It's that whole mid- 20th century approach to engineering. Build a big giant centralized thing! It's impressive! It makes politicans happy! You can sell the idea to the general populace (I'm looking at you, Three Gorges Dam).
It's also major engineering stupidity. A few thousand separate orbiting life support modules, with a heterogeneous mix of technologies would be more robust, far more flexible and cheaper. The only reasons not to build it that way is that it doesn't lend itself to centralized government control.
Unless something has changed, palm oil still has the best net energy return compared to any other organic fuel source. If we're not going to eat the stuff, GM palm oil trees may be the way to go here.
Regardless, plants are still just inefficient solar panels whose only advantage is that their energy output is chemical, not electrical, thereby minimizing transmission and storage energy loss.
From a net energy/price standpoint, biofuels still can't compete with petroleum, though that will change as petroleum gets more expensive and yields less net energy over time, however, the ecological effects of trying to replace the 160 exajoules of energy provided by oil each year would be an unmitigated disaster.
Nice idea, but we're still going to have to reduce our energy consumption worldwide, long before the end of this century.
Had Gates really wanted to help the first, second and third worlds, he would have dedicated his fortune to developing and improving useful, more human-like, artificial intelligence - something he's in a unique position to do.
We'd get scalable forms of artificial intelligence and the solutions to problems like Malaria as minor side effects. We'd get fusion power and space travel too, most likely.
Instead, Gates is indulging his ego in piecemeal, half-assed solutions to humanity's problems. Solutions that give him great publicity, but leave more major issues, like resource depletion, which in the long run will kill many more of us than malaria, untouched.
Read down to about the middle of the article. Texas confiscatory laws mean that even if you weren't charged with a crime, the authorities can confiscate your property and use it to pay their own salary and bonuses.
When I was a kid, we used to refer to such people as "The Mafia." Now, drug laws have evolved to the point where we refer to those people as "The Police." Mexico has nothing on Texas when it comes to policing as an entrepreneurial activity.
Their concerns, senses and physical manipulations would be exclusively chemical and at micro-scales. Their processing speed would be slow, but fast enough for them. A sense of self awareness may, or may not be useful to them.
Fungi have been around a lot longer than us. A certain kind of intelligence might be useful to it. The only way we'd be able to tell would be to measure discrete chemical interactions between them and run a zipfs distribution analysis on the result (http://language.worldofcomputing.net/nlp-overview/zipfs-law.html).
Did it ever occur to any of these web advertising geniuses that we don't *all* have broadband all the time and that their cheery little video missives slow down the browser to the point where you turn it off?
And if we do have broadband, but we're getting it through a hotspot where we're charged through the nose for going over 2 Gigabyes a month, that just maybe we're going to start avoiding these expensive leech ad pages like the plague?
Seriously, if your advertising starts costing me money or time, you're shit out of luck. I not only won't buy from you, I'll never see your ad in the first place.
So, everyone avoids using a previously solved problem because of a patent which is expensive to defend agains.
Instead of a cambrian explosion of languages and solutions followed by a die-off, we have artificially enforced a permanent evolution of wierd, inefficient home-grown code experiments with 9 eyes and star shaped trifurcated limbs to do what two eyes and a claw would have done nicely.
I'm more interested in intelligent regulation. The current regulations are obviously a result of congressional bribery (Oh sorry, I meant "campaign contributions"). These benefit specific corporate interests and are blatantly anti-competitive. At the moment, neither party has the slightest interest in changing that, regardless of the ideology they publically espouse.
The light regulation being complete price and quality transparency, with the prices for all procedures and outcome statistics easily available online. Put the prices for the 100 most common procedures on posters in large type every 200 feet in every hospital. Put a booklet in every hospital and clinic room. Even insured people frequently have a high co-pay. Think prices wouldn't drop?
Other prices would come down quickly if congress were to deregulate. Allow insurance and prescription drug purchases across state and international lines and prices would drop in a hurry.
Moreover, the whole "prescription" idea is a bit of a racket. If I want to buy a stronger zinc oxide cream for foot problems, I have to see a doctor and get a prescription. For foot cream with 5% zinc oxide. I mean, WTF? It's time to release all but the most dangerous drugs into the wild.
that even vaguely limits them, and that they are as likely to pay attention to the rule of law or any principals other than self-interest as they are to grow halos. The only bright spot in this scenario is that they will be fighting the CIA and Homeland Security to become the next KGB, and produce our next home grown Putin.
Cheers everyone, to the logical conclusion of the government Americans started voting for with Reagan.
of oppressing their citizens in just this way. Now, a whistleblower, who can't be proven to have revealed even one explicit state secret (beyond the rather unshocking fact that they were being surveilled) to a foreign power is asking for asylum in Russia.
And that happened for a reason. Homeland security and the NSA may not run the country today, but I wouldn't count on tomorrow. The actual staff at the NSA tend to be decent and patriotic. The guys at the top.... are like guys at the top anywhere.
In the 90s, Windows and MS Office adoption was driven by de-facto discount/piracy (You could buy a cheap upgrade version to legalize your pirated version). It worked. Office and Windows became the standard.
It's probably the only way a technically inferior product can ever get traction.
Slashdot Mirror
It's that whole mid- 20th century approach to engineering. Build a big giant centralized thing! It's impressive! It makes politicans happy! You can sell the idea to the general populace (I'm looking at you, Three Gorges Dam).
It's also major engineering stupidity. A few thousand separate orbiting life support modules, with a heterogeneous mix of technologies would be more robust, far more flexible and cheaper. The only reasons not to build it that way is that it doesn't lend itself to centralized government control.
Unless something has changed, palm oil still has the best net energy return compared to any other organic fuel source. If we're not going to eat the stuff, GM palm oil trees may be the way to go here.
Regardless, plants are still just inefficient solar panels whose only advantage is that their energy output is chemical, not electrical, thereby minimizing transmission and storage energy loss.
From a net energy/price standpoint, biofuels still can't compete with petroleum, though that will change as petroleum gets more expensive and yields less net energy over time, however, the ecological effects of trying to replace the 160 exajoules of energy provided by oil each year would be an unmitigated disaster.
Nice idea, but we're still going to have to reduce our energy consumption worldwide, long before the end of this century.
I a little list. They will never be missed...
Had Gates really wanted to help the first, second and third worlds, he would have dedicated his fortune to developing and improving useful, more human-like, artificial intelligence - something he's in a unique position to do.
We'd get scalable forms of artificial intelligence and the solutions to problems like Malaria as minor side effects. We'd get fusion power and space travel too, most likely.
Instead, Gates is indulging his ego in piecemeal, half-assed solutions to humanity's problems. Solutions that give him great publicity, but leave more major issues, like resource depletion, which in the long run will kill many more of us than malaria, untouched.
The only thing we could missing is the sound of a thousand alien mating frogs.
Sigh. OK, OK, I'll do it again, but this is the last time.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2013/08/how-police-all-over-the-us-steal-cash-cars-even-homes-from-the-innocent.html
Read down to about the middle of the article. Texas confiscatory laws mean that even if you weren't charged with a crime, the authorities can confiscate your property and use it to pay their own salary and bonuses.
When I was a kid, we used to refer to such people as "The Mafia." Now, drug laws have evolved to the point where we refer to those people as "The Police." Mexico has nothing on Texas when it comes to policing as an entrepreneurial activity.
Well, you could hardly argue with either suggestion, even before TOR was known to be compromised.
I know they were just there while the reader wasn't working, but that was one of my favorite features.
Their concerns, senses and physical manipulations would be exclusively chemical and at micro-scales. Their processing speed would be slow, but fast enough for them. A sense of self awareness may, or may not be useful to them.
Fungi have been around a lot longer than us. A certain kind of intelligence might be useful to it. The only way we'd be able to tell would be to measure discrete chemical interactions between them and run a zipfs distribution analysis on the result (http://language.worldofcomputing.net/nlp-overview/zipfs-law.html).
Give me enough booze and I stop fearing robots too.
And does it happen before or after they're hired?
Did it ever occur to any of these web advertising geniuses that we don't *all* have broadband all the time and that their cheery little video missives slow down the browser to the point where you turn it off?
And if we do have broadband, but we're getting it through a hotspot where we're charged through the nose for going over 2 Gigabyes a month, that just maybe we're going to start avoiding these expensive leech ad pages like the plague?
Seriously, if your advertising starts costing me money or time, you're shit out of luck. I not only won't buy from you, I'll never see your ad in the first place.
So, everyone avoids using a previously solved problem because of a patent which is expensive to defend agains.
Instead of a cambrian explosion of languages and solutions followed by a die-off, we have artificially enforced a permanent evolution of wierd, inefficient home-grown code experiments with 9 eyes and star shaped trifurcated limbs to do what two eyes and a claw would have done nicely.
There will be no tagging system that matters. After AI can determine meaning, you won't need a tagging system.
I'm more interested in intelligent regulation. The current regulations are obviously a result of congressional bribery (Oh sorry, I meant "campaign contributions"). These benefit specific corporate interests and are blatantly anti-competitive. At the moment, neither party has the slightest interest in changing that, regardless of the ideology they publically espouse.
The light regulation being complete price and quality transparency, with the prices for all procedures and outcome statistics easily available online. Put the prices for the 100 most common procedures on posters in large type every 200 feet in every hospital. Put a booklet in every hospital and clinic room. Even insured people frequently have a high co-pay. Think prices wouldn't drop?
Other prices would come down quickly if congress were to deregulate. Allow insurance and prescription drug purchases across state and international lines and prices would drop in a hurry.
Moreover, the whole "prescription" idea is a bit of a racket. If I want to buy a stronger zinc oxide cream for foot problems, I have to see a doctor and get a prescription. For foot cream with 5% zinc oxide. I mean, WTF? It's time to release all but the most dangerous drugs into the wild.
My 2 bitcoins.
that even vaguely limits them, and that they are as likely to pay attention to the rule of law or any principals other than self-interest as they are to grow halos. The only bright spot in this scenario is that they will be fighting the CIA and Homeland Security to become the next KGB, and produce our next home grown Putin.
Cheers everyone, to the logical conclusion of the government Americans started voting for with Reagan.
of oppressing their citizens in just this way. Now, a whistleblower, who can't be proven to have revealed even one explicit state secret (beyond the rather unshocking fact that they were being surveilled) to a foreign power is asking for asylum in Russia.
Times change, don't they.
Was their analysis open and shut? Did they decide to probe further?
...from anyone who might criticize the government, its officials or its policies.
FTFY
And that happened for a reason. Homeland security and the NSA may not run the country today, but I wouldn't count on tomorrow. The actual staff at the NSA tend to be decent and patriotic. The guys at the top.... are like guys at the top anywhere.
In soviet America, Homeland secures you.
In the 90s, Windows and MS Office adoption was driven by de-facto discount/piracy (You could buy a cheap upgrade version to legalize your pirated version). It worked. Office and Windows became the standard.
It's probably the only way a technically inferior product can ever get traction.
On the internet, nobody knows you're a rhino....
In space, no one can hear you gargle....
The biggest factor that makes us violent or not is cultural.
Citation?