to participate in this stuff.
This.
Knowing what we know now, anyone who assists DARPA or any TLA is actively working against their own people, and should be regarded as a traitorous persona non grata.
Indeed I can't believe all the people who are still willing to participate in DARPA programs like, say, the Internet. Give them their tubes back already!
I fully agree with you, including the Continuum part, but couldn't you put a spoiler alert before saying it? If I hadn't watched it I would be pretty much pissed off.
S/Continuum/Matrix/
That better?
Or do we still need a spoiler alert for that one too?
Windows is POSIX compliant, although not a certified UNIX. Other than Linux/GNU, there are only a few niche OSes out there these days that AREN'T (or couldn't be, if someone applied for certification) UNIX.
Errol Rasit, research director at Gartner, concurs that the primary cause of Unix weakness over the past decade is migration from the RISC platform to x86-processor based alternatives, which can run many Unix workloads, usually at attractive price/performance ratios.
x86 has been implemented on a RISC based core ever since the PentiumPro. RISC won. It didn't wither away. That transition made possible a performance boost allowing Intel to compete against the home-grown processors of the traditional Unix vendors who lacked the cash to invest in fab advancements needed to match pace.
Such are the fools pandering their vaunted "analysis" to the media these days.
Sorry, but it didn't win. RISC didn't get clobbered by CISC or vice versa; rather, they both got consumed by VLIW. VLIW pipelining made the debate over instruction set complexity meaningless, as you get custom sets based on which pipeline is used, due to long instruction chains. You could argue that at the core of each VLIW chip you have a RISC; but you could also argue that the result is really an extremely CISC. It's kind of like arguing about Toyota vs Ford, when in reality, they both have components made by Honda and Mazda, as well as each other these days.
So Errol Rasit's observation is valid. There was a migration -- I know, because my old 32 and 64-bit RISC code is a headache to port to x64, unless it is abstracted. The current registers however handle old CISC x86 code just fine.
GNU doesn't really apply to *BSD -- any BSD that wants to pay the fee can pretty much become UNIX.
So does this really mean that there are fewer licenses being sold?
Yeah; I've been wondering what exactly they mean by UNIX here -- are we talking POSIX compliant OS (they almost all are these days), something based on BSD/AT&T code (BSD derivatives like OS X and FreeBSD, plus SVr3+ derivatives like HP:UX) are are we talking purely SVR 4+, and thereby mean SCO offerings when we say UNIX?
See http://www.levenez.com/unix/ for a nice list of UNIXes. Interestingly, Windows NT isn't there, even though it is POSIX compliant.
Yes, but the FCC has already been slapped down for this kind of action in the past decade; it's way outside their purview. This should belong to the FTC or the ITU.
http://www.zeroshare.info/
http://web.archive.org/web/20130815235729/http://martinmanleylifeanddeath.com as well, which is guaranteed to reflect the original.
If the suddenly lifespan tripled, and people died at the same rate as born, then the population would triple before it would stabilize. If lifespan tripling was also accompanied by our current population growth, then it would much more than triple. And if lifespan tripling also meant reproductive years tripled, then woah, we really have a huge population crisis on hand.
Lifespan tripling could mean reproductive years tripled for men, but women have a limited number of eggs. There's have to be more going on than just cellular preservation to create more eggs during embryonic development.
And tripled possible lifespan doesn't mean everyone living to fulfill that lifespan; the average human lifespan is currently sitting at 67, even though people can comfortably live into their 90's given the right conditions. This kind of points to the fact that roughly 70% of the world's population isn't dying of "old age". Of course, many are already dying of starvation and treatable ailments, and that may increase with the longer potential lifespan.
But they do have a resource consumption problem...
They also have a growing healthy lifestyle problem, which will kill them off irregardless of this technology.
"we can sustain doubling the population _now_,"
Wrong. We don't even have the logistics in place to feed half of this planet. You think doubling or tripling the lifespan is going to fix that problem? You're sorely mistaken.
Source: I'm a horticultural research director, and I do this globally. You're so off base it's not even funny.
I agree about the logistics about feeding the planet; sustaining is a different issue in my idea. The problem isn't food shortage, it's logistics and politics. However, my comment was assuming the logistics issue was fixed, as in order to provide the entire population with this miracle cure for aging, the same logistics would have to be overcome in the distribution network. What I was saying is that doubling or tripling lifespan isn't really going to make a difference.
Something else I mentioned in one of my other comments: doubling or tripling cellular lifespan won't make much of a difference to generational population anyway, as most people will die before they're 130 irrespective of cellular lifespan. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_causes_of_death_by_rate -- as people get older, the odds of dying catch up with them, whether it be by externally imposed death or internal complications. Most likely, aging is tied to cancer, and is also related to strokes and heart failure -- so if we "cure" aging, those other illnesses will also be fully understood and treatable (assuming people are willing to undergo the treatment, which will likely consist of gene therapy combined with diet and exercise regimen).
So doubling or tripling the lifespan won't fix the problem, but neither will it impact it in any meaningful way, other than possibly to make people think more about long-range consequences of their actions (which may help or hinder the logistics issue).
You're going to have to "cure" starvation due to crushing population growth first.
No, that problem is self-correcting.
As much as I like the idea of a longer life, there is simply no way our planet will support it. Which means it would be a perk for the wealthy and influential, rather than the unwashed masses. Nothing good could come from that.
How many people do you know that "live out their years"? Longer life really wouldn't affect us much; most people would still die by heart disease/stroke/cancer/car crash/etc. And as you live longer, the law of averages catches up with you. Longer cellular life just means a higher chance of death by violence or suffering. You'll still see very few people live past 130.
Actually, if people continue to have the same number of children they do now, and our lifespan doubled (or tripled), we'd have a brief period of doubling or tripling the population, and then the rate of growth would fall back to original levels as people started dying again.
For most longer-living and/or higher educated cultures, the birth rate is already closely tracking the death rate. For those with a shorter lifespan, women are already limited to the number of children they can have in their lifetime, and the number wouldn't change.
Short story: the sooner we expand our lives, the better, as we can sustain doubling the population _now_, but that might not be the case after we travel further along the growth curve.