From kranenbuster at gmail.com  Mon Feb  8 03:49:12 2010
From: kranenbuster at gmail.com (rob van kranenburg)
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 12:49:12 +0100
Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products: Magic, Alchemy,
	Science... and 	Beyond?
In-Reply-To: <809843.50345.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <3559b3cf1002070040r2362198fk66f7e153b0355762@mail.gmail.com>
	<809843.50345.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <3559b3cf1002080349h79b0396bp3e09786b3df53eda@mail.gmail.com>

"How much programming does it take to make people so unprepared for such
simple possibilities?"

Exactly! and so quick this goes. And this I think explains why -like
battered wife syndrome- people, we all - intuitively cling to a bad
situation that we perceive as gradually declining in agancy but seemingly
offering more convenience, then questioning the foundations on which the
systems are build,

Greetings, Rob

On Sun, Feb 7, 2010 at 6:53 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
<ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca>wrote:

> --- On Sun, 2/7/10, rob van kranenburg <kranenbuster at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >
> > We are at this crossroads where this altered state of relationship
> > between us and objects and environment can be very rich (magic,
> > fairytale, solidarities through generic infrastructures, a new
> > politics)  or very poor (logistics, anti-theft, efficiency,
> > safety......). Everything is geared for the poor option. This ensures
> > that future generations will have less chance
> > of dealing with the unexpected, with fallbacks, sudden
> > events, ...
> >
> > I think the point is that they do not ''evolve' as they no
> > longer work with all the options - as a particular sense of normality
> > has been scripted in as the for-ever-ontological-normal, and that they
> > are - as we already - a very very easy bird for any cat of catastrophe.
> > We already can no longer fix our own cars, and have to trust that food
> > in trucks will come into our European cities every two days.
> >
>
> Yes. That situation is already here. Here on the Canadian Prairies we are
> still largely rural in reality. In the province of Saskatchewan we have an
> area only slightly smaller than Texas in the USA but a population that
> hovers around 1 million (1,000,000). Our two largest population centres are
> only slightly more than 200,000.
>
> But we are becoming ever more urban in mentality.
>
> That was brought home to me resoundingly last week. We had a typical winter
> storm come through for a couple of days. It was a pretty good blizzard but
> not a really big one for this time of year. It resulted in a few localized
> power outages in some rural areas that looked like they might last for more
> than a day.
>
> In many of the news reports that involved interviews with people in the
> affected areas there was much wringing of hands and worry because, among
> other things, they thought the food in their refridgerators and freezers
> might spoil.
>
> This is from farm people who choose to live in a rural setting where the
> possibility of some sort of disruption is constant and would seem more or
> less self-evident. These are people who, only one generation earlier, would
> have been prepared for such events as a normal course of living and would
> not have even remarked on it.
>
> This is from people living on the Canadian Prairies in January!!!
> Saskatchewan in January *IS* a refridgerator!!!! Stick the stuff in an
> unheated outbuilding or in a bucketful of snow until the power comes back
> on.
>
> There were other similarly stupid comments/complaints from some of the
> rural and farm residents in the affected communities.
>
> I don't mean to paint all of the people living here with the same brush of
> stupidity. I'm sure these anecdotes made the news *because* of their patent
> foolishness. But the fact that it happened at all and from enough people to
> be remarkable was a wakeup call.
>
> How much brainpower does it take to figure out how to deal with such simple
> problems???
>
> How much programming does it take to make people so unprepared for such
> simple possibilities?
>
>        ...ken...
>
>
>      __________________________________________________________________
> Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr!
>
> http://www.flickr.com/gift/
>
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> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>

From drernie at radicalcentrism.org  Mon Feb  8 10:47:14 2010
From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar)
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 10:47:14 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>

Hi Lucas,

On Feb 5, 2010, at 8:58 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote:

> My gut is that the iPad is like the Lisa.  It won't move a lot of
> units by itself but products that are strongly influenced by it will.
> A way to put this in a bet is that at time T the iPad and direct
> successors will sell less than X units but products that incorporate
> lots of ideas from it will sell more than X.
> 
> Thoughts on T and X?  For a starting guess I'll say 2015 and 10
> million.  Anybody interested in such a bet?


The iPhone will sell less than 10 million units by 2015?  And iPad alternatives together by 2015 will sell more than 10 million?

You are so totally on. :-)

Thing is, I'm already in to Gordon for $50 that the iPad will sell 13M in 15 months (June 2011):

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=283747111147

To simplify accounting, can we align the dates?  

And since that's roughly 1/4 sooner (and a larger number), would you be willing to give me four-to-one odds?

That is, are you willing to bet $200 against my $50 that the iPad (and direct successors) will NOT sell 13 million units by June 2011?

-- Ernie P.




From marcerickson at gmail.com  Mon Feb  8 12:12:04 2010
From: marcerickson at gmail.com (Marc Erickson)
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 12:12:04 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it for me (re:iPad)
In-Reply-To: <235034.57895.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <A36AA398-703E-4739-B647-8926B35E9C8C@radicalcentrism.org>
	<235034.57895.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <C7A04C7780DC4A088402D9BF7309955D@mobile3>

Hopefully another brand does it too.  HP/Compaq have really crappy build
quality.  Silicon 'unglues' itself from the motherboard after two years,
etc.  This is from a technicians' list I'm on.


Marc

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fork-bounces at xent.com [mailto:fork-bounces at xent.com] On 
> Behalf Of Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo
> Sent: February 2, 2010 8:44 PM
> To: Friends of Rohit Khare
> Subject: Re: [FoRK] medical file Re: Aaron does (some of) it 
> for me (re:iPad)
> 
> --- On Tue, 2/2/10, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar 
> <drernie at radicalcentrism.org> wrote:
> > > 
> > > My doctor has a gadget much like a clipboard. Except it's 
> probably a 
> > > laptop with the screen facing up when it's closed.
> > 
> > 
> > I wonder who built that gadget of yours, and whether they're 
> > considering an iPad version...
> > 
> 
> Ernie, it was very likely just a Wintel laptop. There are 
> laptops available that you can rotate the screen and flop it 
> down on the keyboard, turning it into a tablet. Check, for 
> example, the HP TX1000.
> 
>         ...ken...
> 
> 
>       
> __________________________________________________________________
> Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! 
> 
> http://www.flickr.com/gift/
> 
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
> 


From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Mon Feb  8 12:19:29 2010
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 12:19:29 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c1002081219x584f68e0v49dd3e59b6978058@mail.gmail.com>

I bet Apple will try to pull petty bully boy moves to try to control
its purity and to keep in check the unpure...oh wait


http://www.eurodroid.com/2010/02/power-crazed-apple-demands-developer-axes-mention-of-android-from-iphone-app/


How unlike the angelic company of innovative merit to resort to such
things. I am sure in Apple you folks refer to this as DoublePlus Good
...

-tom(peace love and back armor baby)higgins

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Mon Feb  8 14:22:10 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 14:22:10 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Our wonderfully advanced society
Message-ID: <777590.33635.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>


http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/isotope-crisis-deepens-with-dutch-reactor-shutdown/article1459423/

Just as a bit of background to the article, we (Canada) have been trying for many years to build and bring into service a new replacement for the NRU (National Research Universal) reactor refered to in the article. The replacement project (MAPLE) was shut down in 2008. Gruesome details here:

http://www.neimagazine.com/story.asp?storyCode=2050699

We seem to be unable to get a new one going or keep the old one in reasonable repair. 

What's with that?? Have we suddenly become neanderthals that we cannot repair or replace what we have built and become dependent upon? What's next? Dams? Waterworks? Roads?

I love the summation of the initial article:

      '?But those reactors did not become 40 or 50 years old overnight,
       so there should have been a bit more foresight on the part of
       governments across the world,? he said.'

Why is it that we can budget for these things to be built initially but we refuse to budget for their maintenance, in perpetuity, and/or eventual replacement?

      ...ken...

----------------------------
Gloria Galloway

Ottawa ? From Monday's Globe and Mail 
Published on Sunday, Feb. 07, 2010 10:17PM EST
 
Last updated on Monday, Feb. 08, 2010 12:40PM EST
 

.Canadian medical officials are bracing for ?significant shortages? of a key isotope used to perform imaging tests and warning a lack of supply this spring could hamper diagnoses of life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and heart disease.

Doctors have been grappling with a decline in isotope production since last May, when the nuclear reactor in Chalk River, Ont., was shut down for repairs. 

But the shortfall is about to get worse. 

The aging Petten reactor in the Netherlands, which has helped to fill the void while the Chalk River facility sits idle, will be turned off on Feb. 19 to repair leaks, and it is expected to remain closed until summer. 

Together, these two reactors produce about 60 per cent of the world's supply of an isotope called technetium 99, a radioactive substance used in 85 per cent of diagnostic imaging procedures. 

?We are definitely exquisitely anxious. But I don't think that anybody has real solutions,? said Jean-Luc Urbain, president of the Canadian Society of Nuclear Medicine. 

?Nuclear medicine is such that we have the ability to do early diagnosis compared to radiology, for example. And, if you don't do diagnoses of diseases, they keep progressing,? he said. 

?So what we are going to see is an increase in the numbers of advanced cardiovascular diseases and advanced cancers in the years to come.?

Since the NRU reactor in Chalk River was shut down in May, Dr. Urbain said he and the other doctors in his field have been ?coping, coping, coping, day to day.?

Hospitals and clinics have learned to maximize procedures when they have isotopes and sit nearly idle when they don't, he said. 

?Usually Thursday and Friday are very, very quiet days,? Dr. Urbain said. When Petten goes down, he added, ?we might be quiet every day of the week.?

Christopher O'Brien, president of the Ontario Association of Nuclear Medicine, said the supply of isotopes over the past nine months has been better than expected, though he acknowledged that some doctors have been forced to switch to less effective isotopes and employ more costly testing procedures.

?Do we have any elbow room? No,? he said. ?If one of the shipments is late due to some delivery issue overseas, then we are into dire straits until the shipment comes in. So there is actually no slack in the system at all. It is cut to bare bones just to keep supplies going.?

That could change when the Petten reactor goes down, he said.

Although both the Petten and NRU reactors were down simultaneously for a brief period last summer, July and August are slow months for nuclear medicine, Dr. O'Brien said. 

March, on the other hand, is the busiest time of year. ?So we are anticipating significant shortages.?

Christian Paradis, the federal Natural Resources Minister who only recently took over the portfolio that has been a political minefield largely as a result of the isotopes issue, said in an e-mail that the government is doing what it can lessen the impact of the problem.

?The health and safety of Canadians is of the utmost importance and it is imperative that the NRU be brought back online as quickly, and safely, as possible. I speak regularly with AECL [Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd.] to ensure everything that can be done, is being done,? Mr. Paradis said when asked about both reactors being put of service.

Covidien, one of the two North American isotope distributors, has posted a message on its website saying that smaller reactors in Belgium, France and South Africa will help plug the production gap. ?But,? it says, ?intermittent periods of serious shortage will still occur.? 

AECL, the Crown corporation that owns the NRU, has not given a start-up date for the reactor's return to service. Previous estimates of the amount of time it will take to fix leaks have proved wildly optimistic.

The repair period is ?moving forward and right now,? said AECL spokesman Dale Coffin, ?the best information we have is that ? April is a hard finish, back in service, unless something happens between now and the end of the repair process.?

Dr. Urbain said there is no question that old reactors, such as the NRU and the unit in the Netherlands, need to be fixed from time to time.

?But those reactors did not become 40 or 50 years old overnight, so there should have been a bit more foresight on the part of governments across the world,? he said.

--------------------------------------


      __________________________________________________________________
Connect with friends from any web browser - no download required. Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger for the Web BETA at http://ca.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php


From pj at place.org  Mon Feb  8 19:31:59 2010
From: pj at place.org (Paul Jimenez)
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:31:59 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products:  Magic, Alchemy,
 Science... and Beyond?
In-Reply-To: <E2C42F67-CDB5-41E9-95BD-3A64ED5507D0@place.org>
References: <E2C42F67-CDB5-41E9-95BD-3A64ED5507D0@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B70D72F.5020408@place.org>

An interesting perspective, as always.  I agree, though I think it means 
that no product can ever be finished because it will need to adjust to 
the changes in a user's tastes over time, and it's probably so optimized 
to only be 'in style' for a short time.   A kind of usability overfit, 
to make an analogy to machine learning.  Marketers may think that's a 
feature. I think it's a sustainability bug, personally, but YMMV.

   --pj

On 01/29/2010 08:48 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>
> The use of the term "magical" in Apple's description of the iPad has 
> been nagging at me...  after quite a bit of consideration, I've come 
> to the conclusion that their use of this term is "meta-anti-ironic."  
> By this, I mean the following:  they are attempting to use the term 
> figuratively to describe one thing --- the product, which that term 
> does not obviously literally describe --- but in doing so have 
> unintentionally used the term to literally describe something else 
> *about* the thing they intended to describe --- the mindset in which 
> and process by which the product was conceived, defined, and created.  
> In doing so they've revealed what I believe to be an atypical (but 
> probably occasionally unavoidable;  magic is, as we all know, 
> unreliable) result of the way they approach product creation:  confusion.
>
> This gives me an opportunity to dwell (at length ;-) on a topic I've 
> long been fascinated (obsessed?) with:  the intertwined process(es) of 
> product conception, definition, creation, adoption, and refinement / 
> evolution.  I.e., a theory of products and a sort of mini-taxonomy of 
> the evolution of how we approach these processes in making  high 
> technology.  Unfortunately this little write-up doesn't really provide 
> any such theory, despite the title.  But consider it a random walk 
> through some of the prerequisites for understanding any such thing --- 
> which, I ultimately conclude, may not in any case be possible, 
> necessary, or desirable.  Maybe. ;-)
>
> First, definition of a couple of terms and some scoping.  By "product" 
> I generally mean any technological artifact;  though most of the cases 
> and examples considered and given are software and / or computing or 
> consumer electronic hardware (fuzzy lines, there) the general ideas 
> should apply to any sort of intentional, purposeful artifact --- i.e., 
> all "products" are technological.  By "product management" I mean any 
> process of defining products as a part of the process of creating 
> them.  By "product marketing" I generally mean the process of somehow 
> gathering the information necessary for the definition of products.  
> It should be interpreted as an *inbound*, intelligence-gathering 
> process --- and not confused with "outbound" marketing such as 
> marcomm, pre- and post-sales support, channel / pipeline creation and 
> support, advertising, etc.  Specifically this "product marketing" can 
> entail any number of distinct activities, some of which may be 
> described below, but which are all intended to gather intelligence to 
> inform product definition decisions, requirements creation (or 
> exclusion), and so on.
>
> So...
>
> In The Beginning...
>
>
> -- The Magicians --
>
> In The Beginning we had product magicians.  Their product "magic" was 
> / is a process primarily of introspection;  they reflect upon their 
> own attitudes about, uses of, and desires for certain technologies 
> and, from this reflection, can (or attempt to) extrapolate the needs 
> or desires of others and synthesize product definitions accordingly.  
> The result is something equally magical:  a "vision."  It is gestalt, 
> genius, artistry.  It is aesthetic, soft, egoistic, passionate.  The 
> process is highly subjective, intuition driven, and qualitative --- 
> and success or failure relies entirely upon the individual magician's 
> ability to execute this mysterious, internal, creative / synthetic / 
> syncretic process that they themselves probably cannot articulate, 
> much less teach others.  Success or failure also requires the ability 
> of the magician to manage the efforts --- often dictatorially --- of 
> others in actually bringing the product to fruition while maintaining 
> the integrity of the original "vision."
>
>
> Most early successful higher technologies relied upon creators that 
> were magicians and processes that were magical.  Some few were really, 
> really good at it, and still manage to practice it effectively today.  
> Examples:  two should suffice, though there are many --- the early 
> computer entrepreneurial landscape was littered with them, both 
> successful and not so.  The master magician of them all, clearly:  
> Jobs.  His apprentice Jonathan Ive, is no less the true believer and 
> practitioner, with his wide-eyes (from staring into the flames of 
> Platonic truth) and his high temple of creative conjuration, his lab.  
> (Be very quiet when you enter, lest you disturb some intricate 
> spell-in-progress.)  The previous heir-apparent, Tony Fadell, is 
> probably an example practitioner of the next step in the evolution of 
> product marketing and management towards science:  an alchemist.  
> (Speculation:  the fundamental conflict between attitudes toward magic 
> vs. alchemy is the reason that Ive is the golden boy while Fadell got 
> "pithed.")
>
> Digression:  today's "web designers" are most --- perhaps all --- 
> latter-day, would-be magicians, though mostly of the low-end hedge 
> wizard variety, masters of minutia, scam artists mostly --- 
> prestidigitators.  At their best, they may be envious alchemical 
> aspirants, Their major achievements tend to be the conjurations of 
> illusory mountains from trivial molehills.  Oh, how they peddle their 
> mysterious arts!  How they dazzle and confound with their bizarre 
> utterances, their mercurial outbursts, their mystical convictions and 
> religious, inviolable heuristics about font, color, contrast, and oh 
> yes, whitespace;  layout, and (of course) the proper size, 
> orientation, and opacity of drop shadows --- and please, let us make 
> sure that the radius of curvature of those button corners preserves 
> the appropriate ratio of earth, wind, fire and water.  How they seek 
> and seek that deific ideal of "user experience."  They tend to 
> practice a folkloric art, with some apocryphal writings (mostly grad 
> student papers from the mid-80s MIT Media Lab) and oh yes, that Bible 
> of theirs (Apple has a role here) --- the Apple Human Interface 
> Guidelines, or perhaps their Satanic Bible by Raskin, the LaVey of 
> their dark-ish arts, or (for the more sophisticated and sophistical 
> among them) their John Dee:  Tufte.  More misdirection than magic, 
> even less science than alchemy, with few pretenses towards it...
>
>
> -- The Alchemists --
>
> The product alchemists are product magicians that would be product 
> scientists, if merely they understood how.  They attempt to apply 
> various external, reproducible, objective laws, observations, 
> measurements, methods, and so forth to the product creation process in 
> order to achieve the optimal result.  However, there's still a kind of 
> animistic, ad hoc, magical quality to the effort.  They tend to 
> reflect on the objects / artifacts themselves, their abstract purpose 
> and uses (use cases, etc.) and subjective musings about how 
> individuals might use any given artifact with any given configuration 
> of properties in some context to some end.  The methods used tend to 
> be a mix of qualitative and quantitative.  The alchemists have the 
> right goal in mind, but generally not the right tools (i.e., 
> developed-enough models, relying instead on ratios of bilious and 
> phlegmatic humors) or methods (obsessive focus on quantitative means 
> of taking actual input data and turning it into objective meaning.)  
> The input is too selective, the data sets too small, the processes too 
> ad hoc, the experiments too uncontrolled, and the objects of 
> consideration too abstract and animistic to really call what they do 
> science.  To a large extent the success or failure of the effort still 
> devolves to the quality of the intuition of the individual alchemists 
> involved.
>
> General Magic (ironically...?) was an alchemy shop.  For all their 
> usability studies, rapid prototyping, quantification, feedback 
> processes and loops with partners, focus groups, their UI committee, 
> etc...  they still managed to produce a beautiful egg-laying milk pig 
> (i.e., attempted to be all things to all people, ultimately satisfying 
> none.) By contrast another alchemist --- Jeff Hawkins over at Palm at 
> the same time --- managed to hit the right notes for initial market 
> creation, largely by observing what didn't work with Newton and 
> General Magic and doing exactly the opposite, with some minimum of 
> user input and feedback and a maximum of good intuition.
>
> Arguably VCs and investors are a kind of product alchemist;  or 
> perhaps more like patrons of alchemy.  They have some of the same 
> interests but different practices and goals;  their focus is 
> different:  they vet product alchemists.  One major area of focus for 
> these guys is understanding market context, opportunity, execution 
> ability, and --- particularly --- friction / barriers to adoption or 
> success.  The failure of this group of folks to come up with any 
> repeatable process should be clear;  in the end, it's all gut-calls 
> and personalities, and the failure rates reflect that.  Their major 
> conceit:  the barrier to entry.  The inevitable conclusion:  
> everything is impossible.
>
> And here we're mostly stuck.  For three decades now we've been trying 
> to build a science of product marketing out of alchemical parts and 
> don't really have a unified discipline, yet.  From the early days of 
> quantitative usability studies at the (MIT) Media Lab back in the 80s 
> to the abstract study technology adoption and innovation (i.e. Frank 
> Bass --- whose work stretches back to 1969 but was little-recognized 
> until the 90s) through the 90s (Clayton Christensen, and so on) to the 
> object-focused alchemists of the late 90s and Oughts (Don Norman, 
> Steve Krug, the Web 2.0 / 37 Signals crowd, etc.) we continue to get 
> bits and pieces of the discipline but still lack any grand unified 
> theory.  And in fact, any such grand unified theory would likely be 
> enormously (perhaps intractably) complicated.  In addition to the 
> above, it's also going to have to have some theory of actors and 
> motivations, some kind of decision theory, some kind of theory of 
> memes, and some well-formed construct that ties together the "outside 
> context" parts of things, i.e. market context, path / history 
> dependency, friction, predictions about the reactions of existing and 
> non-yet-existing competitors and actors, etc.  Makes e.g. forecasting 
> in "mere" economics-at-scale look trivial.
>
>
> -- The Scientists ---
>
> There won't be any.
>
>
> -- The Post-Scientists / The Empiricists ---
>
> There won't be any science of product, no grand unified theory of 
> product creation / innovation / marketing --- not because it's 
> impossible (though it might be) but because we're going to leap right 
> past that to something fuzzier, spookier, more massive, more 
> inscrutable, more data-driven, colder and yet simultaneously "wetter" 
> and more "biological" --- and more effective.  Bigger, yet less 
> substantial;  ectoplasmic.  Something much...  Google-ier.  Cf. "The 
> Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data,"  "The Google Way of Science," 
> "Science Without Theory," etc.
>
> The basic idea here is:  stop guessing, stop "modeling," stop 
> extrapolating, stop forecasting, stop focus grouping, stop asking...  
> and just measure and evolve.  Measure early, measure often, measure 
> always, measure everything, measure a *whole lot.*  Let the numbers 
> guide the decisions about what to build, how to build it, when to 
> build it, *why* to build it.  What color should that background be?  
> Try them all and measure it.  Should I build X, Y, or Z?  Build them 
> all, see which works best, discard the rest.  Should that button be 
> here or there?  Let the (very large) masses decide.
>
> Google is the pioneer and the current (and foreseeable) master of 
> this.  Their scale coupled with their stigmergic processes and 
> disorganization allow the exploration of very many possibilities in 
> parallel, through a kind of evolutionary process.  What works, 
> propagates.  What doesn't is culled, absorbed, refactored, and any 
> good bits digested and reused.  Everything is measured --- again and 
> again and again.  Nothing is stagnant;  no solution assumed 
> permanently optimal;  mutation is a constant.  Everything is 
> continuously tested for fitness;  that which is (currently) best is 
> selected and used.  New niches to invade and occupy are constantly 
> sought.  Meta-technology in action.
>
> They aren't alone in starting to do things this way, but they're 
> certainly driving it forward as fast as possible.
>
> I have conflicted feelings about this.  Everything reduces to the cold 
> equations, the simple facts, the raw numbers, and the Really Big.  
> Artistry is deprecated, intuition obsoleted, large scale made 
> essential, and incremental bootstrapping from the tiny made difficult 
> or impossible as the ability to conduct the process at small scale is 
> limited.  The world bifurcates;  the distinction between craft 
> products and tools will become ever clearer.  I'm not sure that's a 
> good thing;  maybe it is.  The tools should be more useful, the market 
> overall should become more efficient at delivery of useful goods and 
> services at the right times.  And perhaps the disillusionment that 
> goes along with such distinctions will eventually enable software and 
> other technological *artisans* to conduct their trade for what is is, 
> free from the idea that there's any valid measure other than the 
> aesthetic / subjective / qualitative satisfaction of a limited 
> audience.  (Interesting tangents:  what about the application of this 
> sort of thing to e.g. investments?  Data too limited today, within any 
> given fund or even across funds and industries.  But, maybe...  Also 
> worthy of consideration:  impact of post-scientific product marketing 
> on e.g. bazaar vs. cathedral models.  Obviously, magic and alchemy 
> occur in the cathedral.  But post-science also has to, necessarily, 
> occur in the cathedral today, because that's generally where the 
> critical masses of data, computing resources, and so on reside.  If 
> only there were Turing Awards for product marketing:  "Can 
> Post-Scientific Product Marketing be Liberated from its Cathedral 
> Style?"  If so, how?)
>
>
> Nonetheless, that's where we're at.
>
>
> "Welcome to the brave new world of post-scientific product marketing.  
> Your color is #C2D9FF.  Enjoy it!  We know you will."
>
>
> ---  Beyond-the-Beyond ---
>
> For now, humans remain in the loop, the analysts and actors, human 
> judgments and proactivity still essential to acts of invention, to the 
> product-conceiving and product-making creative process.  That won't 
> always be the case.  The next meta-level up the stack is automating 
> away that part of the process, closing the loop entirely, humans 
> merely as reactive agents and input signals, the population as a whole 
> an experimental testbed on which the process operates.  Quo bono?  Us, 
> hopefully.  But not entirely certainly, and perhaps not forever...
>
> At the end of the line, we will find ourselves back to magic.  Clarke 
> was right, of course;  "any sufficiently advanced technology..."  When 
> the technology in question is the meta-technology of technology 
> creation, and when you've moved beyond theory to pure, inscrutable, 
> dense, automatically-derived, data-driven mathematical models, 
> predictions, and processes...  the creative process is out of our 
> hands, becomes recursive...  the exclusive domain of focused (if 
> global, hopefully friendly (*cough*)) optimizers, optimizing away, 
> refining, perfecting, chiseling away at product-space oh-so-efficiently.
>
> And so we have a world of agents and daemons roaming invisibly through 
> virtual planes that intersect the desert of the real at select 
> touch-points, a whole bestiarum vocabulum of artificial, narrow beings 
> so eager to please:  barely-aware fabs and repraps and reality 
> printers, vision-projectors and consensus hallucinator-facilitators, 
> stock feed logisticians, meta-compilers, automatic user interface 
> builders and mass customizers, usage statisticians and reality miners, 
> attention heat-mappers and points-of-sale streamers, all manner of 
> other localizers and trackers, transaction and other pattern 
> recognizers, time-on-page and other attention-attenders, 
> similarity-clusterers and preference-predictors, action-modality 
> specialists and subculture classifiers and fashion advisors and 
> memetic imagineers, cluestream-sniffers and cluehounds and sensor-node 
> watchers, remembrance agents and interest detectors, gaze gazers and 
> meta-suggestive sell suggesters, and so on...  more attention and 
> effort and urgent need-to-please lavished instantaneously yet 
> continually on each individual than the sum of human attention and 
> effort throughout history...
>
> A swarm of cold intelligences operating for and on us, navigating, 
> searching silently and tirelessly across vast multi-dimensional 
> fitness landscapes of shimmery, roiling, chaotic, noisy, raw, rich, 
> pure data;  mining it, sifting it, finding, reminding, refining, 
> synthesizing...  competing, negotiating, cooperating, mutating, 
> replicating, mating, creating, minimizing the experimental error, 
> "understanding" their human experimental subjects by reduction to pure 
> math..  Climbing that hill...  dancing some weird and intricate dance 
> of creative destruction and destructive creation...  Simultaneously 
> the most personalized, customized, bespoke user experience for each 
> individual, a cornucopia of products, a consumer's Elysium...  a 
> reality tailored perfectly and obsessively to each person, yet not 
> lovingly;  so impersonal, so cold, too...  perfect.  Flawless.  
> Nothing objectionable, nothing out of place, no surprises - ever 
> (except when you want one and don't know it.  They do.)
>
> And the whole thing certainly begins to look like magic.  Spooky, 
> virtual, cold, alien magic.
>
> "Wonderful?"  Certainly, if literally.  Desirable?  Arguable.*  
> Inevitable?  Probably.
>
>
> -- 
>
>
> $0.02,
>
>
> jb
>
>
> * Me?  I guess I dig the idea.  Count me in.  But then, meatheads 
> never impress me much anyway. ;-)
>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork


From pj at place.org  Mon Feb  8 19:42:15 2010
From: pj at place.org (Paul Jimenez)
Date: Mon, 08 Feb 2010 21:42:15 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Portable hotspots (or,
 why the iPad doesn't need 3G / future of Bluetooth questionable?)
In-Reply-To: <3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org>
References: <68EC4D2D-FFB8-4036-8297-D4FA8E4C7BC0@place.org>	<D4A86B12-F38F-4829-A403-4EEE98850C6F@place.org>	<46EABAF7-3E7F-4D53-9868-21B4A929C25F@place.org>
	<3AB5EC7D-4459-4009-AB12-9CB1B1505C90@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B70D997.7030506@place.org>

On 02/02/2010 08:35 PM, Jeff Bone wrote:
>
>
> Re: the dumb / smart network deal, but of course.  This was nailed 
> years ago by a sometime friend of mine, who subsequently got fired for 
> taking the trouble to speak truth to power. ;-)

Anybody I know? :)

   --pj

From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Mon Feb  8 20:35:01 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Mon, 8 Feb 2010 20:35:01 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] A Theory of Products:  Magic, Alchemy,
	Science... and Beyond?
In-Reply-To: <4B70D72F.5020408@place.org>
Message-ID: <192009.39002.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Paul Jimenez <pj at place.org> wrote:
> An interesting perspective, as
> always.? I agree, though I think it means that no
> product can ever be finished because it will need to adjust
> to the changes in a user's tastes over time, and it's
> probably so optimized to only be 'in style' for a short
> time.???A kind of usability overfit, to make
> an analogy to machine learning.? Marketers may think
> that's a feature. I think it's a sustainability bug,
> personally, but YMMV.
> 

One needs to be careful with this sort of assumption. It's not just "taste". It might not even be primarily "taste". Unless you expand your definition of "taste" to include the "learning curve".

That is, now that we've had the opportunity to use it for awhile, here is what we now understand about how the user interface could be improved to make it easier to use. Even with the current user interface, here are changes/additions to features and functions that would make it more useful. And if the suggested changes are made to the user interface, here are even more features and functions that would make it even more useful still.

Iterate.

        ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail.  Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca


From sdw at lig.net  Tue Feb  9 09:52:47 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams)
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 09:52:47 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Google notches victory in Chinese hacker fight
Message-ID: <4B71A0EF.3080805@lig.net>

But what about the generals / agents who they were reporting to??

> the attacks are being taken as an APT ? Advanced Persistent Threat ? 
> which is milspeak for
> an attacker that is so sophisticated and well funded that it would 
> seem to require state sponsorship.
http://www.financetechnews.com/chinese-police-bust-hacker-training-operation/
> Google notches victory in Chinese hacker fight
> February 8, 2010 by Valerie Helmbreck
> Posted in: Information security, Special Report, cybercrime, 
> e-commerce, online banking
>
>
> whistle-blower
>
> How much pressure does it take to get Chinese officials to crack down 
> on would-be cyber-criminals? Plenty, but there?s been modest movement 
> recently with the shuttering of an alleged hacker training operation.
>
> Police in central China have shut down the organization that openly 
> recruited thousands of members online. The folks who ran the ?Black 
> Hawk Safety Net? provided its ?students? with cyber-attack lessons and 
> malicious software, Chinese state media said recently.
>
> Officials say the training group schooled paying customers in Web site 
> hacking techniques and Trojan software.
>
> The shutdown comes as concern continues to mount that China is a 
> center for industrial espionage and criminal behavior on the Web.
>
> The situation got so bad recently, search giant Google threatened to 
> abandon the country, ostensibly because of Chinese censorship. But the 
> threatened pullout came after the software giant charged that Google 
> e-mail accounts were hacked from China.
>
> Google wasn?t the lone victim in that assault, which also hit at least 
> 20 other companies. But it was by far the biggest player with the most 
> muscle.
>
> Seems that flexing that muscle had at least a small impact.
>
> Nobody seems to know if the lawlessness surrounding China?s Web 
> activities is the result of independent criminals or if there?s any 
> state or military involvement in the schemes.
>
> But for now, the hacker training operation ? and its 12,000 paying 
> subscribers, as well as its 170,000 free members ? will have to find 
> another home. Seems that officials seized five computers and a car,  
> shut down all Web sites involved in the case and froze 1.7 million 
> yuan ($250,000) in assets along with arresting three people.
>
>
> One Response to ?Google notches victory in Chinese hacker fight?
>
>    1. Manichattan Junior Says:
>       February 9th, 2010 at 12:17 pm
>
>       That seems like a great development.
>       And though it may ?seem? like nobody knows if the PRC was 
> involved in the hacking schemes,
>       in fact a lot of investigators seem sure of it.
>       In other words, the attacks are being taken as an APT ? Advanced 
> Persistent Threat ? which is milspeak for
>       an attacker that is so sophisticated and well funded that it 
> would seem to require state sponsorship.
>       -Manichattan Jr.

sdw






From aaron at bavariati.org  Tue Feb  9 11:14:27 2010
From: aaron at bavariati.org (Aaron Burt)
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 11:14:27 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa01002070959h1dc01abfjffbd27596fd0681d@mail.gmail.com>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<20100207050828.GA18093@aaron-x31>
	<ab069aa01002070959h1dc01abfjffbd27596fd0681d@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20100209191426.GA19934@aaron-x31>

On Sun, Feb 07, 2010 at 09:59:52AM -0800, Lucas Gonze wrote:
> Aaron, are you stepping up to speak for conventional wisdom among
> techies?  Sure there's wisdom in conventional wisdom?

Speaking mainly for mah cynical sailf.

> Form factor is a subtle and important part of comp sci.

Form factor is critical to physical and UX design, certainly.
But to comp sci?  I'm missing something.

> A netbook without a keyboard is not a lesser desktop, it is a new type of
> thing with new strengths.

The same could be said of *any* design variation.  This particular one has
been tried many, many times.  Good on them if they make it work.

> It's a profound development in the computer industry that the
> morphology of this object has so much in common with smart phones,
> maybe more than it does with desktops, and yet is competitive with
> desktops for many purposes.

Remember where the Symbian phone OS came from?  Or, for that matter, where
the iPhone OS came from?  Or Windows Mobile?

> The desktop, including both monitor and keyboard, has defined our
> conception of computers.

It's not so much the form factor as the tasks that determine how we
interact with computers.  The industrial and military worlds are very
different.

> Laptops without keyboards are a significant step.  The next step is to
> lose monitors.  I wonder what that will be like?  What if the device
> was voice controlled and had a speaker output?  (But also a full scale
> web browser and connectivity).

Why... then you'd have a standard wearable.  Or a modern Gphone.  Give it
time and context-awareness and you'd have something impressive, but until
we have a paradigm shift in how computers facilitate human interaction and
labour, non-visual computers will live in the niches.

For more information about that paradigm shift, consult your local sci-fi, 
from Star Trek to Charlie Stross.


From hkpang at gmail.com  Tue Feb  9 11:30:26 2010
From: hkpang at gmail.com (HK Pang)
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 14:30:26 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <20100209191426.GA19934@aaron-x31>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<20100207050828.GA18093@aaron-x31>
	<ab069aa01002070959h1dc01abfjffbd27596fd0681d@mail.gmail.com>
	<20100209191426.GA19934@aaron-x31>
Message-ID: <5234e09e1002091130x51541d25ocaad2808f0fb38a@mail.gmail.com>

I'm actually eagerly waiting for the iPad. I hope it will be the first
device that I can starting input Chinese the natural way -- writing it
out on the screen.

Currently the iPhone has helped my kids quite a bit in learning
Chinese. They use it as a English/Chinese dictionary. They will love
the iPad.

> A netbook without a keyboard is not a lesser desktop, it is a new type of
> thing with new strengths.
>

From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Tue Feb  9 11:47:00 2010
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 11:47:00 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>
Message-ID: <ab069aa01002091147p23921d84q2c9c2382baef2613@mail.gmail.com>

Ernie, I think you accepted a bet that was much stiffer than you had
to.  But a logical actor shouldn't give you better odds if you'll
accept worse ones.

On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
<drernie at radicalcentrism.org> wrote:
> Hi Lucas,
>
> On Feb 5, 2010, at 8:58 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote:
>
>> My gut is that the iPad is like the Lisa. ?It won't move a lot of
>> units by itself but products that are strongly influenced by it will.
>> A way to put this in a bet is that at time T the iPad and direct
>> successors will sell less than X units but products that incorporate
>> lots of ideas from it will sell more than X.
>>
>> Thoughts on T and X? ?For a starting guess I'll say 2015 and 10
>> million. ?Anybody interested in such a bet?
>
>
> The iPhone will sell less than 10 million units by 2015? ?And iPad alternatives together by 2015 will sell more than 10 million?
>
> You are so totally on. :-)
>
> Thing is, I'm already in to Gordon for $50 that the iPad will sell 13M in 15 months (June 2011):
>
> http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=283747111147
>
> To simplify accounting, can we align the dates?
>
> And since that's roughly 1/4 sooner (and a larger number), would you be willing to give me four-to-one odds?
>
> That is, are you willing to bet $200 against my $50 that the iPad (and direct successors) will NOT sell 13 million units by June 2011?
>
> -- Ernie P.
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>


From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Tue Feb  9 11:53:46 2010
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 11:53:46 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <5234e09e1002091130x51541d25ocaad2808f0fb38a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<20100207050828.GA18093@aaron-x31>
	<ab069aa01002070959h1dc01abfjffbd27596fd0681d@mail.gmail.com>
	<20100209191426.GA19934@aaron-x31>
	<5234e09e1002091130x51541d25ocaad2808f0fb38a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ab069aa01002091153w1dc37eb8t71ca332f92f91811@mail.gmail.com>

Music notation is in a similar position.  Qwerty keyboards have never
been a natural way to deal with it, while touch screens are completely
capable of doing a piano (or guitar, or zither, or ...) interface.
And for that matter, you can use singing into the mic as a data entry
method; that's what Ocharina does.

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 11:30 AM, HK Pang <hkpang at gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm actually eagerly waiting for the iPad. I hope it will be the first
> device that I can starting input Chinese the natural way -- writing it
> out on the screen.
>
> Currently the iPhone has helped my kids quite a bit in learning
> Chinese. They use it as a English/Chinese dictionary. They will love
> the iPad.
>
>> A netbook without a keyboard is not a lesser desktop, it is a new type of
>> thing with new strengths.

From jbone at place.org  Tue Feb  9 19:42:15 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 21:42:15 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] [tt] [wta-talk] The future of politics. Can politicians
	prepare society for the major technology challenges ahead?
	With Darren Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <20100209211343.GD17686@leitl.org>
References: <20100209211343.GD17686@leitl.org>
Message-ID: <CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>


"Can dinosaurs help rodents prepare for their upcoming ascendancy?"

This is hilarious.  Really.  GMAFB.  

Politicians in general cannot and do not understand or cope with, much less help society adapt to and capture the opportunity of, *yesterday's* technology.  Instead, the political system is often the tool of those with entrenched interests in inhibiting new technology.  Tubes, remember?

Looking at the presenter's bio-blip, makes perfect sense.  Hit us with that irrational exuberance about the positive effectiveness of government, Mr. Chairman.

Can (existing forms of) government have a positive impact on society?  Of course.  Does this actually happen?  Rarely, and increasingly so.

Let us not mince words.  Every single technological innovation of any significance on the horizon is a disruptive threat to any centralization of control, be it within markets or within social organization.  That is *the nature* of disruptive innovation vis-a-vis establishments.  Not only is it unrealistic and pollyanna to think that government *could* play a constructive role in this --- in fact the opposite incentives and motivations are intrinsically baked into our systems of governance themselves --- whatever individual intentions and motivations "politicians" might have.


jb



On Feb 9, 2010, at 3:13 PM, Eugen Leitl wrote:

> ----- Forwarded message from estropico <estropico at gmail.com> -----
> 
> From: estropico <estropico at gmail.com>
> Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 16:28:26 +0000
> To: wta-talk at transhumanism.org
> Subject: [wta-talk] The future of politics. Can politicians prepare society
> 	for the major technology challenges ahead? With Darren Reynolds.
> Reply-To: Humanity+ Discussion List <wta-talk at transhumanism.org>
> 
> The future of politics. Can politicians prepare society for the major
> technology challenges ahead? With Darren Reynolds
> 
> Venue: Room 416, Birkbeck College, Torrington Square, London WC1E 7HX
> Date: Saturday 20th February 2010
> Time: 2pm-4pm
> 
> About the talk:
> 
> With the rapid accelerating changes in many fields of technology and
> society, there's a risk we'll wake up one morning in (say) 2015 and
> realise that our politicians have failed to play their role in
> anticipating and preparing for major risks and opportunities -
> politicians were focusing on issues of the past, and neglecting issues
> of the future.
> 
> What should we be doing, now, to change the topic of political debate,
> to bring more focus on the transformative potential of emerging
> technologies?
> 
> How should the role of politicians evolve, over the near future, to
> improve the technological leadership of this country (and beyond)?
> 
> And what role can non-politicians play, to improve the way society
> makes collective choices about the allocation of funding and
> resources?
> 
> About the main speaker:
> 
> Darren Reynolds is a pro-technology campaigner and local government
> councillor for the UK's Liberal Democrats. In his professional career
> he has helped many public and private sector organisations to
> introduce new technology and improve the way they work. Darren
> believes in putting choices in the hands of ordinary people and
> ensuring that tomorrow's technological developments flourish in a
> balanced regulatory framework.
> 
> Darren is Chair of the Burnley Liberal Democrats.
> 
> In 1998, Darren was part of the international team of philosophers and
> activists who produced the original "Transhumanist Declaration"
> 
> Opportunity for additional speakers
> 
> The meeting will also feature a number of 5-minute pitches from
> audience members (agreed in advance) stating cases for specific
> changes in the allocation of national budget - for example, which
> areas of research deserve a larger share of funding (and which areas
> deserve less).
> 
> Anyone wishing to take part in this section of the meeting should get
> in touch asap.
> 
> There's no charge to attend this meeting, and everyone is welcome.
> 
> There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and to make comments.
> 
> Discussion will continue after the event, in a nearby pub, for those
> who are able to stay.
> 
> ** Why not join some of the Extrobritannia regulars for a drink and/or
> light lunch beforehand, any time after 12.30pm, in The Marlborough
> Arms, 36 Torrington Place, London WC1E 7HJ. To find us, look out for a
> table where there's a copy of the book "Citizen Cyborg: Why Democratic
> Societies Must Respond to the Redesigned Human of the Future"
> displayed.
> 
> ** About the venue:
> 
> Room 416 is on the fourth floor (via the lift near reception) in the
> main Birkbeck College building, in Torrington Square (which is a
> pedestrian-only square). Torrington Square is about 10 minutes walk
> from either Russell Square or Goodge St tube stations.
> 
> www.extrobritannia.blogspot.com
> www.uktranshumanistassociation.org
> _______________________________________________
> wta-talk mailing list
> wta-talk at transhumanism.org
> http://www.transhumanism.org/mailman/listinfo/wta-talk
> 
> ----- End forwarded message -----
> -- 
> Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org
> ______________________________________________________________
> ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org
> 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A  7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE
> _______________________________________________
> tt mailing list
> tt at postbiota.org
> http://postbiota.org/mailman/listinfo/tt



From drernie at radicalcentrism.org  Tue Feb  9 20:07:05 2010
From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar)
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 2010 20:07:05 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa01002091147p23921d84q2c9c2382baef2613@mail.gmail.com>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>
	<ab069aa01002091147p23921d84q2c9c2382baef2613@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <300F6387-0583-4DC6-8946-5F613F166708@radicalcentrism.org>

Hi Lucas,

On Feb 9, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Lucas Gonze wrote:
> Ernie, I think you accepted a bet that was much stiffer than you had
> to.  But a logical actor shouldn't give you better odds if you'll
> accept worse ones.

Who says I'll accept worse ones? :-)  Gordon got the low-price offer, but my utility curve is non-linear, so if I'm going to expend another $50 I'm gonna want better odds. By sharing *your* predictions, you've given me a sense of your probability distribution, so logically *I* have no reason to make it easy on you!

>> That is, are you willing to bet $200 against my $50 that the iPad (and direct successors) will NOT sell 13 million units by June 2011?

So are you confident enough to put your money where your mouth is, or not?

-- Ernie P.

> 
> On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
> <drernie at radicalcentrism.org> wrote:
>> Hi Lucas,
>> 
>> On Feb 5, 2010, at 8:58 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote:
>> 
>>> My gut is that the iPad is like the Lisa.  It won't move a lot of
>>> units by itself but products that are strongly influenced by it will.
>>> A way to put this in a bet is that at time T the iPad and direct
>>> successors will sell less than X units but products that incorporate
>>> lots of ideas from it will sell more than X.
>>> 
>>> Thoughts on T and X?  For a starting guess I'll say 2015 and 10
>>> million.  Anybody interested in such a bet?
>> 
>> 
>> The iPhone will sell less than 10 million units by 2015?  And iPad alternatives together by 2015 will sell more than 10 million?
>> 
>> You are so totally on. :-)
>> 
>> Thing is, I'm already in to Gordon for $50 that the iPad will sell 13M in 15 months (June 2011):
>> 
>> http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=283747111147
>> 
>> To simplify accounting, can we align the dates?
>> 
>> And since that's roughly 1/4 sooner (and a larger number), would you be willing to give me four-to-one odds?
>> 
>> That is, are you willing to bet $200 against my $50 that the iPad (and direct successors) will NOT sell 13 million units by June 2011?
>> 
>> -- Ernie P.
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> _______________________________________________
>> FoRK mailing list
>> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork



From sdw at lig.net  Tue Feb  9 21:05:12 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen Williams)
Date: Tue, 09 Feb 2010 21:05:12 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] [tt] [wta-talk] The future of politics. Can politicians
 prepare society for the major technology challenges ahead?	With Darren
 Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>
References: <20100209211343.GD17686@leitl.org>
	<CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>
Message-ID: <4B723E88.9060904@lig.net>

Jeff Bone wrote:
> "Can dinosaurs help rodents prepare for their upcoming ascendancy?"
>
> This is hilarious.  Really.  GMAFB.  
>
> Politicians in general cannot and do not understand or cope with, much less help society adapt to and capture the opportunity of, *yesterday's* technology.  Instead, the political system is often the tool of those with entrenched interests in inhibiting new technology.  Tubes, remember?
>   

As a rule, I agree.  However, there are a good number of exceptions 
where new technology is advanced and/or allowed to flourish where some, 
sometimes even perhaps the majority, might not have gone that way.  The 
military / industrial complex, (mostly old) NASA, DARPA, NIH, etc....
> Looking at the presenter's bio-blip, makes perfect sense.  Hit us with that irrational exuberance about the positive effectiveness of government, Mr. Chairman.
>   

Trying for an ideal isn't bad, believing that it is certain or probable 
may be.
> Can (existing forms of) government have a positive impact on society?  Of course.  Does this actually happen?  Rarely, and increasingly so.
>   

If you don't strive for it and try to make it happen, it will never 
happen.  That it seldom happens even when everyone strives for it 
doesn't mean that cynicism will produce a better result.
> Let us not mince words.  Every single technological innovation of any significance on the horizon is a disruptive threat to any centralization of control, be it within markets or within social organization.  That is *the nature* of disruptive innovation vis-a-vis establishments.  

I don't think that many politicians have any inkling of what is likely 
around the corner.  All of the rules will likely change in several major 
areas in the next 20 years in ways that will out pace existing systems 
of control.  Nano assembly, programmed chemistry (i.e. drugs/biomach as 
software / MP3-like recipes), robots from insects to fully autonomous 
agents doing farming / domestic / manufacturing / sentry / all mindless 
jobs, hyper transport (fast, semi-autonomous vehicles, planes, cycles, 
etc.), etc.  To say nothing of military / protection capabilities.  When 
people start realizing what _could_ be done with some of these new, 
powerful tools, they will freak.  Hopefully the benefits will be clear 
before that happens.

A simple rule change and a little experience with carbon fiber 
composites, even in a tough market, has brought us super-gadgets like 
this amphibious folding airplane / jetski for about the price of two 
expensive cars (i.e. retails for $139K, including avionics):

http://www.iconaircraft.com/video-a5-flight-2.html
http://images.businessweek.com/ss/09/07/0729_IDEA_awards_gold/32.htm

We already have perfected, to a basic but workable extent, UAV and 
in-traffic driving automation capabilities.  Imagine a slightly updated 
version of the Icon with those capabilities.
> Not only is it unrealistic and pollyanna to think that government *could* play a constructive role in this --- in fact the opposite incentives and motivations are intrinsically baked into our systems of governance themselves --- whatever individual intentions and motivations "politicians" might have.
>   

How do we fix this?  Destroying the government is not an option.
>
> jb
>
>
>   
sdw


From aaron at bavariati.org  Wed Feb 10 08:39:20 2010
From: aaron at bavariati.org (Aaron Burt)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 08:39:20 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] [tt] [wta-talk] The future of politics. Can politicians
 prepare society for the major technology challenges ahead? With Darren
 Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>
References: <20100209211343.GD17686@leitl.org>
	<CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>
Message-ID: <20100210163920.GB27319@aaron-x31>

On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 09:42:15PM -0600, Jeff Bone wrote:
> 
> "Can dinosaurs help rodents prepare for their upcoming ascendancy?"

IT'S PEOPLE!  Government is made of PEOPLE!
Or are you awaiting the withering-away of the State?

> Politicians in general cannot and do not understand or cope with, much
> less help society adapt to and capture the opportunity of, *yesterday's*
> technology.  Instead, the political system is often the tool of those
> with entrenched interests in inhibiting new technology.  Tubes, remember?

Yes [internet] I [space race] remember [railroads] how [computers] the
[industrial chemistry] government [modern agriculture] has [nuclear tech]
consistently [scientific research] worked [UAVs] to [patents] defer [R&D
funding] and [protective tariffs] suppress ["green tech" incentives] newer
[DARPA etc.] technologies.

Dang gubmit,
  Aaron

From wgstoddard at gmail.com  Wed Feb 10 09:48:09 2010
From: wgstoddard at gmail.com (Bill Stoddard)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:48:09 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] [tt] [wta-talk] The future of politics. Can politicians
 prepare society for the major technology challenges ahead? With Darren
 Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <20100210163920.GB27319@aaron-x31>
References: <20100209211343.GD17686@leitl.org>	<CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>
	<20100210163920.GB27319@aaron-x31>
Message-ID: <4B72F159.2070004@gmail.com>

On 2/10/10 11:39 AM, Aaron Burt wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 09:42:15PM -0600, Jeff Bone wrote:
>    
>> "Can dinosaurs help rodents prepare for their upcoming ascendancy?"
>>      
> IT'S PEOPLE!  Government is made of PEOPLE!
> Or are you awaiting the withering-away of the State?
>
>    
>> Politicians in general cannot and do not understand or cope with, much
>> less help society adapt to and capture the opportunity of, *yesterday's*
>> technology.  Instead, the political system is often the tool of those
>> with entrenched interests in inhibiting new technology.  Tubes, remember?
>>      
> Yes [internet] I [space race] remember [railroads]
>    

railroads... two words ... Cornelius Vanderbilt

Government hindered, rather than helped, establish railroads in this 
country, at least in the 'early adopter' phase.

Bill

From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Wed Feb 10 12:24:29 2010
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (khare at alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 20:24:29 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] the desi side of si (the swimsuit issue, that is)
Message-ID: <1718738447-1265833604-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-2031485849-@bda057.bisx.prod.on.blackberry>

Courtesy of Prof. Sree Sreenivasan of the South Asian Journalists Association (Dean of Student Affairs, Columbia Graduate School of Journalism)...

======

I told my wife when we were married 10+ years ago, "Anything you find on 
my computer, it's research." This post falls under that clause.

Basically, there's nothing I wouldn't do for SAJA or our community, 
including searching through the new Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, 
looking for South Asian connections. After years of making this supreme 
sacrifice, I am happy to report on the following four items in this year's 
issue.

* Sonia Dara becomes the first South Asian model to be featured in the issue.

* She and four three other models were shot in Rajasthan.

* The other South Asian connection is Maldives, which was another of the 
locations and where the cover was shot.

* Four models in all were shot in the Maldives.

Links to the, um, articles (and perhaps photos and video) on SAJAforum at 
http://bit.ly/sajasi

FACEBOOK: http://facebook.com/sreetips
TWITTER: @sreenet - http://twitter.com/sreenet
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T


From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Wed Feb 10 12:39:17 2010
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:39:17 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <20100209191426.GA19934@aaron-x31>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<20100207050828.GA18093@aaron-x31>
	<ab069aa01002070959h1dc01abfjffbd27596fd0681d@mail.gmail.com>
	<20100209191426.GA19934@aaron-x31>
Message-ID: <ab069aa01002101239r3ba7a817r7c61e3ed6895e1bb@mail.gmail.com>

>> A netbook without a keyboard is not a lesser desktop, it is a new type of
>> thing with new strengths.

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Aaron Burt <aaron at bavariati.org> wrote:
> The same could be said of *any* design variation. ?This particular one has
> been tried many, many times. ?Good on them if they make it work.

Ok, so what's new in the current generation?

Touch screen.  Multitouch and gestures.
No stylus.
Mic & speaker.
Ubiquitous networking.  Better data plans.
Consumers trained by current gen smart phones to be comfortable with
the UI strategy.
No start menu.  Lots of tweaks to the operating environment courtesy
of the iPhone.
Third party ISVs making dedicated products.
Target market consumers rather than businesses.

>> Laptops without keyboards are a significant step. ?The next step is to
>> lose monitors. ?I wonder what that will be like? ?What if the device
>> was voice controlled and had a speaker output? ?(But also a full scale
>> web browser and connectivity).
>
> Why... then you'd have a standard wearable. ?Or a modern Gphone. ?Give it
> time and context-awareness and you'd have something impressive, but until
> we have a paradigm shift in how computers facilitate human interaction and
> labour, non-visual computers will live in the niches.

A standard wearable?  Is there such a thing?  A modern borGphone
desn't have a screen?

Anyhow, I don't want to do verbal fencing anymore, because you said
something interesting about a paradigm shift in how computers
facilitate human interact and labo(u)r.  Can you say more about that?


From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Wed Feb 10 12:41:13 2010
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:41:13 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <300F6387-0583-4DC6-8946-5F613F166708@radicalcentrism.org>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>
	<ab069aa01002091147p23921d84q2c9c2382baef2613@mail.gmail.com>
	<300F6387-0583-4DC6-8946-5F613F166708@radicalcentrism.org>
Message-ID: <ab069aa01002101241w3ace5842g3fce23bf06519947@mail.gmail.com>

Sounds to me like you're regretting your Gordon bet and wouldn't do it
again, meaning that I have convinced you that you were wrong.  So
let's put that to the test.

I'll bet $50 on the same terms as Gordon.  Will you take the bet?

On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 8:07 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
<drernie at radicalcentrism.org> wrote:
> Hi Lucas,
>
> On Feb 9, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Lucas Gonze wrote:
>> Ernie, I think you accepted a bet that was much stiffer than you had
>> to. ?But a logical actor shouldn't give you better odds if you'll
>> accept worse ones.
>
> Who says I'll accept worse ones? :-) ?Gordon got the low-price offer, but my utility curve is non-linear, so if I'm going to expend another $50 I'm gonna want better odds. By sharing *your* predictions, you've given me a sense of your probability distribution, so logically *I* have no reason to make it easy on you!
>
>>> That is, are you willing to bet $200 against my $50 that the iPad (and direct successors) will NOT sell 13 million units by June 2011?
>
> So are you confident enough to put your money where your mouth is, or not?
>
> -- Ernie P.
>
>>
>> On Mon, Feb 8, 2010 at 10:47 AM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
>> <drernie at radicalcentrism.org> wrote:
>>> Hi Lucas,
>>>
>>> On Feb 5, 2010, at 8:58 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote:
>>>
>>>> My gut is that the iPad is like the Lisa. ?It won't move a lot of
>>>> units by itself but products that are strongly influenced by it will.
>>>> A way to put this in a bet is that at time T the iPad and direct
>>>> successors will sell less than X units but products that incorporate
>>>> lots of ideas from it will sell more than X.
>>>>
>>>> Thoughts on T and X? ?For a starting guess I'll say 2015 and 10
>>>> million. ?Anybody interested in such a bet?
>>>
>>>
>>> The iPhone will sell less than 10 million units by 2015? ?And iPad alternatives together by 2015 will sell more than 10 million?
>>>
>>> You are so totally on. :-)
>>>
>>> Thing is, I'm already in to Gordon for $50 that the iPad will sell 13M in 15 months (June 2011):
>>>
>>> http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note_id=283747111147
>>>
>>> To simplify accounting, can we align the dates?
>>>
>>> And since that's roughly 1/4 sooner (and a larger number), would you be willing to give me four-to-one odds?
>>>
>>> That is, are you willing to bet $200 against my $50 that the iPad (and direct successors) will NOT sell 13 million units by June 2011?
>>>
>>> -- Ernie P.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> FoRK mailing list
>>> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> FoRK mailing list
>> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>


From marcerickson at gmail.com  Wed Feb 10 12:48:32 2010
From: marcerickson at gmail.com (Marc Erickson)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 12:48:32 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] [tt] [wta-talk] The future of politics. Can politicians
	prepare society for the major technology challenges ahead?
	With Darren Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <4B72F159.2070004@gmail.com>
References: <20100209211343.GD17686@leitl.org>	<CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org><20100210163920.GB27319@aaron-x31>
	<4B72F159.2070004@gmail.com>
Message-ID: <EAB5D372CCEE42F8BED43D0A3F0C5E15@mobile3>

I know very little about railroad adoption in Canada, but if it weren't for
the government, the first transcontinental railroad here would have been
built much later than it was.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Pacific_Railway
http://www.last.fm/music/Gordon+Lightfoot/_/Canadian+Railroad+Trilogy


Marc 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: fork-bounces at xent.com [mailto:fork-bounces at xent.com] On 
> Behalf Of Bill Stoddard
> Sent: February 10, 2010 9:48 AM
> To: Friends of Rohit Khare
> Subject: Re: [FoRK] [tt] [wta-talk] The future of politics. 
> Can politicians prepare society for the major technology 
> challenges ahead? With Darren Reynolds.
> 
> On 2/10/10 11:39 AM, Aaron Burt wrote:
> > On Tue, Feb 09, 2010 at 09:42:15PM -0600, Jeff Bone wrote:
> >    
> >> "Can dinosaurs help rodents prepare for their upcoming ascendancy?"
> >>      
> > IT'S PEOPLE!  Government is made of PEOPLE!
> > Or are you awaiting the withering-away of the State?
> >
> >    
> >> Politicians in general cannot and do not understand or cope with, 
> >> much less help society adapt to and capture the opportunity of, 
> >> *yesterday's* technology.  Instead, the political system 
> is often the 
> >> tool of those with entrenched interests in inhibiting new 
> technology.  Tubes, remember?
> >>      
> > Yes [internet] I [space race] remember [railroads]
> >    
> 
> railroads... two words ... Cornelius Vanderbilt
> 
> Government hindered, rather than helped, establish railroads 
> in this country, at least in the 'early adopter' phase.
> 
> Bill
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
> 


From drernie at radicalcentrism.org  Wed Feb 10 13:45:08 2010
From: drernie at radicalcentrism.org (Dr. Ernie Prabhakar)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 13:45:08 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa01002101241w3ace5842g3fce23bf06519947@mail.gmail.com>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>
	<ab069aa01002091147p23921d84q2c9c2382baef2613@mail.gmail.com>
	<300F6387-0583-4DC6-8946-5F613F166708@radicalcentrism.org>
	<ab069aa01002101241w3ace5842g3fce23bf06519947@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <4840592D-D914-4DF5-84D1-4C9BB7809729@radicalcentrism.org>

Hi Lucas,

On Feb 10, 2010, at 12:41 PM, Lucas Gonze wrote:

> Sounds to me like you're regretting your Gordon bet and wouldn't do it
> again, meaning that I have convinced you that you were wrong.  So
> let's put that to the test.

No, it means that I saw a chance to make $200 instead of $50. :-)

> I'll bet $50 on the same terms as Gordon.  Will you take the bet?

In the spirit of:

>> Anyhow, I don't want to do verbal fencing anymore


I'll spare us both the bickering and rationalizations and accept the bet as is.  See you in 2011. :-)

-- Ernie P.


> 
> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 8:07 PM, Dr. Ernie Prabhakar
> <drernie at radicalcentrism.org> wrote:
>> Hi Lucas,
>> 
>> On Feb 9, 2010, at 11:47 AM, Lucas Gonze wrote:
>>> Ernie, I think you accepted a bet that was much stiffer than you had
>>> to.  But a logical actor shouldn't give you better odds if you'll
>>> accept worse ones.
>> 
>> Who says I'll accept worse ones? :-)  Gordon got the low-price offer, but my utility curve is non-linear, so if I'm going to expend another $50 I'm gonna want better odds. By sharing *your* predictions, you've given me a sense of your probability distribution, so logically *I* have no reason to make it easy on you!
>> 
>>>> That is, are you willing to bet $200 against my $50 that the iPad (and direct successors) will NOT sell 13 million units by June 2011?
>> 
>> So are you confident enough to put your money where your mouth is, or not?
>> 
>> -- Ernie P.
> 



From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Wed Feb 10 14:41:47 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 14:41:47 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] [tt] [wta-talk] The future of politics. Can politicians
	prepare society for the major technology challenges ahead?
	With Darren Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <4B723E88.9060904@lig.net>
Message-ID: <658697.42245.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Tue, 2/9/10, Stephen Williams <sdw at lig.net> wrote:
> 
> We already have perfected, to a basic but workable extent,
> UAV and in-traffic driving automation capabilities.?
> Imagine a slightly updated version of the Icon with those
> capabilities.
>

Recalling my recent post about our apparent inability to, and possible disinterest in, replacing or repairing some infrastructure that is critical to a particular segment of the global health care system (medical isotopes), I find it frightening that we would even contemplate putting in an automated driving system. The potential for carnage when, not if, we neglect it to death should be enough to kill it before it's born. 

We can't even keep potholes filled in, never mind prevent them from occuring, fercrisake.

          ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail.  Click on Options in Mail and switch to New Mail today or register for free at http://mail.yahoo.ca


From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Wed Feb 10 18:02:21 2010
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:02:21 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <4840592D-D914-4DF5-84D1-4C9BB7809729@radicalcentrism.org>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>
	<ab069aa01002091147p23921d84q2c9c2382baef2613@mail.gmail.com>
	<300F6387-0583-4DC6-8946-5F613F166708@radicalcentrism.org>
	<ab069aa01002101241w3ace5842g3fce23bf06519947@mail.gmail.com>
	<4840592D-D914-4DF5-84D1-4C9BB7809729@radicalcentrism.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c1002101802i5e46c59fgbb2e8759a6dc55aa@mail.gmail.com>

So I am getting no takers on the Apple being a dork about the lockin?

-tom(yeah yeah, its like betting the Yankees will win the '09 world
series)higgins

From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Wed Feb 10 18:06:59 2010
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 18:06:59 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Micropayments Part XXIII - arrrrrgh
Message-ID: <e3b2914c1002101806u261e217m6b314382b80a7c1a@mail.gmail.com>

They come and they go, the promise thats been around for
years...Micropayments...this time its called Flattr

http://flattr.com/beta/

If I am parsing their video right...you budget a set amount each month
that you are able/willing to spend on the riches the intertubes has to
offer.....call this the Pool...during the month you are slicing that
Pool by the number of things you think worthy of a payment. For
instance, I have a 20$ Pool set aside for the wonders..So if I go
around finding 100 things of worth they each only get .20cents . If on
the other hand I only deem 10 things of worth they will each get 2$.
In a way I cheapen the payout the more I find of value.

Then again, and go with me here, if the money I am being paid by
others goes back into the Pool each month then the more things I
create that others find cool would make my end of the month payout
worth more. Drawing down the pool would lessen my worth as a patron.

So yea, a little bit of a ponzi scheme and a little bit of whuffie and
who the heck knows how these things pan out. So far the track record
is not good....

-tom(let the schooling thread in micropayments begin:)- )higgins

From michaelslists at gmail.com  Wed Feb 10 18:50:50 2010
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 13:50:50 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] Micropayments Part XXIII - arrrrrgh
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c1002101806u261e217m6b314382b80a7c1a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <e3b2914c1002101806u261e217m6b314382b80a7c1a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a1002101850i3b6c97d5ud285dca999d53f16@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 1:06 PM, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> They come and they go, the promise thats been around for
> years...Micropayments...this time its called Flattr
>
> http://flattr.com/beta/

I really can't trust any site that still goes with the "removal of
last vowel and try and end in 'r'" naming approach. Seriously, these
people need to get some damn originality, it's just embarrassing.

FWIW, the company I work for at the moment (though not for much
longer; soon to be seeking a job :P) could be considered to really
care about micropayments, (i.e. the core business of this app is to
accept payments for reasonably small amounts (< 20 dollars) over the
internet), yet none of these services really matter to us.

In the end, it's pretty trivial to debit a credit card, or organise
another scheme of payment. So I really can't bring myself to care, and
I think it will remain that way for a significant while.

But maybe this company isn't exactly in the "micropayments" range. I
don't know what values constitue that.

-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20

delft effluence; gardening spear.

From whump at mac.com  Wed Feb 10 19:14:11 2010
From: whump at mac.com (Bill Humphries)
Date: Wed, 10 Feb 2010 19:14:11 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Micropayments Part XXIII - arrrrrgh
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c1002101806u261e217m6b314382b80a7c1a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <e3b2914c1002101806u261e217m6b314382b80a7c1a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <7652287B-DCB5-4354-BAB0-63310CAD4FA3@mac.com>


On Feb 10, 2010, at 6:06 PM, Tom Higgins wrote:

> http://flattr.com/beta/
> 
> If I am parsing their video right...you budget a set amount each month
> that you are able/willing to spend on the riches the intertubes has to
> offer.....call this the Pool...during the month you are slicing that
> Pool by the number of things you think worthy of a payment.

See also:

http://www.kachingle.com/

"A challenger appears!"

"Fight!"

-- whump


From michaelslists at gmail.com  Wed Feb 10 19:21:01 2010
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:21:01 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] Micropayments Part XXIII - arrrrrgh
In-Reply-To: <7652287B-DCB5-4354-BAB0-63310CAD4FA3@mac.com>
References: <e3b2914c1002101806u261e217m6b314382b80a7c1a@mail.gmail.com>
	<7652287B-DCB5-4354-BAB0-63310CAD4FA3@mac.com>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a1002101921q241b3c64xe14934fde315cd10@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 2:14 PM, Bill Humphries <whump at mac.com> wrote:
>
> On Feb 10, 2010, at 6:06 PM, Tom Higgins wrote:
>
> > http://flattr.com/beta/
> >
> > If I am parsing their video right...you budget a set amount each month
> > that you are able/willing to spend on the riches the intertubes has to
> > offer.....call this the Pool...during the month you are slicing that
> > Pool by the number of things you think worthy of a payment.
>
> See also:
>
> http://www.kachingle.com/
>
> "A challenger appears!"
>
> "Fight!"

On this basis, I've recently thought a nice idea for a website is one
where you can directly pay artists (music, paint, N-variety); thus if
you happen to aquire their produce in "some fashion" you can show your
appreciation by donating *directly* to them (not just going out and
buying their CD, or other such strategy).

It would be a fair effort to get this together, and may be against
some of their contracts anyway, but it's similar model to kachingle,
and, I think, not a bad idea.

Of course, the fact that more artists run their own independent labels
makes this less than necessary. Perhaps, then, it could be a site
where you don't donate to the artists themselves, but a charity of
their choosing.


> -- whump

-- 
silky
  http://www.mirios.com.au/
  http://island.mirios.com.au/t/rigby+random+20

unpack backside upholder: caviler: sweepingly LEEK
flagpole-nonexistent hoggishly = passingly...

From marty at halvorson.us  Thu Feb 11 13:18:22 2010
From: marty at halvorson.us (Marty Halvorson)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:18:22 -0700
Subject: [FoRK] > Re:  The future of politics. Can,
 politicians prepare society for the major technology challenges
 ahead?, With Darren Reynolds.
Message-ID: <4B74741E.60203@halvorson.us>

--- On Tue, 2/9/10, Stephen Williams <sdw at lig.net> wrote:
 >
 > We already have perfected, to a basic but workable extent,
 > UAV and in-traffic driving automation capabilities.?

That may be true.  But recent Toyota troubles with drive and stop by 
wire are an indication that not all is well on auto automation.

Peace
Marty Halvorson

From sdw at lig.net  Thu Feb 11 14:55:48 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 14:55:48 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Robotic cars, software / Internet in cars, and Linux Ksplice,
 was: Re:  > Re:  The future of politics. Can,
 politicians prepare society for the major technology challenges ahead?,
 With Darren Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <4B74741E.60203@halvorson.us>
References: <4B74741E.60203@halvorson.us>
Message-ID: <4B748AF4.1040301@lig.net>

Marty Halvorson wrote:
> --- On Tue, 2/9/10, Stephen Williams <sdw at lig.net> wrote:
> >
> > We already have perfected, to a basic but workable extent,
> > UAV and in-traffic driving automation capabilities.?
>
> That may be true.  But recent Toyota troubles with drive and stop by 
> wire are an indication that not all is well on auto automation.

Toyota continues to insist that it is all about floor mats wedging a 
poorly-designed accelerator.  Some of the people who have experienced 
the problem don't believe it.  Floor mats seem to be a verified problem, 
but there could be another race/failure condition lurking.  They need 
black-box-like telemetry...

Odd that people don't think of shifting into neutral and shutting off 
the engine, or at least driving into the back of a vehicle going the 
same direction to get some non-fatal resistance.  Especially the cop.

The Prius brake issue _is_ software related.  I was just saying to 
(other) friends recently that A) in the next cycle or two every vehicle 
will have a wireless Internet connection (for a variety of uses) and B) 
(highly verified) software upgrades will just download when the vehicle 
is off.  Even with current economics, the car companies are stupid for 
not having had the forethought to make an Amazon Kindle-like deal with 
Sprint/Verizon for that kind of thing.  Easy to bury the costs in an 
already-expensive sector, lots of up sell possibilities, and one severe 
recall and everyone easily comes out ahead.

Considering that I'm typing this at 37K feet over NE Kansas via WiFi, 
I'd say that having an Internet connection anywhere is solved 
technically.  Car companies have no excuse.  Oops, now I"m in Missouri.

Of course, if car companies had wireless Internet (On Star et al), 
they'd charge a huge premium for it.  If they even thought of it, they 
probably evaluated whether consumers would buy into fat mega-loaded 
pricing rather than Amazon/Google style economy of scale pricing.  Even 
Apple, which charges a premium to some extent, gives a reasonable deal 
considering the range of features with high design / quality.

No vision.  Car companies: You suck.

In any case, robotics will be the answer soon.  The current car 
companies are just too timid to go beyond marginal uses of computers.

Talking about updating on the fly, have you guys seen or tried Ksplice?  
Freaking awesome.  I'll pay $3.95/mo. for that!  (My Linux sever has 
been up for 191 days, since I last upgraded it.  Basically, I just 
reboot it when the fans or hard drives die.)  Something Windows will 
never have (until it is finally, 20 years too late, Linux Windows).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ksplice
> Ksplice is a free and open source extension of the Linux kernel which 
> allows system administrators to apply security patches to a running 
> kernel without having to reboot the operating system. Ksplice has been 
> implemented for Linux on the x86-32 and x86-64 architectures. It is 
> currently being developed by Ksplice, Inc.
> Design
>
> Ksplice can apply patches to the Linux kernel without rebooting the 
> computer. Ksplice takes as input a unified diff and the original 
> kernel source code, and it updates the running kernel in memory. Using 
> Ksplice does not require any preparation before the system is 
> originally booted (the running kernel does not need to have been 
> specially compiled, for example). In order to generate an update, 
> Ksplice must determine what code within the kernel has been changed by 
> the source code patch. Ksplice performs this analysis at the ELF 
> object code layer, rather than at the C source code layer.
>
> To apply a patch, Ksplice first freezes execution of a computer so it 
> is the only program running. The system verifies that no processors 
> were in the middle of executing functions that will be modified by the 
> patch. Ksplice modifies the beginning of changed functions so that 
> they instead point to new, updated versions of those functions, and 
> modifies data and structures in memory that need to be changed. 
> Finally, Ksplice resumes each processor running where it left off.
>
> To be fully automatic, Ksplice's design was originally limited to 
> patches that did not introduce semantic changes to data structures, 
> since most Linux kernel security patches do not make these kinds of 
> changes. An evaluation against Linux kernel security patches from May 
> 2005 to May 2008 found that Ksplice was able to apply 100% of the 64 
> significant kernel vulnerabilities discovered in that interval. For 
> patches that do introduce semantic changes to data structures, Ksplice 
> requires a programmer to write a short amount of additional code to 
> help apply the patch. This was necessary for 12% of the updates in 
> that time period.[1].

Catch that?  Kernel developers are adding code to their patches / 
packages that translate in-memory data structures to the new format so 
that the new code can start running with existing data.  All by 
preempting (at a stopping point) and doing arbitrary surgery on a 
running kernel!  I've unloaded kernel modules to upgrade to one that I'd 
just hacked, but this is getting so far from 
reboot-Windows-to-change-IP-address like madness (laziness) as to be in 
magic land.

sdw
>
> Peace
> Marty Halvorson
>


From michaelslists at gmail.com  Thu Feb 11 15:26:08 2010
From: michaelslists at gmail.com (silky)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:26:08 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] Micropayments Part XXIII - arrrrrgh
In-Reply-To: <5e01c29a1002101921q241b3c64xe14934fde315cd10@mail.gmail.com>
References: <e3b2914c1002101806u261e217m6b314382b80a7c1a@mail.gmail.com>
	<7652287B-DCB5-4354-BAB0-63310CAD4FA3@mac.com>
	<5e01c29a1002101921q241b3c64xe14934fde315cd10@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <5e01c29a1002111526n6ea9a6f8n4fefc702919f33b7@mail.gmail.com>

Yet another:

https://squareup.com/about

--
silky

From sean at conman.org  Thu Feb 11 15:55:35 2010
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:55:35 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Robotic cars, software / Internet in cars,
	and Linux Ksplice, was: Re:  > Re:  The future of politics. Can,
	politicians prepare society for the major technology challenges
	ahead?, With Darren Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <4B748AF4.1040301@lig.net>
References: <4B74741E.60203@halvorson.us> <4B748AF4.1040301@lig.net>
Message-ID: <20100211235535.GB16339@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Stephen D. Williams once stated:
> 
> Odd that people don't think of shifting into neutral and shutting off 
> the engine, or at least driving into the back of a vehicle going the 
> same direction to get some non-fatal resistance.  Especially the cop.

  Yeah, well ... too much reliance on the crutches of technology so they
don't bother thinking, or something like that.

> The Prius brake issue _is_ software related.  I was just saying to 
> (other) friends recently that A) in the next cycle or two every vehicle 
> will have a wireless Internet connection (for a variety of uses) and B) 
> (highly verified) software upgrades will just download when the vehicle 
> is off.  Even with current economics, the car companies are stupid for 
> not having had the forethought to make an Amazon Kindle-like deal with 
> Sprint/Verizon for that kind of thing.  Easy to bury the costs in an 
> already-expensive sector, lots of up sell possibilities, and one severe 
> recall and everyone easily comes out ahead.

  Great!  Now I have to worry about my car getting hacked [1].

  True story---a friend of mine worked at a company that made car
diagnositic computers.  They were testing their software on a BMW when there
was a power failure and they ended up bricking the car.

  BMW had to fly an engineer from Germany (to South Florida) to get the car
unbricked.  

  Then there's this little bit of reassuring news:

http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/philg/2010/02/09/public-tv-figures-out-how-to-fly-regional-airliners/

> Who crashed Colgan 3407? Actually the autopilot did. The crew told the
> autopilot to level the plane, but left the throttles back near idle. This
> caused a gradual speed decay. Then the pilots extended flaps and gear,
> resulting in a big increase in drag. They should have added power at this
> point, but did not. Acting less competently than the typical person on his
> very first flight lesson, the autopilot kept pulling the nose up in an
> attempt to hold altitude. Eventually it pulled the airplane past the
> "maximum lift/drag" speed in which it would hold the most altitude for a
> given power. And then it kept pulling until the airplane was just about
> stalled. And then it disconnected, dumping the trimmed-to-crash airplane
> into the laps of the sick and tired human pilots. Seconds later, everyone
> was doomed. See the NTSB animation of the flight.
> 
> The airplane had all of the information necessary to prevent this crash. The
> airspeed was available in digital form. The power setting was available in
> digital form. The status of the landing gear was available in digital form.
> The airplane had the ability to put synthetic voice announcements into the
> pilots? headsets. Here?s what you?d expect to happen:
> 
>     * autopilot is set to descend and then level off and hold altitude at 2300'
>     * human pilots neglect to push throttles forward
>     * after a few seconds, autopilot annunciates "leveled off but throttles
>       are still at idle"
>     * pilots put landing gear down; speed decays very quickly
>     * autopilot annunciates "more power required to hold altitude and
>       airspeed"
>     * speed decays below 1.3 times the stall speed
>     * autopilot stops trimming back and says, this time in a very sharp and
>       loud voice "holding 160 knots, descending out of 2300' due to inadequate
>       power"
> 
> How come the autopilot software on this $27 million airplane wasn?t smart
> enough to fly basically sensible attitudes and airspeeds? Partly because FAA
> certification requirements make it prohibitively expensive to develop
> software or electronics that go into certified aircraft. It can literally
> cost $1 million to make a minor change. Sometimes the government protecting
> us from small risks exposes us to much bigger ones.

  -spc (Who's managed to land a simulated Airbus 320 with minimal
	instruction [2])

[1]	In the bad sense of the word.  Yes, I know, I should use "cracked"
	but that just sounds odd to me.

[2]	http://boston.conman.org/2007/12/28.2


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Feb 11 16:12:58 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 16:12:58 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Young and vigorous .... and Vital
Message-ID: <518551.37705.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

This one will warm the cockles of JB's heart.

http://www.cringely.com/2010/02/the-cringely-2010-not-in-silicon-valley-startup-tour/

------------------

The Cringely 2010 (Not in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour

Podcast: Play in new window | Download 

Small companies create jobs in America.

According to a recent study by the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, companies less than five years old generated nearly two-thirds of the new jobs created in the U. S. in 2007. But what?s even more important is that without these startups more jobs would be lost than created, the U. S. economy would permanently shrink and America would eventually lose its superpower status, simple as that.

This is because big companies grow by increasing scale and productivity, which is to say by reducing the number of jobs per unit of sales, while startups grow by inventing cool stuff. See the difference?

The startups that most reliably become giant American corporations and creators of wealth are technology startups. Without startups to compete with or acquire, big technology companies would do almost nothing new. In the United States large companies depend on startups to explore new technologies and new markets. Startups play a particularly important role in growing jobs out of a recession. New companies produced all of the net new jobs in the U. S. from 2001-2007, and also from 1980-1983, the last big American downturn.

Why then, has U. S. economic policy been aimed almost entirely at saving large and dying industries (banks and car companies)? Because sometimes even Presidents don?t get it.

U. S. technology startups are born and die at astounding rates. Ninety-five percent of technology startups fail ? ninety-five percent. With odds at 19-to-1 against success, why do entrepreneurs even bother to build these companies? Because the potential rewards are huge (Microsoft and Apple, Cisco and Intel were all startups, remember) and for real entrepreneurs there are some things even worse than failure, like boredom or being like everyone else.

American technology startups change the world all the time and are this country?s primary global advantage, though hardly anyone understands that. Encouraging technology startups is the key to keeping America competitive and prosperous, though hardly anyone does that. Technology startups succeed despite these adversities because Americans are full of ideas, startups are so darned fun to do, and they don?t have to cost that much, either ? sometimes nothing at all.

Technology export sales drive the U. S. economy and technology startups drive U. S. industry, yet in this era of too-big-to-die companies hardly anyone knows about or understands this phenomenon. The experts are supposed to be the venture capitalists of Silicon Valley and Boston, but they don?t really know what they are doing. VC returns are way down for a variety of reasons mainly coming back to the same greed and stupidity we?ve been seeing at work in other financial markets.

Something needs to be done, then, to encourage America to restart itself, and I?m just the guy to try it.

Announcing the Cringely 2010 (Not in Silicon Valley) Startup Tour.

Starting next month I will be accepting from readers nominations for interesting startup companies in six general categories ? biotech, energy, entertainment, information technology, materials, and transportation.  Over the course of about six weeks we will examine and discuss as a community these nominated companies of which I am hoping there will be hundreds, primarily not from Silicon Valley or any other tech hotbeds.  I?ll have some assistance in this process from the Kauffman Foundation.

Together we?ll whittle the number down to 24 then come June I will set off with my family in our RV to visit all 24.  We?ll camp in the parking lot or in the driveway of the CEO and spend a couple days at each startup, learning about the company, the people, their technology and their market.  I?ll take with me a small camera crew and we?ll produce what will begin with a summer of blogging and end with a 13-part TV reality series

That?s my plan for restarting America and I hope you?ll be along for the ride.  Look for details soon, but no nominations yet, please.



      __________________________________________________________________
The new Internet Explorer? 8 - Faster, safer, easier.  Optimized for Yahoo!  Get it Now for Free! at http://downloads.yahoo.com/ca/internetexplorer/


From sdw at lig.net  Thu Feb 11 18:43:09 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 18:43:09 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Robotic cars, software / Internet in cars,
 and Linux Ksplice, was: Re:  > Re:  The future of politics. Can,
 politicians prepare society for the major technology challenges	ahead?,
 With Darren Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <20100211235535.GB16339@brevard.conman.org>
References: <4B74741E.60203@halvorson.us> <4B748AF4.1040301@lig.net>
	<20100211235535.GB16339@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <4B74C03D.6040600@lig.net>

Sean Conner wrote:
> It was thus said that the Great Stephen D. Williams once stated:
>   
> ...
>> The Prius brake issue _is_ software related.  I was just saying to 
>> (other) friends recently that A) in the next cycle or two every vehicle 
>> will have a wireless Internet connection (for a variety of uses) and B) 
>> (highly verified) software upgrades will just download when the vehicle 
>> is off.  Even with current economics, the car companies are stupid for 
>> not having had the forethought to make an Amazon Kindle-like deal with 
>> Sprint/Verizon for that kind of thing.  Easy to bury the costs in an 
>> already-expensive sector, lots of up sell possibilities, and one severe 
>> recall and everyone easily comes out ahead.
>>     
>
>   Great!  Now I have to worry about my car getting hacked [1].
>   

I learned a long time about that Intel built in the ability to do very 
low level reprogramming of their CPUs.  All you have to do is run an 
instruction that loads a prepackaged configuration blob that permanently 
changes the CPU.  They need this in case a buggy instruction slips out 
into the wild, etc.  Supposedly, there are only a handful of people who 
are capable of signing that blob so that it would accepted.  There are 
plenty of things like that which would have a big impact if hacked, yet 
aren't.  Few of them run Windows.

It is possible to build a trustworthy process for this, you just have to 
work at it.

Similarly, something like a DoD CAC PKI smart card (manufactured by 
several companies) has storage that for ALL practical purposes cannot be 
made to reveal its secrets.  (Usually, your PKI secret key.)  Earlier 
versions were cracked by micromilling, electron microscopes, etc.  There 
are layers and layers of hardware and software countermeasures to 30 
years of exploits build into those $30 cards.
>   True story---a friend of mine worked at a company that made car
> diagnositic computers.  They were testing their software on a BMW when there
> was a power failure and they ended up bricking the car.
>
>   BMW had to fly an engineer from Germany (to South Florida) to get the car
> unbricked.  
>   

Stupid design...  Make 2 banks, a bootloader / failover init that you 
don't change, and it should be a lot more difficult to break.
>   Then there's this little bit of reassuring news:
> ...
>> How come the autopilot software on this $27 million airplane wasn?t smart
>> enough to fly basically sensible attitudes and airspeeds? Partly because FAA
>> certification requirements make it prohibitively expensive to develop
>> software or electronics that go into certified aircraft. It can literally
>> cost $1 million to make a minor change. Sometimes the government protecting
>> us from small risks exposes us to much bigger ones.
>>     

This is what I was explicitly and implicitly referring to as the main 
stumbling block and something that is being loosened up.  The Light 
Sport Aircraft (LSA) category, and the associated LSA liense, was a huge 
change by the FAA.  The requirements on aviation, maintenance (how much 
you can do yourself), amount of training, etc. are far lower.  The 
result is that the cheapest aircraft now have the most modern avionics 
in some cases.  Makes a good farm team for the rest of the industry perhaps.

If you compare a certified GPS unit with a typical car unit or Google 
Maps, etc., you'll see the results of that friction.  Those things are 
not easy to use.
>
>   -spc (Who's managed to land a simulated Airbus 320 with minimal
> 	instruction [2])
>   

My sense is that the bigger and more powerful planes are much easier to 
fly, as long as you know how to activate and deactivate the right 
things.  I've flown in too much gusty wind in a Cessna 152, and had 
plenty of flying in a 172, plus a little in a Cirrus SR22, and a Pitts 
S2B.  Even just more power at the same size make a huge difference.  A 
commercial jet has wide operating margins plus size that makes most wind 
a non-issue.  It is a lot like waves / swells vs. the size of a boat.
> [1]	In the bad sense of the word.  Yes, I know, I should use "cracked"
> 	but that just sounds odd to me.
>
> [2]	http://boston.conman.org/2007/12/28.2
>
>   

sdw




From jbone at place.org  Thu Feb 11 19:52:36 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 21:52:36 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] The future of politics (cont'd)
In-Reply-To: <CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>
References: <20100209211343.GD17686@leitl.org>
	<CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>
Message-ID: <36A63BFC-4FC8-4F5C-8EA2-D1839A3B6840@place.org>


Aaron says:

> Yes [internet] I [space race] remember [railroads] how [computers] the
> [industrial chemistry] government [modern agriculture] has [nuclear tech]
> consistently [scientific research] worked [UAVs] to [patents] defer [R&D
> funding] and [protective tariffs] suppress ["green tech" incentives] newer
> [DARPA etc.] technologies.



Well, gosh, Aaron, thank you for setting the record straight!  How could I have been SO wrong?!? [irony]  Clearly we should thank government [monopoly, coercive, cf. George Washington*] for this bountiful harvest, this veritable cornucopia of technological marvels and wonders that delight us all and make our lives so much better! [sarcasm]  And OBVIOUSLY none of this could have been possible any other way, of COURSE! [load of crap]

Can government have a positive impact on technological innovation?  Of course, though [caveat] usually in basic research and funding thereof.  

Listing all the things that government provided the seed for is easy.  Figuring out all the chilling effects it has had and must have is harder, and requires some degree of [un, apparently] common sense and analytical determination.

Of course you "can't prove a negative" [old saw] so the closest we can come is to observe what happens when government switches its policy from intentional or unintentional monopoly to aggressive promotion of commercialization and private adoption:  the exception that proves the rule [Internet] is when government has the good sense [Al Gore] to get out of the way and let business get down to business. [rarely]

Reading the rest of your [revisionist, implied] history was utterly draining [massive brain damage] so let me address merely a few of these.  Some of this is repetition apropos many earlier discussions around these parts, so I'll be brief.

[space race]  A good argument can be made that productive human use of access to space would have been much further along, driven by private sector interest, had not the US had such a fickle and tepid commitment to NASA over the last 3.5 decades.  (I.e., "none would have been better" is definitely supportable.)

[railroads] As others have pointed out, the notion that positive government influence in the development of these in the US was something other than insignificant vis-a-vis private influence is historicallly absurd.  (Exceptions:  where it *did* attempt to do this, those attempts were generally corrupted and had negative impact overall, though perhaps very local positive impact.)

[nukes] [quasi-monopoly] [arguably good reasons]

As for the rest, you exhaust me.  There is a huge difference between kickstarting a technology and enabling (much less accelerating) its adoption and diffusion. [clearly]

Re: your Soylent Green argument [trivial, zecious]: so are corporations.  [...made of people.]  Recognizing and understanding the entelechic and stigmergic aspects of one but not the other betrays a curious though common bias. [actually two of them, depending on which way you lean.]

[parenthetical] Fwiw, in both theory and practice the decision processes, characteristic behaviors, and effects of governments are often easier to understand and analyze [more historical data, clearer rules, simpler causality, slower evolution, fewer actors] than e.g. companies.  [/parenthetical]

So let's be clear.  Anyone who is intellectually honest / has a shred of objectivity must stipulate the following:  that government, in any and all of the various forms in which it has been practiced by human society throughout history, is:  monopoly [realized or potential], enforced through coercion, funded through theft, costumed in idealism, rationalized by good intentions, justified by somebody's idea of "the greater good."  That is its essential nature.  That's not a judgment call, it is a simple observation.  Is it necessary to the optimal functioning (or even, "functioning") of human society?  Probably, maybe certainly:  in some form and at some scale.  Is it evil?  To the extent that the question has meaning at all, then yes --- at times.  Is it incapable of good?  Again, assuming that means anything --- certainly not.  That's not the point.

Seriously, the point I was attempting to make is that disruptive innovation threatens monopolistic and oligarchical interests, always, definitionally.  And government is, definitionally, a quasi-monopoly in every sphere in which it operates;  only by choosing to divest itself of its potential or real monopolies can it encourage the things that monopoly impedes *in itself.*  At best, such interests are conflicted re influencing innovation; at worst, they necessarily actively suppress it.  Whether the establishment in question is government or other is a bit tangential [though relevant and interesting.]


$0.02 [cheap!]


jb  


*  "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.  Never for a moment should it be left to irresponsible action."  - G. Washington, 1797 (supposedly;  whether he or somebody else actually said this or something different is historically controversial.  The point remains that the founders were prolific, eloquent, and unequivocal about their suspicions of the concentration --- i.e., monopolistic accumulation --- of power in government, even under the most ideal of systems.)



From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Feb 11 19:54:32 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 19:54:32 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Who is more important?
Message-ID: <483162.60998.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

Okay nerds, heads up. What's more important to your software company, programmers or salespeople??

Contains an interesting observation about the economics of offshoring.

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2010/02/11.html

---------------

Joel on Software 

Headcount

by Joel Spolsky

Thursday, February 11, 2010

In the early days of a technology startup, you tend to have a lot of software developers, and you feel like you could never have enough. If you hire sales and marketing staff too early, they don?t really get much traction, and you may start to think that sales and marketing are a waste of time. This lead me, in the early years, to believe that a healthy software company should have a lot of real software developers and maybe no sales and marketing.

At one point I entertained the quixotic and, retrospectively, stupid idea of requiring every employee at Fog Creek to be a programmer... even the receptionist would have to have done some BASIC programming in high school to qualify. In the US Marines everyone, even the cooks, is a rifleman. Of course that?s because the cooks are in friggin Afghanistan getting shot at so they better be riflemen, whereas our receptionist almost never has to drop into the source code and bang out a class. Almost never.

Over time, though, as your product gets better and better, the more sales and marketing people you hire, the more you sell.

That?s because programmers multiply salespeople, and vice-versa.

I?m a nerd, so I?ll be real math-y about this. Define the quality of your code on a scale from 0 to 1. 

0 means your product solves absolutely no problems for anybody so nobody in their right mind would ever buy it. Microsoft Bob.

1 means that every single person on Earth, if they bought your software, would be net happier, even after paying your fee. 

Your software starts at 0 and slowly climbs up the hill.

If everybody in the world knew about your software and was encouraged to evaluate it, the number that would buy it would be (Earth population) x Quality.

Sales and marketing functions exist to encourage earthlings to find out about your software and evaluate it. These functions will have no effect on sales if your quality is extremely low. But as the quality gets higher, the value of sales and marketing goes up, commensurately. Double the quality, and the same sales effort yields double the revenue.

The population of the planet is so large, and the effect of sales and marketing so hard to scale, that by the time your product is really great, the optimal ratio might be very heavily tilted in favor of sales and marketing. Large software companies might have 5 or 10 or 20 people in the sales organization for every developer.

This explains, among other things, why US software companies can?t expect to get sustainable advantage by offshoring software development to cheaper countries. If a developer in Russia, India, or China costs 50% as much as a developer in Seattle, San Francisco, or Boston, but software development is only 10% of your costs, you can only get a 5% advantage from offshoring development. The offshoring that does happen is strongly biased to custom software development which, by design, can only solve one person?s problem, so more developers than marketers are needed.

It is not the case (as commonly believed by nerds) that marketing is a substitute for code quality. The best marketing in the world cannot force people to pay for a useless product.



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From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Thu Feb 11 20:07:27 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 20:07:27 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] The future of politics (cont'd)
In-Reply-To: <36A63BFC-4FC8-4F5C-8EA2-D1839A3B6840@place.org>
Message-ID: <503065.65975.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

I agree with your reasoning. And right back at you, for all the same reasons, regarding the negative impact of large, especially global, sized companies. It is in their best interests, as has been mentioned in here before by someone with initials similar to your own, to suppress ... well just about anything that might give someone else an edge on them.

Governments do not have any sort of monopoly <grin> on all of those issues you mentioned. They not only use their own resources to control and suppress and erect barriers to entry but also purchase the services of governments to assist them. So, it might be argued that they are even more dangerous in this regard than government. Yes?

         ...ken...


--- On Thu, 2/11/10, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:

> 
> Aaron says:
> 
> > Yes [internet] I [space race] remember [railroads] how
> [computers] the
> > [industrial chemistry] government [modern agriculture]
> has [nuclear tech]
> > consistently [scientific research] worked [UAVs] to
> [patents] defer [R&D
> > funding] and [protective tariffs] suppress ["green
> tech" incentives] newer
> > [DARPA etc.] technologies.
> 
> 
> 
> Well, gosh, Aaron, thank you for setting the record
> straight!? How could I have been SO wrong?!?
> [irony]? Clearly we should thank government [monopoly,
> coercive, cf. George Washington*] for this bountiful
> harvest, this veritable cornucopia of technological marvels
> and wonders that delight us all and make our lives so much
> better! [sarcasm]? And OBVIOUSLY none of this could
> have been possible any other way, of COURSE! [load of crap]
> 
> Can government have a positive impact on technological
> innovation?? Of course, though [caveat] usually in
> basic research and funding thereof.? 
> 
> Listing all the things that government provided the seed
> for is easy.? Figuring out all the chilling effects it
> has had and must have is harder, and requires some degree of
> [un, apparently] common sense and analytical determination.
> 
> Of course you "can't prove a negative" [old saw] so the
> closest we can come is to observe what happens when
> government switches its policy from intentional or
> unintentional monopoly to aggressive promotion of
> commercialization and private adoption:? the exception
> that proves the rule [Internet] is when government has the
> good sense [Al Gore] to get out of the way and let business
> get down to business. [rarely]
> 
> Reading the rest of your [revisionist, implied] history was
> utterly draining [massive brain damage] so let me address
> merely a few of these.? Some of this is repetition
> apropos many earlier discussions around these parts, so I'll
> be brief.
> 
> [space race]? A good argument can be made that
> productive human use of access to space would have been much
> further along, driven by private sector interest, had not
> the US had such a fickle and tepid commitment to NASA over
> the last 3.5 decades.? (I.e., "none would have been
> better" is definitely supportable.)
> 
> [railroads] As others have pointed out, the notion that
> positive government influence in the development of these in
> the US was something other than insignificant vis-a-vis
> private influence is historicallly absurd.?
> (Exceptions:? where it *did* attempt to do this, those
> attempts were generally corrupted and had negative impact
> overall, though perhaps very local positive impact.)
> 
> [nukes] [quasi-monopoly] [arguably good reasons]
> 
> As for the rest, you exhaust me.? There is a huge
> difference between kickstarting a technology and enabling
> (much less accelerating) its adoption and diffusion.
> [clearly]
> 
> Re: your Soylent Green argument [trivial, zecious]: so are
> corporations.? [...made of people.]? Recognizing
> and understanding the entelechic and stigmergic aspects of
> one but not the other betrays a curious though common bias.
> [actually two of them, depending on which way you lean.]
> 
> [parenthetical] Fwiw, in both theory and practice the
> decision processes, characteristic behaviors, and effects of
> governments are often easier to understand and analyze [more
> historical data, clearer rules, simpler causality, slower
> evolution, fewer actors] than e.g. companies.?
> [/parenthetical]
> 
> So let's be clear.? Anyone who is intellectually
> honest / has a shred of objectivity must stipulate the
> following:? that government, in any and all of the
> various forms in which it has been practiced by human
> society throughout history, is:? monopoly [realized or
> potential], enforced through coercion, funded through theft,
> costumed in idealism, rationalized by good intentions,
> justified by somebody's idea of "the greater good."?
> That is its essential nature.? That's not a judgment
> call, it is a simple observation.? Is it necessary to
> the optimal functioning (or even, "functioning") of human
> society?? Probably, maybe certainly:? in some form
> and at some scale.? Is it evil?? To the extent
> that the question has meaning at all, then yes --- at
> times.? Is it incapable of good?? Again, assuming
> that means anything --- certainly not.? That's not the
> point.
> 
> Seriously, the point I was attempting to make is that
> disruptive innovation threatens monopolistic and
> oligarchical interests, always, definitionally.? And
> government is, definitionally, a quasi-monopoly in every
> sphere in which it operates;? only by choosing to
> divest itself of its potential or real monopolies can it
> encourage the things that monopoly impedes *in
> itself.*? At best, such interests are conflicted re
> influencing innovation; at worst, they necessarily actively
> suppress it.? Whether the establishment in question is
> government or other is a bit tangential [though relevant and
> interesting.]
> 
> 
> $0.02 [cheap!]
> 
> 
> jb? 
> 
> 
> *? "Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it
> is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful
> master.? Never for a moment should it be left to
> irresponsible action."? - G. Washington, 1797
> (supposedly;? whether he or somebody else actually said
> this or something different is historically
> controversial.? The point remains that the founders
> were prolific, eloquent, and unequivocal about their
> suspicions of the concentration --- i.e., monopolistic
> accumulation --- of power in government, even under the most
> ideal of systems.)
> 
> 
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
> 


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From jbone at place.org  Thu Feb 11 21:05:51 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:05:51 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] The future of politics (cont'd)
In-Reply-To: <36A63BFC-4FC8-4F5C-8EA2-D1839A3B6840@place.org>
References: <20100209211343.GD17686@leitl.org>
	<CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>
	<36A63BFC-4FC8-4F5C-8EA2-D1839A3B6840@place.org>
Message-ID: <BCB7CFC1-99EE-42BE-849F-28C222B66BC3@place.org>


Ken says:

> I agree with your reasoning. And right back at you, for all the same reasons, regarding the negative impact of large, especially global, sized companies. It is in their best interests, as has been mentioned in here before by someone with initials similar to your own, to suppress ... well just about anything that might give someone else an edge on them.

Absolutely agreed.  (Notice, I thus maintain and justify my claim to some degree of objectivity...)  I don't trust any given company more than any given government, absent the possibility of real competition.  But few monopolies really form (of their own, see below) and even fewer remain for long in the private sector, absent some governmental suppression of competition.

And, too, the real point:  that's the real problem with government of any kind:  no real competition, or at least the potential for total suppression of competition.  Even in our own system, what "competition" actually exists is often largely more charade than substance;  and in the end, the entelechic interest of *government itself* trumps the interests of its constituents ("the people") and its own internal individual actors (politicians, i.e., "the  people's representatives.")

Competition is the process of searching for solutions to some problem in some solution space in parallel.  Less competition, suboptimal solutions.  Coercive suppression of the search process, whether by government (which, obviously, has most of the coercive force), private entity, or some collaboration of the two (aka, corruption) is obviously in nobody's interest but the monopoly interest.

Competition requires a fitness function;  fitness functions require that some candidate solutions are selected while others fail.  *Government itself* (i.e., its structure and form) is generally constructed to be *highly* resistant to being "de-selected."  The result?  No real individual or subgroup choice of law, as just one example;  such things are tied by design to whatever governmental structure has monopoly control of such things in some geographic region.


> Governments do not have any sort of monopoly <grin> on all of those issues you mentioned. They not only use their own resources to control and suppress and erect barriers to entry but also purchase the services of governments to assist them. So, it might be argued that they are even more dangerous in this regard than government. Yes?

I believe that's a bit unclear, but I think I understand what you are asking.  (I think "they" in the second sentence refers to corporations, correct?)  No, I do not agree that private monopolies (and the corpora from which they form) are necessarily more dangerous;  quite the opposite.  They are dangerous, sometimes very, just not necessarily more so than government monopolies.

It's a often a symbiotic relationship:  ultimately in such a case it is government that provides the bedrock of coercive support for predatory, favored, would-be-monopolist private interests (when they deign to do so.)  The fact that government has that coercive power in the first place *enables* this sort of corrupt collusion.  Weaker / smaller / more distributed / less "sovereign" governments = more private competition (and, for that matter, more free competition of ideas and solutions in the public sector as well.)

Conversely, it's only by application of its coercive prerogatives that government can, when it chooses, *maintain* a competitive and sane private environment.  That, indeed, may be one of its only legitimate functions.  (You won't see many "libertarians" etc. making such claims, so give that some thought before pulling out those sticky-note labels next time, some of you.  Not that I haven't said the very same thing many times around here before...)  But it's a very, very difficult needle to thread to argue which applications might be legitimate and which might not.  (This is, as I've said often before, the thorn in the side of my youthful libertarian tendencies.  Once I understood the equivalence of government and monopoly, all the contradictions went away --- but the practical difficulties remain.)

Competition is everything;  high-larious and ironic, isn't it, that those who believe strongly in the positive aspects of an expansive government (let's just call them "the left" and have done) are the Kirk Camerons and Ray Comforts of the political spectrum:  the fundamentalists of great society, social evolution-disbelievers --- despite the fact that they actually do believe in biological evolution.  "This banana proves that government is essentially benign."  So blinded by faith;  and not even wrong.

--

Re: your startup post, yes indeed, did warm the cockles of my heart.

Now let us continue dancing about architecture... ;-)


jb





From beberg at mithral.com  Thu Feb 11 22:05:50 2010
From: beberg at mithral.com (Adam L Beberg)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:05:50 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Endgame
Message-ID: <4B74EFBE.7010705@mithral.com>

Things are getting fun now. Time to break out the popcorn...

China just pulled the plug on the global debt orgy, about time too...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/7205110/China-orders-retreat-from-risky-assets.html

More and more stories coming out that lending is just shutting down. No 
way a sane bank will write a loan right now with assets deflating so 
fast from houses to cars to machinery. If you're a small business, 
forget it.

The Fed (a private bank) are printing money like mad and handing it to 
the bankers (themselves) as they flee the sinking ship. California and a 
few other states and hundreds of cities are weeks away from failure, but 
only if the Fed can print money fast enough. Social Security is dead 
right now not in 2017, commercial real estate isn't even worth burning 
down any more. Does anyone in Sillycon valley have a job anymore (22% 
unemployment = no), because there is no rush hour traffic anymore.

Europe is a complete shitshow, with the Greeks striking to demand more 
money for not working - I guess they ran out of burning Roman buildings 
to fiddle to over there. Same Goldman bankers running Greece into the 
ground it turns out. Tanking companies is no longer profitable enough so 
now whole countries need to be taken down.

Long weekend ahead. Tuesday may be a good day to wake up and find out 
the dollar is now just low grade toilet paper. How the fork they have 
managed to keep the Ponzi scheme this long is beyond anyone's comprehension.

Now where's that popcorn...

-- 
Adam L. Beberg
http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/

From bullwinklemouth at yahoo.ca  Thu Feb 11 22:11:05 2010
From: bullwinklemouth at yahoo.ca (John Parsons)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 22:11:05 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Our wonderfully advanced society
Message-ID: <575735.38239.qm@web112312.mail.gq1.yahoo.com>


--- On Mon, 2/8/10, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca> wrote:

> What's with that?? Have we suddenly become neanderthals
> that we cannot repair or replace what we have built and
> become dependent upon? What's next? Dams? Waterworks?
> Roads?

As we face the re-emergence of nuclear power and it's attendant issues
(probably necessary if we can't reduce energy demand), it behooves us to try
and learn from these incidents, rather than become complacently oblivious.
If the most prosperous and advanced nations on Earth can't run these things
competently and reliably, what hope is there for anybody to maintain a 
positive outlook for modern society, never mind just nuclear power?

John


      __________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now
http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com.

From saigua at sbcglobal.net  Thu Feb 11 22:16:11 2010
From: saigua at sbcglobal.net (Steve Nordquist)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:16:11 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Google Disappoints
In-Reply-To: <4B44D13A.3080909@lig.net>
References: <4B44D13A.3080909@lig.net>
Message-ID: <op.u7z3o7v8dmm1ap@hit-nxdomain.opendns.com>

On Wed, 06 Jan 2010 12:06:50 -0600, Stephen D. Williams <sdw at lig.net>  
wrote:

> I expect more from Google.  Their "demo" link off the home page [1]  
> should have a live emulator of the Nexus One.  Let you make and receive  
> calls from the web page.  Load your gmail address book.  Load and try  
> apps.  Link to GPS on your existing phone (via Google Maps) so you can  
> try local reference search and navigation.  Order a preconfigured,  
> preloaded phone.  Anything less and they are just loafing.
in -quiet dignity-, yes.
>
> [1] http://www.google.com/phone
>
> What would you do with 1 million machines??

Buy puts on electric power with utility discounts? (/hindsight) [ducks]
er, continue to run Flash by default?  Do I get a crank recharger port?

> Anyway, leaving out a physical keyboard is substandard.  And not one of  
> those semi-useless sideways chicklet keyboards, but something you can  
> type 40+ wpm.

But with the CMOS camera fed through to display in some kind of low-power  
magic loop and a bit of OLED projection as a guide, you can have a virtual  
Unicode keyboard on any pile of medical waste you like!

Then you can assign Shift-alt-grave-Om to your delight.


From jbone at place.org  Thu Feb 11 22:30:18 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:30:18 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Google Disappoints
Message-ID: <FF387B84-6495-4972-A996-B4591388E98D@place.org>


Okay, who went and downgraded the Nordquist instance?  What was that, v.1997?

That was far less delightfully oblique and incoherent yet gestalt-inducing than runs of the later versions of the software...

;-)

jb



From jbone at place.org  Thu Feb 11 22:35:44 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:35:44 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Google Disappoints
In-Reply-To: <FF387B84-6495-4972-A996-B4591388E98D@place.org>
References: <FF387B84-6495-4972-A996-B4591388E98D@place.org>
Message-ID: <9990474A-0F09-464D-B9A6-6F496A14980A@place.org>


BTW, I notice that now *my own* messages, even original, are sometimes (though not always) apparently failing to line-wrap appropriately.  WTF?

It's like a virus.

I haven't changed any prefs or anything on my end, so no idea why that might be happening...

testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing testing.  testing test test test testing testy test test testariffic testorama.  Testorem testipsum testdolor testsit.  Test, test, test.  Test again.  

Apologies.

jb



From jbone at place.org  Thu Feb 11 22:50:26 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 00:50:26 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] test, ignore
Message-ID: <72CA2ED9-1738-4BAE-85F2-A13C41DF81E2@place.org>


Reposting some previous content that wrapped correctly to observe current behavior, again apologies.


Basically, it only does a few things.  (1) It displays a header with some context info:  location, local time, local weather, etc.  Uses network awareness and geolocation for location determination, and then gets the rest based on that.  (2)  Its default mode is to cycle through a context-specific view of my todo.txt task manager data, showing me what's on my list of things to do, next actions, etc.  It also has a concept called "focus" built-in;  it's really just a minimalist query / filter language (some syntactic sugar around my usual uses of e.g. grep for such things, e.g. "@home -p:later -p:weekend" in order to trim the fat.  (3) Hotkeys and / or shell commands can switch mode to quickly do several other small tasks:  display (a subset, potentially filtered or transformed) of the clipboard, as text;  display contact information from Address Book for the most-recent contact-of-interest from e.g. Mail, from a Web page, etc.;  do dictionary lookups on the five least-common words from the most recently-viewed web page, with optional summary from Wikipedia given another key command;  display status of various devices at the house (a kind of home automation summary screen, no control functionality yet); incoming e-mail notification and summary.  That's about it for now, and probably all I will ever do to it before rewriting it w/ a bit more architecture aforethought.

There's not much (i.e., nothing) there that you can't find e.g. a dashboard widget for.  The main benefits vs. dashboard are:  always there, always on, in-my-face when I am using my machine as a terminal, which is most of the time;  and it is (minimally) context aware and reactive rather than something I have to "drive" for most common tasks.  I.e., I can just watch it for a brief time and minimally "drive" it;  it's job is to deliver useful information to me based on some contextual cues, and to default to something useful.


jb



From aaron at bavariati.org  Thu Feb 11 23:01:45 2010
From: aaron at bavariati.org (Aaron Burt)
Date: Thu, 11 Feb 2010 23:01:45 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] The future of politics (cont'd)
In-Reply-To: <36A63BFC-4FC8-4F5C-8EA2-D1839A3B6840@place.org>
References: <20100209211343.GD17686@leitl.org>
	<CED4F4EE-483D-4F69-8307-E15078C0B843@place.org>
	<36A63BFC-4FC8-4F5C-8EA2-D1839A3B6840@place.org>
Message-ID: <20100212070145.GA14850@aaron-x31>

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 09:52:36PM -0600, Jeff Bone wrote:
> 
> Aaron says:
> 
> > Yes [internet] I [space race] remember [railroads] how [computers] the
> > [industrial chemistry] government [modern agriculture] has [nuclear tech]
> > consistently [scientific research] worked [UAVs] to [patents] defer [R&D
> > funding] and [protective tariffs] suppress ["green tech" incentives] newer
> > [DARPA etc.] technologies.
> 
> Well, gosh, Aaron, thank you for setting the record straight! <snip>

I'm afraid I didn't make my point.  But if you don't like having a
government, move to Somalia.  If you merely want a government that serves
your particular set of whims, I'm sure there's some country that needs a
new tyrant.  Sorry, but I'm having a hard time telling your position apart
from a confused sort of Aynarchism.

> Can government have a positive impact on technological innovation?  Of
> course, though [caveat] usually in basic research and funding thereof.  

...And in regulatory choices that make new technologies necessary or
cost-effective, subsidized/guaranteed loans to businesspeople, buying early
production (that's a big one), import tariffs and other protectionist
measures (that was big before the revival of the Church of Free Trade), et
cetera and ad nauseam.  You already know all this stuff.

> Listing all the things that government provided the seed for is easy.
> Figuring out all the chilling effects it has had and must have is harder,
> and requires some degree of [un, apparently] common sense and analytical
> determination.

Religious fervor often substitutes for the latter.

<snip a flattering amount of considered yet snide response and rebuttal>

> Seriously, the point I was attempting to make is that disruptive
> innovation threatens monopolistic and oligarchical interests, always,
> definitionally.

Your point being:
0. Innovation is always good.
1. Entities don't like innovations that seem to interfere with their power
and/or functioning, and try to suppress them.
2. Governments are entities.
3. Therefore governments will try to suppress some innovations, which is bad.

It's good of you to identify one of the many sorts of entity that might
suppress innovation.  Even given its power and monopoly position in some
areas, it's not an entity I would worry so much about, compared to the many
other entities that have little to no transparency, accountability or legal
restraints, and who are dedicated to short-term profitibility and CEO
aggrandizement rather than the public good.

As long as we're recognizably human, we're stuck with governments.  You and
I happen to live in a country that has pretty good ones, all things
considered.  Bitch about them all you like, or bitch about the tyranny of
backward-compatibility or the speed of light.  It's just as effective.

Better to work toward the greatest good with what we got,
  Aaron

From jbone at place.org  Thu Feb 11 23:17:43 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:17:43 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] text flow / line wrap mystery solved (sort of)
Message-ID: <0FB5B86A-AA3F-4969-AAEE-8C4823F3EDC6@place.org>


Okay.  So one thing did change between the time I posted the previous snippet (Feb 2, when it flowed correctly) and tonight (when it didn't.)  I upgraded the Air to 10.6.2 from 10.5.8.

Looking at the raw source reveals that the previous version used Apple Message framework v936, while the 10.6.2 has Apple Message framework v1077.

v936 apparently set the content-type and content-transfer-encoding as follows:

  Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset=US-ASCII;
	format=flowed;
	delsp=yes
  Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

...which, IMHO, is entirely reasonable, desirable, preferable, correct, etc.  v1077 on the other hand:

  Content-Type: text/plain;
	charset=us-ascii
  Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

(I'm assuming this is happening in the framework itself, or some dependent framework.)

Now, we can have all the religious wars we want over which of these is "right" but at the end of the day, the result is easy to observe:  go look at messages in the archive from before and after the change.  Personally, I prefer the old behavior for all sorts of reasons.

So:  casual investigation doesn't reveal any obvious way to force Mail.app to set these things.  Anybody aware of any way to force this?  Reasonably sure there's probably some defaults write com.apple.mail magic, but nothing obvious from casual inspection of reading same.

I am attempting in this message to manually set the encoding to UTF-8;  this is obviously a hack and may not be effective but there was some anecdotal evidence in a quick Google on the issue that this might force the appropriate attributes in content-type.  We'll see.


jb



From jbone at place.org  Thu Feb 11 23:21:25 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 01:21:25 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Aaron, seriously
Message-ID: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>


> But if you don't like having a
> government, move to Somalia.

I call shenanigans.

Seriously, Aaron, THAT old argument is SOOOO fucking tired that it makes it impossible for me to even read the rest of your message, much less take you seriously.  

"Well if you don't like X about the way things are done here, just move."  Seriously?  

That how you really think it ought to work?  Of course not. 

So don't play that line of bullshit, okay?

GMAFB.

jb



From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Fri Feb 12 03:18:27 2010
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (khare at alumni.caltech.edu)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:18:27 +0000
Subject: [FoRK] TRAVELMAN notes from Frankfurt
Message-ID: <98137491-1265973614-cardhu_decombobulator_blackberry.rim.net-2132603702-@bda057.bisx.prod.on.blackberry>

So FRA is still super-efficient. While the counters were swamped with canceled travelers, and a guard sent me to the wrong side of passport control so I couldn't get to the red carpet club showers, I was able to cross in to germany, shop a few bookstores, come back thru security, hit duty free for local wines and elderflower schnapps, stop by the lounge for sausages, pretzels, and beer AND squeeze in a shower in that hour, even though I walked the length of pier A twice...

RK

P
Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

From geege4 at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 06:19:04 2010
From: geege4 at gmail.com (geege schuman)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:19:04 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Endgame
In-Reply-To: <4B74EFBE.7010705@mithral.com>
References: <4B74EFBE.7010705@mithral.com>
Message-ID: <493a95a01002120619n1fb27702uda880af3ca041ce8@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 1:05 AM, Adam L Beberg <beberg at mithral.com> wrote:

> Things are getting fun now. Time to break out the popcorn...
>
> China just pulled the plug on the global debt orgy, about time too...
>
> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/china-business/7205110/China-orders-retreat-from-risky-assets.html
>
> More and more stories coming out that lending is just shutting down. No way
> a sane bank will write a loan right now with assets deflating so fast from
> houses to cars to machinery. If you're a small business, forget it.
>
> Despite all that, US retail sales are up.  Are they all  - we all -  just
cock-eyed consumers?

From jbone at place.org  Fri Feb 12 07:31:28 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:31:28 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Aaron, seriously
In-Reply-To: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>
References: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>
Message-ID: <1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>


One other bit re:  Aaron...

Your argument is actually a pretty weak strawman:  I haven't claimed that government is unequivocally bad, or that *our* government is unequivocally bad, etc.  So setting aside the ridiculous defensiveness of the "if you don't like it, move" BS, you're arguing against something I haven't said.

Can government do good, i.e. act to improve overall social outcomes?  Of course;  in fact I often make a concerted effort to point out where I see the specific possibilities for this.  The converse is equally true:  it can also, quite clearly, harm outcomes.  [cryptography.  ahem....]  I'm not even interested in coming up with some net valuation or judgment of our, or any particular government.  I'm interested in exploring (discussing, as fairly and frankly as possible) the opportunities, constraints, tendencies, mechanisms, etc. by which government (as an expression of some social choice function) influences social outcomes --- in order to understand how to encourage the positives and discourage the negatives.

The knee-jerk defensiveness and apologia of government usually comes from those who have a bias *for* whatever group, political bias, meme, etc. is in power.  During the Clinton years, it was usually the then-uncritical "left" that  displayed this sort of defensiveness (and nb., aside, despite broad criticism of government as a whole during Clinton's tenure, I was actually a big Clinton fan and feel him to have been the best president we've had during my lifetime);  during the Bush II years, the "right" got defensive and jerky;  and now we're back to the "left."  Whatever personal preferences we might each have, I wish more people could step back from them and have a legitimate, constructively critical, and non-apologetic examination of both specific situations and actions and, even more, *the system itself.*  Only by doing that, and by having free and open conversations that actually seek to embrace valuable  generalizations and truths about things can we begin to understand how to improve upon what we have, however good it may be.

Spending time patting ourselves on the back for all that we do well is silly and unproductive.  Only by digging in, hard, on the things that we *don't* do well --- and, perhaps, looking at those things for which there are systematic obstacles that make doing them well difficult or impossible, i.e. systematic constraints, limitations, and characteristics --- can progress be made in our social organization, choice and decision processes, and mechanisms of "governance."  And it is just that systematic examination that is critically missing in our public discourse today;  which is peculiar given that this is precisely what *defined* the public discourse from the early days of our form of government.  That's unfortunate, because these days we have much better tools for conducting (and discussing / collaborating on) that very systematic analysis.

(Conversely, the fatalistic / nihilistic / disillusioned point of view that cannot conceive of any possible improvements or means of getting there is equally unproductive, though certainly --- depressingly --- less "silly."  Rather unfortunate that exactly that point of view may be even more damaging than the uncritical point of view, as it tends towards self-fulfilling prophesy.)

Furthermore, frequent reexamination of our assumptions about government --- indeed, even the frequent questioning and reexamination of our understanding of its very *nature*, of the intrinsic and essential and ever-evolving relationships of the individual to other individuals, to society as a whole and to its non-individual / collective parts --- is in order;  we have better tools for understanding all the time:  analytical, analogical, and historical.  This process is never without value when conducted with honesty, integrity, and whatever degree of objectivity can be mustered.

In any case, that's the hallmark of a "free and open" society:  a vigorous debate about system itself in order to allow it to improve, coupled with mutability of the system itself responsive to such critical examination.

You do, I assume, prefer free and open societies, don't you Aaron?

Then please have the courage of your convictions and don't offer knee-jerk defensiveness designed to discourage such, mmmkay?


jb




From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 07:54:32 2010
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 07:54:32 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Robotic cars, software / Internet in cars,
	and Linux 	Ksplice, was: Re: > Re: The future of politics. Can,
	politicians prepare society for the major technology challenges
	ahead?, With Darren Reynolds.
In-Reply-To: <20100211235535.GB16339@brevard.conman.org>
References: <4B74741E.60203@halvorson.us> <4B748AF4.1040301@lig.net>
	<20100211235535.GB16339@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <ab069aa01002120754v1dd98440w35f335a9c472a117@mail.gmail.com>

On Thu, Feb 11, 2010 at 3:55 PM, Sean Conner <sean at conman.org> wrote:
> ?True story---a friend of mine worked at a company that made car
> diagnositic computers. ?They were testing their software on a BMW when there
> was a power failure and they ended up bricking the car.
>
> ?BMW had to fly an engineer from Germany (to South Florida) to get the car
> unbricked.

I was on a city bus in Honolulu that the driver had to reboot.  You
could see the system status messages on the display that normally
shows upcoming stops.  The portion of the system that opens and closes
the (literal) back door wasn't responding, so the driver shut down the
bus, waited, started it, and waited again for bootup to complete.

I didn't recognize the prompts, BTW.  Some embedded OS that I don't
hands on experience with.


From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 08:00:22 2010
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:00:22 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c1002101802i5e46c59fgbb2e8759a6dc55aa@mail.gmail.com>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<2F4A0805-BFFC-46B4-AD0D-F9ED467BC326@radicalcentrism.org>
	<ab069aa01002091147p23921d84q2c9c2382baef2613@mail.gmail.com>
	<300F6387-0583-4DC6-8946-5F613F166708@radicalcentrism.org>
	<ab069aa01002101241w3ace5842g3fce23bf06519947@mail.gmail.com>
	<4840592D-D914-4DF5-84D1-4C9BB7809729@radicalcentrism.org>
	<e3b2914c1002101802i5e46c59fgbb2e8759a6dc55aa@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ab069aa01002120800s42abd36dj85b31d3025a15bac@mail.gmail.com>

Apple's mania for lock-in is a sight to see.  The only bet I'd take is
that Apple will reach new lows, like code signing to detect
unauthorized third party software.

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 6:02 PM, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> So I am getting no takers on the Apple being a dork about the lockin?
 series)higgins

From jbone at place.org  Fri Feb 12 08:19:03 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:19:03 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] text flow / line wrap mystery solved (sort of)
In-Reply-To: <0FB5B86A-AA3F-4969-AAEE-8C4823F3EDC6@place.org>
References: <0FB5B86A-AA3F-4969-AAEE-8C4823F3EDC6@place.org>
Message-ID: <FA95A522-98CF-44BC-BEB9-7C1AF74D0299@place.org>


Bit more digging.  Apparently a known issue:

  http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=10585418

jb


From khare at alumni.caltech.edu  Fri Feb 12 08:54:22 2010
From: khare at alumni.caltech.edu (Rohit Khare)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 08:54:22 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Panasonic 3D HD 103" displays for Vancouver Olympics
Message-ID: <70E5F8B4-6AA5-46E6-9BF3-5C1D2A8B6E00@alumni.caltech.edu>

Definitely adding this to my itinerary for the Olympics in Vancouver next weekend! -- Rohit

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/panasonic-opens-full-hd-3d-theatre-at-the-vancouver-2010-olympic-winter-games-live-site-84144927.html

...
Open February 12-28 from 11 am to 11 pm daily, the theatres will screen high definition, three dimensional images of the Opening Ceremony, highlights footage of the 2010 Winter Games, as well as the video of Sarah Brightman performing Panasonic's song, "Shall Be Done".  There is no entrance fee for Panasonic's Olympic Pavilion at the LiveCity Yaletown site in David Lam Park.  

"This theatre is our way of sharing the passion of the 2010 Winter Games with Vancouver residents and visitors from around the world," says Takumi Kajisha, Managing Executive Officer, Panasonic Corporation.  "Panasonic believes 3D systems will greatly enhance at-home viewing of future Olympic Games, combining the enjoyment of watching the greatest sports event with the stereoscopic images of full HD 3D."
...
With Panasonic's frame sequential technology, images are alternately reproduced at 60 frames per second for each eye for a total of 120 frames per second.  These images are viewed alternately through high-precision 3D eyewear with shutters driven in synchronization with the video.  As a result, each eye views a separate 1920 x 1080 full-HD image for beautiful, clear 3D images with no degradation in quality.

Panasonic has always been a leader in standardizing consumer electronic products and is proud that Panasonic full HD 3D technology has greatly contributed to the standardization of Blu-ray 3D? which was announced by the Blu-ray Disc Association at the end of last year.

In January 2010, Panasonic announced its latest twin-lens full HD 3D camera recorder, and a Full HD 3D home theatre system (50", 54", 58" and 65" sizes) at the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The full HD 3D home theatre system is expected to be introduced to the North American market in the spring of this year.  



From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Fri Feb 12 09:00:06 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:00:06 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Google Disappoints
In-Reply-To: <9990474A-0F09-464D-B9A6-6F496A14980A@place.org>
Message-ID: <39715.38136.qm@web33004.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Fri, 2/12/10, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
> 
> BTW, I notice that now *my own* messages, even original,
> are sometimes (though not always) apparently failing to
> line-wrap appropriately.? WTF?
> 

Has to be on your end or somewhere betwixt, in the inbound direction perhaps. I have never ... not ever ... not even once ... seen such a problem here in my nice little Yahoo! cocoon. I have tried sending test messages from here to my half dozen or so other email instances on other services and no problem reading them there. 

I have even, for the sake of some on this list, refrained from using Rich Text and leave this account always on the Plain Text composition setting.

Is it only FoRK? Only me? And now you?

Would it be useful in tracking/tracing if I were to temporarily subscribe to FoRK from another instance of me on another service or two in case it's some bit of cosmic energy following me around? At least if the problem of my messages not wrapping for you stops that might tell us something. Just say the word.

      ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Yahoo! Canada Toolbar: Search from anywhere on the web, and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now
http://ca.toolbar.yahoo.com.


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Fri Feb 12 09:30:49 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 09:30:49 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Aaron, seriously
In-Reply-To: <1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>
Message-ID: <471067.80172.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Fri, 2/12/10, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:

> 
> Spending time patting ourselves on the back for all that we
> do well is silly and unproductive.
> 

Not true. A little positive reinforcement every now and again is actually quite useful. It works even for hardass nerds like you. Just ask your wife. Or any other good manager/mentor.

Sometimes it's worthwhile to count our blessings and put things into perspective. Let's get the context clear before we...


> ...? Only by digging in,
> hard, on the things that we *don't* do well --- and,
> perhaps, looking at those things for which there are
> systematic obstacles that make doing them well difficult or
> impossible, i.e. systematic constraints, limitations, and
> characteristics --- can progress be made in our social
> organization, choice and decision processes, and mechanisms
> of "governance." ...
> 


Now that's good. Very good.

But...


> (Conversely, the fatalistic / nihilistic / disillusioned
> point of view that cannot conceive of any possible
> improvements or means of getting there is equally
> unproductive, though certainly --- depressingly --- less
> "silly."? Rather unfortunate that exactly that point of
> view may be even more damaging than the uncritical point of
> view, as it tends towards self-fulfilling prophesy.)
> 


That's just the sort of bullshit that starts or perpetuates useless flame wars and hinders fruitful discourse. I didn't see Aaron or anyone else saying, suggesting, or even hinting that things couldn't be improved. He was probably just reacting to some of the specious crap, like immediately above, you sometimes wrap around the good stuff, like further above. 

In my view.

Now, I don't know the long and revered history of FoRK and particularly the relationships of its individual participants. So perhaps this is just a time-honored bit of jibing between you two. If so, my apologies for commenting without the necessary context. 

          ...ken...



      __________________________________________________________________
Get a sneak peak at messages with a handy reading pane with All new Yahoo! Mail: http://ca.promos.yahoo.com/newmail/overview2/


From jbone at place.org  Fri Feb 12 09:44:30 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:44:30 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] WORKAROUND Re: text flow / line wrap mystery solved (sort of)
In-Reply-To: <FA95A522-98CF-44BC-BEB9-7C1AF74D0299@place.org>
References: <0FB5B86A-AA3F-4969-AAEE-8C4823F3EDC6@place.org>
	<FA95A522-98CF-44BC-BEB9-7C1AF74D0299@place.org>
Message-ID: <80C14976-95F6-4E4E-99D9-2C8F012CD6B4@place.org>


Cf. http://lists.ranchero.com/pipermail/email-init-ranchero.com/2010-January/001477.html

Bookmarklet hack for reading list archives in browser, should work in various similar situations, works in Safari, untested elsewhere:

  javascript:(document.body.innerHTML+='<style>pre{width:50em;white-space:pre-wrap;word-wrap:break-word;}</style>');


Enjoy!



jb









From jbone at place.org  Fri Feb 12 09:47:23 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:47:23 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Ken, seriously Re: Aaron, seriously
In-Reply-To: <1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>
References: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>
	<1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>
Message-ID: <A087F2A3-94D5-429A-91AD-CC446FDA1294@place.org>


Ken says:

> specious crap

But then:

> Now, I don't know the long and revered history of FoRK 

Correct.

> So perhaps this is just a time-honored bit of jibing


Yes.

> between you two

Actually directed at one or two other folks, not Aaron.

> If so, my apologies for commenting without the necessary context.


I sense a pattern... ;-)


jb


From aaron at bavariati.org  Fri Feb 12 10:01:18 2010
From: aaron at bavariati.org (Aaron Burt)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 10:01:18 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Aaron, seriously
In-Reply-To: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>
References: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>
Message-ID: <20100212180118.GE14850@aaron-x31>

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 01:21:25AM -0600, Jeff Bone wrote:
> 
> > But if you don't like having a
> > government, move to Somalia.
> 
> I call shenanigans.
> 
> Seriously, Aaron, THAT old argument is SOOOO fucking tired that it makes
> it impossible for me to even read the rest of your message, much less
> take you seriously.  

Well, that's what *I* get for burying the important bits further down.

I know the ideas you are trying to advance and discuss are far deeper and
more subtle than the muddled Randroid Nerdfoo they superficially resemble, 
but I'm not seein' 'em.

Sorry to have wasted time and bandwidth,
  Aaron

From aaron at bavariati.org  Fri Feb 12 11:05:21 2010
From: aaron at bavariati.org (Aaron Burt)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:05:21 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Betting on the iPad
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa01002101239r3ba7a817r7c61e3ed6895e1bb@mail.gmail.com>
References: <869534.46792.qm@web33008.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<5101B54E-D8A7-481E-8DEA-ABF79B9AB23F@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B67625A.7010402@boxbe.com>
	<E9D0780F-8D0E-4643-B69C-1A4D75278124@radicalcentrism.org>
	<4B68D4A4.1000504@boxbe.com>
	<ab069aa01002052058q61ef4369y465a072665ad2617@mail.gmail.com>
	<20100207050828.GA18093@aaron-x31>
	<ab069aa01002070959h1dc01abfjffbd27596fd0681d@mail.gmail.com>
	<20100209191426.GA19934@aaron-x31>
	<ab069aa01002101239r3ba7a817r7c61e3ed6895e1bb@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20100212190520.GG14850@aaron-x31>

On Wed, Feb 10, 2010 at 12:39:17PM -0800, Lucas Gonze wrote:
> >> A netbook without a keyboard is not a lesser desktop, it is a new type of
> >> thing with new strengths.
> 
> On Tue, Feb 9, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Aaron Burt <aaron at bavariati.org> wrote:
> > The same could be said of *any* design variation. ?This particular one has
> > been tried many, many times. ?Good on them if they make it work.
> 
> Ok, so what's new in the current generation?

<snip features>

Yes, those (especially good touch-screen and always-on internet) could tip
the balance toward something new, but so far that makes the iPad a bigger
iPod Touch, or a joke iPhone out of http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ttewGXkCmZI

> A standard wearable?  Is there such a thing?  A modern borGphone
> desn't have a screen?

Depends on the application.  Most wearables have a screen, but many are
designed to be used w/o looking at one.  AFAIK industrial/military ones are
usually special-application with a fairly rigid workflow to permit this.

> Anyhow, I don't want to do verbal fencing anymore, because you said
> something interesting about a paradigm shift in how computers
> facilitate human interact and labo(u)r.  Can you say more about that?

Yah, sorry, the discussion hit a sore spot-- my brother and I have been
dreaming about useful, non-visual computers since we were kids.

Most computers demand the sole attention of our eyes and fingers.  That's
fine in some circumstances, but eye & hands are most folks' primary
interfaces to the world.  When computers became important to a lot of our
work and socialization, they forced us to spend more and more of our lives
with our eyes & hands attending to a virtual world "inside the screen"
rather than to our physical world.  This also forces our work and
socialization into narrow channels.

So I want computers to help us with new stuff, the kind of things that
require eyes and hands.  I also want them to help us with the kind of stuff
we already use them for, but I want them to be less obtrusive.  I want an
electronic butler, not a tireless sub-millisecond drama-queen.

You know the joke about how we'll have a paperless restroom before we ever
have a paperless office?  Now I'm talking about PowerPoint-less managers,
form-less data entry/retrieval, click-less calendar management, and other
sorts of madness.  It's like the kind of stuff we did before computers,
when we had secretaries, but with modern precision and fewer humans.*

I'm afraid I haven't tried to put this stuff into concrete terms for a
while, so I don't have a vision statement + manifesto at the moment.  But I
must work on it.  The technology is there now and the tools are cheap.
I just picked up a couple USB Arduino clones for $10 the other day, so I
can now interface anything electric to any computer.

It's a strange new world, and it needs to stay that way.

Thank you for asking,
  Aaron

*Funny - same thing could be said about modern organic/sustainable ag.

From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 11:41:56 2010
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 11:41:56 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] computer morphology
Message-ID: <ab069aa01002121141i25e409ao488ff585fe0051bf@mail.gmail.com>

(topic: wearables & iPad)

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Aaron Burt <aaron at bavariati.org> wrote:
> Most computers demand the sole attention of our eyes and fingers. ?That's
> fine in some circumstances, but eye & hands are most folks' primary
> interfaces to the world.

I ran into braille sheet music last weekend.  A wonderous thing.

I read a pop science book on a group of MIT folk who built a computer
for beating roulette wheels.  The output was a tactile thing in the
sneaker, bumps I think.  The input was a clicker in the pocket
(clicked at each cycle of the ball, to time its speed).  So: simple
inputs.

I've been thinking about radar or sonar for space mapping for blind
people walking down the street.  They would have a radar or sonar
device emitting signals and detecting bounces.  It would be able to
track doppler shift, and would use that to report accelerating and
decelerating bodies.  They had some output device in their hand or
maybe strapped to their body.  The device would have a schematic that
was readable by touch.


> When computers became important to a lot of our
> work and socialization, they forced us to spend more and more of our lives
> with our eyes & hands attending to a virtual world "inside the screen"
> rather than to our physical world. ?This also forces our work and
> socialization into narrow channels.

Beautiful insight.

Users of desktop computers are like the opium smokers.  We go into an
inner world and disconnect from our surroundings.


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Fri Feb 12 12:09:40 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:09:40 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] computer morphology
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa01002121141i25e409ao488ff585fe0051bf@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <881151.77970.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Fri, 2/12/10, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Aaron Burt <aaron at bavariati.org> wrote:
> 
> 
> > When computers became important to a lot of our
> > work and socialization, they forced us to spend more and more of our lives
> > with our eyes & hands attending to a virtual world "inside the screen"
> > rather than to our physical world. ?This also forces our work and
> > socialization into narrow channels.
> 
> Beautiful insight.
> 
> Users of desktop computers are like the opium smokers.? We go into an
> inner world and disconnect from our surroundings.
> 

Yikes! Do I ever resemble those remarks! Yes, it would be nice to be unshackled without losing contact with the features, friends and functions.

          ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Connect with friends from any web browser - no download required. Try the new Yahoo! Canada Messenger for the Web BETA at http://ca.messenger.yahoo.com/webmessengerpromo.php


From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 12:23:57 2010
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:23:57 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Ken, seriously Re: Aaron, seriously
In-Reply-To: <A087F2A3-94D5-429A-91AD-CC446FDA1294@place.org>
References: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>
	<1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>
	<A087F2A3-94D5-429A-91AD-CC446FDA1294@place.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c1002121223u1120a35aib3c45de4877fa0c3@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 9:47 AM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:

> I sense a pattern... ;-)

It is all about patterns here in the BoneYard annex of ForkW0rld.

-tom(fast pass works a charm )higgins

From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 12:31:18 2010
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 12:31:18 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Aaron, seriously
In-Reply-To: <1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>
References: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>
	<1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c1002121231ob15af0dxd455d6f818764f48@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 7:31 AM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:

>
> Then please have the courage of your convictions and don't offer knee-jerk defensiveness designed to discourage such, mmmkay?

Yea, like srsly Aaron...if you are going to make single minded
reactionary comments then at least have the courtesy to make sure it
is no less than 1000 words and contains at least three semi hidden
jabs at others on the thread or if there are no others on the thread
bring up old threads and jab em in absentia. If they do respond just
keep posting more of the same but different and if they do respond
keep posting different things about the same point.

Come on Aaron, you have been around long enough to know this dance.

-tom(peace love and let er rip)higgins

From sdw at lig.net  Fri Feb 12 13:01:14 2010
From: sdw at lig.net (Stephen D. Williams)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 13:01:14 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] computer morphology
In-Reply-To: <881151.77970.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <881151.77970.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <4B75C19A.8060807@lig.net>

Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo wrote:
> --- On Fri, 2/12/10, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>>> On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 11:05 AM, Aaron Burt <aaron at bavariati.org> wrote:
>>>       
>>     
>>> When computers became important to a lot of our
>>> work and socialization, they forced us to spend more and more of our lives
>>> with our eyes & hands attending to a virtual world "inside the screen"
>>> rather than to our physical world.  This also forces our work and
>>> socialization into narrow channels.
>>>       
>> Beautiful insight.
>>
>> Users of desktop computers are like the opium smokers.  We go into an
>> inner world and disconnect from our surroundings.
>>
>>     
>
> Yikes! Do I ever resemble those remarks! Yes, it would be nice to be unshackled without losing contact with the features, friends and functions.
>
>           ...ken...
>
>   
Maybe that electronic world is the real one and you have to unshackle 
yourself from the "marooned in real space/time" of the physical world...

For many people, most of their waking lives are spent at work, with 
various rules, reactions, goals, "friends", etc.  Is that real, or the 2 
hours they see their spouse and kids?

Overlaying the "real world" with a virtual one allows far more social 
interaction than otherwise.  You can choose, track, and communicate more 
often with more friends and family who are chosen rather than proximal.  
We just need to get even better at it.

sdw


From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 14:13:36 2010
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:13:36 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] computer morphology
In-Reply-To: <4B75C19A.8060807@lig.net>
References: <881151.77970.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<4B75C19A.8060807@lig.net>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c1002121413w466910a0m66d0ca4806fc21e2@mail.gmail.com>

Real world, online world, screen world, Virtual, Reality.

Thing is this...when in history have this number of people had this
number of daily possible interactions with this potential horde of
humanity?

To be sure there is a difference between a meatspace gathering and an
online gathering, medium and message can be far more expansive online,
the numbers participating unbound by physical limitations of
location...but we here now this...we here do not think that is air we
are breathing here    in this place.

One could say that for smaller interactive gatherings the meatspace
has many advantages, mostly related the physical aspects. Playing
basketball in meatspace is vastly more physical than any online
representation, so to with sexual/sensual activities.

Those that would slag one for the other or to claim overall advantage
to one for all things over the other are missing some of the finer
points of both.

If you are of the mind that one is "ruining" your life in the other
then maybe you are simply seeing the world in a false
dichotomy....spitting the two from the one has caused many to forget
our whys and wherefores and often to forget the spark that has moved
us to greater things.

-tom(ebony and ivory here together in perfect...argggggggggggggghhhhhhh)higgins

From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 14:15:49 2010
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:15:49 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] computer morphology
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c1002121413w466910a0m66d0ca4806fc21e2@mail.gmail.com>
References: <881151.77970.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<4B75C19A.8060807@lig.net>
	<e3b2914c1002121413w466910a0m66d0ca4806fc21e2@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c1002121415i44dcdb35se8b127df340cf370@mail.gmail.com>

A quick example of the remerging of our senses..... Layar http://layar.com/

-tom(bringing the fragments together...)higgins

From lucas.gonze at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 14:55:36 2010
From: lucas.gonze at gmail.com (Lucas Gonze)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 14:55:36 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] computer morphology
In-Reply-To: <e3b2914c1002121415i44dcdb35se8b127df340cf370@mail.gmail.com>
References: <881151.77970.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<4B75C19A.8060807@lig.net>
	<e3b2914c1002121413w466910a0m66d0ca4806fc21e2@mail.gmail.com>
	<e3b2914c1002121415i44dcdb35se8b127df340cf370@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <ab069aa01002121455l2de96f7u36858a553f26ccf4@mail.gmail.com>

Yeah, I mean *yeah*, Layar fucking slays, at least as a concept.

I'm so happy augmented reality is happening.  Just hoping to hitch my
specialty in music technology to that train somehow.

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 2:15 PM, Tom Higgins <tomhiggins at gmail.com> wrote:
> A quick example of the remerging of our senses..... Layar http://layar.com/
>
> -tom(bringing the fragments together...)higgins
> _______________________________________________
> FoRK mailing list
> http://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork
>

From jbone at place.org  Fri Feb 12 17:12:08 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 19:12:08 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Aaron, seriously
In-Reply-To: <1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>
References: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>
	<1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>
Message-ID: <5F2CD6AD-A7F5-4787-8CF2-7256E1E9D349@place.org>


> I know the ideas you are trying to advance and discuss are far deeper and
> more subtle than the muddled Randroid Nerdfoo they superficially resemble, 
> but I'm not seein' 'em.


Well, at least you can't say that's for lack of me trying. ;-)

Come on, comrade...  the world ain't so black and white.  At least make some effort to meet me in the Kodachrome middle.  It'll at least make those nice, comfortable sticky-note labels look purtier.  I understand I called your Baby-God (large-scale, expansive, benevolent government) ugly;  I'm sorry, really.  Well, not really.

(BTW, thank you for enlightening me.  Before this last go-round, I somehow managed to remain blissfully unaware for *decades* that the founders were Randites.  What a sucker punch of knowledge! ;-)


jb

PS:  Tempted to append another couple-thousand words here for Tom, but I won't.  BTW Tom, what a curious belief you've expressed:  that conversation occurs in something called "threads."  How odd.  ;-)





From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 23:47:00 2010
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:47:00 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] computer morphology
In-Reply-To: <ab069aa01002121455l2de96f7u36858a553f26ccf4@mail.gmail.com>
References: <881151.77970.qm@web33006.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
	<4B75C19A.8060807@lig.net>
	<e3b2914c1002121413w466910a0m66d0ca4806fc21e2@mail.gmail.com>
	<e3b2914c1002121415i44dcdb35se8b127df340cf370@mail.gmail.com>
	<ab069aa01002121455l2de96f7u36858a553f26ccf4@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c1002122347yd5ccbf8p35922cbc6a75151e@mail.gmail.com>

On Fri, Feb 12, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Lucas Gonze <lucas.gonze at gmail.com> wrote:
> Yeah, I mean *yeah*, Layar fucking slays, at least as a concept.
>
> I'm so happy augmented reality is happening. ?Just hoping to hitch my
> specialty in music technology to that train somehow.
>


Have you checked out TuneWiki http://www.tunewiki.com/# ?

I had it on the Droid for a few days and then ditched it, not that
into pegging my location and music listening to the populace:)- But it
has some promising bits to it.

-tom(I can only but guese when the first FARt app will come out....as
you pass by a location that is set as a secret flatulence point you
smartphone lets loose a rippa)higgins


From tomhiggins at gmail.com  Fri Feb 12 23:48:50 2010
From: tomhiggins at gmail.com (Tom Higgins)
Date: Fri, 12 Feb 2010 23:48:50 -0800
Subject: [FoRK] Aaron, seriously
In-Reply-To: <5F2CD6AD-A7F5-4787-8CF2-7256E1E9D349@place.org>
References: <8BEE23F1-ECF7-410F-827B-A49F4ACF3F54@place.org>
	<1275162B-3067-46D6-B393-FF467DA6C9F4@place.org>
	<5F2CD6AD-A7F5-4787-8CF2-7256E1E9D349@place.org>
Message-ID: <e3b2914c1002122348w462c8b0ao71112bd6fa6053d8@mail.gmail.com>

> PS: ?Tempted to append another couple-thousand words here for Tom, but I won't. ?BTW Tom, what a curious belief you've expressed: ?that conversation occurs in something called "threads." ?How odd. ?;-)


The world is all in how you filter it old bean.

-tom(I will forgive you your 1k words but only this once, you realize
the NorquistAI only works well when we all do our part to feed
it)higgins


From jbone at place.org  Sat Feb 13 07:09:54 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:09:54 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
Message-ID: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>


That pro-big government, big dreams, big ideas religion, that is.  Not that I ever had it, but...  I'd like to recount an experience that, had I been suffering from such, would certainly have "cured" me.

Some things are too important to leave to the dishonesty, fickleness and gnat-like attention spans of bureaucrats and politicians. 

Aaron mentioned "the space race" as an example of what government can accomplish (that, presumably, he doesn't believe is achievable via other means.) I'd submit that what our government has done with our "space program" over the last few decades is also a perfect example of government failure, of the cynicism and manipulation and betrayal that inevitably occurs *as a direct result of the structure of our system of governance.*

A few years ago I got to take a sort of "back stage tour" of Johnson Space Center near Houston.  A buddy of mine works for NASA, was a mission controller at the time, and I went down with Jen one weekend to take him up on a longstanding invitation.  We went to the campus on a Saturday and the first thing that struck me was --- nobody was there.  A few people here and there.  A handful of folks in the ISS control room and us, wandering around.  A security guard or two.  That was it.

The whole experience was like a Terry Gilliam nightmare as reimagined by William Gibson, then re-reimagined by Bruce Sterling.  It was like stepping into some weird, desolate, post-apocalyptic world.  The parts of the various buildings that were occupied were filled with surplus olive drab and gunship grey desks and filing cabinets, wooden chairs that were probably in low-level military officers' workspaces circa the end of WWII.  This was the nerve center of what remains of our once-great program, and it looked like it had been furnished by buying truckloads of battered, hard-used, low-end military surplus (which, actually, is about right.)  The computers on peoples' desks --- those that had them --- were all several generations old.  I saw more than one desk that had gear more outdated than that which I had available to me back in school, in the late 80s (yes, some actual, functioning pre-SPARC Suns, etc.)  A kind of functioning computer museum...

The buildings were sparsely occupied.  You'd see one wing, one side really, of a building furnished in the style described above.  Then you'd round a corner and go through a door into another part of the building and --- it was a wasteland.  It was like stepping behind a facade in a movie studio lot.  (No, not implying anything Beberg. ;-)  Entire wings of buildings, right around the corner from where current employees worked, covered in a layer of dust years thick.  Empty, except for the "trash."

The trash consisted of tons, literally, of three-hole paper, pages from manuals past, piled up many feet high, spilling over into drifts against the walls, strewn across the floor like forest humus.  Pages removed so that the binders could be reused;  no organization or filing, just not enough filing cabinets I guess.  Rolled tubes of engineering drawings and project plans --- dependencies diagrams in a notation I've never seen before, not PERTs or Gantts, something else entirely --- strewn about like jungle trees on a beach after a hurricane.  Among all that:  the manuals, plans, memos, documents, training materials, reports, etc. for programs past;  the collective know-how (acquired at such great cost) needed to build such things as an Atlas rocket.  We can't do that anymore, you know.

Building after building this was the case:  tiny little "islands" of occupied workspace in the midst of a barren sea, survivors huddled around the weak, flickering light of a beach campfire made by burning the drift pieces of their vessel, surrounded by darkness and solitude and the decaying remains of a past technology, shipwrecked.  Huddled together, perhaps, merely for each others comfort, hanging onto little scraps of a dream of civilization.

Then I saw it:  the thing that really drove it all home for me.  There is exactly one remaining (ostensibly) functional lunar lander trainer.  This was an actual, flying device that was used to train the Apollo astronauts in operating the landing module, a kind of dune buggy thing.  You'd think something this historical would at least be given some reverential treatment, perhaps retired to the Smithsonian.  

Not so.  It's presently just a dust-covered pile of junk hanging out in the far corner of a dust-choked, unlit corridor of a mostly-unused (except as a trash depot, as far as I can tell) 60s-era office building on a barely-populated, dingy campus littered with documentation and relics of our past glories, a testament to the ongoing failure and betrayal of all those big dreams.  Rusting away in the humid Gulf air, as that whole part of that building wasn't air conditioned and there are, or were, holes in the glass windows here and there.

Put men (back) on the moon?  It's been almost an entire "working generation" (40 years) since we've done that.  We don't even know how to build a rocket that big anymore.  Those were the final accomplishments of our grandfathers' generation, really, for those of us now at or near the midpoint of our own working careers.  For most of that time the "great dream" of manned spaceflight has been realized merely by truck-driving into low earth orbit.  Now, we can argue about the legitimacy of manned spaceflight as a governmental priority, goal, etc. all we want;  but the reality is that politicians periodically invoke this dream in order to provide a sense of shared purpose, a glimpse of some imagined future, a notion of a frontier as-yet unexplored.  They do this, and have now done this for going on four decades, knowing full well that funding for each renewed attempt to reach further will ultimately meet the budgetary axe.

The people that work on these programs at NASA and its subcontractors are, without a doubt, true believers;  they carry the torch of the big dreams of a generation --- or two --- past, and how they manage to maintain their belief in the face of repeated government betrayals I have no idea.  Time after time they've piled into projects full of passion and enthusiasm and hope for the future only to have the rug yanked out from under them by the "VCs" that fund all this stuff --- our friends in Washington.  Yet they keep doing it, presumably because that particular dream dies hard.  And they keep getting betrayed.  Yet they keep going to work --- in this extremely surreal environment that is itself a testament to the failure of the system and their own history of betrayals.

It is extremely disheartening, too, to imagine all the billions and billions we've used to feed the massive bureaucracy that sits above the actual doers, the layers and layers of "management" types that run the geeks and nerds of NASA around a maze of broken promises like lab rats.  Really, the whole thing is a weird longitudinal psychological experiment at high cost:  a sadistic game of football played between Lucy and Charlie Brown.  Over, and over, and over...  and at such *massive* cost.  For what?  

All that technological potential, unrealized;  and, in some cases, that which was realized, subsequently lost.  Man-centuries lost.  Dreams promised but not delivered, repeatedly.  Billions upon billions of dollars wasted.

My buddy has spent most of his adult life working at NASA or, before that, working to get there.  I've known him since we were in school and, with a brief youthful exception, he has doggedly pursued the dream of flying in space himself without interruption for decades now.  Wouldn't even think about going and joining one of the private efforts, even now.  Nor would most of his colleagues;  it's weird, like some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder, but the result of what one might almost regard as a kind of intentional conditioning, repeated trauma lovingly applied.  

I submit that not only has government failed us and --- most importantly --- failed the space geeks horribly and cynically, it has also failed society as a whole by its handling of our manned space program.  Why?  Its repeated failures actively discouraged smaller-scale, more-practical yet probably systemically more achievable private pursuit of many of these goals.  Each failure itself is a signal to the private sector:  see, we can't do this any more with huge organizations and billions of dollars, so don't even think about having the audacity to try this on your own.  

For nearly 4 decades the zombie-like state in which our government has maintained NASA has itself been a major barrier to entry for anyone else, and all the while our know-how has bled away.  Now we're going to have a to reinvent all of it all over again --- a nearly half-century setback --- in order to resume any manned program.  That or, like Finland and telecom, just leap past the legacy stuff.  And that's what the private guys, Bezos and Musk and all the rest, are attempting.  But it's taken four decades of government "suppression" --- whether intended or not --- for folks to get wise to this game, roll up their sleeves, and say "well, if anybody's going to do this it sure as hell isn't going to be the US government, so we might as well get busy.  If we want it to happen, we've got to make it happen ourselves."

Yet, I submit, the present outcome of all of this is inevitable, a kind of unavoidable systemic  inherent in our very structure of government.  It's not surprising at all;  the biggest surprise is that we actually managed to maintain the momentum for a decade sufficiently to actually get men to the moon in the first place, all those years ago.

So...  Some things are too important to leave to the dishonesty, fickleness and gnat-like attention spans of bureaucrats and politicians. 

Things like dreams.

If you don't believe me, see if you can arrange an "all-access" tour of JSC.  Take it, and tell me what you think.

Can politicians inspire greatness?  Absolutely;  no less than any other individual, and perhaps even more.  But the system itself is not reliable;  it  is not set up properly to maintain focus and resources on long-term goals.  The left often bemoans the problems created by the short-term profit obsessions of Wall Street and the private sector that, supposedly, undermine the ability to achieve long-term goals, to act responsibly and sustainably...  How odd then that they don't recognize the same cyclic pathology --- arguably worse, even more inevitable and severe --- in our system of government itself, exactly analogous, with only a slightly lower frequency.



jb







From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Sat Feb 13 08:53:00 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 08:53:00 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
Message-ID: <183506.36626.qm@web33002.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Sat, 2/13/10, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
> 
> Can politicians inspire greatness?? Absolutely;?
> no less than any other individual, and perhaps even
> more.? But the system itself is not reliable;?
> it? is not set up properly to maintain focus and
> resources on long-term goals.? 
> 

I'm not disagreeing with you, but what you write begs a few ... well, more than a few ... questions. Here are a couple:

1. We (North Americans, at least) have what we call a representative system of government. Ostensibly our representatives represent our collective interests. Is it not fair to say that in matters like this they do that reasonably well? 

That is, if you laid the individual budget items -- at least the major ones -- in front of a representative cross-section of citizens do you believe they (we) would collectively choose the budget priorities significantly differently than the politicians have done on our behalf? 

In this regard, at least, I think we get pretty much from our politicians what we want. And deserve.

2. In reading all of the (quite justified) whining over the past many years about how the American government has castrated NASA I have been sorely vexed by one question regarding the suggestion that the private sector could have done better:

      Then why didn't/haven't they?

The only answer I have been able to come up with is that there's no business case for it. Private industry does nothing without a business case. 

Governments often do, wisely or not. Especially if we "ask" them loudly enough.

It seems to me that's the conundrum faced by our representatives. Damned if you do; damned if you don't. And vilified in any case.

Is it our representatives who have the attention spans of a gnat? Or is it us and they are merely responding to it?

       ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
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From jbone at place.org  Sat Feb 13 09:49:21 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 11:49:21 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
Message-ID: <44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>


Ken asks:

> In this regard, at least, I think we get pretty much from our politicians what we want. And deserve.

Easy to demonstrate otherwise, I think, just with the example of NASA.  Let's stipulate that either we want manned space exploration as a government-funded activity or we don't;  let's further stipulate that we don't want to waste money.  We don't get it, really;  for 3.5 decades we've been getting promises off it repeatedly broken, though at great cost.  So either we want it and we're not getting it, or we don't want it and we're not getting it --- but wasting tremendous amounts of money in absolute terms to *not* deliver it!  I lose, you lose, everybody loses *regardless* of what outcome they were hoping for.

This is like a case study of Arrow's Paradox in action, and shows precisely how social choice functions fail to scale.  Thanks for allowing the opportunity to point that out.


> I have been sorely vexed by one question regarding the suggestion that the private sector could have done better:  Then why didn't/haven't they?  The only answer I have been able to come up with is that there's no business case for it.

Of course there is, and it's been articulated well and often by various folks, notably Robert Zubrin and crowd.  (Cf. The Case for Mars, etc.)  A commercially-sponsored trip-to-Mars would be the biggest show on Earth.  Think about how much advertisers / sponsors spend on e.g. NASCAR.  Think about how much --- now approximating a half-billion at the top end --- we pay to make really big movies like Avatar.  Zubrin estimated that a Mars-direct mission could be mounted at a cost of < order-10 billion (in late-90s dollars, IIRC;  would need adjustment, however...)  That's actually in the realm of what private interests can fund, certainly given the payoff economics involved:  ads, sponsorship, direct subscription, special-access content and subscriptions, merchandising, etc.

(BTW, even the Big Showy Trip To Mars isn't the biggest opportunity out there.  Drag a middling-sized S-type or M-type asteroid back to earth orbit from the belt:  payoff in the > $1T range, and likely to grow even higher.  Etc.  Cf. Mining the Sky by John S. Lewis.)

Why haven't private interests pursued this sort of thing before?  Already answered this one.  The zombie-like corpse of NASA sits atop to body of the relevant industries, pinning it down.  It is the mere *presence* of NASA that dominates, directs, and ultimately muddles the incentives of the entire space industry, and has for years.  Its presence distorts the entire landscape;  its failures create fear and FUD, its budgets create pools of easy money, the pursuit of which often delivers no relevant derivative or durable good.


> Is it our representatives who have the attention spans of a gnat? Or is it us and they are merely responding to it?

Well, that too.  But the system insures that our reps have the attention spans of gnats;  that, at least, is fixable. ;-)


jb



From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Sat Feb 13 10:18:40 2010
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 05:18:40 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
	<44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
Message-ID: <8092dc771002131018n72085b4ch10438092e26ff51a@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 4:49 AM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:

>
> Of course there is, and it's been articulated well and often by various
> folks, notably Robert Zubrin and crowd.  (Cf. The Case for Mars, etc.)  A
> commercially-sponsored trip-to-Mars would be the biggest show on Earth.
>  Think about how much advertisers / sponsors spend on e.g. NASCAR.  Think
> about how much --- now approximating a half-billion at the top end --- we
> pay to make really big movies like Avatar.  Zubrin estimated that a
> Mars-direct mission could be mounted at a cost of < order-10 billion (in
> late-90s dollars, IIRC;  would need adjustment, however...)  That's actually
> in the realm of what private interests can fund, certainly given the payoff
> economics involved:  ads, sponsorship, direct subscription, special-access
> content and subscriptions, merchandising, etc.
>

Why go to Mars when you can write NASCAR on the moon with giant frikken
lasers. Its Solar Power Satellites in reverse, cranked up to 11, and a whole
lot cheaper and easier, and more profitable too.  If you have to go to mars,
take a page out of Avatar's playbook and send telepresences instead. Its
just so much cheaper, and its can be timeshared amongst thousands of paying
customers. More profit for the ferrengi. Hell, once you have people plugging
in to experience this, why not take a play out of the Matrix and mix in a
little fabricated reality to help pad out your telepresence timesharing a
bit. Its not like the sheeple will notice whether they are 'live' or not,
and think of the profits. Yes, commercial interests can really drive this
forward.

(BTW, even the Big Showy Trip To Mars isn't the biggest opportunity out
> there.  Drag a middling-sized S-type or M-type asteroid back to earth orbit
> from the belt:  payoff in the > $1T range, and likely to grow even higher.
>  Etc.  Cf. Mining the Sky by John S. Lewis.)
>

Fuckin eh man! Call the space tug the Exxon Valdez II. Isotopic manna from
heaven. Have to make sure we dont put a company that can go bankrupt in
charge of a ELE sized chunk of rock in earth orbit. Bring a whole new
meaning to the term "too big to fail".


>
> Why haven't private interests pursued this sort of thing before?  Already
> answered this one.  The zombie-like corpse of NASA sits atop to body of the
> relevant industries, pinning it down.  It is the mere *presence* of NASA
> that dominates, directs, and ultimately muddles the incentives of the entire
> space industry, and has for years.  Its presence distorts the entire
> landscape;  its failures create fear and FUD, its budgets create pools of
> easy money, the pursuit of which often delivers no relevant derivative or
> durable good.
>

Yep. All those dilapidated budgets, empty buildings and decade old computers
are just too competetive. Not just in actually making money, but on a more
existential level as well. This is why we see private industry focussing
only on highly productive ecological niches such as
throwing billionaires into minute-long zero-g experiences on the border of
the atmosphere. The vision is breathtaking. In a few short years, we will
all be able to rocket to the border of the atmosphere, where we will see
billionaires and movie stars in space hotels 100 miles above us.

> Is it our representatives who have the attention spans of a gnat? Or is it
> us and they are merely responding to it?
>
> Well, that too.  But the system insures that our reps have the attention
> spans of gnats;  that, at least, is fixable. ;-)


Right. Because corporations have a longer term vision than those in public
service. This is an incontrovertible truth, and everyone knows it.

From jbone at place.org  Sat Feb 13 13:36:12 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 15:36:12 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
	<44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
Message-ID: <46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>


Comrade Damien says:

> Have to make sure we dont put a company that can go bankrupt in
> charge of a ELE sized chunk of rock in earth orbit.

I'll grant you this:  it's *sort of* a legitimate concern.  The ELE part / risk management is a legit concern;  whether the original actor(s) can go bankrupt or not isn't really the concern itself, you just need to ensure that you've got a safety net for that and other possible business risks, so that if there is a business fail the mission can roll over to some appropriate party without compounding existential risk.  But practically speaking, there are no single private entities that could even begin to think about doing this in the next 10-20 years independently.  Such a thing is more likely to be taken on by a consortium.

And guess what?  Governments fail, too.  Even big ones.  We've lost 1 superpower in the last two decades, gained another, and are on the verge of losing another one (the US) and gaining another one (India.)  What would you rather have in charge of this?  A bunch of profit-motivated independent companies with fractional-share ownership in the outcome, or a single point of failure in some national government?

I sure as shit know *my* answer to that.  You think I've got a misplaced and overblown distrust of governments, but I think any answer to the above other than "a bunch of private companies working together" betrays a misplaced animosity towards the private sector.  I don't like single points of failure.  I don't like monopolies.


> Right. Because corporations have a longer term vision than those in public
> service. This is an incontrovertible truth, and everyone knows it.

Look, if you're going to bother to argue, at least build a stronger strawman.  I *already* stipulated --- in the *very post* you are responding to, indeed within the next few lines of what you're quoting --- that the private sector (often, though there are increasing examples to the contrary) suffers from the problem of short-termism.  And the characteristic time horizon for operating businesses (rather than early-stage ones) is characteristically *even shorter* than the election cycle.  


To wit, third paragraph down from the quote you are responding to I said:

> Can politicians inspire greatness?  Absolutely;  no less than any other individual, and perhaps even more.  But the system itself is not reliable;  it  is not set up properly to maintain focus and resources on long-term goals.  The left often bemoans the problems created by the short-term profit obsessions of Wall Street and the private sector that, supposedly, undermine the ability to achieve long-term goals, to act responsibly and sustainably...  How odd then that they don't recognize the same cyclic pathology --- arguably worse, even more inevitable and severe --- in our system of government itself, exactly analogous, with only a slightly lower frequency.

Get that?  Read it again for comprehension.

Specifically, the (US) public sector operates at about 7.92744799594e-09 Hz whereas the private sector operates at about 1.26839167935e-07 Hz.  That's obviously a big difference but it guarantees that projects that require, say, 10+ years are problematic in either instance.  On the other hand, the private sector has three things going for (at least) that the public sector does not:  you get more parallel exploration of the opportunity space (i.e., competition) and indeed, less centralized failure modes, and you've got ample existence proofs of private-sector planning ability that has that decade-like horizon:  *any* startup *starts* with the assumption of 5-10 years to liquidity.  If the private sector couldn't operate on plans of that timescale, no new companies would ever get started.


Per this:

> Yep. All those dilapidated budgets, empty buildings and decade old computers
> are just too competetive. [sic]

It's not true competition;  that's just the point.  It's a massive, illusory and pathological distortion of the overall landscape, with chilling effects that have nothing to do with the actual potential of the existing quasi-monopoly and everything to do with the structural deficiencies it is caused by and has caused in itself.  That was *the whole point.*  Are you capable of understanding *anything* I say, or does the "Bone said it -> disagree" filter just impede that?  Do you actually have some kind of argument?  If you do, I wish you'd (and / or e.g. Aaron, etc.) would make it rather than just kvetching and being disagreeable for no apparent reason.

What's your thesis, Damien?  Private space stuff can never work?  I don't get what you're attempting to say.


As for this bullshit:

> highly productive ecological niches such as throwing billionaires into minute-long zero-g experiences on the border of the atmosphere. The vision is breathtaking.

Consider where our vaunted program started out:  throwing tin cans with radios into low, decaying orbits.  Then animals.  Breathtaking vision indeed.

You've got to start somewhere.  At least these guys have some idea of how to make this happen incrementally, in a bootstrapped fashion, playing for itself as they go.  That's probably a MUCH more reliable path --- however reliable it might be --- than relying on the fickle winds of public funding and political commitment.  And FWIW, the manned part of this is really not the low-hanging fruit;  the private, commercial, and independent but unmanned possibilities are really the short-term opportunity.  The tourism stuff is just PR and incremental early revenue.

But if you actually look at the business plans for even the tourism stuff --- and I'm not talking about the vomit comet nonsense of e.g. "Virgin Galactic" but the decade-out private station "space hotel" stuff --- that quickly gets into merely-wealthy reach as private cost-per-pound to orbit drops.  This stuff all scales just like anything else:  non-linearly.  They aren't unreasonable extrapolations.

-- 

Let me offer one other anecdote about the brokenness of the system.  This is, of course, anecdotal to the point of being questionable folklore, but it's illustrative if not actually true.  Astronauts needed to be able to write in space.  What did we do?  Spent millions inventing the pressurized cartridge ink pen.  What did the Russians do?

They gave them pencils.

Now, you might thing that's an argument for the superiority of communism over capitalism;  it's not.  It's an argument against the web-of-dependencies that has been our aerospace industry for decades, in which the structure itself is designed not to produce optimal solutions but to optimize the job security of massive bureaucracies while throwing money at favored contractors, far in excess of value delivered.

I've said this before, I'll say it again:  the problem isn't purely public vs. private;  it's not socialism or whatever vs. undiluted capitalism.  It's what happens when you try to hybridize the two or coexist and collaborate in some way in some endeavor.  The resulting chimera is a god-awful monster.  I can't think of any exceptions;  maybe one of you can.


$0.02,


jb





From wkearney99 at hotmail.com  Sat Feb 13 14:51:14 2010
From: wkearney99 at hotmail.com (Bill Kearney)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:51:14 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
Message-ID: <BLU0-SMTP4083A2B975B8F07C2E605BD74C0@phx.gbl>

> For nearly 4 decades the zombie-like state in which our government has 
> maintained
> NASA has itself been a major barrier to entry for anyone else

Bull.  The truth is it's hard to make orbit and without a lot of cost 
justification it's not going to happen in the private sector.  There are 
several private sector launch companies.  They launch all manner of 
payloads.  Clearly there's no barrier to it being done.  Where there is a 
barrier is cost.   Make a business case for it and the private sector will 
be more than happy to make a profit from doing it.

> and all the while our  know-how has bled away.

And this is provable, how?  I mean, besides a trite throwaway phrase, that 
is.

> But the system itself is not reliable;  it  is not set up properly
> to maintain focus and resources on long-term goals.

And your suggested alternative is, what?

I don't disagree with the concerns about long-term planning.

-Bill Kearney 


From jbone at place.org  Sat Feb 13 15:44:22 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 17:44:22 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
	<44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
	<46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>
Message-ID: <685FB07A-634A-4DB2-A90D-FCCED36AE8CB@place.org>


Bill says:

> Bull.

Look, this only takes common sense to figure out.  NASA has created a garden industry of highly-specialized contractor firms that exist to design, build, maintain, and service specific subsystems or provide highly specialized services.  IT has always been the central planner and coordinator.  The money --- government dollars allocated to private-sector solutions to the problem --- was always out there, low-hanging fruit, for a *high degree of specialization.*  No incentives existed for any one firm or firms to individually acquire all the competencies necessary to do the whole enchilada.  Even the private sector launch companies you mention don't do the whole enchilada themselves:  the rely heavily on the services of NASA, the military, and others to get it done.  By limiting the profitable scope of what can be done privately, by providing barely-adequate services at below cost, and by making high specialization the most-profitable activity, NASA's mere existence has *inevitably* supported the traditional aerospace players while discouraging efforts like e.g. Musk's.

Until NASA started looking *really* flaky, that is.  At which point, things like Musk's effort started to look reasonable.

Getting to orbit *is* expensive;  even moreso with the waste and inefficiency of the existing system.  (Aside:  the thing that annoyed me the most about the X-Prize was just that:  if it doesn't achieve orbit, it's a freakin' airplane.  The techniques necessary to "win" the X-Prize are virtually useless for any real commercial use of space.  Some of the newer challenges are much more reasonable.  And in fact, I think the prize model is a reasonable way for e.g. government to use public funds to encourage significant R&D and technical achievement.  Been done before.  Works well.  Encourages massive parallelism, especially compared to singular government pursuit of the same ends;  maximum dollar leverage, and guarantees payout corresponds with success.)

But it's also profitable:  even putting satellites in place is big business.  Obviously, otherwise smart guys like Elon and company wouldn't be chasing it.  So the "it hasn't happened because it wouldn't be profitable" argument is a half-truth;  the business overall has been a profitable opportunity for a long time --- but the existing system has distorted the incentives such that actually attempting to do the whole thing has been less profitable than e.g. the chasing of McGuffins by the traditional players.

Anyway, there's definitely a Long Bet possible in this.  There's all kinds of contradictions wrapped into your thesis vis-a-vis the present burst of new private sector activity on this stuff.  Clearly either there's something flawed in somebody's understanding of difficulties and opportunities.

Structural deficiency.


>> and all the while our  know-how has bled away.
> And this is provable, how?  I mean, besides a trite throwaway phrase, that is.

Well, sorry to be "trite."  I don't find it trite at all, I find it tragic.

One data point, just one:  the buddy I mentioned is (was, I assume this is up in the air now) working on flight control systems for future lunar landing craft.  Pointing out the lunar lander trainer was something he specifically wanted to do to make the point.  He's had to redo certain basic research in various areas in order to come up with a viable solution.  It's just gone, Bill.

Re:  the Atlas bit, ask anybody on the inside.  Read even the popular literature.  It's been stated repeatedly, in some cases by NASA officials in testimony before Congress, in justifying Orion etc.  The data, the designs, the engineering, the test results --- misplaced, missing, destroyed.  The tool and die capability gone.  The generation of experts that designed and built them, gone, retired or dead.  Continuity of know-how destroyed by lack of continuity in the program these three decades past, therefore no passing-down of the craft and science of it.  The companies that built the parts, gone / consolidated / moved on.  The capability is *just gone.*

Disagree if you want, prove me wrong.  Prove my NASA friends wrong.  I'd be thrilled to be wrong about this.  But I happen to have both a little inside info and a lot of reading on and long-term interest in the topic.  *Even the project management systems and tools that were employed are, in some cases, lost --- aside from the work product thereof, which as mentioned is piled in drifts and scattered across the floors of various NASA facility buildings.*  But don't take my word on it;  go find your own answer.  If it's very different from mine, after doing the homework, I'll be shocked.


> And your suggested alternative is, what?

Here's a couple (ok, three) right off-the-cuff suggestions for improving the ability of elected officials to focus on big-picture projects rather than "whatever it takes to get my district to send me back in 4 years."  (1)  Term limits, (2) at-large representation, and (3) replacement of voter-selected representation with a public service lottery.  Unfortunately, those are all rather large hacks of the operating system.  But we may be reaching a point where large hacks or a complete rewrite are the only things that will get us to the next quantum of scale.

That's a whole other topic, of course.

jb



From sean at conman.org  Sat Feb 13 15:45:34 2010
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 18:45:34 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <8092dc771002131018n72085b4ch10438092e26ff51a@mail.gmail.com>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
	<44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
	<8092dc771002131018n72085b4ch10438092e26ff51a@mail.gmail.com>
Message-ID: <20100213234534.GA11961@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Damien Morton once stated:
> On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 4:49 AM, Jeff Bone <jbone at place.org> wrote:
> 
> > Of course there is, and it's been articulated well and often by various
> > folks, notably Robert Zubrin and crowd.  (Cf. The Case for Mars, etc.)  A
> > commercially-sponsored trip-to-Mars would be the biggest show on Earth.
> >  Think about how much advertisers / sponsors spend on e.g. NASCAR.  Think
> > about how much --- now approximating a half-billion at the top end --- we
> > pay to make really big movies like Avatar.  Zubrin estimated that a
> > Mars-direct mission could be mounted at a cost of < order-10 billion (in
> > late-90s dollars, IIRC;  would need adjustment, however...)  That's actually
> > in the realm of what private interests can fund, certainly given the payoff
> > economics involved:  ads, sponsorship, direct subscription, special-access
> > content and subscriptions, merchandising, etc.
> 
> Why go to Mars when you can write NASCAR on the moon with giant frikken
> lasers. Its Solar Power Satellites in reverse, cranked up to 11, and a whole
> lot cheaper and easier, and more profitable too.  If you have to go to mars,
> take a page out of Avatar's playbook and send telepresences instead. Its
> just so much cheaper, and its can be timeshared amongst thousands of paying
> customers. More profit for the ferrengi. Hell, once you have people plugging
> in to experience this, why not take a play out of the Matrix and mix in a
> little fabricated reality to help pad out your telepresence timesharing a
> bit. Its not like the sheeple will notice whether they are 'live' or not,
> and think of the profits. Yes, commercial interests can really drive this
> forward.

  The reasons for Mars may be a bit tenuous, but the Moon has a real shot at
a source of He-3 [1] for power generation here on Earth (as well as some
other industrial uses).  Yes, getting to the Moon is expensive (it's a long
uphill climb) but the reverse trip is dirt cheap (pardon the pun).

> (BTW, even the Big Showy Trip To Mars isn't the biggest opportunity out
> > there.  Drag a middling-sized S-type or M-type asteroid back to earth orbit
> > from the belt:  payoff in the > $1T range, and likely to grow even higher.
> >  Etc.  Cf. Mining the Sky by John S. Lewis.)
> 
> Fuckin eh man! Call the space tug the Exxon Valdez II. Isotopic manna from
> heaven. Have to make sure we dont put a company that can go bankrupt in
> charge of a ELE sized chunk of rock in earth orbit. Bring a whole new
> meaning to the term "too big to fail".

  Personally, I would love to see industy (you know, the nasty polluting
type of industry) moved to space, either to Earth orbit, or hey, why not the
Moon?  Less chance of a factory falling out of Earth orbit that way, and one
can orbit asteroids around the Moon (perhaps less chance of an errent
asteroid strike to Earth that way).

  High capital costs?  Sure.  Huge payoff?  Yup.

> > Is it our representatives who have the attention spans of a gnat? Or is it
> > us and they are merely responding to it?
> >
> > Well, that too.  But the system insures that our reps have the attention
> > spans of gnats;  that, at least, is fixable. ;-)
> 
> Right. Because corporations have a longer term vision than those in public
> service. This is an incontrovertible truth, and everyone knows it.

  Now, sure.  But go back a century.  IBM, AT&T, they had a long range
vision and did a lot to advance our technology back in the day (you do
realize that it was Bell Labs that developed the transistor?  The first
globally spanning communications network?  IBM developed the first
compilers?  Disk drives?  The 8-bit byte?) but changes in regulation changed
the insentives public companies follow.

  But there are some public companies that have a long range vision---Apple,
Google and Microsoft are three to come to mind (okay, maybe not Microsoft as
much anymore, but they are known to stick with a product for years in order
to get it right---twenty years from Windows 1.0 to Windows XP, for
instance).  

  -spc (Who will conceed that the government does do good sometimes---it
	funded the development of the Internet, for instance ... )

[1]	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium-3

From sean at conman.org  Sat Feb 13 16:14:55 2010
From: sean at conman.org (Sean Conner)
Date: Sat, 13 Feb 2010 19:14:55 -0500
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
	<44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
	<46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>
Message-ID: <20100214001455.GB11961@brevard.conman.org>

It was thus said that the Great Jeff Bone once stated:
> 
> Let me offer one other anecdote about the brokenness of the system.  This
> is, of course, anecdotal to the point of being questionable folklore, but
> it's illustrative if not actually true.  Astronauts needed to be able to
> write in space.  What did we do?  Spent millions inventing the pressurized
> cartridge ink pen.  What did the Russians do?
> 
> They gave them pencils.

  That's true, but not quite.  The US government didn't spend millions to
develop a pen that could write in space---a private company did, on their
own initiative.  The company that spent the $3m (if I recall correctly, and
this was done in the 60s or 70s) in research probably felt it was money sell
spent (publicity, bragging rights, "We have the *only* pen that writes in
space", etc.).

  And there's a problem with using pencils in space---graphite.  Graphite
powder is conductive, so sharpening a pencil could be a dangerous act
(causing a short, heck---who knows the long term effects of breathing
graphite powder).

  -spc ("Those how govern the best, govern the least.")


From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Sat Feb 13 16:21:56 2010
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:21:56 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <20100214001455.GB11961@brevard.conman.org>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
	<44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
	<46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>
	<20100214001455.GB11961@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <8092dc771002131621t5a8c13f9tcab5c60a01bf6346@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 11:14 AM, Sean Conner <sean at conman.org> wrote:

>
>  And there's a problem with using pencils in space---graphite.  Graphite
> powder is conductive, so sharpening a pencil could be a dangerous act
> (causing a short, heck---who knows the long term effects of breathing
> graphite powder).
>
>
What is often overlooked in the russian space pencil anecdote is the
complicated pencil sharpener they issued with the pencils. This sharpener
was mounted on the hull of their spacecraft and was capable of opening into
space to evacuate the shavings and graphite. It was a particularly dangerous
device that could only be used a limited amount of times so as to reduce the
amount if air that was evacuated in the process of sharpening the pencil.

From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Sat Feb 13 16:49:10 2010
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 11:49:10 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
	<44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
	<46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>
Message-ID: <8092dc771002131649u6da08421ra2949819fa18b0d@mail.gmail.com>

On Sun, Feb 14, 2010 at 8:36 AM, the magnetic field around the entity
designated Jeff Bone had a tremor and emitted the following signal:

>
> Comrade Damien says:
>
> > Have to make sure we dont put a company that can go bankrupt in
> > charge of a ELE sized chunk of rock in earth orbit.
>
> I'll grant you this:  it's *sort of* a legitimate concern.  The ELE part /
> risk management is a legit concern;  whether the original actor(s) can go
> bankrupt or not isn't really the concern itself, you just need to ensure
> that you've got a safety net for that and other possible business risks, so
> that if there is a business fail the mission can roll over to some
> appropriate party without compounding existential risk.  But practically
> speaking, there are no single private entities that could even begin to
> think about doing this in the next 10-20 years independently.  Such a thing
> is more likely to be taken on by a consortium.
>

Its an absolutely legitimate concern. Anything that can move that amount of
mass around is also a weapon.

>
> And guess what?  Governments fail, too.  Even big ones.  We've lost 1
> superpower in the last two decades, gained another, and are on the verge of
> losing another one (the US) and gaining another one (India.)  What would you
> rather have in charge of this?  A bunch of profit-motivated independent
> companies with fractional-share ownership in the outcome, or a single point
> of failure in some national government?
>

Sure. They fail. But they are transformed rather than disappearing. There
was significant continuity in the soviet space program - it continues
today. Hasn't just vanished. I suppose you could say the same thing of
companies, c.f. Iridium, now a branch of the military.


> I sure as shit know *my* answer to that.  You think I've got a misplaced
> and overblown distrust of governments, but I think any answer to the above
> other than "a bunch of private companies working together" betrays a
> misplaced animosity towards the private sector.  I don't like single points
> of failure.  I don't like monopolies.


Sure, after all, its just a bunch of people working together, whatever you
call the group and however its funded. Probably the only entity we have
discussed so far that has the multi-decade vision needed is your friend, the
space geek. Im sure he is quite capable of working in the private sector,
but has chosen the public sector as the best way of achieving his life
goals.



> > Right. Because corporations have a longer term vision than those in
> public
> > service. This is an incontrovertible truth, and everyone knows it.
>
> Look, if you're going to bother to argue, at least build a stronger
> strawman.  I *already* stipulated --- in the *very post* you are responding
> to, indeed within the next few lines of what you're quoting --- that the
> private sector (often, though there are increasing examples to the contrary)
> suffers from the problem of short-termism.  And the characteristic time
> horizon for operating businesses (rather than early-stage ones) is
> characteristically *even shorter* than the election cycle.
>

That wasn't a strawman. That was pure sarcasm. Not intended to withstand the
intense radiation emanating from your skull.


>  To wit, third paragraph down from the quote you are responding to I said:
>
> > Can politicians inspire greatness?  Absolutely;  no less than any other
> individual, and perhaps even more.  But the system itself is not reliable;
>  it  is not set up properly to maintain focus and resources on long-term
> goals.  The left often bemoans the problems created by the short-term profit
> obsessions of Wall Street and the private sector that, supposedly, undermine
> the ability to achieve long-term goals, to act responsibly and
> sustainably...  How odd then that they don't recognize the same cyclic
> pathology --- arguably worse, even more inevitable and severe --- in our
> system of government itself, exactly analogous, with only a slightly lower
> frequency.
>
> Get that?  Read it again for comprehension.
>

Oh yeah. My mind must have glazed over at your strawman. The one where "the
left" bemoans short term profit obsession in corporations, while completely
being unaware of the 4 year election cycle. How could they be so focussed on
the evils of capitalism as to miss a basic fact known to most people with a
10th grade civics education? How do these people manage to get through life
at all?


> Specifically, the (US) public sector operates at about 7.92744799594e-09 Hz
> whereas the private sector operates at about 1.26839167935e-07 Hz.  That's
> obviously a big difference but it guarantees that projects that require,
> say, 10+ years are problematic in either instance.  On the other hand, the
> private sector has three things going for (at least) that the public sector
> does not:  you get more parallel exploration of the opportunity space (i.e.,
> competition) and indeed, less centralized failure modes, and you've got
> ample existence proofs of private-sector planning ability that has that
> decade-like horizon:  *any* startup *starts* with the assumption of 5-10
> years to liquidity.  If the private sector couldn't operate on plans of that
> timescale, no new companies would ever get started.
>

Yeah, the usual way, the world over, of handling the relatively fast
election cycles and even faster business cycles, is to set up
an independently funded institution - so that they don't have to worry so
much about funding, and can instead focus on the steps needed to be taken to
achieve a longer term goal.

Per this:
>
> > Yep. All those dilapidated budgets, empty buildings and decade old
> computers
> > are just too competetive. [sic]
>
> It's not true competition;  that's just the point.  It's a massive,
> illusory and pathological distortion of the overall landscape, with chilling
> effects that have nothing to do with the actual potential of the existing
> quasi-monopoly and everything to do with the structural deficiencies it is
> caused by and has caused in itself.  That was *the whole point.*  Are you
> capable of understanding *anything* I say, or does the "Bone said it ->
> disagree" filter just impede that?  Do you actually have some kind of
> argument?  If you do, I wish you'd (and / or e.g. Aaron, etc.) would make it
> rather than just kvetching and being disagreeable for no apparent reason.
>
> What's your thesis, Damien?  Private space stuff can never work?  I don't
> get what you're attempting to say.
>

Thesis is that NASA isn't competition at all. Business isn't prevented from
entering the space launch field.

In practice, the ideal is to have an institution, like NASA, that has long
term goals and also has the role of stepping in and maintaining strategic
capabilities where business fear to tread.

If a business steps up to the plate and is providing, e.g. high orbit
launches, then NASA should step back and let them have it, while maintaining
the capability to do the same in case said business withdraws services for
whatever reason. In fact, I am sure NASA and the military would be more than
happy to employ whatever launch facilities the private sector can come up
with.

As for this bullshit:
>
> > highly productive ecological niches such as throwing billionaires into
> minute-long zero-g experiences on the border of the atmosphere. The vision
> is breathtaking.
>
> Consider where our vaunted program started out:  throwing tin cans with
> radios into low, decaying orbits.  Then animals.  Breathtaking vision
> indeed.
>
> You've got to start somewhere.  At least these guys have some idea of how
> to make this happen incrementally, in a bootstrapped fashion, playing for
> itself as they go.  That's probably a MUCH more reliable path --- however
> reliable it might be --- than relying on the fickle winds of public funding
> and political commitment.  And FWIW, the manned part of this is really not
> the low-hanging fruit;  the private, commercial, and independent but
> unmanned possibilities are really the short-term opportunity.  The tourism
> stuff is just PR and incremental early revenue.
>

The thing is - they are following, not leading. They are following stuff
that has been done in NASA and DARPA and repeating it. 50 years ago we could
put astronauts into low earth orbit. Its been done. Even stuff like the
Rutan mothership and its launch payload. Been done. Maybe not in carbon
fiber, so it can be done 20% better now, but its been done.


> But if you actually look at the business plans for even the tourism stuff
> --- and I'm not talking about the vomit comet nonsense of e.g. "Virgin
> Galactic" but the decade-out private station "space hotel" stuff --- that
> quickly gets into merely-wealthy reach as private cost-per-pound to orbit
> drops.  This stuff all scales just like anything else:  non-linearly.  They
> aren't unreasonable extrapolations.
>

None of this scales while we are riding into space on chemical rockets. The
specific impulse doesnt scale. It hasnt moved in 2000 years since
Heron's Aeolipile. It s*imply doesnt scale. It gets you absolutely nowhere.
Whatever space dreams you have are dead. Whatever dreams of visiting other
planets are gone. Done, buried, rotten and eaten by worms. If youre lucky,
you might get a roller coaster ride on the Virgin Galactic, but  Branson
isnt doing that for commercial reasons, hes not planning on making money out
of it - its a frikken PR stunt, like projecting his face onto the moon with
frikken laser beams. He's doing it for pure ego and because he is of an age
where he saw the Apollo series as a child and was inspired, like the rest of
them - the money men who are toying around in the space business, and thats
fine, but dont come to me all like "private industry will get us there" -
thats where the pure bullshit lies. You don't see any public corporations,
the ones with the real profit concerns, dipping their toes into the hobby
space market, do you?*
*
*

Let me offer one other anecdote about the brokenness of the system.  This
> is, of course, anecdotal to the point of being questionable folklore, but
> it's illustrative if not actually true.  Astronauts needed to be able to
> write in space.  What did we do?  Spent millions inventing the pressurized
> cartridge ink pen.  What did the Russians do?
>

What does this have to do with anything? Meaningless drivel. Blah blah blah.


> I've said this before, I'll say it again:  the problem isn't purely public
> vs. private;  it's not socialism or whatever vs. undiluted capitalism.  It's
> what happens when you try to hybridize the two or coexist and collaborate in
> some way in some endeavor.  The resulting chimera is a god-awful monster.  I
> can't think of any exceptions;  maybe one of you can.
>

Yeah sure, whatever you fear the most. Except, you wouldn't even be thinking
about this stuff without the existence of that god awful monster. Instead of
rolling around in your sandpit eating dirt, you were rolling around eating
dirt and looking up, wondering. Because of that chimera. I was too. Be
thankful.

From jbone at place.org  Sun Feb 14 06:10:27 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:10:27 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <685FB07A-634A-4DB2-A90D-FCCED36AE8CB@place.org>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
	<44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
	<46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>
	<685FB07A-634A-4DB2-A90D-FCCED36AE8CB@place.org>
Message-ID: <821A218C-320C-4A4B-979C-104DB770C836@place.org>


Re:  the pens / pencils things, thanks to Sean for reloading the cache.  I believe I went hunting for the truth behind that anecdote some years ago and got the same answer, but clearly its utility as a rhetorical device exceeded the truthiness value needed to pin it in my cache. ;-)

Damien says several things...  that I agree with.  We're making progress, if only barely.  I'll ignore the unwarranted snarkiness and just respond to some of the substance in order to hopefully move things along a bit.


> Sure, after all, its just a bunch of people working together, whatever you
> call the group and however its funded.

Yes...  but.  That's exactly the point:  several characteristics of such groups and social organizations tightly define and constrain what can be accomplished and how it may be accomplished.  These characteristics include but are not limited to:  where the funding comes from, how reliable the funding is, what the ultimate incentives are for members in the group and for other groups cooperating or competing (or both) with the group, and the social choice functions (i.e., way individual preferences among group members get aggregated into decisions and enacted) involved.  This is the heart of the matter.  NASA has *FAILED* to fulfill *any* significant long-term, big-picture objective with respect to manned spaceflight, despite *having that charter* (whether you agree with it or not) and despite numerous attempts, really, since Apollo.  If you agree with that assertion, then understanding why that is the case might be useful.  At least, I would think so.  (Note that this exercise is useful *whether or not* one agrees that manned spaceflight is a reasonable priority and / or use of tax dollars.  Which, actually --- I do not.)


> Probably the only entity we have
> discussed so far that has the multi-decade vision needed is your friend, the
> space geek. Im sure he is quite capable of working in the private sector,
> but has chosen the public sector as the best way of achieving his life
> goals.

Unfortunately, it has become quite clear --- to him --- that this has been the incorrect choice except insomuch as it may move him closer to the head of the line with one of the private entities in the next decade or so.  But even he recognizes, I think, that such a conclusion would have been better arrived at some few years ago, when Bezos and the billionaire-spacer clubs started getting their shit together.


> Yeah, the usual way, the world over, of handling the relatively fast
> election cycles and even faster business cycles, is to set up
> an independently funded institution - so that they don't have to worry so
> much about funding, and can instead focus on the steps needed to be taken to
> achieve a longer term goal.

Of course, that's why all the major problems of the world --- famine, mitigating existential risks, building a robust and sustainable space-access industry and capability, assuring sustainable energy and food bases, etc. --- have been handled by these sustainably-funded organizations.  (Not.  Sorry, that was snarky, but what fucking science-fiction reality are YOU living in where all these benevolent Foundations handle all of man's problems?)

Just the point:  NASA isn't capable of achieving its charter *because* of the fickleness and dependencies baked into its funding;  further, that funding requirement is far greater than it would otherwise be if they didn't have to move their massive bureaucracy *and* their highly-specialized network of private sector symbionts through time and complexity in order to achieve the charter.

Can we at least agree on the latter?  The only argument that I can think of *against* that latter point would be:  that's all necessary and the *only* way to configure things to achieve the goal.  I haven't heard anybody make that argument;  I think it's a rather weak one.  So can we at least agree on that much?


> Thesis is that NASA isn't competition at all. Business isn't prevented from
> entering the space launch field.

Keyword:  *prevent.*  You are absolutely correct:  they are not *prevented.*  I never claimed they were *prevented* per se, or if that was how the assertions came across, then that is my bad.  Say, rather, they are systematically though inactively discouraged to tackle the big picture by the very incentives and structures set up by the present arrangements.  Existing incentives and structures have been a drag on things for several decades.  I've now said this five different ways to Wednesday, I'm not sure how I can further avoid having you attempt to argue against a point I'm not actually even trying to make.


> In practice, the ideal is to have an institution, like NASA, that has long
> term goals and also has the role of stepping in and maintaining strategic
> capabilities where business fear to tread.

Keyword:  *fear.*  Exactly.  Well, and *greed.*  The combination of the two, run through the function of how we've organized the whole industry around a public, bureaucratic super-entity with the charter but with funding subject to the winds of political whim, is precisely the problem.  


> In fact, I am sure NASA and the military would be more than
> happy to employ whatever launch facilities the private sector can come up
> with.

Of course they will.  Here's a thought exercise, however:

NASA's never really *made* much of anything themselves.  Indeed, they've even *designed* very little, all in, themselves.  There was no immediate reason, even going back to the immediate post-Apollo era, that private industry could *not* have taken on more of this, quite capably.  It's only now that some are, and unfortunately those few are having to start essentially from scratch on several very basic fronts.  So the open questions, for which I've presented one explanation and nobody else has presented any explanation, are:  why did the private sector *not* step in earlier, particularly when the then-existing private entities were closer to having the capability to do so, and why *now* are new private entities stepping in so aggressively?

Come up with an internally / externally / historically consistent hypothesis that explains those two things, and we're cooking with Crisco.  I'm all ears.


> None of this scales while we are riding into space on chemical rockets.

Well, we'll see.  I agree that this isn't the endgame, and that what's possible while operating under that technological constraint is pretty meager.  But what I meant, really, is that there is finally a smooth path apparent with proper incentives that moves the technology along the curve in a sustainable fashion.  No claim was made about the technology;  the claim was re: the business plan (i.e., the incremental and private approach) and the enthusiasm of the new participants for tackling enough of the picture to really get things done as independently as practical, rather than being highly specialized and highly dependent gee-gaw providers whose main motivation is to see that their already-designed gee-gaws as well as many new ones are included in every subsequent mission plan.

You want to argue with Elon Musk, Peter Thiel, Jeff Bezos, and those guys --- go right ahead.  I'm not going to, and I also refuse to accept that what they are undertaking is an expensive hobby / status symbol rather than viable business planning with refreshingly large scope.  These are smart guys.  Their track record about handicapping profit opportunity and related planning better than yours (or mine.)


> Whatever space dreams you have are dead. Whatever dreams of visiting other
> planets are gone. Done, buried, rotten and eaten by worms.

THAT particular religion died for me long before I made my little trip to NASA.  I've said it around here before and I'll say it again, there's no Star Trek, no monkeys zipping around the galaxy in pressurized tin cans.  The economics (along with everything else about the idea) --- unworkable.    That's baked into the idea itself, not even a function of the things we're "debating" (or whatever it is you're trying to do, I still can't tell.)  

FWIW, I came to that conclusion back in college while taking an astronomy course that devoted an entire semester to running the numbers for estimating Drake equation solutions. 

That's why I've gone to pains several times in this to *avoid* making any claim that this whole activity is a legitimate activity for anybody to be doing or to indicate that I approve of it as a public goal.  However...  while I think the limits and constraints involved are quite severe --- we agree on that --- I do tend to agree with Zubrin et. al. that there is some potential social-psychological benefit to that dream, and some degree of pursuit of it by some group or groups, somehow. 

Indeed, that's the whole point:  it's *not* a big enough priority, IMHO, to warrant the public money we've thrown at it, yet we've done very poorly for those who *would* see it through, as far as is possible, by giving that charter to an organization yet failing to provide adequate resources to meet that charter --- over, and over, and over.  That was the Arrow point:  perfect example of a negative-sum arrangement, implicit and probably unavoidable given how we've chosen to organize things to supposedly "accomplish" this goal.  Everybody loses, or at least has now for several decades.  (QED.  Instead of taking pot-shots at various other bits, if you disagree with *this* --- please explain.  Whose interests have really been best served by the countless starts and stops re: various manned spaceflight initiatives since Apollo?)

I agree w/ you re:  Branson in it being ego- and PR-driven, but I wouldn't bet that he doesn't actually expect to make a profit on this.  And I wouldn't bet that he doesn't.


> Meaningless drivel

Meaningless snarkiness and disagreeability.  Sorry, again, for pushing whatever hidden button I pushed of yours.  Well, not really sorry, except inasmuch as I appear to have bought some griefing that I didn't realize was going to be thrown in for free. ;-)


> Yeah sure, whatever you fear the most. Except, you wouldn't even be thinking
> about this stuff without the existence of that god awful monster. Instead of
> rolling around in your sandpit eating dirt, you were rolling around eating
> dirt and looking up, wondering. Because of that chimera. I was too. Be
> thankful.

No idea what that's all about.  If I were being snarky, I'd make some comment to the effect of "oh, yes, let's thank our benevolent government-god and its central planner-priests and lay bureaucracies for all our bountiful blessings.  May they never be analyzed or criticized in any way, and may they endure forever, unexamined and unchanged, for no improvement can be possible and all bounties flow from them.  Now let us tithe."  

But I won't.


;-)


jb




From jbone at place.org  Sun Feb 14 06:44:47 2010
From: jbone at place.org (Jeff Bone)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 08:44:47 -0600
Subject: [FoRK] Restating the argument was Re: Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <821A218C-320C-4A4B-979C-104DB770C836@place.org>
References: <7473946E-D347-42C7-A058-F8263DC29E99@place.org>
	<44FBDBF8-4EB8-4EAB-9AD0-AD8E68BCE67C@place.org>
	<46B1C727-979C-4007-A429-A865986A8832@place.org>
	<685FB07A-634A-4DB2-A90D-FCCED36AE8CB@place.org>
	<821A218C-320C-4A4B-979C-104DB770C836@place.org>
Message-ID: <2D52CA57-614C-4CBC-BCDB-88AECC432453@place.org>


Okay, scrap all the prior.  Let me state the thesis:

We have ostensibly had and maintained some goal or goals over the last few decades of continuing some program of manned space exploration to whatever extent it was, at any point along the way, technologically possible.  Yet since Apollo 17 returned to Earth on December 19, 1972 no human being has traveled beyond LEO.  This despite many such NASA initiatives and billions of dollars spend on same;  I'm too lazy to run the numbers but lets stipulate that in the ~37 years since then we have spent *at least* $10B (absolute dollars) on such programs, none of which have been "successful" (i.e., resulting in the ostensible goal of putting men beyond LEO.)  (Also note, the real inflation-adjusted figure would be much higher than $10B.)

So the open question is this:  assuming the ostensible goal is worthy of any public spending at all, what configuration of incentives, structuring of the program, dispersement or use of funds, etc. would have had a greater likelihood of achieving the stated goal?

As a straw man, I would suggest that merely posting a $10B dollar bounty or prize to be collected by the first private entity to put a man back on the surface of the moon would have had a greater chance of success, and resulted in more derivative benefits along the way as multiple entities worked to achieve the goal in parallel, in competition.  If this money had been placed essentially in escrow in e.g the mid-70s and potentially reinvested or otherwise compounded, a far lower seed figure than e.g. $10B might have been quite sufficient.

(Note that Zubrin's Mars Direct mission plan had a price tag at the very low end of $5B in late-90s dollars, and the energy economics etc. of access to the Moon are similar --- surprisingly --- enough that costs there are on the same order of magnitude.  So $10B in, say, 2000 dollars should be sufficient to provide reasonable profit incentives for same.  It's a rather high-risk proposition, so perhaps incremental "milestone" incentives sufficient to cover intermediate step costs and provide profit might be useful.)

Agreed or disagreed that such an incentive program would have better likelihood of success than how we've historically gone about this for the last four decades?  And if disagreed, please explain (Aaron, etc.)

If you agree, then my basic point is made:  the *structure* of our program has actually impeded rather than furthered achievement of its ostensible goal versus other potential structures and incentive arrangements.  NASA (and / or our treatment of NASA, in terms of funding, politics, and frequent mission redefinition) has actually been harmful rather than helpful with respect to allowing (that part of) its charter to be fulfilled by it or anyone else.


jb



From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Sun Feb 14 19:43:17 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 19:43:17 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] Losing my religion
In-Reply-To: <20100214001455.GB11961@brevard.conman.org>
Message-ID: <673773.16583.qm@web33005.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

--- On Sat, 2/13/10, Sean Conner <sean at conman.org> wrote:

> 
> ? -spc ("Those how govern the best, govern the least.")
> 

Or, as a good friend is fond of saying: "It's a damn good thing we don't get all the government we pay for!!"

           ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Looking for the perfect gift? Give the gift of Flickr! 

http://www.flickr.com/gift/


From ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca  Sun Feb 14 21:15:59 2010
From: ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca (Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo)
Date: Sun, 14 Feb 2010 21:15:59 -0800 (PST)
Subject: [FoRK] The latest "wearable"...
Message-ID: <412976.96535.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

... if you happen to be a fighter pilot.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-492631/The-Terminator-style-helmets-allow-fighter-pilots-planes.html

I won't post the text because you really need to see the annotated pic to appreciate it.

          ...ken...


      __________________________________________________________________
Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo! Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com

From dmorton at bitfurnace.com  Sun Feb 14 21:21:06 2010
From: dmorton at bitfurnace.com (Damien Morton)
Date: Mon, 15 Feb 2010 16:21:06 +1100
Subject: [FoRK] The latest "wearable"...
In-Reply-To: <412976.96535.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
References: <412976.96535.qm@web33003.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Message-ID: <8092dc771002142121g3364ddfct32d64e006d56fe78@mail.gmail.com>

Qualifcation to be a fighter pilot:

Good eyesight.
Fast reflexes.
Intelligent.
Cunning.
Neck like a tree trunk.

On Mon, Feb 15, 2010 at 4:15 PM, Ken Ganshirt @ Yahoo <ken_ganshirt at yahoo.ca
> wrote:

> ... if you happen to be a fighter pilot.
>
>
> http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-492631/The-Terminator-style-helmets-allow-fighter-pilots-planes.html
>
> I won't post the text because you really need to see the annotated pic to
> appreciate it.
>
>          ...ken...
>
>
>      __________________________________________________________________
> Ask a question on any topic and get answers from real people. Go to Yahoo!
> Answers and share what you know at http://ca.answers.yahoo.com
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> FoRK mailing list
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>