Hmm, The article is basically 'Please Invest Here! We want your money to ( thorium is the next big thing technobabble babble babble most people with money aren't nuclear engineers so the naive among them may part with dough yeah that means you, give me your money! )'
What I want to know is how Thorium in cars is doable when Thorium in giant power plants has yet to take off?
We want the cloud to compute f( a, b, c ) for us without it knowing what a, b, and c are.
Is this scheme like
A) f( enc(a), enc(b), enc(c) ) = enc( f( a, b, c ) )
or is it
B) f( enc( a, b, c ) ) = enc( f( a, b, c) )
?
I am not questioning the secureness of enc(). But if you send 'the cloud'
enc('h'),enc('e'),enc('l'),enc('l'),enc('o') and it returns enc( f( 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o' ) ) and you decrypt it to get the result 'goodbye', then because 'the cloud' knows the messages are english, pretty soon it can deduce that enc( 'h' ) corresponds to 'h' etc.
Or is enc( 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o' ) sent which would be opaque. Although if you know it's encrypted english you still might guess that enc( 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o' ) corresponded to the word 'hello' after receiving it a few times.
Gall? No gall required. I merely stated what my understanding was given what I read. I wasn't claiming anything ( I even admitted to taking only a quick look, and having likely misunderstood something ). I do this ALL the time and will continue to, that is state my current (likely flawed) understanding of something hoping for someone smarter than me to correct me, and hopefully clarify things.
After a quick look at the wikipedia entries for Homomorphism and Homomorphic Encryption, this scheme seems roughly equivalent to other homomorphisms such as ROT-13.
If you know the algebraic structure ( which you might guess looking at the encrypted data ) then you can use statistics about data pertaining to that structure to tell what encrypted value corresponds to what real value. ( similarly to how you can tell which letter is E if you 'encrypt' by letter substitution eg:
I'll buy that growing the economy isn't the only goal of government in the same way that growing one's savings account isn't a person's only goal in life ( gotta enjoy yourself or why bother? ). Also, I buy that 'grow as fast as you can without regard to sustainability or any other concern than capital value at the current instant' can actually lead to a smaller taxable base long term, even if it works in the short term.
The US can roll over it's debt at near 0% short term barring any major changes in the market for debt. Since the Fed steps in to buy debt lately if the rate rises ( it needs to keep rates low to meet it's goal of helping the economy ) this market for US debt is basically guaranteed.
I say we should stop doing this perpetual rollover, and just issue currency to pay back all US debt as it becomes due. Deficits should be financed always now and in the future with the issue of currency.
This is the only honest accounting.
The thing is, whether the government comes by money by sale of debt or by printing a new note, the effect of government spending is that resources are shifted from private ends to government ends. If these ends grow the economy, so that there is more value created than was shifted, then this is not inflationary. Otherwise, it is.
Of course, the value created if any tends to work over time - the value of a new sewage treatment plant accrues to society over the years it operates, so when there is healthy demand interest rates may have to rise to prevent inflation as the resources in existence in the present are constant, but when demand is slack, there were probably not many better competing uses the resources could have been put to, so this is not inflationary. ( most money is sitting in vaults in banks waiting to be lent in these sorts of times ) Yes, increasing govt spending counter-cyclically is Keynesian. Keynes was right.
Disregarding trade with debt to the foreign world for a moment, a country always operates with present resources ( the world always operates with present resources as there are no space aliens to trade with ). Social security doesn't have a trust fund that can be cashed in and without having an effect on the economy. It is logically impossible for the government to save money. Ensuring resources are put to the use which best grows the economy is the only saving the government is capable of. Usually but not always, this means not spending.
Now introducing foreign countries, and currencies, and debt and trade, complicates this. As long as foreign countries wish to hold US debt in order to devalue their currencies, a strong dollar will enable the purchase of useless Wal-Mart crap and Oil and other resources. These foreign investors should be paid back with dollars which they are free to hold ( they probably still would to some extent even at 0% ) .
The good life will always exist for some. I would wager that high tech modern good life will exist as well, but for fewer and fewer people. Consider feudalism in medieval times - it was basically the MOST EFFICIENT ( resource wise ) form of government possible. The military WAS the nobles, who controlled all the resources, and allowed enough peasants to live as suited their interests. There is still wild game in Europe because of this.
With modern technology able to replace people more efficiently than ever before, many fewer people are needed to keep the economy humming along. And with fewer consumers, this need not consume exponentially increasing resources. As technology enables the economy to be ever more efficient, then more and more consumers can be eliminated! Some day there may be no need for people at all. (SKYNET)
It didn't have to be this way but very poor choices...
Yes it did. The choices were not poor at the individual level. We're yeast in a bottle, reindeer on an island, and rats in a bamboo forest that fruits once every 49 years.
Since the galaxy is larger than 2600 light years across, then it's physically impossible to surround every star in the galaxy with a Dyson Sphere before then. And with population growth limited by the point at which the human race would have to become a superluminally expanding ball of meat to continue exponential growth ( in numbers of people ) there may be other restrictions due to c.
What if they DID lower general taxes to compensate? That would be fine by me in principle, at least get gas taxes paying for the roads. Then have additional gas taxes partially fund the military. Lower other taxes ( progressively to compensate for the regressive nature of the gas tax ) and you have a wash.
Not paying for roads with gas taxes IS a subsidy. It subsidizes living far from where you work with money taxed from the general public.
I agree that it's a problem that will solve itself, and because of Jevon's Paradox I see no public benefit to conserving energy, nor is it clear to me that replacing a functioning gas guzzler with a newly built gas sipper would actually save energy since energy is expended in creating the replacement.
The only reason I am for raising gas taxes above that needed to fund the roads is strategic. It's not strategically wise for the economy to be overly dependent on energy for transportation at this time.
Nothing to do with punishment. Only incentives for future behavior.
Fuel efficiency standards are a stupid way to go. Instead raise the funding for the roads using only gas taxes. Tax gas like it was tobacco, and people will CHOOSE to buy fuel efficient vehicles. Those that truely value supposed gas guzzling will still buy gas guzzlers. Fuel efficiency standards are just a maze of loopholes with the loopholes created to suit the interests involved ( government bureaucrats and car makers ). And don't subsidize any particular fuel. Automotive fuel, gas, ethanol, hydrogen, electricity, whatever should be taxed much more heavily.
Nuclear energy is unsafe in the hands of humans, and probably shouldn't be done - BUT it's going to be done anyway. The only intelligent way to proceed is to sincerely try to do everything possible to ensure that it's done in a way that is actually as safe as it can practically be.
NOTE: This is NOT the same thing as what 'environmental' and NIMBY groups do, which is to attempt to reduce the amount of fission that gets done by attempting to make it unprofitable with asinine overregulation, and whiny hinderances. These people need to realise that the amount of fission that gets done will be the same no matter what they do, and that amount is ALL OF IT.
The only question is whether it's done safely and whether the waste is managed appropriately. The more profit that's in it, the more resources that will be available to try and ensure the whole thing is done as safely as possible.
Doing things well, even things that should not be done, but which will be done, is the best way to deal with nuclear fission power.
Not sure if it even runs in Eclipse... It's pretty tied to Emacs though. I think the Browser is ok for seeing concepts, but I doubt I'd care to use it for serious programming though. I've been compiling what I code in oz with vi, and running it on the command line.
The documentation needs to be better though. I did buy http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html, but the online docs need some polishing and completing, especially section 12 of the tutorial since that's where much of the cool stuff would be.
Someday, if I ever get the energy/time/oz-expertise, I want to try implementing a network protocol using oz's determinacy driven execution and definite clause grammers. Wouldn't it be neat to (almost) paste in the specification for HTTP to implement a web browser/server with the same sort of simplicity as one can almost paste in the BNF for URIs from the RFC to implement a URI parser?
Not an Oz expert though... Oz is still on my list of 'things to do when I get around to it.'
Another annoying thing is that Oz only runs in 32 bit so far.
It's just that when you don't really know what you are building, building generally useful things at least lets you make some progress. Whatever the goal, you'll have something useful in your pocket when it's clear what it is you were trying to make.
As long as you have a tiny lightweight core then you can shed excess baggage if it starts to weigh you down more than it is worth. I think that's going to be the winningest strategy long term. Build small lightweight tools that can connect with others so that whatever the situation requires, you can pick from what you need and stick em together into whatever form fashion dictates.
Really? I thought it was the old ammo that keeps better because they put preservatives in the primers to allow them to be kept in crates since WWII. I buy old ammo for my Mosin Nagant some of it from this era, and it fires quite nicely.
What if they find a way to completely halt ( but not reverse ) the progression of Alzheimers, just as TP has reached the blithering idiot stage?
In a couple more years they discover reverse telomerase and people ( especially lucrative hospitalized ones who are blithering idiots without sufficient awareness to refuse medication ) live forever?
If I were him, I'd shut the heck up about the issue though. He wouldn't want to be declared suicidal and hence crazy, and then locked up in a rubber room to suffer the FULL TERM of his alzheimers with the BEST MEDICAL CARE.
Better to quietly purchase a shotgun, ( or a tank of CO if you're a wuss ) and keep it ready for the day you decide to end it.
Slashdot Mirror
Hmm, The article is basically 'Please Invest Here! We want your money to ( thorium is the next big thing technobabble babble babble most people with money aren't nuclear engineers so the naive among them may part with dough yeah that means you, give me your money! )'
What I want to know is how Thorium in cars is doable when Thorium in giant power plants has yet to take off?
What's particularly different than this: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Energy_amplifier
I guess what I am not clear about is:
We want the cloud to compute f( a, b, c ) for us without it knowing what a, b, and c are.
Is this scheme like
A) f( enc(a), enc(b), enc(c) ) = enc( f( a, b, c ) )
or is it
B) f( enc( a, b, c ) ) = enc( f( a, b, c) )
?
I am not questioning the secureness of enc(). But if you send 'the cloud'
enc('h'),enc('e'),enc('l'),enc('l'),enc('o') and it returns enc( f( 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o' ) ) and you decrypt it to get the result 'goodbye', then because 'the cloud' knows the messages are english, pretty soon it can deduce that enc( 'h' ) corresponds to 'h' etc.
Or is enc( 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o' ) sent which would be opaque. Although if you know it's encrypted english you still might guess that enc( 'h', 'e', 'l', 'l', 'o' ) corresponded to the word 'hello' after receiving it a few times.
Gall? No gall required. I merely stated what my understanding was given what I read. I wasn't claiming anything ( I even admitted to taking only a quick look, and having likely misunderstood something ). I do this ALL the time and will continue to, that is state my current (likely flawed) understanding of something hoping for someone smarter than me to correct me, and hopefully clarify things.
After a quick look at the wikipedia entries for Homomorphism and Homomorphic Encryption, this scheme seems roughly equivalent to other homomorphisms such as ROT-13.
If you know the algebraic structure ( which you might guess looking at the encrypted data ) then you can use statistics about data pertaining to that structure to tell what encrypted value corresponds to what real value. ( similarly to how you can tell which letter is E if you 'encrypt' by letter substitution eg:
ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ ->
HLGVDAQZMIKWTYENBJUXPCSFOR
This is the way we encrypt the sentence ->
XZMU MU XZD SHO SD DYGJONX XZD UDYXDYGD
Maybe I misunderstood something but this is what it seems like at first glance.
I'll buy that growing the economy isn't the only goal of government in the same way that growing one's savings account isn't a person's only goal in life ( gotta enjoy yourself or why bother? ). Also, I buy that 'grow as fast as you can without regard to sustainability or any other concern than capital value at the current instant' can actually lead to a smaller taxable base long term, even if it works in the short term.
The US can roll over it's debt at near 0% short term barring any major changes in the market for debt. Since the Fed steps in to buy debt lately if the rate rises ( it needs to keep rates low to meet it's goal of helping the economy ) this market for US debt is basically guaranteed.
I say we should stop doing this perpetual rollover, and just issue currency to pay back all US debt as it becomes due. Deficits should be financed always now and in the future with the issue of currency.
This is the only honest accounting.
The thing is, whether the government comes by money by sale of debt or by printing a new note, the effect of government spending is that resources are shifted from private ends to government ends. If these ends grow the economy, so that there is more value created than was shifted, then this is not inflationary. Otherwise, it is.
Of course, the value created if any tends to work over time - the value of a new sewage treatment plant accrues to society over the years it operates, so when there is healthy demand interest rates may have to rise to prevent inflation as the resources in existence in the present are constant, but when demand is slack, there were probably not many better competing uses the resources could have been put to, so this is not inflationary. ( most money is sitting in vaults in banks waiting to be lent in these sorts of times ) Yes, increasing govt spending counter-cyclically is Keynesian. Keynes was right.
Disregarding trade with debt to the foreign world for a moment, a country always operates with present resources ( the world always operates with present resources as there are no space aliens to trade with ). Social security doesn't have a trust fund that can be cashed in and without having an effect on the economy. It is logically impossible for the government to save money. Ensuring resources are put to the use which best grows the economy is the only saving the government is capable of. Usually but not always, this means not spending.
Now introducing foreign countries, and currencies, and debt and trade, complicates this. As long as foreign countries wish to hold US debt in order to devalue their currencies, a strong dollar will enable the purchase of useless Wal-Mart crap and Oil and other resources. These foreign investors should be paid back with dollars which they are free to hold ( they probably still would to some extent even at 0% ) .
The good life will always exist for some. I would wager that high tech modern good life will exist as well, but for fewer and fewer people. Consider feudalism in medieval times - it was basically the MOST EFFICIENT ( resource wise ) form of government possible. The military WAS the nobles, who controlled all the resources, and allowed enough peasants to live as suited their interests. There is still wild game in Europe because of this.
With modern technology able to replace people more efficiently than ever before, many fewer people are needed to keep the economy humming along. And with fewer consumers, this need not consume exponentially increasing resources. As technology enables the economy to be ever more efficient, then more and more consumers can be eliminated! Some day there may be no need for people at all. (SKYNET)
Yes it did. The choices were not poor at the individual level. We're yeast in a bottle, reindeer on an island, and rats in a bamboo forest that fruits once every 49 years.
The greatest sin in the world: Central Air Conditioning.
Since the galaxy is larger than 2600 light years across, then it's physically impossible to surround every star in the galaxy with a Dyson Sphere before then. And with population growth limited by the point at which the human race would have to become a superluminally expanding ball of meat to continue exponential growth ( in numbers of people ) there may be other restrictions due to c.
What if they DID lower general taxes to compensate? That would be fine by me in principle, at least get gas taxes paying for the roads. Then have additional gas taxes partially fund the military. Lower other taxes ( progressively to compensate for the regressive nature of the gas tax ) and you have a wash.
Not paying for roads with gas taxes IS a subsidy. It subsidizes living far from where you work with money taxed from the general public.
I agree that it's a problem that will solve itself, and because of Jevon's Paradox I see no public benefit to conserving energy, nor is it clear to me that replacing a functioning gas guzzler with a newly built gas sipper would actually save energy since energy is expended in creating the replacement.
The only reason I am for raising gas taxes above that needed to fund the roads is strategic. It's not strategically wise for the economy to be overly dependent on energy for transportation at this time.
Nothing to do with punishment. Only incentives for future behavior.
Fuel efficiency standards are a stupid way to go. Instead raise the funding for the roads using only gas taxes. Tax gas like it was tobacco, and people will CHOOSE to buy fuel efficient vehicles. Those that truely value supposed gas guzzling will still buy gas guzzlers. Fuel efficiency standards are just a maze of loopholes with the loopholes created to suit the interests involved ( government bureaucrats and car makers ). And don't subsidize any particular fuel. Automotive fuel, gas, ethanol, hydrogen, electricity, whatever should be taxed much more heavily.
Millions of cyclists pedaling away.. Now THERE's jobs per megawatt for you!
And since nobody died, we can celebrate!
Nuclear energy is unsafe in the hands of humans, and probably shouldn't be done - BUT it's going to be done anyway. The only intelligent way to proceed is to sincerely try to do everything possible to ensure that it's done in a way that is actually as safe as it can practically be.
NOTE: This is NOT the same thing as what 'environmental' and NIMBY groups do, which is to attempt to reduce the amount of fission that gets done by attempting to make it unprofitable with asinine overregulation, and whiny hinderances.
These people need to realise that the amount of fission that gets done will be the same no matter what they do, and that amount is ALL OF IT.
The only question is whether it's done safely and whether the waste is managed appropriately. The more profit that's in it, the more resources that will be available to try and ensure the whole thing is done as safely as possible.
Doing things well, even things that should not be done, but which will be done, is the best way to deal with nuclear fission power.
- End rant.
WHO THE FSCK CARES!
What a waste of time and money.
Sounds like sour... oh yeah Sauerkraut... Dood! Want some ACIDKraut on your hot dog?
huh huh huh
Eclipse? WTF?
Not sure if it even runs in Eclipse... It's pretty tied to Emacs though. I think the Browser is ok for seeing concepts, but I doubt I'd care to use it for serious programming though. I've been compiling what I code in oz with vi, and running it on the command line.
The documentation needs to be better though. I did buy http://www.info.ucl.ac.be/~pvr/book.html, but the online docs need some polishing and completing, especially section 12 of the tutorial since that's where much of the cool stuff would be.
Someday, if I ever get the energy/time/oz-expertise, I want to try implementing a network protocol using oz's determinacy driven execution and definite clause grammers. Wouldn't it be neat to (almost) paste in the specification for HTTP to implement a web browser/server with the same sort of simplicity as one can almost paste in the BNF for URIs from the RFC to implement a URI parser?
Not an Oz expert though... Oz is still on my list of 'things to do when I get around to it.'
Another annoying thing is that Oz only runs in 32 bit so far.
I thought I detected sarcasm in the 'I wonder who's next?' comment. That was the only one I was replying to, not your topmost comment.
It's just that when you don't really know what you are building, building generally useful things at least lets you make some progress. Whatever the goal, you'll have something useful in your pocket when it's clear what it is you were trying to make.
As long as you have a tiny lightweight core then you can shed excess baggage if it starts to weigh you down more than it is worth. I think that's going to be the winningest strategy long term. Build small lightweight tools that can connect with others so that whatever the situation requires, you can pick from what you need and stick em together into whatever form fashion dictates.
Really? I thought it was the old ammo that keeps better because they put preservatives in the primers to allow them to be kept in crates since WWII. I buy old ammo for my Mosin Nagant some of it from this era, and it fires quite nicely.
I haven't seen a vinyl record since 1980 something. I saw a 8 track tape of Dark Side of the Moon sometime mid 90's.
That's it.
What if they find a way to completely halt ( but not reverse ) the progression of Alzheimers, just as TP has reached the blithering idiot stage?
In a couple more years they discover reverse telomerase and people ( especially lucrative hospitalized ones who are blithering idiots without sufficient awareness to refuse medication ) live forever?
If I were him, I'd shut the heck up about the issue though. He wouldn't want to be declared suicidal and hence crazy, and then locked up in a rubber room to suffer the FULL TERM of his alzheimers with the BEST MEDICAL CARE.
Better to quietly purchase a shotgun, ( or a tank of CO if you're a wuss ) and keep it ready for the day you decide to end it.