--- Day changed Sat Dec 20 2008
01:56 < fenn> hmm this sounds sorta like my life: "Welcome, you have now become unemployed. We regret to inform you that  there aren't many openings for jobs, and the alternative to working to  live hasn't been able to fully scale and deploy at this time. Good  luck."
02:00 < fenn> a nice history of prescription psychoactive drug use in the US: http://www.csicop.org/si/2008-06/weiss.html
02:03 < gene> you know fenn, instead of airbags for UAV package bombing you could use packing foam or bagged air packing materials
02:05 < fenn> depends on the mass being dropped and the package size
02:06 < fenn> i.e. bagged air wouldn't work to well for your 1kg uranium sample
02:06 < fenn> too*
02:06 < gene> heh
02:06 < gene> How the heck do you know about it fenn?
02:07  * fenn furtively encrypts his copy of gene's hard drive
02:07 < gene> at least you don't know the purity or mass number
02:09 < gene> what would be the max package size your aerial deliverator would carry?
02:10 < fenn> doesn't work like that
02:10 < fenn> it's a continuous function
02:10 < gene> kanzure, you there?
02:10 < fenn> the more crap you strap onto it, the slower it flies
02:10 < fenn> rather, you'd want to keep the payload around its optimum cost/benefit ratio
02:11 < kanzure_> yes, I'm replying to Tom Knight re: "synthetic biology >> milling machines"..
02:11 < gene> Well you might want to deliver small things
02:11 < kanzure_> in particular I'm thinking back to xp_prg
02:11 < gene> like dox
02:11 < gene> huh?
02:11 < kanzure_> the linear programming mindset is still pervasive even within the synthetic biology community
02:11 < gene> HAHAHAHAHAHAHA
02:12 < gene> they need to learn about network theory
02:12 < fenn> dox?
02:12 < gene> legal documents
02:12 < fenn> do you still have to physically sign stuff?
02:13 < gene> yup
02:13 < fenn> wtf does that prove anyway
02:13 < gene> in large cities they have people with bikes ferry dox between buildings
02:14 < gene> they are called couriers
02:15 < gene> the hard part is getting people to trust sending dox via UAVs
02:15 < gene> also buildings can focus winds, making it hard for UAVs
02:17 < gene> also, where do you land the UAV in the city?
02:17 < fenn> this wouldnt work in a big city downtown anyway, unless you had some way to land on roof and go into the building
02:17 < fenn> it's more for suburbia, to reduce number of SUV's driving around pointlessly
02:17 < gene> how do you deliver a huge flat panel fenn
02:17 < fenn> the whole "two tons of glass and steel to get a coke" thing
02:17 < fenn> with a UPS truck, silly
02:17 < gene> people aren't giving up SUVs
02:18 < fenn> i know
02:18 < gene> they are safer
02:18 < fenn> they also hate driving
02:18 < gene> or at least people think they are
02:18 < fenn> they are safer because all the energy is absorbed by the splattered brains of people in small cars
02:18 < gene> heh
02:19 < fenn> F-150? 250? had the worst crash rating of american cars
02:19 < gene> supposedly NIST or someone did a study on it, and all the radio talkshow hosts are pushing it
02:19 < fenn> now that's not an SUV but they're all about the same to me
02:20 < gene> so you want to deliver coke via UAV?
02:20 < fenn> sure why not
02:21 < gene> you could shoot the coke out of a cannon, the bottle has a fairly aerodynamic shape
02:21 < fenn> you could shoot the UAV out of a cannon too
02:21 < gene> add some fins and a recovery system too
02:21 < gene> to the coke bottle
02:21 < gene> not a big one
02:22 < gene> but yes
02:22 < gene> maybe a big one, if you use inflatable wings, but catapults make more sense when you get big
02:22 < fenn> with a little propeller around the cap right :)
02:22 < gene> to trigger the recovery system of course!
02:24 < gene> have you done a cost analysis to see if you could make a profit with it?
02:26 < gene> http://www.physorg.com/news148916503.html
02:26 < gene> this might be useful kanzure
02:28 < gene> cheap sonicator
02:32 < kanzure_> wtfm, profuturists.org (it's just the Assoc. of Professional Futurists)
02:32 < kanzure_> catchy domain name I guess.
02:32 < kanzure_> "yes, I'm antifuture. I increasingly hate my self every moment I live"
02:33 < fenn> you and your "profit"
02:33 < fenn> isnt having a UAV deliver a coke profit enough?
02:34 < gene> professional futurists, I want that job
02:34 < gene> get to play oracle all day long
02:35 < gene> fenn, profit is being able to get money from venture capitalists to do it
02:35 < kanzure_> oh crap. obvious rebuttal to Tom's email. He's saying that synbio is the way rather than manufacturing in the traditional sense, but he seems to fail to realize that the tools to do synbio require manufacturing at this time..
02:35 < gene> and that biology is noisy
02:36 < kanzure_> fenn: how do people make  money if that's their reasoning about the whole of it "meh, just get a vc to fund it, that's profit."
02:37 < gene> VC's won't fund it unless it is profitable, or they're stupid
02:37 < kanzure_> no, you just said something completely different
02:37 < kanzure_> you said "profit is being able to get money from VCs"
02:37 < gene> ok
02:44 < gene> I was wrong
03:00 < kanzure_> fenn: help. I'm trying to reply to Nathan about how his latest intro also sucks. whenever he writes it's as if he's a politican trying to push some view.
03:00 < kanzure_> I don't necessarily disagree with him, but it just *hurts* because the writing sucks and doesn't need to exist
03:00 < kanzure_> so now he's saying "What political ideology do you believe is implied?"
03:01 < kanzure_> "but its my hope that it if is not, it can become a primary goal for Open Manufacturing" why does it have to have a political goal, gtfo..
03:02 < fenn> i hate when people talk about sharing energy as currency
03:02 < fenn> you might as well talk about sharing water or land as currency
03:03  * kanzure_ hands you North America, breaks his back in process
03:06  * fenn wonders which is worth more, North America or the lever that was used to move it
03:08 < kanzure_> maybe I can just tell him, "I fold. But please stop writing. You're killing neurons."
03:08 < fenn> rofl
03:08 < fenn>  You must "stand up to the challenge" and prove
03:08 < fenn> your dignity, free will, your Country, only one true God, and the other things that can't
03:08 < fenn> possibly continue utmost happiness, so to be worthy of an earned, privileged,
03:08 < fenn> righteous and acceptable life.
03:09 < kanzure_> many other important mailing lists go fine without long, flowy introductions
03:09 < kanzure_> debian-dev for instance. has been going for *decades* without a flowy intro.
03:09 < fenn> i think i prefer "protocol definitions" rather than ambiguous poetry
03:09 < kanzure_> hm?
03:10 < fenn> usually i'm left wondering whether something is appropriate to post to a list or not
03:10 < fenn> a list is just a communications protocol after all
03:11 < fenn> "mind the SNR" doesnt help most sorts of semantic noise
03:11 < kanzure_> when you hit 150+ mailing lists, it gets harder to figure out which of the 150 lists you should send something interesting to
03:11 < fenn> yeah
03:11 < kanzure_> but what is a "protocol definition" in this context?
03:11 < kanzure_> SMTP?
03:12 < fenn> which mailing list to send stuff to
03:12 < fenn> or rather, what sort of stuff should be sent to this list
03:12 < fenn> and you can figure out the inverse from that
03:13 < fenn> wouldnt it be nice to have a 'topic matrix'
03:13 < fenn> and then run singular value decomposition on your message
03:13 < fenn> it goes where it needs to go
03:15 < kanzure_> so basically a modified bayesian classifier (spam filter)
03:15 < kanzure_> and the feedback would be the amount of positive response in terms of people either replying with positive      things to say, or the number of responses, etc.
03:15 < kanzure_> feedback/scoring
03:16 < kanzure_> heh, I have 80,000+ emails from many mailing lists in my archives
03:16 < kanzure_> so there's the training material ..
03:17 < fenn> what does "unported" mean in "CC-BY-SA 3.0 Unported"?
03:17 < kanzure_> don't know. I googled it and didn't find anything informative
03:18 < kanzure_> but I did like how simple the CC-BY-SA 3.0 explanation page was
03:20 < fenn> "the Unported licenses (introduced in 3.0) are written to conform to international copyright treaty."
03:21 < fenn> rather than tailored to a specific jurisdiction
03:21 < kanzure_> hm.
03:26 < fenn> i wonder why microwave ovens don't have IR temperature sensors instead of a timer
03:26 < fenn> so there'd be two buttons, one for size of object, another for surface temperature
03:27 < fenn> or it could use a scale to determine the size
03:27 < kanzure_> probably an over anxious pre-optimization of the system.. "ok, screw all this technical crap; people want to be able to use it immediately. ok.. let's just make it a timer."
03:29 < fenn> but they always have that obnoxious beeping membrane switch thing
03:29 < fenn> i hate that shit!
03:31 < fenn> i had a pile of microwaves and the only one i kept has two knobs: power level and a mechanical timer
03:53 < kanzure_> http://projectperko.blogspot.com/2006/06/gods-of-future.html  <- I still like this. I quoted it on Kevin Kelly's blog once.
04:04 < gene> heh
04:04 < gene> set the powerlevel to over 9000
04:04 < gene> IR temperature sensors measure the surface temperature of the food
04:05 < gene> kanzure you sound like you're trolling
04:06 < gene> microwave might have to have an ir camera
04:08 < fenn> now you're just being silly
04:09 < gene> a low pixel ir camera
04:09 < gene> take advantage of that rotating plate
04:09 < kanzure_> gene, where was I trolling?
04:09 < fenn> anyway the point is if you know the mass you know approximately the depth of microwave penetration and can make a depth/temperature profile
04:09 < gene> well fenn it's more complicated than that
04:10 < gene> microwaves have hotspots due to the size of the wavelenght
04:11 < gene> you also have different microwave absorbances, say the bone in that chicken compared to the meat on the bone
04:12 < gene> Nathan, on why his latest intro also sucks
04:12 < gene> that sounds like trolling
04:14 < kanzure_> in an email I wrote or in here?
04:14 < gene> in here
04:15 < gene> you don't have to reply
04:15 < fenn> i think you used the word "trolling" wrong
04:15 < gene> ok
04:15 < gene> please define trolling then
04:16 < fenn> making an intentionally inflamatory statement to incite a response, without actually caring about the issue one way or another
04:16 < gene> btw did Sata send you the algae sampling instructions Kanzure?
04:16 < gene> ok
04:16 < gene> it sounded like Kanzure was trolling
04:18 < kanzure_> heh, if only all trolls use a bayesian filtering mechanism
04:18 < kanzure_> *would use
04:18 < fenn> for automated trolling?
04:18 < fenn> god that would be an awesome way to make money with spam
04:19 < fenn> you can see here <ad link> that <we should eat babies>
04:19 < fenn> tailored to the thread
04:21 < gene> Bayesian filtering mechanism, what is that?
04:21 < gene> babies, a new delicacy is born everyday
04:28 < kanzure_> gene: "Bayesian inference is statistical inference in which evidence or observations are used to update or to newly infer the probability that a hypothesis may be true."
04:29 < gene> so how do you get computers to do it
04:30 < gene> do you use it in automatic design?
04:43 < kanzure_> yes, it is possible to do bayesian inference in automatic design, but frankly I don't want to because it's about probabilities rather than formal design methodologies.
04:43 < kanzure_> and there aaaare tons of open source bayesian stuff
04:43 < kanzure_> http://openbayes.org/
04:44 < kanzure_> http://www.openbayes.org/tutorials/inference-in-the-watersprinkler-bayesian-network
04:44 < kanzure_> http://www.google.com/Top/Computers/Artificial_Intelligence/Belief_Networks/Software/
04:44 < kanzure_> http://bnt.sf.net/ but only for matlab
04:44 < kanzure_> etc.
04:46 < gene> you can have a program give you probabilities and learn things?
04:46 < gene> only for matlab isn't a problem, we have access to the ME appserver remember?
05:10 < kanzure_> there are better solutions out there. ignore the matlab one, that was just at the top of the search results
06:27 < gene> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qLJxMUw51N8&feature=related
06:27 < gene> 5 axises of awesome
06:28 < gene> note build error
07:00 < kanzure_> http://zacksprojects.blogspot.com/2008/12/science-article.html   <-- I worked with this guy in a lab. I'd read it.
07:20 < kanzure_> fenn: ok, nathan's latest email isn't terrible. faith renewed?
07:27 < kanzure_> fenn: also, now might be an ok time to again suggest the 'debian social contract' and similar provisions .. if you want to post something like that to om. Tito and Meredith from diybio have sent me a partial version for the diybio.org community, but it's more geared towards safety and good lab protocol (i.e., not dying)
07:58 < kanzure_> heh, Jim Carrey likes death metal.
08:14 < kanzure_> http://moviesblog.mtv.com/2008/12/17/keanu-reeves-eager-to-do-something-good-with-cowboy-bebop-movie
08:14 < kanzure_> keanu reeves playing keanu reeves..
08:28 < bkero> kanzure_: You saw the live action dbz trailer, didn't you?
08:48 < kanzure_> Not the trailer.
08:48 < kanzure_> Hrm, I need to figure out which of the 20 ports is for audio again.
09:56 < fenn> huh. does Nathan have multiple personality disorder to something?
10:00 < fenn> all of a sudden there is the appearance of linear rational thought
14:53 < fenn> wheee posting "offer massive quantities of yarn" sure gets freecyclers excited
15:40 < kanzure_> are you implying that freecyclers are simply computer-wielding cats?
15:42 < kanzure_> http://www.re-public.gr/en/?p=479  CFP re: transhuman
15:43 < kanzure_> argh, this sucks, it's failing to separate "let's enforce it for all of humanity" and personal options.
16:09 < fenn> kanzure: the computer-wielding cat theory is quite probable
20:22 < gene> best cellphone mod ever: http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/multimedia/2008/12/gallery_microscope_phone
21:26 < kanzure_> where's PeerInfinity?
21:26 < kanzure_> I want to tell him how much "The Scenarios Project" sucks :/
21:27 < kanzure_> seriously, I send the 'radical transhuman organization' links and information about actual engineering
21:27 < kanzure_> and then he replies with this crap:
21:27 < kanzure_> http://cosmeng.org/publicwiki/index.php/The_Scenarios_Project
21:29 < kanzure_> as if that map was the true territory.
21:29 < kanzure_> *sigh*
21:34 < gene> sigh indeed
21:34 < kanzure_> what do you know of the map-not-being-the-territory?
21:34 < kanzure_> half the time it feels like I'm explaining that to you..
21:35 < gene> too many people want to set up a framework to do the work, while not actually doing the work
21:35 < kanzure_> frameworks are ok, but the mapping initiatives are hardly about the frameworks
21:35 < kanzure_> configure-make-install is a nice framework.
21:36 < gene> heh that map is funny, reminds me of a monty python sketch
21:36 < kanzure_> the map on the link in particular?
21:36 < gene> yes
21:36 < gene> college of cosmic engineers
21:37 < gene> you don't happen to know autocad, do you?
21:37 < gene> I mean, how to use autocad?
21:39 < gene> I am playing around with autocad 2000, aka autocad classic
21:45 < gene> autocad 2000 has a command prompt
21:45 < gene> you might like it
21:47 < gene> http://cosmeng.org/publicwiki/index.php/Kevin_Warwick_-_Is_Actively_Working_Towards_-_Cybernetics
21:48 < gene> Kevin Warwick is working toward bioethics?
21:48 < gene> HAHAHAHA They have a cosmic engineers WoW guild
21:48 < gene> I take it, this isn't very serious
21:55 < kanzure_> well
21:55 < kanzure_> they are serious, but they are jerks
21:55 < kanzure_> Kevin Warwick is Captain Cyborg :-)
21:55 < kanzure_> anyway, all of the old CAD programs had command prompts.
21:55 < kanzure_> autocad 2008/2009 doesn't seem to easily run under wine. I haven't gotten it to work, though others on winehq's appdb have.
22:16 < gene> I know who Warwick is Kanzure
22:17 < gene> they seem like incompetent jerks to me
22:17 < gene> you have autocad 2008?
22:17 < gene> autocad 2008 sucks
22:17 < gene> in my opinion
22:18 < gene> I think the programmers were like, "let's make all the icons look pretty and professional"
22:18 < gene> instead of let's add some useful features
23:23 < kanzure_> phillipe van nedervalde thinks that "instead of doing open source hardware projects, we should make a roadmap from here up to and until computronium"
23:23 < kanzure_> what the hell is this guy smoking
23:25 < UtopiahGHML> computronium?
23:35 < kanzure_> he has an obsession with saying computronium is the end result of everything
23:35 < kanzure_> and I suspect he's in a rut much like Eli or Lee.
23:36 < UtopiahGHML> sounds like the pandemonium computer
23:53 < gene> pandemonium as in pan "demon" ium
23:55 < gene> as in you have a whole bunch of entities that report up to higher entities
23:55 < gene> that sort of pandemonium?
23:56 < gene> would computronium be the end result of making a sandwich?