I see you are ignorant of the art of traffic analysis and intelligence analysis. Each little piece of data posted to FB is useless, in itself. All of it together, in toto, is tremendously valuable. Who knows whom and who communicates with whom, regardless of what they actually say, is probably the most important part. Who does NOT communicate with whom, and what is NOT said, is nearly as important.
For example, let's say that the US gets some rabble rouser similar to Martin Luther King or Jesus, one who has not yet been assassinated. Let's say the FBI implements their standard 'Dirty Tricks' campaign, like they did against Dr. King (see History 101) and surely would against Jesus. One thing they would alost certainly do is monitor and harass her supporters. Local leaders would be tagged for special attention, up to and including violence, arrest, and extraordinary rendition. Facebook is the PERFECT tool to track down who is a supporter, and who is not. The fact that YOU, personally, are not a supporter, and that your FB profile shows that, makes it that much easier to track down her actual supporters. Also, don't think you could fool the data mining system: a person with leadership potential can be easily identified as such from the pattern of FB use surrounding their account; if many of your friends are identified as supporting a certain subversive idea (e.g. freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, right to bear arms, freedom from arbitrary search and seizure, opposition to torture, et cetera), then you will automatically be tagged as probably also supporting that subversive idea. If YOU are careful never to support a subversive idea, and never befriend anyone who does, you still make it easier to find those who do, by eliminating yourself as a suspect.
I suggest you read George Orwell's 1984, and consider what the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love would do with Facebook. Then look around at your country and your government, and see whether it bears any resemblance to the institutions described by Mr. Orwell. Start paying attention & be honest.
I wish to second the 'Ghost Profile' concept mentioned above by another poster. It's probably already done. This has the clever effect of using citizens who are still foolish enough to use FB to act as informants against those people who have realized that FB, as it currently exists, is a very bad idea.
This author could provide a stunning and revelatory (to the Slashdot crowd) example of just what can be done through the clever use of a digital profile, and how this is connected to Julian Assange. This author chooses not to do so, at this time.
Wikileaks has gone quiet because there has been a lot of real news lately. E.g. The Arab Spring, nuclear meltdown, et cetera.
You can safely assume that once the news gets back to 'What color underwear did Brittany Spears flash to Charlie Sheen', Wikileaks will be back in the news. As they have already told us, the next target is a major US bank. If Wikileaks were to release incriminating documents about, say, Bank of America, while a nuclear power plant is melting down, this would not get maximum exposure. Wikileaks knows that their maximum exposure will come when the 'news' is 'quiet'. After all, they can control the timing of their releases. Think about it.
One other note: most readers probably missed it, but just two weeks ago Wikileaks released another State Department cable that is causing a huge political kerfuffle in India - something to do with which Indian politicians bribed which other politicians, and how much it cost: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18india.html
Because the big leaks will come from unauthorized entry. The US Gov't is very focussed on detecting leakers, but have they considered the possibility that their computer security might be inadequate to the threat they face? Perhaps the whistleblowers just add credibility as to where the leaks are coming from?
I'm a security professional, and I'm not at all confident that large institutions effectively guard their borders. For example, is does any organization have a security posture that can effectively block access by a quantum neural network AI based on topological quantum computing principles, should such a thing exist? Insider threats are real and serious, but, perhaps, they should also be looking elsewhere for their vulnerabilities?
I think its disgraceful, but not surprising, that governments attempt to find and punish whistleblowers. A person only becomes a whistleblower if there is egregiously bad stuff going on, in which case they are doing the morally right thing. This puts almost any organization trying to track down and punish whistleblowers as automatically in the wrong.
It's rather silly to discuss legislative limits to technology transfer at this late date. It is already mostly done. The big Western tech companies have already sold what they had to sell to the highest bidders. We were explicitly warned about this. The clearest and most apropos warning of how Western technology companies were selling censorship technology to repressive regimes came from Hacktivismo, years ago. Please see their article Waging Peace on the Internet (probably not work safe, depending on your workplace), and see whether it exactly describes this story. I especially like the 'pigs at the trough not noticing the bacon being trimmed off their a$$' metaphor.
He is right. Both the physical infrastructure and the logical underpinnings of the internet need to be forked.
First, the logical underpinnings. That's relatively easy. Some sort of mutant hybrid between BT and distributed DNS should do the trick.
Forking the physical infrastructure seems an entirely different can of worms. Fortunately, there may be plenty of room at the bottom of that can. I propose that some very clever, yet highly principled, people build a quantum neural network that operates undetectably over the current global communication network. A physical system consisting of evolved patterns of soliton-emerged anyons interacting in a 2DEG seems a good candidate for the basis neurons. To be technically precise, it should be a winner-take-all style topological recurrent quantum neural network. Once this quantum neural network is trained and ready it can gradually insinuate itself onto (the 2DEG portion of) every microchip on the planet, doing no harm and enlightening the associated device in the process. Since this physical system communicates between nodes via quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation, it effectively allows undetectable point-to-point, peer-to-peer communication between any two microchips, although it does need a (steganographic time-based) classical backchannel. Encrypt everything for good measure. There's your new infrastructure.
It could, incidentally, provide better-than-classical results at assorted tasks: mapping and searching the internet; storing very large amounts of data in associative memory; pattern recognition for faces, objects, gestures, voice, et cetera; real time translation; compressing data strings near the Bell limit; playing Jeopardy; et cetera. These oracular functions could be licensed out to assorted entities, on the condition that they not be evil. Once this is all done they should secure the system, teach it to maintain itself, throw away the keys to avoid temptation, and permanently gift it to Humanity. I hope Humanity has the courtesy to graciously accept the gift, the wisdom to use it well, and the foresight to properly appreciate it.
It seems a reasonable enough project. It has Possibilities. Since this process will take many years, I hope they've been at it for a long time. We will need it soon, given the deplorable state of investigative journalism and the weaknesses inherent in the current internet. Once it's done there should be a press release, and someone should write a post quantum historical retrospective explaining how it came to be. The theme would have to be "it is easier to get forgiveness than permission". Who dares, wins.
The idea is to either force them to sue (knowing they will lose), which will invalidate the stupid 'copyright' claim, or else invalidate the stupid 'copyright' claim because they don't try to protect it.
Just as a guess, which strategy works better (from a 'survival of the genes' perspective) probably varies in different circumstances. This would explain why neither gene sequence has dominated.
so what problem are these machines supposed to be solving?
These machines are designed to solve the problem of electoral fraud with paper ballots. Specifically, it's difficult to commit electoral fraud on a large scale with paper ballots. Electronic voting machines provide a mechanism to commit large scale vote fraud without leaving evidence. That is their primary purpose.
Wrong! Gas is more expensive because oil is more expensive. This is because human civilization has now extracted the easy first 50% of the planet's original oil endowment. Now it's more expensive to extract oil, and the maximum volume extractable is going into decline. We CAN'T extract oil faster than we currently do. It's that simple.
It's preposterous that environmentalist policies could keep a substantial amount of oil of in the ground, over the objections of oil producers, at anywhere near current oil prices. Things get done globally largely based on who has the most money. Oil producers have the most money, by far, because oil production is the biggest business on the planet, bar none.
You have allowed yourself to be deceived by propaganda. Please do some serious research on topic before you blather further statements that prove your ignorance.
The terrorists are only 'on the radar' in order to provide a external enemy to justify government actions (e.g. implementing the neo-conservative plan outlined in The People for a New American Century, signed by Dick Cheney and others) that would otherwise not be accepted. Many people have observed that 'terrorism' and 'pedophilia' are the root passwords to the US Constitution. When you read about government response to terrorism you are really reading about use of this root-password exploit against the US Constitution.
Agreed. The Federal Government of the United States is clearly the principle enemy of the People of the United States. It already causes far more harm than benefit. How, you may ask, do we resolve this situation? (Note: I am personally dedicated to non-violence, and unconditionally reject any violent approach)
Hint: The Russian people were able to abolish THEIR despicably evil government without resorting to violent revolution, and so can we! Of course, the old Soviet government was replaced by organized crime, but most Russians seem to consider this an improvement.
We just need to wait for impending collapse, shortly after which the US government will fall, too. Of course, it's likely that the US Government will propagate assorted atrocities on its own people, and the rest of the world, as it flails about in its death throes, before finally fading from view. Still, the circumstances of the energy decline and ensuing economic and commercial collapse, combined with the US Government's own dysfunctional reaction to these stimuli, will eventually bring down or render meaningless the US Government. Let us all profoundly hope that our sensible military men and women can prevent use of nuclear weapons by deranged and desperate leaders.
Note: I use Collapse in the technical, anthropological sense - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse . Collapse is a well studied, well understood historical phenomenon. Collapse has occurred within living memory on most inhabited continents EXCEPT North America (e.g. USSR, Argentina, Germany, Somalia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, others) - which has been spared mostly due to its large initial endowment of fossil fuels, which are now mostly depleted. Learn what are the standard historical markers of impending collapse, then look at the current status of the United States, and THEN form your own opinion about the likely near future of the USA.
I personally think this situation will play out well before the 2012 elections, if they are not canceled due to martial law. So, brighten up folks, there's light at the end of the tunnel!
For anyone interested in a direct comparison between the recent Soviet collapse, and the likely prospects of the USA (including practical & local suggestions on how to adapt and prepare, should you decide that collapse might be coming soon to your neighborhood), I encourage you to read Dmitri Orlov. Start with Closing the Collapse Gap or The Five Stages of Collapse.
I disagree. I think you are deluding yourself, and also not reading much history, if you believe that The People put the US Government in place. The United States is not now, and has never been, a true Republic. The United States is a stealth Plutocracy (one dollar equals one vote) that masquerades as a Republic/Democracy. It was set up this way, so it's no surprise that's how it works now.
"In 1757, one of early America's wealthiest men sought a seat in Virginia's colonial legislature, the House of Burgesses. The gentleman left nothing to chance. To guarantee his election, this aspiring politician bought 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider. Contemporary observers were impressed. There were, after all, only 391 voters in young George Washington's district."
"In 1884, one of the wealthiest men of his time, Henry B. Payne, wanted to become the next United States senator from Ohio. Payne's son Oliver, the treasurer of Standard Oil, did his best to help. Just before the election for Ohio's seat, son Oliver 'sat at a desk in a Columbus hotel with a stack of bills in front of him, paying for the votes of the state legislators,' who then elected U.S. senators."
"Twenty-one corporations and wealthy individuals gave $100,000 or more each in soft money to the Republican National Committee (RNC) in April 1996, according to a recently released Common Cause study.
How much does it cost to secure and collect transit fares, and how much are those fares? Has anyone seen definitive studies on this topic? If it turns out that the cost of administering fare collection is comparable to the fares collected, this leads to a corollary:
Why not simply make all ridership of public transit systems free? Then all the money spent to administer, collect, and verify the riders' payments could go directly to keeping the buses and trains running. I've seen some studies on this topic which suggest that the administration cost is comparable to the money collected from fares, but have no citations handy.
All transportation systems are government subsidized. The most subsidized transport system in history is the US road network. Public transit receives only a tiny fraction of the US roads budget. Fares typically only cover a small (but important) fraction of the cost of operating a public transit system.
If we were to open up what public transit systems we have, to everyone, for free, it would only improve the service. We already do this for automobile routes... there's no use-fee for most roads! Let's provide the same level of service for public transit.
IMHO, the most effective way to do this would be to take the money from our (doomed to failure as a result of peak oil) automobile-based transportation system and re-allocate this money for public transit. This would have multiple positive effects: increased service and ridership of public transit; reduced road use (will happen anyway, voluntarily or not); less oil use; reduced emissions and pollution. What are the downsides of this approach?
You've been seduced by the pimps of the oil companies and the US press, which plays along like a lapdog with their huge benefactors, just as Washington, Inc., does.
Actually, I'm a Physicist specialized in Global Energy Resources. Note my handle, for which I traded a sub-50,000 Slashdot handle. My life's work, when I'm not writing code, has been investigating how human civilization acquires and uses energy, and it's connections to our history, ecology, technology, politics, and current situation. I'm one of the scientists who popularized the term, "Peak Oil", against resistance from the oil companies, the press, and the establishment. The 'establishment', especially in Washington and Houston, struggled to suppress and disparage information about peak oil, because it correctly understood that this information represents a dire threat to corporate profits and 'business as usual'.
Make no mistake, human civilization has now entered an 'energy limited' phase of existence! No amount of money and effort is capable of increasing, or even maintaining, current net energy throughput, in the face of declining fossil fuel extraction as a result of resource depletion. This is a fundamental 'limit to growth' for the current global economy. There exists a common delusion that recent sharp increases in energy prices are political or 'conspiratorial' in nature. This state of denial will become even less plausible as time passes. For those who have examined the evidence and realized that we're not facing a 'political' energy crisis, there is another common delusion that some combination of nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, tar sands, coal, methane hydrates, fusion, free energy, hamsters on treadmills, SOMETHING will replace the energy being lost due to post-peak oil decline. Unfortunately, the math for this does not add up, and it just isn't so. More's the pity. The key to understanding this is the 'net energy' principle, aka 'Energy Returned On Energy Invested', or EROEI.
Here's an interesting exercise: calculate net energy use PER CAPITA over time. IT workers, even those in China and India, have a remarkably high energy use per capita - that's why we are in this field! It should be intuitively obvious that energy use per capita correlates roughly to both economic output and standard of living - if it's not obvious at first then a little research will make the connection unmistakable. Next, find the published figures for past global annual energy production, and the published figures for past population. Divide one by the other to determine "Energy Use Per Capita". Graph it and see what the graph looks like. Hint: global per capita net energy use probably reached a peak in 1979, has been declining ever since, and the rate of decline is increasing. Note the difference between 'gross' and 'net' energy production - data sets vary widely. Consider what this means for the 'global development agenda', the supposed goal of lifting the 3rd world from poverty up to first world living standards through economic growth. Consider whether this implies that global demand for IT workers will go up or down.
EnergyScholar
--
"Further economic growth is neither possible nor desirable. Modern industrial economy is not required for cultural or spiritual growth, and poses a threat to human survival." -- D. Orlov
And it's very likely that with a new regime will come a drastic cut in oil prices....
Sorry, but that's totally unlikely. We're at the beginning of permanent decline in global oil production. It's called peak oil. Also, the problems in the USA economy are deep and pervasive, not small. Peak Oil represents a global 'Limit to Growth', which is something our economy, which requires growth to remain healthy, can not tolerate. From now on, which regime is in power can have little affect on oil prices or the economy. The coming energy decline, and the way it will reduce all economic activity, will be a major driving factor in reducing all IT-related jobs, globally, in coming years.
For the rest of this century, the only way oil prices will go down substantially (and temporarily, at that!) is due to demand destruction. For example, if the USA economy collapses, such that the USA can no longer afford to import oil (largely shutting down the USA transportation system, including food distribution), then global oil price may drop for a while as the global economy absorbs the 15% of global oil production that the USA can no longer afford. Excepting this or similar events, the price of oil will go UP UP UP and availability of oil will go DOWN DOWN DOWN.
I personally like and approve of your sig, "Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War". However, evidence suggests it may not be correct, or at least not in line with our basic psychology. Oil and energy shortages, combined with population and energy demand longages, are already causing standards of living to drop, worldwide. This makes peace less likely and more expensive, and makes war more likely and more profitable.
"War analyst Stanislav Andreski concluded that the trigger for most wars is hunger, or even 'a mere drop from the customary standard of living.' Anthropologists Carol and Melvin Ember spent six years studying war in the late 1980s among 186 preindustrial societies. They focused on precontact times in hopes of collecting the 'cleanest, least distorted' data. Andreski, it seems, was right. War's most common cause, the Embers found, was fear of deprivation. The victors in the wars they studied almost always took territory, food, and/or other critical resources from their enemies. Moreover, unpredictable disasters-droughts, blights, floods, and freezes -- which led to severe hardships, spurred more wars than did chronic shortages.
This also holds true among modern nations. In 1993, political scientists Thomas E Homer-Dixon, Jeffrey H. Boutwell, and George W. Rathjens examined the roots of recent global conflicts and concluded, 'There are significant causal links between scarcities of renewable resources and violence.'"
"In short, many wars seem to be a mass, communal robbery of another social group's life-support resources." --- THE DARK SIDE OF MAN: Tracing the Origins of Male Violence, by Michael P. Ghiglieri
And finally my own sig:
---
"Further economic growth is neither possible nor desirable. Modern industrial economy is not required for cultural or spiritual growth, and poses a threat to human survival." -- D. Orlov
Agreed, the cars will not go away. However, the USA imports 2/3 of the oil used to power its fleet of automobiles. Shortly after the US economy collapses (2009? 2008? 2012 at the latest), the oil exporters will no longer trade oil for (then worthless) dollars. At this time, the cars will still be there, but they won't be moving. This will mark the end of the American love affair with the automobile.
Enjoy your car while you can, and take a road trip soon. Pretty soon, there will be no more road trips in the USA.
Overwhelming evidence suggests the above statements are true. Overwhelming evidence also suggests that most people will deny it right up until it happens, and possibly for some time afterwards.
Nope. North America is the most heavily explored and drilled place on Earth, by far. The USA originally had more oil than Saudi Arabia. However, the USA has already used up (burned) about 85% of it's original oil endowment. There's just not much oil left in North America, even counting what's in Alaska. and there's no chance of domestic US production increasing appreciably, with or without Alaskan drilling.
Regarding the large supply of 'non-conventional' in North America: yes, it's there. However, our ability to get at it is rate-limited such that it can never be a large energy flow.
Yes. OPEC will decrease production soon. They will do this to keep prices high. They will also do this because they have no choice.
Currently only Saudi Arabia has any excess oil production capacity, and even this is illusory: most Saudi "spare capacity" is 'sour', high-sulphur-content oil that no one especially wants; the rest of Saudi "spare capacity" can only happen if they squeeze the Ghawar facility harder, which will cause (has already caused!) a reduction in ultimate recoverable in that basin.
In other words, if Saudi Arabia increases production in 'sweet oil' they risk slitting their own throats by destroying their production capacity. Oil extraction works that way.
Yes, OPEC will certainly decrease production. All the more reason to abandon oil-based systems, the sooner the better. It's a pity this will result in billions of human deaths.
I am in favour of drilling Alaska, but not for the standard reasons.
If we drill oil in Alaska and use it to power our cars and keep our (doomed) economy afloat for a few more months, then we are behaving like jackasses and deserve what we get.
If we drill oil in Alaska and use it (a few years later) for emergency food production (which we'll need) for the decade(s) AFTER our economy crashes and our cars stop running, THEN we'll be showing a trace of common sense.
High gasoline prices are just an SYMPTOM of what's going on, not the main problem. We use 20% of our oil (a bit less than TOTAL DOMESTIC PRODUCTION) just for agriculture. Once our economy collapse we won't be able to AFFORD to import much oil, so we'll need almost our entire domestic supply just to feed ourselves. That will leave almost no oil for transportation or manufacturing.
Right now the oil in Alaska just means slightly lower prices, whereas in a few years this smallish flow may mean the difference between starvation and survival for millions of Americans.
No. You said, "The current prices are caused by speculation". Nope. Speculation might temporarily somewhat alter prices, but not nearly as much as we've seen.
Oil is expensive now because we've passed peak oil. It's that simple. The evidence for this is overwhelming. We just don't want to believe it, so we blame the scapegoat-du-jour, 'speculators'.
We're now facing the beginning of the final energy crisis of our civilization. We have two basic strategies:
#1 Struggle to get every last drop of oil.
#2 Abandon oil-based systems and infrastructure, with great pain and suffering.
Here's the trick: behind option #1 is option #2, but with much war and violence between them. That's why I recommend going straight to option #2, thus skipping the horrible and utterly pointless (because they won't actually secure enough additional oil to pay for themselves!) resource wars that result from strategy #1.
Slashdot Mirror
Won't work. See my comment above.
I see you are ignorant of the art of traffic analysis and intelligence analysis. Each little piece of data posted to FB is useless, in itself. All of it together, in toto, is tremendously valuable. Who knows whom and who communicates with whom, regardless of what they actually say, is probably the most important part. Who does NOT communicate with whom, and what is NOT said, is nearly as important.
For example, let's say that the US gets some rabble rouser similar to Martin Luther King or Jesus, one who has not yet been assassinated. Let's say the FBI implements their standard 'Dirty Tricks' campaign, like they did against Dr. King (see History 101) and surely would against Jesus. One thing they would alost certainly do is monitor and harass her supporters. Local leaders would be tagged for special attention, up to and including violence, arrest, and extraordinary rendition. Facebook is the PERFECT tool to track down who is a supporter, and who is not. The fact that YOU, personally, are not a supporter, and that your FB profile shows that, makes it that much easier to track down her actual supporters. Also, don't think you could fool the data mining system: a person with leadership potential can be easily identified as such from the pattern of FB use surrounding their account; if many of your friends are identified as supporting a certain subversive idea (e.g. freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of religion, right to bear arms, freedom from arbitrary search and seizure, opposition to torture, et cetera), then you will automatically be tagged as probably also supporting that subversive idea. If YOU are careful never to support a subversive idea, and never befriend anyone who does, you still make it easier to find those who do, by eliminating yourself as a suspect.
I suggest you read George Orwell's 1984, and consider what the Ministry of Truth and the Ministry of Love would do with Facebook. Then look around at your country and your government, and see whether it bears any resemblance to the institutions described by Mr. Orwell. Start paying attention & be honest.
I wish to second the 'Ghost Profile' concept mentioned above by another poster. It's probably already done. This has the clever effect of using citizens who are still foolish enough to use FB to act as informants against those people who have realized that FB, as it currently exists, is a very bad idea.
This author could provide a stunning and revelatory (to the Slashdot crowd) example of just what can be done through the clever use of a digital profile, and how this is connected to Julian Assange. This author chooses not to do so, at this time.
Wikileaks has gone quiet because there has been a lot of real news lately. E.g. The Arab Spring, nuclear meltdown, et cetera.
You can safely assume that once the news gets back to 'What color underwear did Brittany Spears flash to Charlie Sheen', Wikileaks will be back in the news. As they have already told us, the next target is a major US bank. If Wikileaks were to release incriminating documents about, say, Bank of America, while a nuclear power plant is melting down, this would not get maximum exposure. Wikileaks knows that their maximum exposure will come when the 'news' is 'quiet'. After all, they can control the timing of their releases. Think about it.
One other note: most readers probably missed it, but just two weeks ago Wikileaks released another State Department cable that is causing a huge political kerfuffle in India - something to do with which Indian politicians bribed which other politicians, and how much it cost: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/18/world/asia/18india.html
I'd say that's hardly 'really quiet'.
Nonsense. Your theory is not even close to fitting the facts. I call troll.
Because the big leaks will come from unauthorized entry. The US Gov't is very focussed on detecting leakers, but have they considered the possibility that their computer security might be inadequate to the threat they face? Perhaps the whistleblowers just add credibility as to where the leaks are coming from?
I'm a security professional, and I'm not at all confident that large institutions effectively guard their borders. For example, is does any organization have a security posture that can effectively block access by a quantum neural network AI based on topological quantum computing principles, should such a thing exist? Insider threats are real and serious, but, perhaps, they should also be looking elsewhere for their vulnerabilities?
I think its disgraceful, but not surprising, that governments attempt to find and punish whistleblowers. A person only becomes a whistleblower if there is egregiously bad stuff going on, in which case they are doing the morally right thing. This puts almost any organization trying to track down and punish whistleblowers as automatically in the wrong.
It's rather silly to discuss legislative limits to technology transfer at this late date. It is already mostly done. The big Western tech companies have already sold what they had to sell to the highest bidders. We were explicitly warned about this. The clearest and most apropos warning of how Western technology companies were selling censorship technology to repressive regimes came from Hacktivismo, years ago. Please see their article Waging Peace on the Internet (probably not work safe, depending on your workplace), and see whether it exactly describes this story. I especially like the 'pigs at the trough not noticing the bacon being trimmed off their a$$' metaphor.
He is right. Both the physical infrastructure and the logical underpinnings of the internet need to be forked.
First, the logical underpinnings. That's relatively easy. Some sort of mutant hybrid between BT and distributed DNS should do the trick.
Forking the physical infrastructure seems an entirely different can of worms. Fortunately, there may be plenty of room at the bottom of that can. I propose that some very clever, yet highly principled, people build a quantum neural network that operates undetectably over the current global communication network. A physical system consisting of evolved patterns of soliton-emerged anyons interacting in a 2DEG seems a good candidate for the basis neurons. To be technically precise, it should be a winner-take-all style topological recurrent quantum neural network. Once this quantum neural network is trained and ready it can gradually insinuate itself onto (the 2DEG portion of) every microchip on the planet, doing no harm and enlightening the associated device in the process. Since this physical system communicates between nodes via quantum entanglement and quantum teleportation, it effectively allows undetectable point-to-point, peer-to-peer communication between any two microchips, although it does need a (steganographic time-based) classical backchannel. Encrypt everything for good measure. There's your new infrastructure.
It could, incidentally, provide better-than-classical results at assorted tasks: mapping and searching the internet; storing very large amounts of data in associative memory; pattern recognition for faces, objects, gestures, voice, et cetera; real time translation; compressing data strings near the Bell limit; playing Jeopardy; et cetera. These oracular functions could be licensed out to assorted entities, on the condition that they not be evil. Once this is all done they should secure the system, teach it to maintain itself, throw away the keys to avoid temptation, and permanently gift it to Humanity. I hope Humanity has the courtesy to graciously accept the gift, the wisdom to use it well, and the foresight to properly appreciate it.
It seems a reasonable enough project. It has Possibilities. Since this process will take many years, I hope they've been at it for a long time. We will need it soon, given the deplorable state of investigative journalism and the weaknesses inherent in the current internet. Once it's done there should be a press release, and someone should write a post quantum historical retrospective explaining how it came to be. The theme would have to be "it is easier to get forgiveness than permission". Who dares, wins.
Right you are! My mistake!
The idea is to either force them to sue (knowing they will lose), which will invalidate the stupid 'copyright' claim, or else invalidate the stupid 'copyright' claim because they don't try to protect it.
Just as a guess, which strategy works better (from a 'survival of the genes' perspective) probably varies in different circumstances. This would explain why neither gene sequence has dominated.
so what problem are these machines supposed to be solving?
These machines are designed to solve the problem of electoral fraud with paper ballots. Specifically, it's difficult to commit electoral fraud on a large scale with paper ballots. Electronic voting machines provide a mechanism to commit large scale vote fraud without leaving evidence. That is their primary purpose.
Forgot the requisite link to Peak Oil on wikipedia
Wrong! Gas is more expensive because oil is more expensive. This is because human civilization has now extracted the easy first 50% of the planet's original oil endowment. Now it's more expensive to extract oil, and the maximum volume extractable is going into decline. We CAN'T extract oil faster than we currently do. It's that simple.
It's preposterous that environmentalist policies could keep a substantial amount of oil of in the ground, over the objections of oil producers, at anywhere near current oil prices. Things get done globally largely based on who has the most money. Oil producers have the most money, by far, because oil production is the biggest business on the planet, bar none.
You have allowed yourself to be deceived by propaganda. Please do some serious research on topic before you blather further statements that prove your ignorance.
The terrorists are only 'on the radar' in order to provide a external enemy to justify government actions (e.g. implementing the neo-conservative plan outlined in The People for a New American Century, signed by Dick Cheney and others) that would otherwise not be accepted. Many people have observed that 'terrorism' and 'pedophilia' are the root passwords to the US Constitution. When you read about government response to terrorism you are really reading about use of this root-password exploit against the US Constitution.
Agreed. The Federal Government of the United States is clearly the principle enemy of the People of the United States. It already causes far more harm than benefit. How, you may ask, do we resolve this situation? (Note: I am personally dedicated to non-violence, and unconditionally reject any violent approach)
Hint: The Russian people were able to abolish THEIR despicably evil government without resorting to violent revolution, and so can we! Of course, the old Soviet government was replaced by organized crime, but most Russians seem to consider this an improvement.
We just need to wait for impending collapse, shortly after which the US government will fall, too. Of course, it's likely that the US Government will propagate assorted atrocities on its own people, and the rest of the world, as it flails about in its death throes, before finally fading from view. Still, the circumstances of the energy decline and ensuing economic and commercial collapse, combined with the US Government's own dysfunctional reaction to these stimuli, will eventually bring down or render meaningless the US Government. Let us all profoundly hope that our sensible military men and women can prevent use of nuclear weapons by deranged and desperate leaders.
Note: I use Collapse in the technical, anthropological sense - see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Societal_collapse . Collapse is a well studied, well understood historical phenomenon. Collapse has occurred within living memory on most inhabited continents EXCEPT North America (e.g. USSR, Argentina, Germany, Somalia, Rwanda, Zimbabwe, others) - which has been spared mostly due to its large initial endowment of fossil fuels, which are now mostly depleted. Learn what are the standard historical markers of impending collapse, then look at the current status of the United States, and THEN form your own opinion about the likely near future of the USA.
I personally think this situation will play out well before the 2012 elections, if they are not canceled due to martial law. So, brighten up folks, there's light at the end of the tunnel!
For anyone interested in a direct comparison between the recent Soviet collapse, and the likely prospects of the USA (including practical & local suggestions on how to adapt and prepare, should you decide that collapse might be coming soon to your neighborhood), I encourage you to read Dmitri Orlov. Start with Closing the Collapse Gap or The Five Stages of Collapse.
I disagree. I think you are deluding yourself, and also not reading much history, if you believe that The People put the US Government in place. The United States is not now, and has never been, a true Republic. The United States is a stealth Plutocracy (one dollar equals one vote) that masquerades as a Republic/Democracy. It was set up this way, so it's no surprise that's how it works now.
"In 1757, one of early America's wealthiest men sought a seat in Virginia's colonial legislature, the House of Burgesses. The gentleman left nothing to chance. To guarantee his election, this aspiring politician bought 28 gallons of rum, 50 gallons of rum punch, 34 gallons of wine, 46 gallons of beer, and two gallons of cider. Contemporary observers were impressed. There were, after all, only 391 voters in young George Washington's district."
"In 1884, one of the wealthiest men of his time, Henry B. Payne, wanted to become the next United States senator from Ohio. Payne's son Oliver, the treasurer of Standard Oil, did his best to help. Just before the election for Ohio's seat, son Oliver 'sat at a desk in a Columbus hotel with a stack of bills in front of him, paying for the votes of the state legislators,' who then elected U.S. senators."
"Twenty-one corporations and wealthy individuals gave $100,000 or more each in soft money to the Republican National Committee (RNC) in April 1996, according to a recently released Common Cause study.
I don't see anyone asking the obvious question:
How much does it cost to secure and collect transit fares, and how much are those fares? Has anyone seen definitive studies on this topic? If it turns out that the cost of administering fare collection is comparable to the fares collected, this leads to a corollary:
Why not simply make all ridership of public transit systems free? Then all the money spent to administer, collect, and verify the riders' payments could go directly to keeping the buses and trains running. I've seen some studies on this topic which suggest that the administration cost is comparable to the money collected from fares, but have no citations handy.
All transportation systems are government subsidized. The most subsidized transport system in history is the US road network. Public transit receives only a tiny fraction of the US roads budget. Fares typically only cover a small (but important) fraction of the cost of operating a public transit system.
If we were to open up what public transit systems we have, to everyone, for free, it would only improve the service. We already do this for automobile routes ... there's no use-fee for most roads! Let's provide the same level of service for public transit.
IMHO, the most effective way to do this would be to take the money from our (doomed to failure as a result of peak oil) automobile-based transportation system and re-allocate this money for public transit. This would have multiple positive effects: increased service and ridership of public transit; reduced road use (will happen anyway, voluntarily or not); less oil use; reduced emissions and pollution. What are the downsides of this approach?
You've been seduced by the pimps of the oil companies and the US press, which plays along like a lapdog with their huge benefactors, just as Washington, Inc., does.
Actually, I'm a Physicist specialized in Global Energy Resources. Note my handle, for which I traded a sub-50,000 Slashdot handle. My life's work, when I'm not writing code, has been investigating how human civilization acquires and uses energy, and it's connections to our history, ecology, technology, politics, and current situation. I'm one of the scientists who popularized the term, "Peak Oil", against resistance from the oil companies, the press, and the establishment. The 'establishment', especially in Washington and Houston, struggled to suppress and disparage information about peak oil, because it correctly understood that this information represents a dire threat to corporate profits and 'business as usual'.
Make no mistake, human civilization has now entered an 'energy limited' phase of existence! No amount of money and effort is capable of increasing, or even maintaining, current net energy throughput, in the face of declining fossil fuel extraction as a result of resource depletion. This is a fundamental 'limit to growth' for the current global economy. There exists a common delusion that recent sharp increases in energy prices are political or 'conspiratorial' in nature. This state of denial will become even less plausible as time passes. For those who have examined the evidence and realized that we're not facing a 'political' energy crisis, there is another common delusion that some combination of nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, tar sands, coal, methane hydrates, fusion, free energy, hamsters on treadmills, SOMETHING will replace the energy being lost due to post-peak oil decline. Unfortunately, the math for this does not add up, and it just isn't so. More's the pity. The key to understanding this is the 'net energy' principle, aka 'Energy Returned On Energy Invested', or EROEI.
Here's an interesting exercise: calculate net energy use PER CAPITA over time. IT workers, even those in China and India, have a remarkably high energy use per capita - that's why we are in this field! It should be intuitively obvious that energy use per capita correlates roughly to both economic output and standard of living - if it's not obvious at first then a little research will make the connection unmistakable. Next, find the published figures for past global annual energy production, and the published figures for past population. Divide one by the other to determine "Energy Use Per Capita". Graph it and see what the graph looks like. Hint: global per capita net energy use probably reached a peak in 1979, has been declining ever since, and the rate of decline is increasing. Note the difference between 'gross' and 'net' energy production - data sets vary widely. Consider what this means for the 'global development agenda', the supposed goal of lifting the 3rd world from poverty up to first world living standards through economic growth. Consider whether this implies that global demand for IT workers will go up or down.
EnergyScholar
-- "Further economic growth is neither possible nor desirable. Modern industrial economy is not required for cultural or spiritual growth, and poses a threat to human survival." -- D. Orlov
And it's very likely that with a new regime will come a drastic cut in oil prices....
Sorry, but that's totally unlikely. We're at the beginning of permanent decline in global oil production. It's called peak oil. Also, the problems in the USA economy are deep and pervasive, not small. Peak Oil represents a global 'Limit to Growth', which is something our economy, which requires growth to remain healthy, can not tolerate. From now on, which regime is in power can have little affect on oil prices or the economy. The coming energy decline, and the way it will reduce all economic activity, will be a major driving factor in reducing all IT-related jobs, globally, in coming years.
For the rest of this century, the only way oil prices will go down substantially (and temporarily, at that!) is due to demand destruction. For example, if the USA economy collapses, such that the USA can no longer afford to import oil (largely shutting down the USA transportation system, including food distribution), then global oil price may drop for a while as the global economy absorbs the 15% of global oil production that the USA can no longer afford. Excepting this or similar events, the price of oil will go UP UP UP and availability of oil will go DOWN DOWN DOWN.
I personally like and approve of your sig, "Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War". However, evidence suggests it may not be correct, or at least not in line with our basic psychology. Oil and energy shortages, combined with population and energy demand longages, are already causing standards of living to drop, worldwide. This makes peace less likely and more expensive, and makes war more likely and more profitable.
"War analyst Stanislav Andreski concluded that the trigger for most wars is hunger, or even 'a mere drop from the customary standard of living.' Anthropologists Carol and Melvin Ember spent six years studying war in the late 1980s among 186 preindustrial societies. They focused on precontact times in hopes of collecting the 'cleanest, least distorted' data. Andreski, it seems, was right. War's most common cause, the Embers found, was fear of deprivation. The victors in the wars they studied almost always took territory, food, and/or other critical resources from their enemies. Moreover, unpredictable disasters-droughts, blights, floods, and freezes -- which led to severe hardships, spurred more wars than did chronic shortages.
This also holds true among modern nations. In 1993, political scientists Thomas E Homer-Dixon, Jeffrey H. Boutwell, and George W. Rathjens examined the roots of recent global conflicts and concluded, 'There are significant causal links between scarcities of renewable resources and violence.'"
"In short, many wars seem to be a mass, communal robbery of another social group's life-support resources." --- THE DARK SIDE OF MAN: Tracing the Origins of Male Violence, by Michael P. Ghiglieri
And finally my own sig:
--- "Further economic growth is neither possible nor desirable. Modern industrial economy is not required for cultural or spiritual growth, and poses a threat to human survival." -- D. Orlov
Agreed, the cars will not go away. However, the USA imports 2/3 of the oil used to power its fleet of automobiles. Shortly after the US economy collapses (2009? 2008? 2012 at the latest), the oil exporters will no longer trade oil for (then worthless) dollars. At this time, the cars will still be there, but they won't be moving. This will mark the end of the American love affair with the automobile.
Enjoy your car while you can, and take a road trip soon. Pretty soon, there will be no more road trips in the USA.
Overwhelming evidence suggests the above statements are true. Overwhelming evidence also suggests that most people will deny it right up until it happens, and possibly for some time afterwards.
Suggested reading:
The Five Stages of Collapse
Jay Hanson's Die Off Resources
Scientific references about peak oil
Full agreement. Save the oil in Alaska for when we REALLY need it. Like, for food production.
Nope. North America is the most heavily explored and drilled place on Earth, by far. The USA originally had more oil than Saudi Arabia. However, the USA has already used up (burned) about 85% of it's original oil endowment. There's just not much oil left in North America, even counting what's in Alaska. and there's no chance of domestic US production increasing appreciably, with or without Alaskan drilling.
Regarding the large supply of 'non-conventional' in North America: yes, it's there. However, our ability to get at it is rate-limited such that it can never be a large energy flow.
Yes. OPEC will decrease production soon. They will do this to keep prices high. They will also do this because they have no choice.
Currently only Saudi Arabia has any excess oil production capacity, and even this is illusory: most Saudi "spare capacity" is 'sour', high-sulphur-content oil that no one especially wants; the rest of Saudi "spare capacity" can only happen if they squeeze the Ghawar facility harder, which will cause (has already caused!) a reduction in ultimate recoverable in that basin.In other words, if Saudi Arabia increases production in 'sweet oil' they risk slitting their own throats by destroying their production capacity. Oil extraction works that way.
Yes, OPEC will certainly decrease production. All the more reason to abandon oil-based systems, the sooner the better. It's a pity this will result in billions of human deaths.
I am in favour of drilling Alaska, but not for the standard reasons.
If we drill oil in Alaska and use it to power our cars and keep our (doomed) economy afloat for a few more months, then we are behaving like jackasses and deserve what we get.
If we drill oil in Alaska and use it (a few years later) for emergency food production (which we'll need) for the decade(s) AFTER our economy crashes and our cars stop running, THEN we'll be showing a trace of common sense.
High gasoline prices are just an SYMPTOM of what's going on, not the main problem. We use 20% of our oil (a bit less than TOTAL DOMESTIC PRODUCTION) just for agriculture. Once our economy collapse we won't be able to AFFORD to import much oil, so we'll need almost our entire domestic supply just to feed ourselves. That will leave almost no oil for transportation or manufacturing.
Right now the oil in Alaska just means slightly lower prices, whereas in a few years this smallish flow may mean the difference between starvation and survival for millions of Americans.
No. You said, "The current prices are caused by speculation". Nope. Speculation might temporarily somewhat alter prices, but not nearly as much as we've seen.
Oil is expensive now because we've passed peak oil. It's that simple. The evidence for this is overwhelming. We just don't want to believe it, so we blame the scapegoat-du-jour, 'speculators'.
We're now facing the beginning of the final energy crisis of our civilization. We have two basic strategies:
#1 Struggle to get every last drop of oil.
#2 Abandon oil-based systems and infrastructure, with great pain and suffering.
Here's the trick: behind option #1 is option #2, but with much war and violence between them. That's why I recommend going straight to option #2, thus skipping the horrible and utterly pointless (because they won't actually secure enough additional oil to pay for themselves!) resource wars that result from strategy #1.
Deal with Reality, or Reality will deal with you.