From nanogirl at halcyon.com Sat Sep 1 10:12:06 2007 From: nanogirl at halcyon.com (Gina Miller) Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 03:12:06 -0700 Subject: [ExI] New Special video / Dermal Display with Freitas narration at Alcor conference References: <200708311528.l7VFSS95017958@ms-smtp-06.texas.rr.com> Message-ID: <03be01c7ec80$94972190$0200a8c0@Nano> Some of you may recall that in late 2005 I completed my collaboration with Robert A. Freitas Jr. http://www.rfreitas.com/ on the Dermal Display animation, http://www.nanogirl.com/museumfuture/dermaldisplay.htm a concept he published in his book Nanomedicine http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI.htm. Freitas gave a presentation at the 6th Alcor conference http://www.alcor.org/conferences/2006/index.html on the topic of Nanomedicine and Medical Nanorobotics which featured a section on the Dermal Display animation and a really terrific verbal description of what is happening when you are watching it. I was fortunate enough to have been supplied the footage by Alcor http://www.alcor.org/ which I merged with the animation and edited so that you can enjoy this special feature video. Come download it here: http://www.nanogirl.com/museumfuture/freitastalk.htm Go to the original blog post for the Dermal Display animation: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/2005/09/dermal-display.html Get the Alcor conference DVD (not the same as this footage and is the full conference): https://www.shop.alcor.org/displayProductDocument.hg?productId=1 Watch Alcor 6 conference clips: http://www.alcor.org/Library/videos/conference6.html Comment about this special feature video at the blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/2007/08/dermal-display-special-video-with.html Best wishes, Gina "Nanogirl" Miller Nanotechnology Industries http://www.nanoindustries.com Personal: http://www.nanogirl.com Animation Blog: http://maxanimation.blogspot.com/ Craft blog: http://nanogirlblog.blogspot.com/ Foresight Senior Associate http://www.foresight.org Nanotechnology Advisor Extropy Institute http://www.extropy.org Email: nanogirl at halcyon.com "Nanotechnology: Solutions for the future." -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070901/9e2a1364/attachment.html From andres at thoughtware.tv Sat Sep 1 09:50:11 2007 From: andres at thoughtware.tv (Andres Colon) Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 05:50:11 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Thoughtware.TV news: 360-degrees Holographic Display Message-ID: Check out this cool 360-degrees Holographic Display, recently seen at Siggraph: http://www.thoughtware.tv/videos/show/704 Description: Researchers at USC have taken another step towards that holiest of sci-fi dreams: the 3D holographic display. Using a spinning mirror covered with a "holographic diffuser," a special DVI implementation, and a high-speed projector, the team's device can project a three-dimensional image that can be viewed from 360 degrees -- regardless of the viewer's height and distance. Yep. I know you want one :-) Andr?s, Thoughtware.TV -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070901/fef7a883/attachment.html From jonkc at att.net Sun Sep 2 17:26:09 2007 From: jonkc at att.net (John K Clark) Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 13:26:09 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of Dust References: Message-ID: <055f01c7ed86$6c136740$38054e0c@MyComputer> http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201803325 From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Sep 2 18:00:29 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 11:00:29 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshka brains] In-Reply-To: <055f01c7ed86$6c136740$38054e0c@MyComputer> Message-ID: <200709021819.l82IJb4L003561@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of John K Clark > Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of Dust > http://www.informationweek.com/news/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=201803325 Cool John! I have been thinking about this for some time, while thinking about what is the optimal size and spacing of the nodes when creating a Bradbury-esque Matrioshka brain. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Matrioshka_brain http://www.aeiveos.com:8080/~bradbury/MatrioshkaBrains/index.html I once spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out how to do station-keeping with M-brain nodes approximately the size of a dime (but much thinner). Last spring, I was at a lecture by Dawkins. At dinner afterwards, Amara made an offhanded comment that has rattled around in my brain. She said that interplanetary space carries a small net electrical charge. I never realized that, but it makes total sense, and explains why interplanetary dust behaves the way it does. In retrospect that fact was (I think) mentioned in Amara's PhD thesis, but for some reason it didn't sink in back in January of 02 when I read that work. Since then, it occurred to me that if the processors are small enough, station keeping of individual nodes would require far less precision than Robert and I originally calculated in March 2002. Possibly they would not require station keeping at all, which would save a lot of mass and complexity. If we could make individual nodes such that the mass is sufficiently small, we could arrange for each node to carry a net electrical charge. Then the nodes would repel each other electrostatically, obviating the need for station keeping. spike From amara at amara.com Sun Sep 2 18:44:15 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 20:44:15 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: digest behavior? Message-ID: Hi extronauts, nothing urgent, but I've been wondering what changed this summer with the digest? I used to get them every day and if I wanted to check in-between the delivery time I went to the web site archive. The web archive has been stuck/broken at 2006 for one or two months though, and the digest delivery is an irregular every 2-4 days. The delivery rate is better than my random-or-never home postal delivery, but I kind of liked the daily regularity so that I could be somewhat interactive with the list, when I'm not traveling (like this moment). If there are new settings that I must change to have it work the old way, could you give me a hint where I would do that? Thanks! Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From amara at amara.com Sun Sep 2 18:32:32 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 20:32:32 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshka brains] Message-ID: >Last spring, I was at a lecture by Dawkins. At dinner afterwards, Amara >made an offhanded comment that has rattled around in my brain. She said >that interplanetary space carries a small net electrical charge. Oops! Did I say that? How many glasses of wine did I drink ? ;-) If you mean interplanetary dust instead of interplanetary space, then yes, the dust particles are usually charged 1-10 Volts. But if you really mean interplanetary space, which is another expression for "plasma", then no, overall the plasma is neutral (by definition). Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From pharos at gmail.com Sun Sep 2 19:38:18 2007 From: pharos at gmail.com (BillK) Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 20:38:18 +0100 Subject: [ExI] META: digest behavior? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 9/2/07, Amara Graps wrote: > Hi extronauts, nothing urgent, but I've been wondering what changed this > summer with the digest? I used to get them every day and if I wanted to > check in-between the delivery time I went to the web site archive. > > The web archive has been stuck/broken at 2006 for one or two months > though, and the digest delivery is an irregular every 2-4 days. The > delivery rate is better than my random-or-never home postal delivery, > but I kind of liked the daily regularity so that I could be somewhat > interactive with the list, when I'm not traveling (like this moment). > > If there are new settings that I must change to have it work the old > way, could you give me a hint where I would do that? Thanks! > I think you might be looking at the wrong archives. These seem to be up-to-date: The lucifer.com archives died in January 2006. The digest might just be slow because there has been low list activity recently. The system might not send out a digest until it gets a sufficient volume of posts. BillK From hibbert at mydruthers.com Sun Sep 2 22:17:49 2007 From: hibbert at mydruthers.com (Chris Hibbert) Date: Sun, 02 Sep 2007 15:17:49 -0700 Subject: [ExI] META: digest behavior? In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: <46DB368D.1070605@mydruthers.com> > The web archive has been stuck/broken at 2006 for one or two months > though, and the digest delivery is an irregular every 2-4 days. The > delivery rate is better than my random-or-never home postal delivery, > but I kind of liked the daily regularity so that I could be somewhat > interactive with the list, when I'm not traveling (like this moment). I looked for archives about a month ago, and all my usual links were broken. I thought for a bit, and realized I'd seen a link in the footer of recent messages. Sure enough > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat Each message I get gives the link above, which continues to accrue new messages. Yours is http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/2007-September/037473.html Chris -- It is easy to turn an aquarium into fish soup, but not so easy to turn fish soup back into an aquarium. -- Lech Walesa on reverting to a market economy. Chris Hibbert hibbert at mydruthers.com Blog: http://pancrit.org From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Sep 2 22:17:00 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 15:17:00 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshka brains] In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200709022235.l82MZIek015895@andromeda.ziaspace.com> The dust particles carry a net positive charge, ja? Makes sense that they would, since electrons seem more likely to run free than protons, flightly characters that they are, having very little mass or responsibility. Amara I may have misunderstood your comment, but I grokked you meant the dust particles are slightly net positive to 5-ish volts average. Of course the entire space is neutral (otherwise the sun would eventually have a net charge.) If so, then we could arrange M-brain nodes to hold a net charge as well. Then we use electrostatic charge to prevent their clumping together. That discussion took place before the sake arrived as I recall. {8^D Thanks for reminding me of a very pleasant evening with a most delightful and thought-stimulating group. Speaking of pleasant company, Russell Whitaker has left us for New York for graduate studies in biochemistry or something like that. Any ExI-Bayers here know the details on Russell? We in the SF area will miss that man bigtime. He was always a kick at the local extro schmoozes. When Anders was here, we went with Russell to the local sushi bar. He conversed with the waitress at length, in perfect Japanese. No mortal deserves such a generous portion of brains as he. Our loss in New York's gain. spike > -----Original Message----- > From: Amara Graps [mailto:amara at amara.com] > Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2007 11:33 AM > To: spike > Cc: 'ExI chat list'; 'Robert Bradbury' > Subject: RE: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshka > brains] > > >Last spring, I was at a lecture by Dawkins. At dinner afterwards, Amara > >made an offhanded comment that has rattled around in my brain. She said > >that interplanetary space carries a small net electrical charge. > > Oops! Did I say that? How many glasses of wine did I drink ? ;-) > > If you mean interplanetary dust instead of interplanetary space, then > yes, the dust particles are usually charged 1-10 Volts. > > But if you really mean interplanetary space, which is another > expression for "plasma", then no, overall the plasma is neutral > (by definition). > > Amara > > -- > > Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com > Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson > INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From spike66 at comcast.net Sun Sep 2 22:24:19 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 15:24:19 -0700 Subject: [ExI] META: digest behavior? In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200709022236.l82Ma0D3003287@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Hi Amara, I just checked your mail status; everything looked OK and set correctly, digest only. There were a bunch of days when there were no ExIchat messages. I think the server was down for a while in late July or early August. I sent in two posts right before I went on vacation. One of them showed up a couple weeks later while I was away. I didn't investigate, since the server appeared to be up again. So my guess is that if there is little or nothing to digest, then the digest doesn't go out that day. spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Amara Graps > Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2007 11:44 AM > To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > Subject: [ExI] META: digest behavior? > > Hi extronauts, nothing urgent, but I've been wondering what changed this > summer with the digest? I used to get them every day and if I wanted to > check in-between the delivery time I went to the web site archive. > > The web archive has been stuck/broken at 2006 for one or two months > though, and the digest delivery is an irregular every 2-4 days. The > delivery rate is better than my random-or-never home postal delivery, > but I kind of liked the daily regularity so that I could be somewhat > interactive with the list, when I'm not traveling (like this moment). > > If there are new settings that I must change to have it work the old > way, could you give me a hint where I would do that? Thanks! > > Amara > > -- > > Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com > Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson > INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From ka.aly at luxsci.net Sun Sep 2 23:15:48 2007 From: ka.aly at luxsci.net (Khaled Aly) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 02:15:48 +0300 Subject: [ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) References: <001b01c7e0f5$714512b0$55074e0c@MyComputer><710b78fc0708271830j4ce76255ja2ca2e981f005955@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <008501c7edb7$3c8fe5d0$e1a367d4@pcd> Good day I've been following this since it started. I feel that a murderer should be punished to death in the easiest possible way (e.g. lethal injection), once it is proven for very sure that he/she has done so deliberately and under no external effects; for two reasons: 1) It is a relief to the victim's family unless they choose otherwise; and 2) If I were to choose, being the murderer, I'd rather go now/then than spend 20 years in jail. About therapy, I think it may work in certain sick cases (there are sick souls that could be treated why not, and there are evil souls that will not change, and there are those whose life circumstances made them go wrong way and they need social rehabilitation - every case is different). This is my entry to how effective is the overall current justice system. And the ever unresolved question about the tradeoffs between personal privacy and community security. Do any computer or IT people see a role of algorithms helping the justice system to decide (for a start; since real-life AI is a bit far ahead). What I mean for example, consider obtaining a search warrant. How difficult is it to write some code that could 'assist' the decision making. First, it will perform preliminary information analysis. Second, if it's open implementation, it will be possible to a large technical population to review it and ensure it works as intended/declared and for the benefit of justice. And third, within a digital world, it can ensure that a court order of privacy invasion for a suspect individual will actually expire; provided it began, through the use of digital certificates to be provided and revoked in time by court to law enforcement. The last of course requires that default electronic communication be secured, and be broken only using a court digital certificate. This can be as frequent as the low issuing entities would decide according to existing situation (exceptional, less exceptional, regular). An innocent whose privacy was broken deserves to be advised about it at some point. Beyond this, any computer literate person would confirm that open source code is most reliable because it had been reviewed by the expert public. Same applies to an open source algorithm that is designed to support the justice system deciding what to do with a suspect, a person in trial, or an indicted person and let that be an advisory input for trial. Unlike few people may think, computers and human minds don't work the same way. Computers are structured crunching speed machines and minds are pattern learning neural machines. They are complementary (until neural network computing make it to market and yet it will be v. hard to mimic the brain). Why does law enforcement, or as a whole the justice system use computers only for data recording purposes. What about the huge analytic power that can be made presentable to humans to evaluate and judge. I don't think any final sentence should be produced by a machine with the current state of the art, or may be never. But speaking preliminary and analytic support, incorporating digital technology can potentially resolve many issues and cases where the society disagrees about how just the outcome was. Greatest software technologies came out of open source because it is auditable. And that's much like digital democracy. Transparency does not compromise rule of law -- it rather enhances it. Sadly, digital technology is being consumed for many irrelevant but sellable applications before it is being considered to support a sound social infrastructure. And what's more relevant than justice... Cheers ka, phd ----- Original Message ----- From: "Stathis Papaioannou" To: "ExI chat list" Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 1:36 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment. > On 28/08/07, Emlyn wrote: > >> I was reading this, and had a hazy recollection of learning in >> undergrad psych that sociopaths are actually made worse by traditional >> therapy (it helps them learn how to fake being normal). > > There's little evidence that "therapy" helps with anything, let alone > fundamentally changing the personality you were born with. > > > -- > Stathis Papaioannou > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From russell.wallace at gmail.com Mon Sep 3 00:06:23 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 01:06:23 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshka brains] In-Reply-To: <200709021819.l82IJb4L003561@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <055f01c7ed86$6c136740$38054e0c@MyComputer> <200709021819.l82IJb4L003561@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0709021706w76bc6179uf70fafff578fd61d@mail.gmail.com> On 9/2/07, spike wrote: > I once spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out how to do > station-keeping with M-brain nodes approximately the size of a dime (but > much thinner). What would you see as the advantage of making them that small? Seems to me things are easier and more efficient if you agglomerate a decent amount of machinery together in a single mass, for a Dyson sphere maybe km-size nodes. We break things up into small units like cell phones because we have a particular need to make them that small, but when we just want total computing or other throughput we use smaller numbers of larger units. From spike66 at comcast.net Mon Sep 3 03:56:24 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 20:56:24 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshkabrains] In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0709021706w76bc6179uf70fafff578fd61d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200709030418.l834IRcF001147@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Russell, this turns into an interesting question of autonomous manufacturing optimization and launching of nodes, as well as optimization of the use of energy from sunlight. Going with smaller and more numerous nodes has an advantage that is related to an engineering textbook problem from a signals and systems class I took way too many years ago. Imagine you have a signal you wish to transmit distance x. You can do it with one transmitter and one receiver, but you could put another receiver at x/2, amplify the signal and retransmit another x/2 to distance x. This way you actually have two transmitters, but each one requires only one fourth as much power as in the first case, so together they only require half as much power. Now imagine three receivers and transmitters, each transmitting a distance x/3. Each requires one ninth as much power, so together they require a third as much power as in the first case. And so on. Cool, huh? Perhaps you worked the same problem. As for station keeping, as the node size scales downward, gravity becomes less the driver and electrostatic forces ever more important. My intuition tells me that building an M-brain is optimized by making the individual nodes as small as our technology permits. spike > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Russell Wallace > Sent: Sunday, September 02, 2007 5:06 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and > matrioshkabrains] > > On 9/2/07, spike wrote: > > I once spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out how to do > > station-keeping with M-brain nodes approximately the size of a dime (but > > much thinner). > > What would you see as the advantage of making them that small? Seems > to me things are easier and more efficient if you agglomerate a decent > amount of machinery together in a single mass, for a Dyson sphere > maybe km-size nodes. We break things up into small units like cell > phones because we have a particular need to make them that small, but > when we just want total computing or other throughput we use smaller > numbers of larger units. > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat From eugen at leitl.org Mon Sep 3 04:29:18 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 06:29:18 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshkabrains] In-Reply-To: <200709030418.l834IRcF001147@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <8d71341e0709021706w76bc6179uf70fafff578fd61d@mail.gmail.com> <200709030418.l834IRcF001147@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <20070903042918.GG12988@leitl.org> On Sun, Sep 02, 2007 at 08:56:24PM -0700, spike wrote: > Russell, this turns into an interesting question of autonomous manufacturing > optimization and launching of nodes, as well as optimization of the use of It is more interesting to see what happens during long-term operation in a mature node cloud. > energy from sunlight. Going with smaller and more numerous nodes has an > advantage that is related to an engineering textbook problem from a signals > and systems class I took way too many years ago. > > Imagine you have a signal you wish to transmit distance x. You can do it > with one transmitter and one receiver, but you could put another receiver at > x/2, amplify the signal and retransmit another x/2 to distance x. This way This is implicit in each node being a router. > you actually have two transmitters, but each one requires only one fourth as > much power as in the first case, so together they only require half as much > power. Now imagine three receivers and transmitters, each transmitting a > distance x/3. Each requires one ninth as much power, so together they > require a third as much power as in the first case. And so on. Cool, huh? > Perhaps you worked the same problem. > > As for station keeping, as the node size scales downward, gravity becomes > less the driver and electrostatic forces ever more important. You have to use photonic pressure for orbit control, as anything else will cause reaction mass which is unacceptable long-term. > My intuition tells me that building an M-brain is optimized by making the > individual nodes as small as our technology permits. There's synergy in having switches nearby, due to relativistic latency, and you do need a certain sail/PV array size for orbit control. They'll probably will be a bit larger than dust, few mm at the very least, possibly cm^3 to m^3 computronium blocks, which would need much larger sails. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl 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 From eugen at leitl.org Mon Sep 3 04:36:22 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 06:36:22 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshka brains] In-Reply-To: <8d71341e0709021706w76bc6179uf70fafff578fd61d@mail.gmail.com> References: <055f01c7ed86$6c136740$38054e0c@MyComputer> <200709021819.l82IJb4L003561@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <8d71341e0709021706w76bc6179uf70fafff578fd61d@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <20070903043622.GI12988@leitl.org> On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 01:06:23AM +0100, Russell Wallace wrote: > On 9/2/07, spike wrote: > > I once spent a lot of mental energy trying to figure out how to do > > station-keeping with M-brain nodes approximately the size of a dime (but > > much thinner). > > What would you see as the advantage of making them that small? Seems > to me things are easier and more efficient if you agglomerate a decent > amount of machinery together in a single mass, for a Dyson sphere > maybe km-size nodes. We break things up into small units like cell > phones because we have a particular need to make them that small, but > when we just want total computing or other throughput we use smaller > numbers of larger units. Whenever the heat production in the computation volume exceeds the rate of dissipation through the surface bounding such volume you have to fragment into computational volumes. How large the volume can become depends very much on the mode and speed of computation. We don't know yet, but km^3 would seem to be on a tall side, m^3 would seem quite doable, however, though perhaps requiring fractal cooling channels. Buckytronics does seem to like UHV and cold, though, since collisions degrade the operation by geometric distortions. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl 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 From eugen at leitl.org Mon Sep 3 04:57:39 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 06:57:39 +0200 Subject: [ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) In-Reply-To: <008501c7edb7$3c8fe5d0$e1a367d4@pcd> References: <008501c7edb7$3c8fe5d0$e1a367d4@pcd> Message-ID: <20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org> On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 02:15:48AM +0300, Khaled Aly wrote: > I've been following this since it started. I feel that a murderer should be That thread has been killed, actually. > punished to death in the easiest possible way (e.g. lethal injection), once You don't seem to know much about execution by lethal injection. Especially, since many are bungled on purpose. Say, have you ever been in jail? In terms of monetary costs, executing people is more expensive than locking them up for life. > it is proven for very sure that he/she has done so deliberately and under no You don't seem to know much about 'proving' anything outside of the realm of formal system. How do you estimate your error range in knowledge? > external effects; for two reasons: 1) It is a relief to the victim's family > unless they choose otherwise; and 2) If I were to choose, being the Do you know how clan wars start? > murderer, I'd rather go now/then than spend 20 years in jail. About therapy, Since you think that way, everyone else must also think that way. Obviously. > I think it may work in certain sick cases (there are sick souls that could > be treated why not, and there are evil souls that will not change, and there > are those whose life circumstances made them go wrong way and they need > social rehabilitation - every case is different). Interesting theories you got going there. > This is my entry to how effective is the overall current justice system. And > the ever unresolved question about the tradeoffs between personal privacy > and community security. Do any computer or IT people see a role of > algorithms helping the justice system to decide (for a start; since The legal code is already an algorithm by which the society operates (and it is really code in literal sense of the word). Fortunately, blind Justitia is executed by agents of flesh and blood, which have common sense (the law is an ass). > real-life AI is a bit far ahead). What I mean for example, consider > obtaining a search warrant. How difficult is it to write some code that > could 'assist' the decision making. First, it will perform preliminary If people need an expert system to decide such basics you should fire them. > information analysis. Second, if it's open implementation, it will be > possible to a large technical population to review it and ensure it works as > intended/declared and for the benefit of justice. And third, within a > digital world, it can ensure that a court order of privacy invasion for a > suspect individual will actually expire; provided it began, through the use People make mistakes. > of digital certificates to be provided and revoked in time by court to law > enforcement. The last of course requires that default electronic > communication be secured, and be broken only using a court digital Good idea, in theory, in practice cryptography doesn't work. > certificate. This can be as frequent as the low issuing entities would > decide according to existing situation (exceptional, less exceptional, > regular). An innocent whose privacy was broken deserves to be advised about > it at some point. > > Beyond this, any computer literate person would confirm that open source > code is most reliable because it had been reviewed by the expert public. Any code is unreliable, read Bugtraq. > Same applies to an open source algorithm that is designed to support the > justice system deciding what to do with a suspect, a person in trial, or an > indicted person and let that be an advisory input for trial. > > Unlike few people may think, computers and human minds don't work the same O'Rly? > way. Computers are structured crunching speed machines and minds are pattern > learning neural machines. They are complementary (until neural network > computing make it to market and yet it will be v. hard to mimic the brain). > Why does law enforcement, or as a whole the justice system use computers > only for data recording purposes. What about the huge analytic power that Do you know many LEOs or judges? Do you know much about system security? > can be made presentable to humans to evaluate and judge. I don't think any > final sentence should be produced by a machine with the current state of the Thank you for that. > art, or may be never. But speaking preliminary and analytic support, > incorporating digital technology can potentially resolve many issues and > cases where the society disagrees about how just the outcome was. I could see whether computer assist would be good in forensics, but in decision-making, that's ridiculous. By the time it will be useful, there be computer crime, as in: criminal computers. > Greatest software technologies came out of open source because it is > auditable. And that's much like digital democracy. Transparency does not It is so difficult to build robust electronic voting systems and people are so ignorant that currently all such attempts need to be banned. > compromise rule of law -- it rather enhances it. Sadly, digital technology > is being consumed for many irrelevant but sellable applications before it is > being considered to support a sound social infrastructure. And what's more > relevant than justice... > ka, phd You have no idea how funny you are. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl 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 From pjmanney at gmail.com Mon Sep 3 05:04:42 2007 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Sun, 2 Sep 2007 22:04:42 -0700 Subject: [ExI] The Street Performer Protocol In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0708270602r11dd1220y9ef569f4798f3c3e@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0708270602r11dd1220y9ef569f4798f3c3e@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <29666bf30709022204k481bb1e5qd526a5203bc22022@mail.gmail.com> On 8/27/07, Emlyn wrote: > "We introduce the Street Performer Protocol, >http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/ Forgive the long post, but I'd like to address the different problems in Kelsey and Schneier's paper "The Street Performer's Protocol and Digital Copyrights" and Emlyn's subsequent analysis as I see them, as someone who works within the existing system daily and would love to see a new system that benefits creators and stops them from being content slaves. In general, I think the paper is exactly what you would expect cryptographers to write: it's about protection of digital information transfer, not about content and why people make it, sell it or and buy it, which is what an economic system stands on. And that's what they're proposing ? an economic system. Only it's just a system, without the economics. Who the New World is Up Against First, let me repeat what you probably already know (and if you really do, you can skip this and the next paragraph): Beyond the entrenchment of the distribution companies and the 'war on [copyright] terror' they wage hand in hand with the US Government, let's remember that the reason the war involves the US Government against the rest of the world is that most of the content being pirated/shared/appropriated is filtered through the US, who gets its cut. That is not to say that there isn't perfectly good content made in other countries that people want. It means that the US distributes more content people want than any other country on Earth. Media (which includes hardware, software and content for entertainment and information) is arguably the US's single most important industry, based on both money and influence, and if you appropriate enough of anything, you're sure to run afoul of the big guys: News Corp, CBS/Viacom, Disney, NBC/Universal, Time-Warner, Sony. Each of them is a vertically and horizontally integrated multinational corporation. Hence the major distribution companies who drive the copyright infringement train utilize US market forces and political leverage, even if their parent companies are based overseas, like Sony. They are a very united front, with extraordinary political leverage through organizations like the Motion Picture Association of America and the State Department. For instance, the MPAA was responsible for twisting the Swedish government's arm to prosecute Pirate Bay. Or no more US media product to Sweden. Think about that for a moment. You may think the MPAA, RIAA and the rest of the gang are dinosaurs, but they'll stick around longer than you think. As I write, they are systematically destroying entertainment labor unions and if they are successful at the next round of Screen Actor's Guild, Writer's Guild and Director's Guild negotiations this year, the union system will be finished for good. [Yes, yes, I know the libertarians among you are cheering.] And everyone working for them will be doubly screwed until the paradigm changes in their favor. And who knows when that will be. That's the long way of saying they won't go quickly or quietly. That's the bad news. There IS a growing group of independent, artist-owned and operated distributors developing, like record-labels, publishing houses, etc. But few of the profitable companies can resist the suitcase full of cash or stock options when the big boys come knocking. They all eventually go for the greenbacks and trade in their youthful renegade dreams for the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Bling, baby. That's what REAL social status is all about. [BTW, Bling is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It makes a culture where creators are taught to aspire to Bling. Creation is not a goal, but a means to an end. And we have to live with the mediocrity. But that's another essay.] The Real Behavior of the Economic Audience-Person Why does someone spend money for a work of art or entertainment? To bond through common experience. To escape, through mental transportation or transcendence. To experience catharsis. Only when the art/entertainment is expensive does the concept of status become an issue. Then it's about ownership and its directly proportional relationship to the increasing size of one's male genitalia, not experience. Most people own a Rolls Royce to say they own a Rolls Royce and feel like a big dog, not for the driving experience. It's the same with Picassos. Big paintings = big penises. (More on that later.) Regardless of our motives, we buy to experience happiness, however it turns us on. But how do people know that work of art/entertainment will do that, so they are ready to part with their hard-earned cash? Marketing. And how does marketing work? By someone vetting the product beforehand and promising your life will be better by consuming it. I can't emphasize this enough. Reviews, word of mouth, promises of emotions to be experienced. "You'll laugh, cry, and beg for more!" Stupid ads with quotes from people you've never heard of but assume must know something, because it's them, and not you, quoted in an ad or on a dust jacket. Images of people who look like you, have lives like you, but are happier than you. Because they bought [fill in the blank]. As for the status model, to put it even more crassly, the Wannabe Big Penis buys the Big Painting because someone with a Bigger Penis bought one before him and therefore vetted his choice. His real reason is he wants to join the Big Penis Club and wave his around. Wannabe Big Penises don't buy from unknown artists, because appreciating art for art's sake isn't the issue. If they do, then they are true art connoisseurs and patrons and they really do have big cojones. And they are increasingly rare (see the Bling argument above) and deserved to be cherished for the precious species they are. The SPP model is dependent on a wishful expectation of future output. That just doesn't cut it when parting with real money. People shop to find the best value for their money. If they blindly invested in entertainment, as the model depicts, every movie star and famous author and singer would have a hit every time they worked, just because at one time, they did something people really liked. Sure, die-hard, indiscriminant fans might, but they are not enough to generate the kind of income the authors assume. As for Emlyn's Coca Cola reference, we know Coca Cola's good because... someone told us. Then we tried it, we liked it and we had the same experience again, because the Coke experience is infinitely reproducible. If Coke came out with a new flavor, I wouldn't try it just because Coke made it (mostly because I know their other products are nowhere as successful as their first one). I'd wait to see if anyone else liked it, after the fact. But by then, based on the pre-pay SPP model, it's too late. In the movie business, part of the SPP model already exists as one of the benchmarks studios use to assess a project's worth in the first place: "Can this star open a movie?" 'Open a movie' means enough people will see it opening weekend to make it a hit, just because the star is in it. The movie business likes to say only a handful of people in the entire world can open a movie, but in reality, no one can (well, maybe Will Farrell can...). I can name dozens of movies with Tom Cruise, Harrison Ford, Julia Roberts, etc. that no one went to see. Obviously, it's the same in publishing, music, etc. There is no such thing as a "sure thing." That's why the entertainment business is structured so that one giant, blockbuster hit pays for the nine other underperformers and outright flops. Executives cling to the commonly accepted 'open a movie' fallacy so they can sleep better at night. The New Economic Landscape The coming art/info/entertainment world is a flooded landscape of endless content, where hundred-million dollar movies and a hit-maker's single compete on the same playing field as naked dancing and fart-a-thons on YouTube. There is too much product and not enough time or money to consume it all. And it's only just begun. Already, the economic model is entirely about how to get the audiences' attention long enough for them to want to buy the product. If you don't give them something to attract them, keep them and then reinforce the choice with a positive reaction, you've failed before you've started. How does the SPP model work at all in an economic system where attention, and not product, is the rare and valued commodity? The Problem with Sponsors Sponsor status only works in sub-cultures where financial influence over creativity buys social status and the buyer has money to burn. That's the nouveau riche and old money's noblesse oblige. It's possible this model could create a new social status symbol among the masses, but given their limited resources, it's not probable. At least until technoutopian nano-abundance, and then we're all artist-performers in Techno Heaven. ;-) I don't think the average person can afford to play the sponsor game when they are already up to their eyeballs in debt over status markers like shelter and transportation, which are far more crucial expenditures. Also, with money comes a desire for control and recognition. Who's going to get the press: the creator or Daddy Artbucks, who made it all possible? Already, the media itself wants to be the story and it's getting less and less interested in the product as? well, product, as opposed to promoting the brand (Disney, Fox/News Corp, etc.) it came from as the ultimate product. Again, it all comes back to the economics of attention. If PBS's model of sponsorship actually worked, the US Congress wouldn't have the power to regularly threaten to end its existence. PBS exists because of American tax dollars as much as sponsorship and is therefore beholden to politics. And most of the sponsorship is not corporate, but from educational foundations that give money to worthy causes. They are a small (and growing smaller) resource, as many foundations have discovered other worthy causes, like ending malaria and polio. Or universal literacy. I know personally how hard it is to get non-educational sponsorship for television. Unless you're giving the sponsor exactly what they want, which usually amounts to your product-as-ad for the sponsor or the promise of exclusivity with the distribution company, which is not in the distribution company's best interest, you've got a hard row to hoe ahead of you. Technological delivery systems Online books are nowhere near ready for mass acceptance, you early adopters notwithstanding. It's hard for electronic books to beat the easy, transportable and bug-free technology of a paperback or hardcover. Maybe in a few more years, but right now, the delivery systems for books suck. Below is an interesting analysis based on Stephen King's experience online-publishing The Plant? http://slashdot.org/features/00/11/30/1238204.shtml ?which Jon Katz describes as not about the technology itself, but about how publishers don't understand how the technology can be used to their best advantage. Simply put, they don't take advantage of the economics of attention. Either way, distributors are not getting it. The technology behind future media convergence already exists. It's those pesky distributors who control enough of the content, technology and pipelines who are holding it up to milk their model for as long as they can, even as it falls to bits under them. And why not? Anyone ever heard of petroleum? Yes, yes, I know the oil business is a different economic model, but one of the reasons the energy industry isn't enthusiastic about alternative sources is because the cost of infrastructure and the uncertainty of a new economic model is too high to justify not milking the old one to the end. It's the same with entertainment. Sell the proles a VHS, then a DVD, then a HD-DVD to justify selling them the same movie again and again, but don't change the economic concept of distribution. The costs and risks are far too high. Which takes us right back to the beginning. There must be an alternative to the present system. I just don't think the SPP model is it. I'd love to know your thoughts. Respectfully, PJ From aiguy at comcast.net Mon Sep 3 10:04:10 2007 From: aiguy at comcast.net (Gary Miller) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 06:04:10 -0400 Subject: [ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) In-Reply-To: <20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org> References: <008501c7edb7$3c8fe5d0$e1a367d4@pcd> <20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org> Message-ID: <002001c7ee11$c6384660$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> Eugen, It is one thing to reiterate that a thread is dead as a moderator that is within your rights. But to reply publicly and in doing so to promote your own viewpoint when you expect others to not reply because the thread has been declared dead by you is in my opinion an abuse of power. I realize that you took the moderator position because nobody else wanted it, and I thank you for that I think, but I would suggest that you do not put out fires by fanning the flames. I also think the tone of the reply was rather insulting and would have expected a better showing from a moderator representing this group. Currently this sounds more like censorship and punishment of opposing viewpoint than moderation. Gary -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Eugen Leitl Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 12:58 AM To: extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org Subject: Re: [ExI] free-will, determinism,crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 02:15:48AM +0300, Khaled Aly wrote: > I've been following this since it started. I feel that a murderer > should be That thread has been killed, actually. > punished to death in the easiest possible way (e.g. lethal injection), > once You don't seem to know much about execution by lethal injection. Especially, since many are bungled on purpose. Say, have you ever been in jail? In terms of monetary costs, executing people is more expensive than locking them up for life. > it is proven for very sure that he/she has done so deliberately and > under no You don't seem to know much about 'proving' anything outside of the realm of formal system. How do you estimate your error range in knowledge? > external effects; for two reasons: 1) It is a relief to the victim's > family unless they choose otherwise; and 2) If I were to choose, being > the Do you know how clan wars start? > murderer, I'd rather go now/then than spend 20 years in jail. About > therapy, Since you think that way, everyone else must also think that way. Obviously. > I think it may work in certain sick cases (there are sick souls that > could be treated why not, and there are evil souls that will not > change, and there are those whose life circumstances made them go > wrong way and they need social rehabilitation - every case is different). Interesting theories you got going there. > This is my entry to how effective is the overall current justice > system. And the ever unresolved question about the tradeoffs between > personal privacy and community security. Do any computer or IT people > see a role of algorithms helping the justice system to decide (for a > start; since The legal code is already an algorithm by which the society operates (and it is really code in literal sense of the word). Fortunately, blind Justitia is executed by agents of flesh and blood, which have common sense (the law is an ass). > real-life AI is a bit far ahead). What I mean for example, consider > obtaining a search warrant. How difficult is it to write some code > that could 'assist' the decision making. First, it will perform > preliminary If people need an expert system to decide such basics you should fire them. > information analysis. Second, if it's open implementation, it will be > possible to a large technical population to review it and ensure it > works as intended/declared and for the benefit of justice. And third, > within a digital world, it can ensure that a court order of privacy > invasion for a suspect individual will actually expire; provided it > began, through the use People make mistakes. > of digital certificates to be provided and revoked in time by court to > law enforcement. The last of course requires that default electronic > communication be secured, and be broken only using a court digital Good idea, in theory, in practice cryptography doesn't work. > certificate. This can be as frequent as the low issuing entities would > decide according to existing situation (exceptional, less exceptional, > regular). An innocent whose privacy was broken deserves to be advised > about it at some point. > > Beyond this, any computer literate person would confirm that open > source code is most reliable because it had been reviewed by the expert public. Any code is unreliable, read Bugtraq. > Same applies to an open source algorithm that is designed to support > the justice system deciding what to do with a suspect, a person in > trial, or an indicted person and let that be an advisory input for trial. > > Unlike few people may think, computers and human minds don't work the > same O'Rly? > way. Computers are structured crunching speed machines and minds are > pattern learning neural machines. They are complementary (until neural > network computing make it to market and yet it will be v. hard to mimic the brain). > Why does law enforcement, or as a whole the justice system use > computers only for data recording purposes. What about the huge > analytic power that Do you know many LEOs or judges? Do you know much about system security? > can be made presentable to humans to evaluate and judge. I don't think > any final sentence should be produced by a machine with the current > state of the Thank you for that. > art, or may be never. But speaking preliminary and analytic support, > incorporating digital technology can potentially resolve many issues > and cases where the society disagrees about how just the outcome was. I could see whether computer assist would be good in forensics, but in decision-making, that's ridiculous. By the time it will be useful, there be computer crime, as in: criminal computers. > Greatest software technologies came out of open source because it is > auditable. And that's much like digital democracy. Transparency does > not It is so difficult to build robust electronic voting systems and people are so ignorant that currently all such attempts need to be banned. > compromise rule of law -- it rather enhances it. Sadly, digital > technology is being consumed for many irrelevant but sellable > applications before it is being considered to support a sound social > infrastructure. And what's more relevant than justice... > ka, phd You have no idea how funny you are. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl 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 _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.13.2/985 - Release Date: 9/2/2007 4:32 PM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.13.2/985 - Release Date: 9/2/2007 4:32 PM From eugen at leitl.org Mon Sep 3 10:26:30 2007 From: eugen at leitl.org (Eugen Leitl) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 12:26:30 +0200 Subject: [ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) In-Reply-To: <002001c7ee11$c6384660$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> References: <20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org> <002001c7ee11$c6384660$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> Message-ID: <20070903102630.GR12988@leitl.org> On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 06:04:10AM -0400, Gary Miller wrote: > It is one thing to reiterate that a thread is dead as a moderator that is > within your rights. > > But to reply publicly and in doing so to promote your own viewpoint when you My viewpoint is that this was a moronic thread, and I apologize for not nipping it in the butt (yip! yip!) -- I can't camp in front of the display all day long, after all. (Or can I?) > expect others to not reply > because the thread has been declared dead by you is in my opinion an abuse > of power. > > I realize that you took the moderator position because nobody else wanted > it, and I thank you for that I think, but > I would suggest that you do not put out fires by fanning the flames. > > I also think the tone of the reply was rather insulting and would have > expected a better showing from a moderator > representing this group. I reserve the right to poke fun at particularly idiotic posters. > Currently this sounds more like censorship and punishment of opposing > viewpoint than moderation. I must admit my first impulse was to put the guy on moderation, but I figured he probably missed the killthread. -- Eugen* Leitl leitl 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 From russell.wallace at gmail.com Mon Sep 3 10:44:20 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 11:44:20 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshkabrains] In-Reply-To: <200709030418.l834IRcF001147@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <8d71341e0709021706w76bc6179uf70fafff578fd61d@mail.gmail.com> <200709030418.l834IRcF001147@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <8d71341e0709030344g2062dad7m5f713f231e7b6083@mail.gmail.com> On 9/3/07, spike wrote: > Russell, this turns into an interesting question of autonomous manufacturing > optimization and launching of nodes, as well as optimization of the use of > energy from sunlight. *nods* Well, for initial bootstrap there are other considerations; on the one hand, you don't want the up front cost to be too big, on the other hand there'll be mining of materials from asteroids, gas giants etc, and the machines needed to do this efficiently will have a certain preferred size range. In this context I'm only considering the most efficient configuration of the final Dyson sphere. > Imagine you have a signal you wish to transmit distance x. You can do it > with one transmitter and one receiver, but you could put another receiver at > x/2, amplify the signal and retransmit another x/2 to distance x. This way > you actually have two transmitters, but each one requires only one fourth as > much power as in the first case, so together they only require half as much > power. Now imagine three receivers and transmitters, each transmitting a > distance x/3. Each requires one ninth as much power, so together they > require a third as much power as in the first case. And so on. Cool, huh? > Perhaps you worked the same problem. Ah, interesting. I don't recall having come across that one before, and your solution makes sense when transmitter count is the only variable being considered; but there are factors you're not taking into account: 1. Transmitter size matters, and with fewer larger nodes you can afford to make the transmitters bigger. A 2 meter dish at 2 megameter range gives the same beam footprint as a 1 m dish at 1 Mm (or you can take part of the benefit in the ability to use longer wavelength photons, which have less energy). 2. Similarly, receiver size also matters. 3. Most importantly, with big nodes you can eliminate most of the transmitters completely, replacing them with wires that don't spill photons into space. Alternatively you can think of this as the ultimate limiting case of your solution: if more transmitters in the chain are more efficient, use a wire = a chain of transmitters that are all in contact with each other. > As for station keeping, as the node size scales downward, gravity becomes > less the driver and electrostatic forces ever more important. Okay, but electrostatic isn't the only option, nor necessarily the best one. There's photon pressure as Eugen observes - this scales down with thickness, but doesn't care about width. There are also magnetic forces, which are arguably easier to control than electrostatic. These scale better to large sizes than electrostatic does. > My intuition tells me that building an M-brain is optimized by making the > individual nodes as small as our technology permits. *nods* Mine tells me it's optimized by making the nodes as large as reasonably practical, the above being some of the reasons. From russell.wallace at gmail.com Mon Sep 3 11:00:06 2007 From: russell.wallace at gmail.com (Russell Wallace) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 12:00:06 +0100 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshka brains] In-Reply-To: <20070903043622.GI12988@leitl.org> References: <055f01c7ed86$6c136740$38054e0c@MyComputer> <200709021819.l82IJb4L003561@andromeda.ziaspace.com> <8d71341e0709021706w76bc6179uf70fafff578fd61d@mail.gmail.com> <20070903043622.GI12988@leitl.org> Message-ID: <8d71341e0709030400h7ac62c29p28f37e91a6b551d4@mail.gmail.com> On 9/3/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > Whenever the heat production in the computation volume exceeds the > rate of dissipation through the surface bounding such volume you have > to fragment into computational volumes. How large the volume can become > depends very much on the mode and speed of computation. We don't know > yet, but km^3 would seem to be on a tall side, m^3 would seem quite > doable, however, though perhaps requiring fractal cooling channels. > Buckytronics does seem to like UHV and cold, though, since collisions > degrade the operation by geometric distortions. Yeah. Of course the nodes should probably be disks rather than spheres. Thickness is perhaps the primary variable... which also depends on the thickness of the whole shell. Let's look at some numbers to get a feel for the sort of magnitudes involved. Suppose there's 100 Earth masses of material to work with (if our solar system is reasonably representative, that's likely to be typical to an order of magnitude, assuming most of the hydrogen and helium isn't useful, and omitting helium fusion and starlifting as potential sources from the current analysis), and that the radius is 2 AU. m = 6e26 kg r = 3e11 m a = 4 pi r^2 = 1.13e24 m^2 m/a = 530 kg/m^2 So we're looking at on the order of a meter total thickness. Of course radius isn't a fixed constant, but this seems like at least a plausible set of figures for a starting point. Now I'll conjecture that there's no point making the thickness of the shell more than a few times that of individual nodes, because inner ones trying to cool will just be dumping waste heat into the outer ones, which are a) starved of sunlight and b) reflecting some of the heat back at the inner ones. Of course it might be useful to have a hierarchy of nodes at substantially different operating temperatures and radii, e.g. the inner shell operates at room temperature and dumps IR as waste heat, the outer shell operates at cryogenic temperature, uses IR as energy source and dumps microwaves as waste heat, to get the most computation out of every joule. How does that affect the analysis? I'll postulate for the sake of argument that the total number of nodes in all layers is no more than 100, so the thickness of an individual node will be 10 mm. 10 mm? Okay, now we are down to dime-sized nodes along the z-axis at least. But this is in space, where structures can be pancake-flimsy. I'll conjecture it would be feasible and desirable, even with that thickness, to make nodes disc-shaped and at least 1 km across. From ka.aly at luxsci.net Mon Sep 3 13:44:39 2007 From: ka.aly at luxsci.net (Khaled Aly) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 16:44:39 +0300 Subject: [ExI] Your response References: <008501c7edb7$3c8fe5d0$e1a367d4@pcd> <20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org> Message-ID: <001d01c7ee30$96643920$70a367d4@pcd> I wasn't aware the thread is closed, as I'm new to the list. My response within. If you are a list moderator, 'kindly' contact me in person. Please note that you made many insulting statements as an expression of your views. You could have made your points in a more objective way, or you could have put me on moderation as said, and take it in person. You chose to publicly offend me. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eugen Leitl" To: Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 7:57 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] free-will, determinism,crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) > On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 02:15:48AM +0300, Khaled Aly wrote: > >> I've been following this since it started. I feel that a murderer should >> be > > That thread has been killed, actually. > >> punished to death in the easiest possible way (e.g. lethal injection), >> once > > You don't seem to know much about execution by lethal injection. > Especially, since many are bungled on purpose. Say, have you ever been > in jail? ** No I haven't - why do you think so? It's normal to assume that long-term loss of freedom is not fun (many will actually die in jail anyway). You ignored my phrase (in the easiest possible way). I'm obviously not an execution expert, nor was any of the posters. I think the meaning is what matters. > > In terms of monetary costs, executing people is more expensive than > locking them up for life. ** Not sure how, but the thread's concern was about justice not cost. > >> it is proven for very sure that he/she has done so deliberately and under >> no > > You don't seem to know much about 'proving' anything outside of the realm > of formal system. How do you estimate your error range in knowledge? ** I did not claim any knowledge of the ways of proving guilt and innocence. You seem to be deliberately mis-reading my statements. > >> external effects; for two reasons: 1) It is a relief to the victim's >> family >> unless they choose otherwise; and 2) If I were to choose, being the > > Do you know how clan wars start? ** Sure. They start when people take justice in their hands, not when justice is done by justice system. It's expected that a victims family may want the releif of the indicted being punished, regardless of how. Though others may find the releif in forgiveness. But don't they have a right? > >> murderer, I'd rather go now/then than spend 20 years in jail. About >> therapy, > > Since you think that way, everyone else must also think that way. > Obviously. ** Did I say that? > >> I think it may work in certain sick cases (there are sick souls that >> could >> be treated why not, and there are evil souls that will not change, and >> there >> are those whose life circumstances made them go wrong way and they need >> social rehabilitation - every case is different). > > Interesting theories you got going there. ** I think this is just intuitive- no claims of theories. Same has been expressed in many posts in different ways and contexts. > >> This is my entry to how effective is the overall current justice system. >> And >> the ever unresolved question about the tradeoffs between personal privacy >> and community security. Do any computer or IT people see a role of >> algorithms helping the justice system to decide (for a start; since > > The legal code is already an algorithm by which the society operates > (and it is really code in literal sense of the word). Fortunately, blind > Justitia is executed by agents of flesh and blood, which have common > sense (the law is an ass). ** If the law is an ass, why have it at the first place? Or should it be fundamentally modified? Isn't this an insult to law and its practitioners. Common sense implies arbitrary actions and opens doors for personal-based decisions. Yes, the law itself has much similarity to mathematical algorithms, and that's where computer code may assist. > >> real-life AI is a bit far ahead). What I mean for example, consider >> obtaining a search warrant. How difficult is it to write some code that >> could 'assist' the decision making. First, it will perform preliminary > > If people need an expert system to decide such basics you should fire > them. ** Expert systems can support an analysis not replace the decision making. They could but it won't be right. > >> information analysis. Second, if it's open implementation, it will be >> possible to a large technical population to review it and ensure it works >> as >> intended/declared and for the benefit of justice. And third, within a >> digital world, it can ensure that a court order of privacy invasion for a >> suspect individual will actually expire; provided it began, through the >> use > > People make mistakes. ** Yes you said it (against some other arguments). A coded algorithm functions exactly as is written, including any bugs. Open source code has fewer bugs because it gets reviewed and fixed by public expert community. > >> of digital certificates to be provided and revoked in time by court to >> law >> enforcement. The last of course requires that default electronic >> communication be secured, and be broken only using a court digital > > Good idea, in theory, in practice cryptography doesn't work. ** Cryptography is the basis of ecommerce for both authentiction and transaction completion, including B2B, which may make the bulk of transaction values. What exactly doesn't work there? ** You keep repeating the word "theory/theoretical". Isn't this whole thread theoretical/hypothetical? Has the initiator present his ideas as a proposal for immediate implementation? > >> certificate. This can be as frequent as the low issuing entities would >> decide according to existing situation (exceptional, less exceptional, >> regular). An innocent whose privacy was broken deserves to be advised >> about >> it at some point. >> >> Beyond this, any computer literate person would confirm that open source >> code is most reliable because it had been reviewed by the expert public. > > Any code is unreliable, read Bugtraq. ** Without reading Bugtraq, and even if I never wrote code, of course any code has bugs. But the code never functions arbitrarily. > >> Same applies to an open source algorithm that is designed to support the >> justice system deciding what to do with a suspect, a person in trial, or >> an >> indicted person and let that be an advisory input for trial. >> >> Unlike few people may think, computers and human minds don't work the >> same > > O'Rly? ** Where is the problem here? From a computer architecture viewpoint, there are both similarities and complementary differences. > >> way. Computers are structured crunching speed machines and minds are >> pattern >> learning neural machines. They are complementary (until neural network >> computing make it to market and yet it will be v. hard to mimic the >> brain). >> Why does law enforcement, or as a whole the justice system use computers >> only for data recording purposes. What about the huge analytic power that > > Do you know many LEOs or judges? Do you know much about system security? ** Never said I did. Yes I know about IT system security, if that's what you meant. > >> can be made presentable to humans to evaluate and judge. I don't think >> any >> final sentence should be produced by a machine with the current state of >> the > > Thank you for that. ** Lots of mocking statements. > >> art, or may be never. But speaking preliminary and analytic support, >> incorporating digital technology can potentially resolve many issues and >> cases where the society disagrees about how just the outcome was. > > I could see whether computer assist would be good in forensics, but in > decision-making, that's ridiculous. By the time it will be useful, there > be computer crime, as in: criminal computers. ** I repeatedly wrote decision making 'support', which you're omitting. That includes forensics. How can computers make decisions? Computer crimes exist for long time. They are mostly network related. Public networks are not regulated, right? > >> Greatest software technologies came out of open source because it is >> auditable. And that's much like digital democracy. Transparency does not > > It is so difficult to build robust electronic voting systems and people > are so ignorant that currently all such attempts need to be banned. ** Or rather, invest in building more robust systems and educate/inform people about using them right. Both people and computers make mistakes, but computers do exactly what they're told to. They cannot behave arbitrarily. Why do you think that people are so ignorant- shouldn't it be more like "un-informed"! > >> compromise rule of law -- it rather enhances it. Sadly, digital >> technology >> is being consumed for many irrelevant but sellable applications before it >> is >> being considered to support a sound social infrastructure. And what's >> more >> relevant than justice... >> ka, phd > > You have no idea how funny you are. ** You probably have an idea how biased and offensive you sound. > > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl 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 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From amara at amara.com Mon Sep 3 18:59:55 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 20:59:55 +0200 Subject: [ExI] META: digest behavior? Message-ID: Thanks BillK, Chris and Spike. You're right, I had the archive address pointing to lucifer. The digest probably has a minimum kB it must reach before it's sent out, and it's been a slow summer probably. I can use the archives to check, now that I have the correct address. Thanks again, Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Sat Sep 1 19:43:35 2007 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Sat, 1 Sep 2007 21:43:35 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Universal Transhumanist Bibliography Message-ID: <580930c20709011243i3641066cr4ff2a4b066cc860a@mail.gmail.com> The Associazione Italiana Transumanisti has resolved to establish through its Web site a bibliographic resource for transhumanists worldwide and for anybody interested in studying transhumanist ideas and related technological, scientific, and philosophical issues, offering full details as well as links to the appropriate pages to purchase the books and/or to access their online full-text edition or dedicated Web sites, if any. The project for the time being is limited to books containing essays and fiction which are available in print. We are especially, but of course not exclusively, interested in bibliographies including titles in languages other than English and Italian. For instance, we have sofar only *two* books either in Spanish or Portoguese out of a hundred titles... Natasha has kindly suggested that I extend the invitation to participate to this project to the members of this list, which I have recently joined. We thank in advance anybody willing to contribute with a few recommendations. Stefano Vaj National Secretary of AIT http://www.biopolitica.it -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070901/8c8d09aa/attachment.html From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Mon Sep 3 18:57:16 2007 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 20:57:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) In-Reply-To: <20070903102630.GR12988@leitl.org> References: <20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org> <002001c7ee11$c6384660$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> <20070903102630.GR12988@leitl.org> Message-ID: <580930c20709031157w7d4b6c54h8a29e95bd71f2dc1@mail.gmail.com> On 9/3/07, Eugen Leitl wrote: > My viewpoint is that this was a moronic thread, and I apologize for not > nipping it in the butt (yip! yip!) -- I can't camp in front of the > display all day long, after all. (Or can I?) Actually, you killed it quickly enough for me not to receive but the last few messages. Too bad, I was curious... :-) Stefano Vaj From amara at amara.com Mon Sep 3 19:10:16 2007 From: amara at amara.com (Amara Graps) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 21:10:16 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Chips The Size Of[interplanetary] Dust [and matrioshka brains] Message-ID: >As for station keeping, as the node size scales downward, gravity becomes >less the driver and electrostatic forces ever more important. At about 1 micron-sized particles, Lorenz force is a perturbing force to gravity. At about 0.01 micron, the Lorentz begins to dominate depending on the circum-whatever environment. Don't forget about radiation pressure force too, but RP not important for sizes of tens or hundreds of nanometers. What kind of magnetic fields and plasmas do you think would be in the vicinity? Amara -- Amara Graps, PhD www.amara.com Associate Research Scientist, Planetary Science Institute (PSI), Tucson INAF Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI), Roma, Italia From mmbutler at gmail.com Mon Sep 3 19:25:11 2007 From: mmbutler at gmail.com (Michael M. Butler) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 12:25:11 -0700 Subject: [ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) In-Reply-To: <580930c20709031157w7d4b6c54h8a29e95bd71f2dc1@mail.gmail.com> References: <20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org> <002001c7ee11$c6384660$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> <20070903102630.GR12988@leitl.org> <580930c20709031157w7d4b6c54h8a29e95bd71f2dc1@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <7d79ed890709031225m6136fa81k8c902d55a2b7c032@mail.gmail.com> My viewpoint is that this is more fun than I can stand. See you around the universe. Spaeter. -- Michael M. Butler : m m b u t l e r ( a t ) g m a i l . c o m "I'm going to get over this some time. Might as well be now." From ka.aly at luxsci.net Mon Sep 3 20:47:20 2007 From: ka.aly at luxsci.net (Khaled Aly) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 23:47:20 +0300 Subject: [ExI] free-will, determinism, crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) References: <20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org><002001c7ee11$c6384660$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> <20070903102630.GR12988@leitl.org> Message-ID: <00ab01c7ee6b$a1d990d0$70a367d4@pcd> Further to my last mail, I strongly felt that the initiator's views were academic and unrealizable. I didn't think they needed to be mocked. There were tens of posts and I've read only some. You could obviously judge and choose which ones were moronic. Whether you are an official moderator or a volunteer, and though being new to the list, I ask you to read the "EXTROPY-CHAT" LIST AGREEMENT" and apply same to your response. I ask you to check your own multiple policy violations and if it is within your mandate to advise me of my violations that resulted in your considering to put me on moderation for my post. Thanks. ----- Original Message ----- From: "Eugen Leitl" To: Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 1:26 PM Subject: Re: [ExI] free-will, determinism,crime and punishment (& CS techniques - Security and/or Privacy ) > On Mon, Sep 03, 2007 at 06:04:10AM -0400, Gary Miller wrote: > >> It is one thing to reiterate that a thread is dead as a moderator that is >> within your rights. >> >> But to reply publicly and in doing so to promote your own viewpoint when you > > My viewpoint is that this was a moronic thread, and I apologize for not > nipping it in the butt (yip! yip!) -- I can't camp in front of the > display all day long, after all. (Or can I?) > >> expect others to not reply >> because the thread has been declared dead by you is in my opinion an abuse >> of power. >> >> I realize that you took the moderator position because nobody else wanted >> it, and I thank you for that I think, but >> I would suggest that you do not put out fires by fanning the flames. >> >> I also think the tone of the reply was rather insulting and would have >> expected a better showing from a moderator >> representing this group. > > I reserve the right to poke fun at particularly idiotic posters. > >> Currently this sounds more like censorship and punishment of opposing >> viewpoint than moderation. > > I must admit my first impulse was to put the guy on moderation, but I > figured he probably missed the killthread. > > -- > Eugen* Leitl leitl 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 > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070903/06dd2766/attachment.html From scerir at libero.it Mon Sep 3 20:42:53 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 22:42:53 +0200 Subject: [ExI] health expenditure vs mortality References: <008501c7edb7$3c8fe5d0$e1a367d4@pcd><20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org> <001d01c7ee30$96643920$70a367d4@pcd> Message-ID: <000a01c7ee6b$00c96b20$f7941f97@archimede> interesting chart (excel) - OECD health data 2007 http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/46/36/38979632.xls (mortality stat is at the end) From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Sep 4 00:13:34 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 09:43:34 +0930 Subject: [ExI] [geek] good commercial svn hosts? Message-ID: <710b78fc0709031713m7a3656es9a63c557737b0af7@mail.gmail.com> Hi all, I've recently been successful in convincing some commercial entities not to use in-house source control, but to use an externally hosted subversion repository. And now I've been asked the hard question, which service do you recommend? I had thought that sourceforge had a closed-source hosting service as well as open source, but I can't see any sign of that. So I'm stuck with choosing a commercial entity. Anyone got ideas/experience of such services? The only one I've personally used, and only minimally at that, is cvsdude.org. This is for closed source hosting, has to be secure (for some reasonable value of "secure"). Recommendations? Emlyn From aiguy at comcast.net Tue Sep 4 01:49:51 2007 From: aiguy at comcast.net (Gary Miller) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 21:49:51 -0400 Subject: [ExI] [geek] good commercial svn hosts? In-Reply-To: <710b78fc0709031713m7a3656es9a63c557737b0af7@mail.gmail.com> References: <710b78fc0709031713m7a3656es9a63c557737b0af7@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <000901c7ee95$e2a8a770$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> Emlyn, Just curious, why put your reputation on the line with these commercial entities unless you've used one or more of these services enough to be confident in their security, longevity and data integrity. Open source is one thing. It tends to proliferate and end up in multiple repositories so a single group going belly up does not endanger the source's existence. And security is not an issue there. But I can't imaging a commercial enterprise entrusting it's critical development software, a major asset for most companies to a service unless they were insured, bonded, escrowed and had an established track record to insure that if the service goes belly up that their company doesn't go along with it. In addition most companies I deal with would not even allow their source code to cross the internet unless it was via a VPN or some other encrypted format. Just my opinion but backing out gracefuly may be the best couse of action. Gary -----Original Message----- From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Emlyn Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 8:14 PM To: ExI chat list Subject: [ExI] [geek] good commercial svn hosts? Hi all, I've recently been successful in convincing some commercial entities not to use in-house source control, but to use an externally hosted subversion repository. And now I've been asked the hard question, which service do you recommend? I had thought that sourceforge had a closed-source hosting service as well as open source, but I can't see any sign of that. So I'm stuck with choosing a commercial entity. Anyone got ideas/experience of such services? The only one I've personally used, and only minimally at that, is cvsdude.org. This is for closed source hosting, has to be secure (for some reasonable value of "secure"). Recommendations? Emlyn _______________________________________________ extropy-chat mailing list extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.13.2/985 - Release Date: 9/2/2007 4:32 PM No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.13.2/985 - Release Date: 9/2/2007 4:32 PM From andres at thoughtware.tv Tue Sep 4 02:10:03 2007 From: andres at thoughtware.tv (Andres Colon) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 22:10:03 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Transhuman Targeted Advertisement Message-ID: Now with all the futuristic ads running around, we at Thoughtware.TVwondered what a *real* Transhumanist Ad would look like and more importantly, who would be in it. Our guess is it would look a little bit something like this. Enjoy! (Please Note: This is not a real advertisment, it was created for H+ humor. Thoughtware.TV has no relationships with Heineiken nor do we aim to imply that any of those depicted in this video endorse said company or any of its products. Should anyone depicted in this video wish to have it taken offline, please contact us at the following address: andres, at thoughtware dot TV) Andres, Thoughtware.TV -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070903/9ea844d9/attachment.html From andres at thoughtware.tv Tue Sep 4 02:39:37 2007 From: andres at thoughtware.tv (Andres Colon) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 22:39:37 -0400 Subject: [ExI] Transhuman Targeted Advertisement In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On 9/3/07, Andres Colon wrote: > > Now with all the futuristic ads running around, we at Thoughtware.TVwondered what a *real* Transhumanist Ad would look like and more > importantly, who would be in it. > > Our guess is it would look a little bit something like this. Enjoy! > > (Please Note: This is not a real advertisment, it was created for H+ > humor. Thoughtware.TV has no relationships with Heineiken nor do we aim to > imply that any of those depicted in this video endorse said company or any > of its products. Should anyone depicted in this video wish to have it taken > offline, please contact us at the following address: andres, at thoughtware > dot TV) > > Andres, > Thoughtware.TV > You can't get very far without a link, can you? So here it is! http://thoughtware.tv/videos/show/735 Andres, Thoughtware.TV -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070903/2686059a/attachment.html From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Sep 4 03:37:48 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 13:07:48 +0930 Subject: [ExI] [geek] good commercial svn hosts? In-Reply-To: <000901c7ee95$e2a8a770$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> References: <710b78fc0709031713m7a3656es9a63c557737b0af7@mail.gmail.com> <000901c7ee95$e2a8a770$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> Message-ID: <710b78fc0709032037i47cf51cbya9ece9911adbc99e@mail.gmail.com> Now that's very old school of you Gary! (of course, I could come back crying some time in the future, but I'm relatively confident). On 04/09/07, Gary Miller wrote: > Emlyn, > > Just curious, why put your reputation on the line with these commercial > entities unless you've used one or more of these services enough to be > confident in their security, longevity and data integrity. Well, I've used svn over the internet for commercial work before. Specifically, my previous employer is geographically distributed all over Australia (developers in 4 states by the time I left). We took the decision early on to hire based on talent rather than location, and expect geographic separateness in the design of the team structure. Now, even though the company was heavily distributed, it wasn't even a medium sized business from a USians point of view. It never got beyond 15 full time employees while I was there. So, doing something cost effective was always going to be necessary. I was also dead against a VPN, because they're clunky things that break the flow of work. What we ended up doing was hosting our own svn repository in one of the state offices, and making it visible online (via Apache+ssl). Using that plus TortoiseSVN for the source control client (plus IM and remote meeting tools for collaboration) led to a very tight little setup, short development times, very low friction environment. (Out of interest, we also used NUnit and CruiseControl.Net to get automated build, unit testing, and release to a web portal, that's the good stuff!). Also of note was the use of SSH for remote access to other services, without requiring a VPN. Was it secure enough? We think so. How can you ever know such things for sure? Our code doesn't appear to be posted on haxxor sites... The new case I have is two commercial entities which are only very loosely related (contract specifies that entity A develops core product for entity B, and B then owns the product, and does in-house development of plugins). A source control repository is mandatory (I refuse to work without one), but must be accessible to developers employed by A and B. For various reasons, hosting internally to either A or B is impractical (well, it could be done, but neither is set up for it, internal bureacratic nightmare), so a commercial host outside of both would be a great alternative technical solution, and somewhat to my surprise, looks as though it may be acceptable to all parties involved. > > Open source is one thing. It tends to proliferate and end up in multiple > repositories so a single group going belly up does not endanger the source's > existence. And security is not an issue there. > > But I can't imaging a commercial enterprise entrusting it's critical > development software, a major asset for most companies to a service unless > they were insured, bonded, escrowed and had an established track record to > insure that if the service goes belly up that their company doesn't go along > with it. Well, there are three issues I can see here: reliability of service, external access security, and trustworthiness of service supplier. Reliability is easy. It's an svn repository, so it's already known reliable software. You can't control for the service provider's hardware setup and practices, but many allow you to periodically download a backup dump of the whole thing. What I intend to add to that is to schedule nightly (more frequent?) repository dumps to a machine under one or the other entities' control (this can be done remotely and can include all history, everything). So losing code isn't a problem. And if the service is flaky, well we'll notice that pretty quickly, and switch supplier. External access security should be straightforward too. Access must be via ssl, and then it's just about account management (being anal about everyone having their own account, making sure to disable accounts when they should no longer have access, even using folder level security to enforce people only accessing what they need). Trustworthiness of the supplier is the tricky part, as you've said above. There seems to be some openmindedness on this score between the parties involved, but finding a reputable service provider is really important, which is why I'm starting to ask around. Honestly, I don't really know how to verify this besides being recommended a service by someone sensible, then researching the service they provide, terms and conditions, all that stuff. > > In addition most companies I deal with would not even allow their source > code to cross the internet unless it was via a VPN or some other encrypted > format. SSL is an encrypted format. > > Just my opinion but backing out gracefuly may be the best couse of action. > > Gary I see this mentality a lot in large corporates. It's the corporate castle model of IT, with DMZs and firewalls and possibly MEC (Man Eating Crocodiles). That stuff is all fine and dandy, but contributes a *massive* overhead to any project which has to interact with it, basically because it's about taking a perfectly functional connection to the internet and reducing its functionality in many wonderfully diabolical ways. Security is important of course(!), but it's in a tradeoff relationship with cost & functionality. In my opinion, many companies err vastly too far on the side of security. Why do they do that? Because we have this model of *** OUR COMPANY *** -> barrier -> barrier -> ... -> barrier -> evil internet cloud rather than INTERNET comprises (OUR COMPANY, EVERYONE ELSE) The internet is seen as a dangerous thing out there that companies must go to massive lengths to keep out of their corporate castle, rather than something which the company is part of and contributes to and benefits from being involved with. I've done a lot of remote technical consulting work for big orgs in recent years, which has required me to interact with their internal IT systems from outside. By far the biggest headache is getting remote access and then keeping it functioning, and it drives their IT guys to distraction. The biggest complaint I would get from the internal people was that so many people want remote access, it's a huge burden. And I think, well, it's only a burden because you architected your systems to keep people out, and now fight running battles against yourselves to circumvent your own systems. Wow, rant, apologies... I'm a supporter of the ASP model. I think as time moves on, successful organisations will need to outsource more and more of their IT systems to ASPs, where hosting internally provides no extra value (which it doesn't, in most cases). And much of this stuff is critical, just as critical as source code or moreso. Plenty of organisations do all their banking online... you'd think money was pretty critical. Hell, email is the most critical app in practise, just turn off your email server and wait for the executive level guys to ride in guns blazing. And they send that across the net in the clear! ROFL! Summary ... there's definitely risk in putting your source code with a third party. But there's benefit too. So it's about balance, to my mind. Emlyn > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Emlyn > Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 8:14 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [ExI] [geek] good commercial svn hosts? > > Hi all, > > I've recently been successful in convincing some commercial entities not to > use in-house source control, but to use an externally hosted subversion > repository. And now I've been asked the hard question, which service do you > recommend? > > I had thought that sourceforge had a closed-source hosting service as well > as open source, but I can't see any sign of that. So I'm stuck with choosing > a commercial entity. > > Anyone got ideas/experience of such services? The only one I've personally > used, and only minimally at that, is cvsdude.org. This is for closed source > hosting, has to be secure (for some reasonable value of "secure"). > Recommendations? > > Emlyn > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.13.2/985 - Release Date: 9/2/2007 > 4:32 PM > > > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.13.2/985 - Release Date: 9/2/2007 > 4:32 PM > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From ka.aly at luxsci.net Tue Sep 4 04:46:29 2007 From: ka.aly at luxsci.net (Khaled Aly) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 07:46:29 +0300 Subject: [ExI] [geek] good commercial svn hosts? References: <710b78fc0709031713m7a3656es9a63c557737b0af7@mail.gmail.com> <000901c7ee95$e2a8a770$6801a8c0@ZANDRA2> Message-ID: <004101c7eeae$916e65c0$81e8dbc4@pcd> Gents I worked for years for a multinational network service provider. Providers are now emphasizing IT hosting services as bandwidth got cheaper and connctivity services aren't generating revenues as used to. Any service could be outsourced by a client, to cut cost as seems to be the case here too, and hosted by the service provider where it can be managed and supported centrally with other clients' services. Messaging is one example, but another interesting one is the security applicances themselves. Some clients choose to host their firewalls and anti-virus software at a "trusted third party" service provider. If they do, they have to 'trust' the third party, which configures and maintains their appliances. Typically those clients would be also IP VPN clients too. Oherwise, any remote access through the Internet is via IPsec VPN, which is not costly. It's really the client's decision to trade eficiency/cost vs. trust. I know that didn't answer the main question of what are suitable hosts as I haven't come across hosted source control. But I mean to say that many enterprises at all scales do trust their sensitive traffic and IT services to reputable third parties. It's a choice. Re remote access, the company staff was dispersed all over, for historical reasons. They also promoted teleworking. I worked for a year in a virtual team of 10 people located in several countries, out of home office, within IPSec tunnel and using a soft IPT with an ext. nr. Had no complaint and the setup worked perfectly. Of course there was the benefit of the large scale consistent setup and the round-the-clock internal 'IT' support. Cheers ka ----- Original Message ----- From: "Gary Miller" To: "'ExI chat list'" Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 4:49 AM Subject: Re: [ExI] [geek] good commercial svn hosts? > Emlyn, > > Just curious, why put your reputation on the line with these commercial > entities unless you've used one or more of these services enough to be > confident in their security, longevity and data integrity. > > Open source is one thing. It tends to proliferate and end up in multiple > repositories so a single group going belly up does not endanger the > source's > existence. And security is not an issue there. > > But I can't imaging a commercial enterprise entrusting it's critical > development software, a major asset for most companies to a service unless > they were insured, bonded, escrowed and had an established track record to > insure that if the service goes belly up that their company doesn't go > along > with it. > > In addition most companies I deal with would not even allow their source > code to cross the internet unless it was via a VPN or some other encrypted > format. > > Just my opinion but backing out gracefuly may be the best couse of action. > > Gary > > > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org > [mailto:extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Emlyn > Sent: Monday, September 03, 2007 8:14 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: [ExI] [geek] good commercial svn hosts? > > Hi all, > > I've recently been successful in convincing some commercial entities not > to > use in-house source control, but to use an externally hosted subversion > repository. And now I've been asked the hard question, which service do > you > recommend? > > I had thought that sourceforge had a closed-source hosting service as well > as open source, but I can't see any sign of that. So I'm stuck with > choosing > a commercial entity. > > Anyone got ideas/experience of such services? The only one I've personally > used, and only minimally at that, is cvsdude.org. This is for closed > source > hosting, has to be secure (for some reasonable value of "secure"). > Recommendations? > > Emlyn > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > > No virus found in this incoming message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.13.2/985 - Release Date: 9/2/2007 > 4:32 PM > > > No virus found in this outgoing message. > Checked by AVG Free Edition. > Version: 7.5.484 / Virus Database: 269.13.2/985 - Release Date: 9/2/2007 > 4:32 PM > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat > From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Tue Sep 4 04:45:25 2007 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 00:45:25 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) Message-ID: <826641.72762.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> I had the privilege last weekend to attend my first gay marriage. Before the wedding, I thought deeply about what my conviction was regarding gay marriage. (Of course this led me back to what I had written a year ago, see below.) This particular wedding will forever be in my thoughts. It's amazing how one experience can alter a belief perception. After seeing them together, it seems silly to me to have wasted time even debating such an issue. Who am I to decide what is better for one than the other? Who am I to judge? Anyhow, didn't mean to bore anybody but I did feel the need to apologize to those that may have been offended by some of my remarks. Hope everyone on the Extropy List has had a wonderful summer. Anna:) Anna wrote on Mon Oct 30: >>> >Why wouldn't the gay communities want their own >>> >word for their union and still keep the basic >>> >laws for spouse and marital? On 10/31/06, Terry Colvin forwarded: >> Maybe because they're forming a union, joined for >>life, and creating a family -- so there's a perfectly >>good word for that already in existence. That word is already taken. It describes the "Union" between male and female. >>In any case, it's not "scriptural" -- the >>institution predates and is independent of any >>particular scripture. No. Laws are institutions that predate. If gays want to be married, I again will repeat, I have no problem with that. I believe they should have every right to the same benefits and laws as a "married" couple should have but I think it should be defined by a different word. >>>I can't presume to understand the relationship >>>between 2 men or 2 women and who am I to judge what >>>"Union" they want but as a heterosexual woman, >>>don't I have every right to keep word "marriage"?. >> Sure you do. Your marriage won't suddenly become >>a "flerm" just because someone else got married. Did >>all heterosexual marriages suddenly change somehow >>in 1989, when Denmark recognized gay marriage? It's not about recognizing gay marriage. I have the up most respect for gays, I would never disrespect any choice of sexual behaviour unless it violates rights. I feel using the word "marriage" as a symbol of the union between 2 men or 2 women violates my right as a heterosexual female. Why is that so wrong? >> What you don't necessarily have is the right to >>deny the word to other people. Why? If the word had already been established, why wouldn't I have the right to keep it just the way it is? The "Union" between man and woman. What I don't understand is why the gay community would not choose to represent itself as a self-sufficient member of society and choose a word that describes what their future "union" may one day represent. I am aware that most don't believe in the sanction of a woman and a man. That's their choice. I do. Not the laws, not the piece of paper but the choice to want to procreate with somebody and evolve as humans. It's not my scenario, at the present time, but I do believe that it should be a right and that "right" is the term defined by the word "marriage". Just an opinion. Anna Be smarter than spam. See how smart SpamGuard is at giving junk email the boot with the All-new Yahoo! Mail at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca From thespike at satx.rr.com Tue Sep 4 05:25:54 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 00:25:54 -0500 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) In-Reply-To: <826641.72762.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <826641.72762.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070904002419.02237de8@satx.rr.com> Congratulations, Anna! It's a brave thing to announce publicly that experience has modified one's opinions! Damien Broderick From spike66 at comcast.net Tue Sep 4 05:38:31 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Mon, 3 Sep 2007 22:38:31 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) In-Reply-To: <826641.72762.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <200709040538.l845cVTC023208@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anna Taylor > Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) > > I had the privilege last weekend to attend my first > gay marriage. Before the wedding, I thought deeply > about what my conviction was regarding gay marriage. ... > Anna I have some questions for the legal eagles of the group. It would be even more interesting if the Brits and Europeans comment. If a spouse perishes, I understand that the surviving spouse gets the social security payment that is the higher of the two. So if the survivor made more money longer, then no change in benefits. But if the lower paid spouse is the survivor, he or she gets a raise when the richer spouse perishes. What a racket this could be, for high earners to marry a low earner when the rich person has only months to live. An old rich person could marry a young low earner, and thus the social security system could be looted. It isn't clear to me what the rich terminal person could be given in exchange. Questions: If gay marriage becomes legal, would that problem be worse? Could a sick rich person marry her grandson's girlfriend in order to provide them with a generous pension while they are in their twenties? Is it any different than the kinds of abuses that could theoretically be pulled off now? For instance, an old sick person could marry her granddaughter's boyfriend in a fake marriage, while the young couple still carries on as before. So from a social security pension point of view (the only reason I care about who is allowed to marry) would gay marriage have any impact? Does Europe have similar issues? spike From femmechakra at yahoo.ca Tue Sep 4 05:59:39 2007 From: femmechakra at yahoo.ca (Anna Taylor) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 01:59:39 -0400 (EDT) Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) In-Reply-To: <200709040538.l845cVTC023208@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <672982.6964.qm@web30407.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Spike, I have no idea how if gay marriage becomes legal could affiliate with the rest of your post. Can you help me out. --- spike wrote: If gay marriage becomes legal, would that problem be worse? Could a sick rich person marry her grandson's girlfriend in order to provide them with a generous pension while they are in their twenties? Is it any different than the kinds of abuses that could theoretically be pulled off now? For instance, an old sick person could marry her granddaughter's boyfriend in a fake marriage, while the young couple still carries on as before. So from a social security pension point of view (the only reason I care about who is allowed to marry) would gay marriage have any impact? Does Europe have similar issues? Get news delivered with the All new Yahoo! Mail. Enjoy RSS feeds right on your Mail page. Start today at http://mrd.mail.yahoo.com/try_beta?.intl=ca From emlynoregan at gmail.com Tue Sep 4 08:42:10 2007 From: emlynoregan at gmail.com (Emlyn) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 18:12:10 +0930 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) In-Reply-To: <200709040538.l845cVTC023208@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <826641.72762.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200709040538.l845cVTC023208@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <710b78fc0709040142l11ba34c5v301cd84d6ccd3e8e@mail.gmail.com> On 04/09/07, spike wrote: > If gay marriage becomes legal, would that problem be worse? Could a sick > rich person marry her grandson's girlfriend in order to provide them with a > generous pension while they are in their twenties? Is it any different than > the kinds of abuses that could theoretically be pulled off now? For > instance, an old sick person could marry her granddaughter's boyfriend in a > fake marriage, while the young couple still carries on as before. So from a > social security pension point of view (the only reason I care about who is > allowed to marry) would gay marriage have any impact? Does Europe have > similar issues? > > spike Fake marriages are something that various government institutions deal with already (eg: for immigration, and here for family payment, austudy (that loophole might be closed now), many other miscellaneous welfare benefits). One of the big motivators for legalising gay marriage, of course, is that there are a whole bunch of entirely reasonable benefits available only to married couples, not the least of which is being treated as family members in hospital, and estate going to the spouse in case of no will (that's correct no?). Bring it on, I say, it's just ridiculous that gay marriages don't have the same standing as hetero ones. Emlyn -- http://emlynoregan.com From stefano.vaj at gmail.com Tue Sep 4 10:38:51 2007 From: stefano.vaj at gmail.com (Stefano Vaj) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 12:38:51 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) In-Reply-To: <826641.72762.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> References: <826641.72762.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> Message-ID: <580930c20709040338w28bce47eoea98e610355478c1@mail.gmail.com> On 9/4/07, Anna Taylor wrote: > No. Laws are institutions that predate. If gays want > to be married, I again will repeat, I have no problem > with that. I believe they should have every right to > the same benefits and laws as a "married" couple > should have but I think it should be defined by a > different word. Why, as long as married couples do not have any, that would be fine also with me. Which does not mean of course that I think that "marriage" should be conserved even for "straights", besides and beyond everybody's freedom to "unite" in couples, as well as in triplets, monades, quartets, including with descendants, pets, computers, or whatever they like. Stefano Vaj From scerir at libero.it Tue Sep 4 18:44:01 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 20:44:01 +0200 Subject: [ExI] [ART] softwart References: <008501c7edb7$3c8fe5d0$e1a367d4@pcd><20070903045739.GJ12988@leitl.org><001d01c7ee30$96643920$70a367d4@pcd> <000a01c7ee6b$00c96b20$f7941f97@archimede> Message-ID: <000401c7ef23$9933ef80$bf961f97@archimede> [move your mouse here] http://lab.andre-michelle.com/instable-connections http://lab.andre-michelle.com/color-traces http://lab.andre-michelle.com/particle-explosion [do not move the mouse here :-)] http://lab.andre-michelle.com/cable-clock From pjmanney at gmail.com Tue Sep 4 19:12:25 2007 From: pjmanney at gmail.com (PJ Manney) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 12:12:25 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) In-Reply-To: <200709040538.l845cVTC023208@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <826641.72762.qm@web30402.mail.mud.yahoo.com> <200709040538.l845cVTC023208@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <29666bf30709041212s1d61fe9cif739ef95a94e6257@mail.gmail.com> On 9/3/07, spike wrote: > If gay marriage becomes legal, would that problem be worse? Could a sick > rich person marry her grandson's girlfriend in order to provide them with a > generous pension while they are in their twenties? Is it any different than > the kinds of abuses that could theoretically be pulled off now? For > instance, an old sick person could marry her granddaughter's boyfriend in a > fake marriage, while the young couple still carries on as before. So from a > social security pension point of view (the only reason I care about who is > allowed to marry) would gay marriage have any impact? Does Europe have > similar issues? The key word you used is "theoretically." Spike, there are only 800,000 same sex couples in the entire country. Where's the huge rip off of the system by the straight couples? When my retirement money is being pilfered by every straight Tom, Dick and Henrietta, then I'll be worried. Emlyn's right. This is a non-issue. Gays deserve the same rights straights get. And I thought you were a math wiz... ;-) PJ From scerir at libero.it Tue Sep 4 19:12:48 2007 From: scerir at libero.it (scerir) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 21:12:48 +0200 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) References: <200709040538.l845cVTC023208@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <000801c7ef27$959ff680$bf961f97@archimede> Does Europe have similar issues? spike Fake marriage? Here illegal immigrants became legal with a fake (and very short) marriage. Its cost (for the immigrant)? It depends on how old, sick, and poor is the partner to be married. Parliament is discussing a sort a 'weak' marriage (for gay or non gay people living together since long time, say 5 years). s. From aiguy at comcast.net Tue Sep 4 21:06:28 2007 From: aiguy at comcast.net (aiguy at comcast.net) Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:06:28 +0000 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) Message-ID: <090420072106.25960.46DDC8D4000349DD000065682207300033979A09070E@comcast.net> Come on Spike if Anna Nicole Smith could figure this out, I'm sure you can too! Spike asked... >> What a racket this could be, for high earners to marry a low earner when the rich person has only months to live. An old rich person could marry a young low earner, and thus the social security system could be looted. It isn't clear to me what the rich terminal person could be given in exchange. -------------- Original message -------------- From: "spike" > > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Anna Taylor > > Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) > > > > I had the privilege last weekend to attend my first > > gay marriage. Before the wedding, I thought deeply > > about what my conviction was regarding gay marriage. > ... > > Anna > > > > I have some questions for the legal eagles of the group. It would be even > more interesting if the Brits and Europeans comment. > > If a spouse perishes, I understand that the surviving spouse gets the social > security payment that is the higher of the two. So if the survivor made > more money longer, then no change in benefits. But if the lower paid spouse > is the survivor, he or she gets a raise when the richer spouse perishes. > > What a racket this could be, for high earners to marry a low earner when the > rich person has only months to live. An old rich person could marry a young > low earner, and thus the social security system could be looted. It isn't > clear to me what the rich terminal person could be given in exchange. > > Questions: > > If gay marriage becomes legal, would that problem be worse? Could a sick > rich person marry her grandson's girlfriend in order to provide them with a > generous pension while they are in their twenties? Is it any different than > the kinds of abuses that could theoretically be pulled off now? For > instance, an old sick person could marry her granddaughter's boyfriend in a > fake marriage, while the young couple still carries on as before. So from a > social security pension point of view (the only reason I care about who is > allowed to marry) would gay marriage have any impact? Does Europe have > similar issues? > > spike > > > > > > > _______________________________________________ > extropy-chat mailing list > extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org > http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070904/86163f01/attachment.html From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Sep 5 01:42:18 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 18:42:18 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) In-Reply-To: <29666bf30709041212s1d61fe9cif739ef95a94e6257@mail.gmail.com> Message-ID: <200709050153.l851rqIp009466@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > -----Original Message----- > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of PJ Manney > Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 12:12 PM > To: ExI chat list > Subject: Re: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) > > On 9/3/07, spike wrote: > > If gay marriage becomes legal, would that problem be worse? Could a > sick > > rich person marry her grandson's girlfriend ... > > The key word you used is "theoretically." > > Spike, there are only 800,000 same sex couples in the entire country. > Where's the huge rip off of the system by the straight couples? When > my retirement money is being pilfered by every straight Tom, Dick and > Henrietta, then I'll be worried. Emlyn's right. This is a non-issue. > Gays deserve the same rights straights get. > > And I thought you were a math wiz... ;-) > > PJ PJ, the ripoffs I was describing have little or nothing to do with gay or straight, so the actual number of gay couples is irrelevant. The grandmother who marries her grandson's girlfriend is presumed straight. She goes into a fake marriage to provide her new spouse (and presumably her grandson) with a pension that lasts their lifetimes. These sorts of scams could occur already, but perhaps allowing gay marriage would double the opportunities, or possibly more than double them. Consider for instance that an elderly woman would likely feel more comfortable with a young woman living in her home than she would with a young man. If grandma entered the arrangement in exchange for the young woman providing elderly care, then both women benefit. Society pays dearly. You and I pay for that. When we need that social security, it might be bankrupt for paying off our younger fellow citizens who married an elderly (and long since perished) person in their 20s. As to the question of how this is relevant to gay marriage, it seems to me that opening this door invites this sort of abuse. We know that elderly men often marry young women, and we can easily imagine what is in it for both. But we do not see elderly women marrying young men. If this world's societies decide to allow same sex marriage, it allows or even invites elderly women and young women to play this game ever more to their own advantage, for grandma would surely be unopposed to her wife having male friends. The debate seems to be chronically sidetracked on irrelevant sexual morality issues. Totally beside the point are these. What really does matter, PJ is what it costs. I don't care (no one should care) what people do with whom in their bedrooms. But I care bigtime if it contributes in any way to plundering my pension fund. Seems to me that Europe, Canada, Japan, and Australia would face a similar (if not more severe) problem, for all the same reasons. spike From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Sep 5 01:44:15 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 18:44:15 -0700 Subject: [ExI] belgium doesn't like them either Message-ID: <200709050159.l851xv8U028495@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Perhaps Keith should have gone to Belgium instead of Canada: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295693,00.html -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20070904/58d727cd/attachment-0001.html From fauxever at sprynet.com Wed Sep 5 02:34:43 2007 From: fauxever at sprynet.com (Olga Bourlin) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 19:34:43 -0700 Subject: [ExI] I Want Your Pictures :) References: <7.0.1.0.2.20070822185237.023b3c70@satx.rr.com><62c14240708221707x25e1b132l2aa5616835d7fd82@mail.gmail.com> <7.0.1.0.2.20070822200433.021cf698@satx.rr.com> Message-ID: <00ea01c7ef65$51daaf10$6401a8c0@brainiac> Hello Transhumanists and Extropians: Yesterday - on a lark - I set up this new FLICKR account because I wanted something like this to refer to at times, and I thought it could be fun and educational. I noticed there was nothing like it on FLICKR (I was searching for something like this - before the idea came to me to start one up myself). http://www.flickr.com/photos/12628996 at N03/ My request of *any of you who may wish to have your picture with a little blurb or quote underneath your picture* (it doesn't have to be a head shot necessarily - more casual pictures will do nicely) is this: Please email me (fauxever at sprynet.com) a jpg picture of yourself with 1) either something about yourself (with your URL if you want to have that published, as well); or 2) an original quote from you (something that you've written before, or make one up especially for this ... right now!). Should you do this now and then decide you would like me to delete your picture at any time in the future - it's easy enough for me to do, and I will honor your request pronto. Remember, this account is a little over 24 hours old. I've only just begun ... I would LOVE to see what some of y'all look like - and I hope to hear from some of you! All best, Olga From thespike at satx.rr.com Wed Sep 5 03:16:31 2007 From: thespike at satx.rr.com (Damien Broderick) Date: Tue, 04 Sep 2007 22:16:31 -0500 Subject: [ExI] belgium doesn't like them either In-Reply-To: <200709050159.l851xv8U028495@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <200709050159.l851xv8U028495@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: <7.0.1.0.2.20070904221508.024c0980@satx.rr.com> At 06:44 PM 9/4/2007 -0700, spike wrote: >Perhaps Keith should have gone to Belgium instead of Canada: > >http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,295693,00.html "The church, founded in 1954, counts actors Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its 10 million members." I wonder how many members they really have? 20 or 30 thousand worldwide? From rpicone at gmail.com Wed Sep 5 04:15:09 2007 From: rpicone at gmail.com (Robert Picone) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 21:15:09 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) In-Reply-To: <200709050153.l851rqIp009466@andromeda.ziaspace.com> References: <29666bf30709041212s1d61fe9cif739ef95a94e6257@mail.gmail.com> <200709050153.l851rqIp009466@andromeda.ziaspace.com> Message-ID: On 9/4/07, spike wrote: > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: extropy-chat-bounces at lists.extropy.org [mailto:extropy-chat- > > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of PJ Manney > > Sent: Tuesday, September 04, 2007 12:12 PM > > To: ExI chat list > > Subject: Re: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) > > > > On 9/3/07, spike wrote: > > > If gay marriage becomes legal, would that problem be worse? Could a > > sick > > > rich person marry her grandson's girlfriend ... > > > > The key word you used is "theoretically." > > > > Spike, there are only 800,000 same sex couples in the entire country. > > Where's the huge rip off of the system by the straight couples? When > > my retirement money is being pilfered by every straight Tom, Dick and > > Henrietta, then I'll be worried. Emlyn's right. This is a non-issue. > > Gays deserve the same rights straights get. > > > > And I thought you were a math wiz... ;-) > > > > PJ > > > PJ, the ripoffs I was describing have little or nothing to do with gay or > straight, so the actual number of gay couples is irrelevant. The > grandmother who marries her grandson's girlfriend is presumed straight. She > goes into a fake marriage to provide her new spouse (and presumably her > grandson) with a pension that lasts their lifetimes. > In some hypothetical future in which bisexuality doesn't carry any stigma amongst any social group, maybe it would be irrelevant, but this isn't the case. This isn't likely to make any change in the way things are not because of what could legally be technically done, but due to the state of society. Marrying across a large age gap already carries a major stigma, especially if one openly admits to it, and it is only a fairly minor problem these days because of the social complications. Marrying a member of the same sex carries an even more social problems, and one wouldn't able to admit it is a sham without being guilty of defrauding the state... What are the odds that someone that was willing to go through the marriage for this knows members of the same sex that wouldn't mind publicly claiming to change their sexual orientation and doesn't know a member of the opposite sex who would have to deal with a whole lot less hassle?... Would you marry a man and openly admit homosexuality (assuming you don't already profess it) for monetary gains?... > These sorts of scams could occur already, but perhaps allowing gay marriage > would double the opportunities, or possibly more than double them. Consider > for instance that an elderly woman would likely feel more comfortable with a > young woman living in her home than she would with a young man. If grandma > entered the arrangement in exchange for the young woman providing elderly > care, then both women benefit. Society pays dearly. You and I pay for > that. When we need that social security, it might be bankrupt for paying > off our younger fellow citizens who married an elderly (and long since > perished) person in their 20s. > How many old women do you know that would be more comfortable talking about their wives than their younger husbands?.... > The debate seems to be chronically sidetracked on irrelevant sexual morality > issues. Totally beside the point are these. What really does matter, PJ is > what it costs. I don't care (no one should care) what people do with whom > in their bedrooms. But I care bigtime if it contributes in any way to > plundering my pension fund. The fact that a large chunk of the morality issues in of itself blocks these problems though... Outside of San Francisco, gays tend to deal with quite a bit of shit that Io wouldn't be willing to choose for a paycheck down the road. From spike66 at comcast.net Wed Sep 5 04:55:34 2007 From: spike66 at comcast.net (spike) Date: Tue, 4 Sep 2007 21:55:34 -0700 Subject: [ExI] Change of thought (was Just curious, it's not natural!) In-Reply-To: Message-ID: <200709050455.l854tXDE016572@andromeda.ziaspace.com> > bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of Robert Picone ... > > Would you marry a man and openly admit homosexuality (assuming you > don't already profess it) for monetary gains?... As a society, we appear to be in the process of opening the definition of marriage. Currently heterosexuality is not required to enter a marriage, only that the couple is opposite sex. Similarly, if the legal system allows same sex marriage, it would not require the partners to be homosexual. In either case, there is no practical way to prove the orientation of the partners. Regarding a sham marriage, I know of no rules that require the