devijvers

No, it's correct. The light actually gets slowed down in material (anything else than a vacuum.) That has nothing to do with observation, it's an actual physical effect. The speed of light in a vacuum is constant and so is the speed of light in any particular pure material (like a pure gas.) It's just that those constant speeds are different.

Be careful who you call a dictator. While Ataturk has been President of Turkey for 15 years (until his death in 1938) he encouraged a multi-party system. However, during his lifetime several parties were formed and again self-dissolved or dissolved after an uncovered assassination attempt on Ataturk. It's only in 1945 - after Ataturk's death - that the multi-party system in Turkey took off for real.

Serious people don't care about games.

I agree with you on the energy balance thing, I don't agree Lulz is creating that energy.

What we're seeing is the consequence of letting docs you want to keep a secret out. Lulz is just fishing and reporting what they caught.

To the people who want to revoke more of our liberties for what is basically lousy security: I wish you good luck.

Is this the prototype of the cheap product that's been promised years ago (although it still uses platinum & titanium)?

The euro is fine, the EU banking system - including UK banks - are not. Banks are too big, why can't I pay with my phone like is possible in Africa? We're gonna have to bleed one way or the other, I'd prefer to have less and much smaller banks after this ordeal is over.

Sarko and Merkel realize that banks are fighting their end game - banks 20 years from now won't be the same kind of animal anymore. They're both up for re-election and are gonna give the banks their final stroke.

This will change the fabric of the nation-state profoundly. Buckle up, we're in for a ride.

"Scientific certainty" is not a popularity contest as you describe.

Everybody can agree and still be wrong. Einstein's work is a good example of that.

I would be happy to leave it to academics if they hadn't transformed into a political body. Too late.

The canonical problem of health insurance is not profit making, it's that most of the people who contribute have to be excluded from receiving benefits. Not sure how a distributed model is going to do a better job at that than current models.

Bitcoin is trying to solve a mathematical problem (double spending), you're talking about a problem that in my opinion doesn't have a mathematical solution.

There's also operation turkey:

http://anonnews.org/?p=press&a=item&i=1005

+1 for reprap link.

1/ Calculate which mobile subscription on the market would be cheaper based on your mobile activity of previous months. Needs a way to keep track of hundreds of subscription rules and way to easily scan and OCR paper invoices and/or pdf invoices.

2/ Offer free salary calculations. Charge employers for sending paper salary slips (PDF versions are for free) and employment related and legal counseling. Also offer free self-service portal for employers and employees. Barrier: requires a lot of knowledge of local employment, fiscal and social security regulations. Reward: if you can break the barrier you'll probably be the first and make a killing.

3/ Offer a service like square with the distinction that once a cent is converted to a online cent the entire history of that cent's online usage is freely accessible (radical transparency.) As soon as the cent is withdrawn that history will be lost of at least will be frozen for ever. This way when I want to accept a payment from you I - or my application - can scrutinize the history of the cents you offer me. If there's something in the history of a certain cent that I don't like - example: it's been used to buy X, Y or Z - I'll reject that cent. Other people can step in and tag transactions or even a party in a transaction in a certain way so that I can configure my application to reject those tags. This simple mechanism introduces a new negative feedback loop in our economy that we don't have but need in our economic system.

It comes from the book Business Model Generation:

http://www.businessmodelgeneration.com/

A very very good book, I can recommend it. The way the book was written is also very inspirational.

The medium is the message. This means any alternative money systems that would be based or linked to our current forms of money will always suffer from the same problems we're facing today.

I would swap snake oil salesman Kurzweil for Clay Shirky's institutions vs collaboration:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPQViNNOAkw

"You'll note there's lots of uncertainty, but a rough rule of thumb is that each doubling of carbon dioxide will raise the temperature around 3 degrees Celsius. Of course people love to argue about these things: you can find reasonable people who'll give a number anywhere between 1.5 and 4.5 °C, and unreasonable people who say practically anything."

What is this scientific method you speak of?

This is the raging Ayn Rand view. Net neutrality is a valid concern for government since it's res publica: a common good that can only be achieved when every citizen have it. Individual citizens or even groups of citizens can not procure a net neutrality package when it's not available or affordable for other citizens.

Exactly what I mean with linguistic/logic side-effects.

Both "rationality" and "free will" are vague terms. Your line of questioning won't get you anywhere beyond linguistic/logic side-effects.

Actually, it's not financial illiteracy that's killing us.

Image for a moment that we were financially literate, what would be able to do that we are not able to do today and what would be doing differently? Being financially literate would mean we would be able to read. However, as soon as we would be able to do that we would be shocked and we would walk away.

What is killing us is not being able to financially write. Money is a medium that has been designed so that it can hardly be read let alone written. We need to redesign money. Money is a medium like all other media and it can be redesigned.

Macros are important, that's why I seeking guidance in Let Over Lambda. The most suitable lisps for writing macros are lisp-2, hence the preference for a lisp-2 dual namespace.

It might one day become a general lisp for javascript but for now the concurrency-free server-side environment of node.js is assumed.

I've scanned the Parenscript docs and it doesn't seem immediately obvious how to combine node.js and Parenscript without having to include Common Lisp. Also, there's a number of things on my wish list that compelled me to write my own lisp implementation (there are other JavaScript lisp implementations):

* only requirement is node.js and the lisp source distribution, no other dependencies. * ability to debug lisp code from the browser. * immutable data structures.

I feel I can implement a lisp that can run the examples in <i>Let Over Lambda</i> in a couple of weeks. The lisp won't be as stable as Parenscript but that's ok. Only at that point can the real work start of building the web framework that is lisp.js. I think the most important bit for me is to have a base that I can modify as the needs arise. I'm already trying to include as many lisp concepts in the test source as I can find to make sure lisp.js is a general purpose lisp. In that respect I'm setting several goals: get lisp-in-lisp working, get Let Over Lambda examples working, ... any other useful lisp constructs that I come across. That's a journey I can only make if I do my own lisp implementation.

Thanks for the reference to Parenscript which I'm unfamiliar with. The main point of lisp.js is to benefit from node.js' event-loop/non-blocking-i/o environment. node.js will be able to handle far greater loads than web servers that use blocking I/O. I'm not sure whether or not the Common Lisp web server exclusively uses non-blocking I/O on the account that I'm not familiar with that web server. I'm erring on the side of blocking I/O in which case node.js/lisp.js would run circles around that web server.

Basically, the server "knows" (as in can know) the references that exist on the client and vice versa. When a watched reference changes value on the client an HTTP request/response is sent over the wire. The request carries the old and new value, the response is basically redundant but since it's HTTP it needs to be there. Hence, the response might carry new forms to be executed on the client.

The client watching references on the server is obviously more tricky. node.js already supports keep-alive by default. There probably needs to be some kind of chuncked reply mechanism that allows the server to send changes without the client having to send polling requests. Obviously, if the reference is not going to change frequently it might be cheaper to just poll every once in a while.

Good to hear! What do have in mind when you say "client/server distinction"?

My thoughts instantly go to Deleuze & Guattari's rhizome Idea in A Thousand Plateaus. Why wouldn't our brain run small connected pieces of software that together emulate how the world works and especially how other people are expected to act/behave. This way the network of networks can run simulations. Also, when new bits of information arrive - see Dawkins' communication-is-influence idea - the software gets updated.

If you want to get a feel of what Tuva's like have a look at the Mongolia episode of Long Way Round:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5538321375706386968

They drive through the Altay mountains which is next to Tuva and is the mythical home land of the Turkic people.

1. Turing machine: there is no difference between data and instructions. Meaning: any data can be interpreted as instructions (e.g. 1 + 1, GET /, [ 1, 2, 3], ...)

2. Writing is turning ideas into meaningless symbols, reading is turning meaningless symbols into ideas.

3. The alphabet consists of meaningless symbols and meaningless sounds.

Conclusion: any sensory cues can be interpreted, given meaning, and be converted into action; also by computers.

Are you aware that plagiarism is a crime? Hence, without being convicted nobody is a plagiarist.

It's like saying: are programmers burglars? Well, have they been convicted for burglary? No? Duh ...