Daily Archives: May 27, 2012

Mail 726 Sunday, May 27, 2012

First glory, then gold; then?

Now that Dragon capsule has docked at the ISS, people are saying that the era of commercial space-flight has arrived. The New World was explored for three reasons; God, gold and glory. Government spaceflight

– Apollo especially – was about glory; commercial spaceflight will be about gold; but looking to the future, who’ll go to space for God? What mission would there be?

I propose two. The first is the clearing-away of the Earth-crossing asteroids. A long-term project, for the good of all mankind, indeed of all life on Earth. Some of the commercial spacefarers have expressed an interest in mining the Earth-crossers for precious metals and water; which is fine, but there will be a residue of worthless but deadly flying mountains. Who disposes of those? This is where private charity can step in. I foresee the Mormons and Greenpeace launching ion-driven gravity tugs on search-and-tow missions; remote-operated for decades by unpaid volunteers.

The second mission is the terraformation of Mars. This is a very long-term project; many generations of hard and dangerous experimental labor on an alien world; of no benefit to anyone on Earth except the pleasure of having neighbors. The time-scale and reward structure favors a religious organization doing this job. Terraformers have to believe in terraforming; so whatever the source religion, Terraforming itself would become newborn Mars’s de facto founding religion.

Paradoc

I would think the first goal is to become a sparefaring civilization. There’s plenty out there. We need to make it possible to go get it. Then we can pick paths and missions.

A great day dawns

Dr. Pournelle

re: Dragon Docks and the commercial space era begins. <http://>

An associate asked me what I thought of the Space X launch. I said it opened a new era in space transportation and for the better. He asked me why, and I launched into a lecture on operational efficiency versus performance which led to a lecture on propellants and ended with my prerecorded rant against NASA ("Kill ’em all. God will know his own").

He then brought up that ‘some guys’ were planning to mine a ‘meteor’. I said that there was a new corporation formed to mine near-Earth asteroids and that they would use commercial launch services.

Yeah, it’s a great day.

Live long and prosper

h lynn keith

It is indeed.

Backdoor found in Chinese-made US military chip

http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/sec_news.html#Assurance

—

Eric Smith

I have always wished for my computer to be as easy to use as my telephone; my wish has come true because I can no longer figure out how to use my telephone.

Bjarne Stroustrop, Developer of C++ programming language

I have always been concerned about security in manufacturing routers and other important electronic equipment. It’s an obvious thing for an intelligence agent to want: a secure and hidden way to see what’s going on in telephones, internet mail, you name it. Of course one can try to get one’s electronics Trojan horses into equipment manufactured in the US, but it had got to be easier if you’re the one providing the security…

If we put the Bunny Inspectors out of business, they can retrain as Henhouse Inspectors.

http://thehill.com/blogs/floor-action/house/229533-senators-propose-federal-standards-for-egg-laying-hens

I saw nothing in the Constitution about eggs and hens, and I cannot think that the Framers had any such thing in mind for the federal government. States can decide to be kinder to chickens than tro chicken farmers; but I do not think there is any such power for the Federal government. Nor should be.

TV Truth Revealed

I maintained for quite some time that "content" refers to the commercials and "fill" refers to the crappy shows between the commercials e.g. Dancing with the Stars, America’s got Talent, CSI, Creeping Around with the Kardashians.  Well, Fox filed suit and in that suit they prove as much in their arugment:

<.>

"We were given no choice but to file suit against one of our largest distributors, Dish Network, because of their surprising move to market a product with the clear goal of violating copyrights and destroying the fundamental underpinnings of the broadcast television ecosystem," Fox said in a statement. "Their wrongheaded decision requires us to take swift action in order to aggressively defend the future of free, over-the-air television."

</>

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/envelope/cotown/la-et-ct-fox-sues-dish-network-over-adblocking-feature-20120524,0,3654685.story

No, you did that when you put more commercials in an hour than content I would want to see if it wasn’t so watered down that I would have to have an IQ below 85 to want to watch it.  As far as it being an "ecosystem", I hope the judge laughs you out of the courtroom.  But, we all know government is a tax-payer funded enfrocement agency for big companies like Fox.  And, if Fox fails, they’ll steal MORE of our money to "bail out" the too big to fail company.  What a joke. 

The Journal also reported on this:

http://online.wsj.com/article/AP65148c316b8a4afc90693391f1913f8a.html

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

I confess that I have taken to recording my TV shows and watching them half an hour later so that I can skip past the commercials. I generally watch any commercial I haven’t seen except for a few that I know are designed to be irritating, and I often go from fast forward to play when there’s an ad that might or might not be interesting; and I generally feel a little guilty because I know that without the ads no one would pay for the shows I like (which turn out to be more now than a couple of years ago even though the ones we have now aren’t as good – it’s just that I seem to watch a bit more mindless TV than I used to). But it’s like newspapers: they have made the print so small, and so filled the papers with ads to the detriment of news, that I generally get news on line now. I prefer what we used to have in news, with properly written stories, but that takes money for real editorial staff, and the papers don’t have that or say they don’t. A death spiral, perhaps. My local papers clearly hate their readers, and work to make the paper harder and harder to read. I’d pay a lot more for subscriptions if there were some good stories once in a while that were printed in types I could read…

‘A 2010 study by Chinese economist Wang Xiaolu found that the top 2 percent of households earned a staggering 35 percent of national urban income.’

<http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2012/05/22/bear_in_a_china_shop?page=full>

Based upon my experiences in China and the fact that thisstudy was produced by a Chinese economist, my guess is that the actual amount of concentrated wealth is considerably higher, somewhere on the order of 50% – 60%.

—

Roland Dobbins

We all know that most of the wealth and nearly all the progress comes from about 10% of the population; ‘equality’ is very expensive, and if enforced in allocation of education resources leads to ruin. We all know this, and apparently choose ruin.

Stupidest Event Ever

Now, I’m constantly irritated at stupidity, stupid people, and stupid events.  But, this takes the cake and — as always — it invovles public servants who are also stupid as well as stupid parents and the aquiesence of a stupid society:

<.>

A 17-year-old high school honor student who works two jobs and financially supports her two siblings is heading into summer on a sour note after spending a night in jail for being too tired to attend school.

Diane Tran was arrested in open court and sentenced to 24 hours in jail Wednesday after being repeatedly truant due to exhaustion. KHOU reports that Tran, a junior at Willis High School, was warned by Judge Lanny Moriarty last month to stop missing school. When she missed classes again this month, Moriarty wanted to make an example of Tran.

“If you let one (truant student) run loose, what are you gonna’ do with the rest of ‘em? Let them go too?” Moriarty asked, according to KHOU.

Tran told KHOU that in addition to taking advanced and honors classes, she works full-time and part-time jobs in an effort to try to support her older brother at Texas A&M and a younger sister in the Houston area. After Tran’s parents divorced, they both moved away from the honor student and her two siblings.

Tran was also fined $100.

</>

Why is a 17-year old being ordered to attend school when most kids are allowed to drop out at 16 anyway? 

Why didn’t the judge note the girl is an honor student?

Why didn’t the judge note the girl’s parents both moved away from their children after their divorce?

Other than that, I have questions that any person with two brain cells working in unison could ask and I will not insult anyone by asking those questions here.  Stupid people cost this country a lot more than money; I believe we need to have an IQ test before people work in society or in government.  Imagine cops that had high IQs, imagine elected servants with high IQs, imagine teachers with high IQs.  WOW!  What a great society that would be.  Let the epsilon semi-morons wear their khakis, go to work, and shut up.  We don’t need more idiocy.  I’d rather have that than the bs I read on a daily basis in the newspaper. 

—–

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Come now, I suspect we can all think of even greater stupidities. One should be careful with superlatives when rating follies. And it’s a brave new world that has such people in it…

Excellent article on long term voter preferences

Partisan voters really color issues by party. Independents don’t.

http://www.freakonomics.com/2012/05/24/are-voters-just-rooting-for-clothes/

Well, perhaps.

. ‘The ubiquitous distribution of abiotic organic carbon in Martian igneous rocks is important for understanding the Martian carbon cycle and has implications for future missions to detect possible past Martian life.’

<http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2012/05/23/science.1220715>

Roland Dobbins

Transfer of Life-Bearing Meteorites from Earth to Other Planets.

<http://arxiv.org/abs/1204.1719>

<http://arxiv.org/pdf/1204.1719v1>

Roland Dobbins

I was critical of the original Viking experimental design, and have been of all the ones since, but I am not really much of an expert on biochemistry. Still, you’d think they could come up with something definitive given how much they have to spend.

: NYT 3 part series on Philip K Dick

Dear Jerry,

In case you haven’t seen this.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/philip-k-dick-sci-fi-philosopher-part-1/?src=recg

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/21/philip-k-dick-sci-fi-philosopher-part-2/?src=

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/22/philip-k-dick-sci-fi-philosopher-part-3/?src=recg

May 20, 2012, 5:00 PM

Philip K. Dick, Sci-Fi Philosopher, Part 1

By SIMON CRITCHLEY <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/author/simon-critchley/>

The Stone<http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/blogs_v3/opinionator/pogs/thestone45.gif>

The Stone <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/category/the-stone/> is a forum for contemporary philosophers on issues both timely and timeless.

TAGS:

PHILIP K. DICK <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/philip-k-dick/> , PHILOSOPHY <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/philosophy/> ,SCIENCE FICTION <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/science-fiction/>

This is the first in a three-part series <http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/tag/philip-k-dick/> .

~~~

Part 1: Meditations on a Radiant Fish

When I believe, I am crazy. When I don’t believe, I suffer psychotic depression.

— Philip K. Dick

Philip K. Dick is arguably the most influential writer of science fiction in the past half century. In his short and meteoric career, he wrote 121 short stories and 45 novels. His work was successful during his lifetime but has grown exponentially in influence since his death in 1982. Dick’s work will probably be best known through the dizzyingly successful Hollywood adaptations of his work, in movies like “Blade Runner” (based on “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”), “Total Recall,” “Minority Report,” “A Scanner Darkly” and, most recently, “The Adjustment Bureau.” Yet few people might consider Dick a thinker. This would be a mistake. <snip>

There is a good TV special on Phil Dick in the Masters of SF series. I was interviewed for the one on Mr. Heinlein. The one on Dick used Tim Powers, perhaps not as much as it should have: Tim was close to Phil and has thought about him a good bit. Phil Dick was arguably mad, but he was a very intelligent madman…

scribd and DMCA

The "scale" thing is important. I recall an article where someone pointed out that back when the DMCA was first written, the most common method by which Americans connected to the Internet was by a land-line modem running at 56 kilobaud. Yahoo! was the big name in Internet search and there was no Google. AoL and Prodigy were still going concerns. Amazon was some niche thing that college students used to score cheap CDs.

It’s actually kind of funny, because all along the anti-copyright crowd has been saying that technology has outpaced litigation, and you know what? They’re *right*. But that doesn’t mean that copyright needs to go away.

—

Mike T. Powers

Good observation

scribd, specific urls, and the amount of work required for takedown

Hello Jerry,

I read this:

"Our agent is painstakingly accumulating a list of URL’s to works by her clients that are up on scribd. It takes a good bit of work on her part, but it will be done,"

And I immediately wondered why she was doing this by hand. This seems to be the perfect application for a computer! Every morning, your script runs, searching for new posts related to each author, for each one found, the URL is compared to your database of already cited URLs, the correct paperwork is printed (or formatted for electronic submission), database is updated. Agent scans each submission quickly for accuracy and content, signs it, and submits. Minimum work, maximum effect…

Distribute the script /app /whatever to several agents, and then scribd starts getting hammered daily with takedown orders. When it gets too expensive for them to deal with, they change their policy. (Best possible outcome, maybe least likely though.)

FWIW, I have used scribd for manuals, and other tech support documentation, but never for works of fiction. Never even looked for that. On at least 2 occasions I was able to find the documents in their original online location, after finding them on scribd. For whatever reason, search engines found them on scribd, but not in their original locations.

Please keep producing new fiction, and re-releasing your old. Keep up with the site as best you can. I think it is one of the best on the web. I’ve stopped consuming mainstream media completely, knowing that if something is important, it will end up on your site. Saves me a lot of time, and yelling at the TV.

Thanks again for all you do,

zuk

Bill Zukley