I watched when a vehicle he built launched launched on a successful ISS resupply mission. I've driven one of his Tesla S cars. Don't know if he's the next Steve Jobs, but gotta say, he's actually making things happen. Beats posting as AC on/., don't you think?
Thanks for describing a genuinely constructive action many of us could emulate. I would much rather contribute propellant to an American student's life launch than pour more fiscal gasoline on the political bonfire by contributing to lobbying groups, even those whose values I endorse.
of Ray Harryhausen, I watched Jason and the Argonauts again this evening. I first saw it when I was about 20, and I've never been able to look at a skeleton quite the same way since. What a talent he had!
This is exactly right. Show them the before/after videos, tell them how proprietary your algorithms are, and give them a market analysis that shows why somebody will buy your tech/company, etc. The VCs want to invest and then transfer the risk asap to an acquiring entity or to the public sector (IPO). They don't care about the technology beyond its ability to get to that outcome.
The inverse correlation between incubation period and symptom severity is what one would expect from successful in-the-wild pathogens. I get that evolutionary processes have given us the pathogen behavior you describe.
However, I don't think what we currently know is that's all that's possible. I suspect the set of potential (engineerable) pathogenic behavior is broader than what we observe in the wild, and broader than what we currently think probable.
Your statement "Engineered bioweapons cannot propagate" seems (to me, anyway) unlikely to be valid given the complexity of the systems involved and human creativity. I regard it as only a matter of time, just as the transition from chemical to nuclear explosives was only a matter of the time needed to understand new physics and do the engineering, once the motivation was there. "Cannot" isn't the bet I'd place.
That said, it's silly to think that intrusively monitoring bioresearchers will help anyone but the security theater types. It will only add friction that will delay beneficial applications of the research.
because nobody could distribute the daily HF etchant load so as to kill very many people. Contrast that with the Black Death, which killed 1/3 of Europe through the movement of fleas on rats on ships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
Chemweapons have to be distributed and don't extend their effects very far beyond their delivery locus. Bioweapons can propagate. Engineer a latency between infection and onset of symptoms of say, 100 days into an airborne pathogen with high clinical mortality and watch it spread far and wide before it surfaces.
I understand that such bioengineering may be nontrivial, but to say that "no biological weapon could ever be as effective as a chemical one" is, I believe, incorrect.
There's been a lot of opportunity for space technology to have developed from everyday advancements, rather than the reverse. That hasn't been the course of events.
When a development modality that would *seem* feasible doesn't happen despite long opportunity to do so, I start thinking maybe it really isn't as feasible - or as efficient - as what actually does occur.
I think reality disagrees with you. The tech you listed was pushed into being by military, cost-is-no-object requirements. GPS happened because the US military needed a precision location system, and a space-based system was the only way to make it happen. Integrated circuits, which led to microprocessors and all the rest, happened because the US military had to miniaturize guidance and control electronics for ballistic missile systems. All of the decades of aerospace R&D which SpaceX is building upon to such good effect in reducing launch costs were undertaken by noncommercial, mostly cost-insensitive nation/state participants.
Basically, the $0.75 GPS chip in your iPhone happened in response to the prior existence of the GPS system. I doubt that Steve Jobs at his best would have been successful in persuading the US DoD to put up GPS. But with GPS already in the sky, he had a firm base on which to monetize the mass-market potential of the system (as did others - just using Jobs/iPhone as one example).
This is how it's worked over the centuries: human conflict drives development of "stuff" that ordinary consumers/businesses could never get funded through their own economic models. Then people think of wider uses for the "stuff", and (manufacturing volume + tech advance) make the capabilities cheap.
So while you may think it more efficient to have space technology develop as a consequence of everyday advancements, it seems that in fact, everyday advancements more often proceed from the incredibly expensive cutting-edge wacko development work undertaken for reasons completely outside the purview of everyday economics. I think efficiency is a complicated and subtle thing.
Agreed. Our local hardware store sells honey from local producers. Variety varies depending on what's in bloom and it's minimally processed, which I think is why it tastes so much better than the stuff in major grocery stores. The price is lots higher and I buy less of it than I might if I were buying at Safeway, but I enjoy it much more and I'm glad to support the local beekeepers. It's nice to drive by the hives where the honey came from on my way home.
One response to this situation (which is a hazard faced by a non-wealthy individual patentholder) would be to go to the imfringing company's competitors and offer licenses. Do you know if the prof's relative tried this? Just curious.
AC is correct. First to file vs. first to invent has nothing to do with prior art. A big provision of the America Invents Act takes effect on March 16, when US patent law changes its primary priority criterion from FTI to FTF. In anticipation of which I'm spending nights and weekends until then getting our company's invention backlog filed so somebody doesn't beat us to an invention by filing an application at 00:01am March 16.
This interests me. As a nonexpert in AI, it has always seemed to me that a critical missing aspect of attempts to generate 'strong' AI (which I guess means AI that performs at a human level or better) is a process in which the AI formulates questions, gets feedback from humans (right, wrong, senseless - try again), coupled with modification by the AI of its responses and further feedback from humans...lather, rinse, repeat...until we get responses that pass the Turing test. This is basically just the evolutionary process. This is what made us.
I don't think we need to know how a mind works to make one. After all, hydrogen and time have led to this forum post, and I doubt the primordial hydrogen atoms were intelligent. So we know that with biochemical systems, it's possible to come up with strong I given enough time and evolution. Since evolution requires only variation, selection, and heritabillity, it's hard for me to believe we can't do that with computational systems. Is it so difficult to write a learning system that assimilates data about the world, asks questions, and changes its assumptions and conclusions on the basis of feedback from humans?
And it's probably already been tried, and I haven't heard about it. If it has, I'd like to know. If not, I'd like to know why not.
Sorry to reply to my own post - I mistook the energy in 1 ton of TNT (4.2e9 Joules) as being the energy for 1 kiloton of TNT, so my energy estimate is 1000x too large. Actual energy release would be in the low kiloton range, which I agree we could easily miss if most of the energy were coupled to the atmosphere by an endoatmospheric burst.
"For example, it doesn't take a lot of research to find out that Earth routinely gets hit by objects of this size."
"routinely"? Really?
If such impacts were routine, we'd have noticed.
Let's use the 400 metric ton mass somebody above posted and figure out the energy of impact. MKS units.
E=(m*v^2)/2 (Joules)
400 T = 4e5 kilograms
Now we need a velocity estimate, which I'll low-ball at 10 km/sec. Meteors apparently have a velocity spread of from 10 - 70 km/sec or so, and the impactors at Meteor Crater (AZ) and Chixilub were estimated at about 11k/sec, so let's pick the low end.
V=10km/sec = 1e4 m/sec V^2 = 1e8m^2/sec^2
so energy = 0.5*(4e5kg)*(1e8m^2/sec^2)
= 2e13 Joules
So would we notice this if it happened at all, much less "routinely"? Let's see, 1 kiloton of TNT yields about 4.2e9 Joules, so our energy yield is 2e13/4.2e9 = about 5e3KT, which is about 5 megaton(ne)s of energy release.
If 5 MT impacts were routine, we'd notice. Even assuming that we missed seeing the 70% that hit the ocean, we'd surely notice the remaining 30%.
I don't think these impacts are "routine" on time scales less than 10 generations. We'd remember.
Slashdot Mirror
I watched when a vehicle he built launched launched on a successful ISS resupply mission. I've driven one of his Tesla S cars. Don't know if he's the next Steve Jobs, but gotta say, he's actually making things happen. Beats posting as AC on /., don't you think?
Thanks for describing a genuinely constructive action many of us could emulate. I would much rather contribute propellant to an American student's life launch than pour more fiscal gasoline on the political bonfire by contributing to lobbying groups, even those whose values I endorse.
And anyway, 3,120,000cm = 31,200m = 31.2km
of Ray Harryhausen, I watched Jason and the Argonauts again this evening. I first saw it when I was about 20, and I've never been able to look at a skeleton quite the same way since. What a talent he had!
This is exactly right. Show them the before/after videos, tell them how proprietary your algorithms are, and give them a market analysis that shows why somebody will buy your tech/company, etc. The VCs want to invest and then transfer the risk asap to an acquiring entity or to the public sector (IPO). They don't care about the technology beyond its ability to get to that outcome.
The inverse correlation between incubation period and symptom severity is what one would expect from successful in-the-wild pathogens. I get that evolutionary processes have given us the pathogen behavior you describe.
However, I don't think what we currently know is that's all that's possible. I suspect the set of potential (engineerable) pathogenic behavior is broader than what we observe in the wild, and broader than what we currently think probable.
Your statement "Engineered bioweapons cannot propagate" seems (to me, anyway) unlikely to be valid given the complexity of the systems involved and human creativity. I regard it as only a matter of time, just as the transition from chemical to nuclear explosives was only a matter of the time needed to understand new physics and do the engineering, once the motivation was there. "Cannot" isn't the bet I'd place.
That said, it's silly to think that intrusively monitoring bioresearchers will help anyone but the security theater types. It will only add friction that will delay beneficial applications of the research.
because nobody could distribute the daily HF etchant load so as to kill very many people. Contrast that with the Black Death, which killed 1/3 of Europe through the movement of fleas on rats on ships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
Chemweapons have to be distributed and don't extend their effects very far beyond their delivery locus. Bioweapons can propagate. Engineer a latency between infection and onset of symptoms of say, 100 days into an airborne pathogen with high clinical mortality and watch it spread far and wide before it surfaces.
I understand that such bioengineering may be nontrivial, but to say that "no biological weapon could ever be as effective as a chemical one" is, I believe, incorrect.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1999_F-117A_shoot-down
it's *when*!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meganeura
I do think we're talking about the same thing.
There's been a lot of opportunity for space technology to have developed from everyday advancements, rather than the reverse. That hasn't been the course of events.
When a development modality that would *seem* feasible doesn't happen despite long opportunity to do so, I start thinking maybe it really isn't as feasible - or as efficient - as what actually does occur.
I think reality disagrees with you. The tech you listed was pushed into being by military, cost-is-no-object requirements. GPS happened because the US military needed a precision location system, and a space-based system was the only way to make it happen. Integrated circuits, which led to microprocessors and all the rest, happened because the US military had to miniaturize guidance and control electronics for ballistic missile systems. All of the decades of aerospace R&D which SpaceX is building upon to such good effect in reducing launch costs were undertaken by noncommercial, mostly cost-insensitive nation/state participants.
Basically, the $0.75 GPS chip in your iPhone happened in response to the prior existence of the GPS system. I doubt that Steve Jobs at his best would have been successful in persuading the US DoD to put up GPS. But with GPS already in the sky, he had a firm base on which to monetize the mass-market potential of the system (as did others - just using Jobs/iPhone as one example).
This is how it's worked over the centuries: human conflict drives development of "stuff" that ordinary consumers/businesses could never get funded through their own economic models. Then people think of wider uses for the "stuff", and (manufacturing volume + tech advance) make the capabilities cheap.
So while you may think it more efficient to have space technology develop as a consequence of everyday advancements, it seems that in fact, everyday advancements more often proceed from the incredibly expensive cutting-edge wacko development work undertaken for reasons completely outside the purview of everyday economics. I think efficiency is a complicated and subtle thing.
Thanks for this, would mod you informative if I had points. Interesting.
Agreed. Our local hardware store sells honey from local producers. Variety varies depending on what's in bloom and it's minimally processed, which I think is why it tastes so much better than the stuff in major grocery stores. The price is lots higher and I buy less of it than I might if I were buying at Safeway, but I enjoy it much more and I'm glad to support the local beekeepers. It's nice to drive by the hives where the honey came from on my way home.
One response to this situation (which is a hazard faced by a non-wealthy individual patentholder) would be to go to the imfringing company's competitors and offer licenses. Do you know if the prof's relative tried this? Just curious.
AC is correct. First to file vs. first to invent has nothing to do with prior art. A big provision of the America Invents Act takes effect on March 16, when US patent law changes its primary priority criterion from FTI to FTF. In anticipation of which I'm spending nights and weekends until then getting our company's invention backlog filed so somebody doesn't beat us to an invention by filing an application at 00:01am March 16.
Mod up, please. Informative for me, would mod you as such if I could. Thank you.
Great idea! I'm also a big guy, but it might fit me best if I were to lay it out horizontally...):
As a rocket scientist, perhaps you might get a chuckle out of this xkcd: http://xkcd.com/1133/
This interests me. As a nonexpert in AI, it has always seemed to me that a critical missing aspect of attempts to generate 'strong' AI (which I guess means AI that performs at a human level or better) is a process in which the AI formulates questions, gets feedback from humans (right, wrong, senseless - try again), coupled with modification by the AI of its responses and further feedback from humans...lather, rinse, repeat...until we get responses that pass the Turing test. This is basically just the evolutionary process. This is what made us.
I don't think we need to know how a mind works to make one. After all, hydrogen and time have led to this forum post, and I doubt the primordial hydrogen atoms were intelligent. So we know that with biochemical systems, it's possible to come up with strong I given enough time and evolution. Since evolution requires only variation, selection, and heritabillity, it's hard for me to believe we can't do that with computational systems. Is it so difficult to write a learning system that assimilates data about the world, asks questions, and changes its assumptions and conclusions on the basis of feedback from humans?
And it's probably already been tried, and I haven't heard about it. If it has, I'd like to know. If not, I'd like to know why not.
Tnx - Appreciate the clarification.
Sorry to reply to my own post - I mistook the energy in 1 ton of TNT (4.2e9 Joules) as being the energy for 1 kiloton of TNT, so my energy estimate is 1000x too large. Actual energy release would be in the low kiloton range, which I agree we could easily miss if most of the energy were coupled to the atmosphere by an endoatmospheric burst.
"For example, it doesn't take a lot of research to find out that Earth routinely gets hit by objects of this size."
"routinely"? Really?
If such impacts were routine, we'd have noticed.
Let's use the 400 metric ton mass somebody above posted and figure out the energy of impact. MKS units.
E=(m*v^2)/2 (Joules)
400 T = 4e5 kilograms
Now we need a velocity estimate, which I'll low-ball at 10 km/sec. Meteors apparently have a velocity spread of from 10 - 70 km/sec or so, and the impactors at Meteor Crater (AZ) and Chixilub were estimated at about 11k/sec, so let's pick the low end.
V=10km/sec = 1e4 m/sec
V^2 = 1e8m^2/sec^2
so energy = 0.5*(4e5kg)*(1e8m^2/sec^2)
= 2e13 Joules
So would we notice this if it happened at all, much less "routinely"? Let's see, 1 kiloton of TNT yields about 4.2e9 Joules, so our energy yield is 2e13/4.2e9 = about 5e3KT, which is about 5 megaton(ne)s of energy release.
If 5 MT impacts were routine, we'd notice. Even assuming that we missed seeing the 70% that hit the ocean, we'd surely notice the remaining 30%.
I don't think these impacts are "routine" on time scales less than 10 generations. We'd remember.
How did this get modded *4, Funny*?
I'm interested, as other respondents have said, and can't find links to what you say exists. I'd be interested if you could direct me. Tnx.
Thanks, and full marks for the submission. The video is fascinating.