[uvfnnuvc] Unicode musical notes

permitting up to two ledger lines above or below, there are 19 possible note positions on a 5-line musical staff.

consider adding these 19 symbols to Unicode.  although it is far from being able to express music purely in Unicode, it is a huge step in that direction.  once we can do pitches, inventing a new serial notation for specifying clefs, accidentals, rhythms, rests, dynamics, articulations, and phrasing seems not too difficult.

if the middle line (e.g., B on a treble clef, middle C on an alto clef) is labeled 0, then the range is -9 to +9.  a set of symbols denoting integers between -9 and +9 on a vertical scale seems generically useful beyond music.  balanced base 19?

should the notes have stems (like half note or shorter) or not (like whole note)?  having a stem pointing the conventional direction makes it slightly easier to recognize whether a note is above or below the middle line.  which way should the stem on a middle line note go?  let's add an additional character to permit either possibility.  (vaguely reminiscent of signed zero in IEEE 754 floating point.)

should notes be hollow (like whole and half note) or solid (like quarter note)?  hollow makes it slightly easier to recognize whether a note is on a line or on a space.

durations from whole notes to 32nd notes would increase a factor of 6: 20*6 = 120 characters, still less than a Unicode block of 256.  or duration could be done with modifiers, like combining diacritics or emoji skin tone modifiers.

if not Unicode, notes on a staff seem not too difficult to do with inline SVG images.

by having separate glyphs for each note, automatic formatting to any display width becomes easy: just wrap lines like regular text.  this is especially useful for reading sheet music on a narrow display.

are there any Unicode blocks that depict a range of at least 19 values?  Unicode clocks seem promising: 🕕 🕡 🕖 🕢 🕗 🕣 🕘 🕤 🕙 🕥 🕚 🕦 🕛 🕧 🕐 🕜 🕑 🕝 🕒 🕞 🕓 🕟 🕔 🕠 (future post lxscsnac).

[plfbenya] Falling into a black hole at very high speed

Start with an object at rest a good distance away from a black hole.  Allow the black hole's gravity to pull the object into the black hole.  How fast is the object traveling just before it falls in, just before it crosses the event horizon?

Qualitative answer: It is traveling just slightly less than the speed of light.  We can derive this answer by imagining running the experiment in reverse.  Start slightly outside of the event horizon.  From here, how fast do you need to launch the object upwards so that it barely makes it to that original starting point a good distance away (then starts falling downward again)?  The escape velocity at the event horizon is the speed of light, so the answer will be just slightly less.  (Why is this reasoning valid?  I'm not willing to trust that things true in Newtonian mechanics are true near black holes.  For example, general relativity does not obey conservation of energy.)

Quantitatively, what is the escape velocity as a function of distance above the event horizon?  It might be tricky even to express the answer, because speed is distance/time, and distances and time are warped near a black hole.

(How fast is a dropped-in object traveling just after it crosses the event horizon?  Is it traveling slightly faster than the speed of light?)

A black hole therefore provides an easy way to accelerate things to very close to the speed of light.  Particle physicists like accelerating things to very close to the speed of light.  Instead of dropping things straight in, consider an accretion disk.  Just outside the event horizon, are very high energy particle collisions occurring?  How high energy?  At what collision rate?  Is the collision energy much higher than that achievable by terrestrial particle accelerators?  Are the energies Grand Unified Theory scale?  Theory Of Everything scale?

Hopefully we aren't defeated by matter in an accretion disk all tending to orbit going the same direction, so collisions aren't head on.  We do know that collisions with energy high enough to produce X-rays are occurring.  Does the fact that rotating black holes have ergospheres affect the energy of collisions?  (When we observe radiation from a black hole accretion disc, how much of it is coming from within the ergosphere?)

Artificially constructing a GUT- or TOE-scale particle accelerator seems mind-bogglingly difficult; we probably won't have the technology to do so for a long while.  Sending a probe out to observe a black hole seems much easier.  We will have to wait a while (the nearest currently known black hole, HR 6819, is 1100 light years away) (update: the system is more likely a spectroscopic binary of two stars, no black hole), but it could still be faster than developing the technology to build huge particle accelerators.   (Even more optimistically, all we might need is a sufficiently powerful telescope, but that won't be able to observe particles which decay quickly, so we won't consider this any further.)

Is it better to use a large black hole or a small one for these kinds of observations?  Do we want a black hole without much of an existing accretion disk so that we can actively drop stuff in in a controlled fashion?  What kind of sensors are required?  We will probably need to separate out the particle collisions we care about from those we don't, same as with a man-made particle accelerator.  How does the strong gravitational redshift near the event horizon affect observations?

If super exotic TOE-energy particles are being produced just outside the event horizon, how do they affect things in that area?  What might they be doing quantumly to the structure of spacetime?  The region just above the event horizon might be geometrically quite complicated.  This is superficially similar to fuzzballs, but our complexity arises only when there is an accretion disk.

Could exotic particle physics occurring just outside an event horizon produce ultra high energy cosmic rays?  This could explain how they can violate the GZK limit: they only needed to travel from a "nearby" black hole.

The Theory Of Everything is of course the Holy Grail of physics.  After that, the universe is solved.  It's fascinating to believe that the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything is gettable without too much difficulty, requiring mostly only patience.  The universe in fact directly gives us the answer, naturally constructing black holes with accretion disks for us to go observe.  Many black holes are giant beacons, the brightest lights in the universe, seemingly calling attention to themselves, making it impossible for us not to notice them, beckoning us to consider visiting them to observe them and learn the final secret of the universe.

(The Star Trek novel The Entropy Effect begins with observations of a black hole that mysteriously seem to indicate that something has gone very wrong with the entire universe -- the heat death of the universe will occur within a century.  (The novel's black hole was a naked singularity, having no event horizon.)  It is not unrealistic that observations of a black hole (even a normal one clothed in an event horizon) could yield profound insights about the entire universe.)

[dnbruxxa] No one wants transparency in government

Those who want big government know that big government will often function poorly, so don't want to make it easy to gather evidence that it is functioning poorly, as it will reflect badly on themselves as proponents of big government.

Those who want small government want to abuse the freedoms of small government to do sleazy things, so don't want to make it easy to gather evidence of that, as it will reflect badly on themselves as proponents of small government.

This is especially sad because transparency is kind of a panacea.  If people know what is going on, they can respond optimally.  More optimistically, if people know what is going wrong, they can work to fix it.

Inspired by several consecutive recent Presidential administrations of seemingly diametrically opposed political views, but transparency hasn't increased in any of them.

[rbmrkazx] Proselytizing encyclopedia

Create a editable compendium of knowledge similar to Wikipedia, probably a fork, but with the explicit author philosophy of, "We think this topic is awesome, and we want you to think so, too."  This explicit goal of what defines a good article may help resolve the editing conflicts that currently plague Wikipedia.

The philosophy has been successfully deployed in subject-specific wikis such as those for TV shows, or Tvtropes.

Probably drop the proscription "Wikipedia is not a textbook", because a textbook style might be the best way to engage the reader, for certain topics.

[cssohavu] Enabling arbitrary static verification

As the complexity of programs increase, static verification features of a programming language become relatively more important, compared to say code conciseness or code execution speed (at least, constant factors of code execution speed).  It becomes relatively more important for a machine verifier to be able to "understand" the program and verify correctness properties about it.  That computer verifier might become the only entity that understands the entirety of a large program written over a long period of time by many authors.

Rich type systems such as in Haskell are an example of static verification.  For example, it is useful to be able to annotate which code is stateful and what state it is modifying. Haskell monads accomplish such annotation, and the type checker checks that the annotations are correct.

However, Haskell types are not the be-all-end-all of static verification.  In more complicated code, it is easy to want to express and verify properties which cannot be expressed in its type system.

Design a language whose static verification features are user definable and may be arbitrarily complex, keeping pace with the complexity of the program.

(We will probably eventually want to express static verification of the static verification, and so on.  The difficulty of creating a correct program inherently grows faster than linearly with size of the executable part of the program.  Perhaps this will prevent the technological singularity.)

Language features such as polymorphic types or other type extensions would not be hardcoded into the compiler but imported as one of many possible static verification libraries that a program can invoke in the static verification phase of its compilation.  Theorem provers will also likely be useful as libraries.

Lisp syntax looks nice, with its arbitrary extensibility and ability to treat code as data, which is what the static verification code will be doing.

[umkzcilo] Information provenance database

A vague vision of the future: Every purported fact, every statement, every idea you might hear can instantly have its source tracked down by information search tools operating on natural language.  Along with the source, also available are other confirmations, commentary, endorsements, and rejections.

Whether to trust the individuals in the provenance still requires a personal judgment call, but we could imagine a "web of trust" becoming formed. (Inspired by the concept in cryptography.)

Optimistically, the era of myth may soon be over.  Pessimistically, forces too powerful will continue to cause people to hold fast to their beliefs.

Similar previous idea emphasizing the importance of natural language processing.

[pmwzeilo] Teach your children about sex

Dear parents and parents-to-be,

Consider teaching your children about sex: not just the biological aspects of it, but also how issues related to sexuality pervade nearly every aspect of society and human behavior, and that people think and act in a great many radically different ways about those issues.

Take advantage of that phase of curiosity in young children when they ask "why" about everything.  In that phase, you can provide them with answers that their mind is prepared to receive (they having asked "why"); learning need not be a traumatic shock.

It's all right if you aren't sure about answers, just express your uncertainty.  Later in life, your child will undoubtedly confirm that questions concerning social and behavioral aspects of sexuality are among the most difficult questions about humanity and will not fault a parent for being uncertain.

Teach from a young age, and try to be as complete as possible: don't hold back just because a topic is considered taboo, though you may wish to digress into an explanation of the concept of taboo.

Someday, your child will face first-hand some situation related to sexuality, and education prevents unpleasant surprise.  In particular, it prevents being made a victim by people who would take advantage of your child's ignorance about sexuality to manipulate and cause harm.

Are there classes which train parents how to talk to their child about sex? Are they complete in the way I am suggesting?

Some previous posts on this topic:

• Real defense against the Dark Arts
• Children naturally ask questions
• The relative complexity of chess versus human sexuality
• The plastic minds of young children
• Forbidden knowledge

[cjsxenrl] Follow the money

Wealth provides power. Just application of power requires transparency. Therefore, require spending by the wealthy be a public record. This is a radical change from the status quo.

Everyone may spend up to (say) $100,000 privately per year. Each transaction beyond that must be publicly reported in detail.

Let this apply to corporations as well.

Wherever there is a hiding of price, there is a power difference being exploited.

Is it really so simple?

[icuxnnjg] Direct democracy via Twitter

If people are organizing their revolutions and protests by Twitter, Facebook, Blackberry mobile, etc., then why not organize the government the same way?   Suppose the revolution has succeeded.

Originally, we founded a republic (elected legislators as proxies for the people) instead of a direct democracy because millions of people trying to debate an issue and reach a decision was previously assumed technologically impossible.  But it isn't impossible, or soon it might not be.  A million people actually can, e.g., tweet all at once and be heard; they don't have to all be physically present in a legislative chamber.

Sorting, categorizing, counterpointing millions of people's speech can be done (if not now, hopefully in the near future) by computers with natural language processing.  For example, here might be an interaction:  You start by saying something.  The AI steers you toward others who have said something similar.  Between yourselves, you discuss and explore the issue, trying to form a coherent and detailed viewpoint.  At each step of the way a computer checks your work, rejecting or warning about logical and other fallacies.  The computer is loaded with a tremendous amount of knowledge (every citizen's Library of Congress) (like Jeopardy's Watson) as a reference for policymaking.

In parallel with people and speech that agrees with you, the computer also finds opposing speech.  You then try to explore or resolve the differences, again with computer aided moderation.  Online discussion is not done by numbers of supporters, but by logic.  One person could theoretically refute a thousand.  A direct democracy need not require lots of participation by everyone: you check that your (current) viewpoint has already been stated by someone else, and you need not participate further (until it gets refuted).

Sometimes, it might come down to fundamentally irreconcilable differences for a very contentious and important issue by probably a close margin, at which point a vote is taken, one man one vote (avoiding sock puppets) at the ballot box.  I hope this will be rare, because a society with such differences frequently may have something more fundamentally wrong with it.

Cynically, can such a direct democracy do worse than the corrupt government we have now?

Facebook, Twitter, BBM are peer to peer technologies (or attempt to look like that), in contrast traditional politics, where it takes a lot of money to say something.  Peer to peer is changing the world.  There is no gatekeeper to control speech, to steer discourse in the direction the gatekeeper wants it to go.  Expect fierce resistance, as this system will likely displace certain current institutions of power, entrenched in the republic system.

Optimistically, this is inevitable, as technology marches on. The era of bad ideas may soon be over.

[erenxuna] Create jobs by repealing retroactive copyright

Dear Senator ___________:
Dear Representative __________:

Here is a bold yet simple proposal to CREATE MANY JOBS while upholding the Constitution: Repeal retroactive copyright extensions.  That is, let works created under a certain copyright term become public domain when their original copyright term expires.

This proposed legislation will CREATE MANY JOBS by spurring innovation. It will cause many old works to immediately pass into public domain because their original copyrights have already expired. (Currently they remain under copyright because of retroactive copyright extensions passed after the works were published.)  The economy will kick into high gear as people will now have the freedom to innovate and build upon these many works newly in public domain. The economic effect will be similar to if tremendous new natural resource were to be unearthed. MANY JOBS WILL BE CREATED broadly in many sectors of the economy to support the innovation.

Innovation is always the driving force behind economic growth and CREATING JOBS.  Innovation never takes place in a vacuum: it always builds upon previous work.  This is why the public domain is very important for economic growth, because it provides a base upon which people may freely build.  Because of the retroactive copyright provisions in the Copyright Term Extension Act (CTEA) of 1998, exactly zero works have passed into the public domain in the past 13 years.  I cannot help but notice that this very roughly coincides with the current economic downturn, though I do not know of any measurements of the actual economic effect of the Act.

As a concrete example of the economic impact of public domain, consider the 2010 Disney film "Alice in Wonderland" directed by Tim Burton.  Based on gross theater receipts, this film had an economic impact of over one billion dollars.  Based on the listed cast and crew, the film provided 1,492 JOBS, from film editors to caterers, plus MORE JOBS indirectly supported by the film, for example, from projectionists to janitors at the movie theater, or the many uncredited employees involved in the marketing or distribution of the film.  All of these jobs existed because Disney could freely build upon Lewis Carroll's book, "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland", published in 1865 and in public domain.

This example demonstrates how the public domain CREATES JOBS, such as caterers and janitors, in sectors seemingly completely unrelated to copyright or intellectual property.

The Progress Clause of the Constitution (Article 8, Section 8) empowers Congress "to promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries."  This proposed legislation upholds the Constitution:  it does not impede progress.  It will NOT affect works yet to be published (nor will it affect recently published works).  Such works will continue to retain the full copyright term granted by the 1998 CTEA.  As a consequence, it will NOT decrease the incentive for current authors and creators to create works of progress and economic growth.  In fact, under this legislation, many newly copyrightable "derived works" will be built upon the works newly in public domain, and the promise of a very long revenue stream of royalties (up to 120 years under CTEA) will spur authors, publishers, and other innovators to produce and market such derived works.  This will CREATE MANY JOBS.

The purpose of copyright, as explicitly stated in the Constitution, is to promote progress.  Retroactive copyright extension does not promote progress: for example, retroactive copyright extension cannot cause an author to retroactively create more works.  That would require time travel!  In fact, for many of the beneficiaries of retroactive extension, the original author may be long since dead!  Politically, the motivation for retroactive copyright has been to protect the royalty revenue stream being paid to an estate or corporation.  Such protectionism is not the purpose of copyright in the Constitution.  In fact, such protectionism impedes CREATING MANY JOBS by preventing works from becoming public domain and allowing innovators to build upon them.  In economic terminology, such protectionism causes a deadweight loss to the economy due to monopoly control over production of derived works.

Despite the strong argument that the beneficiaries of retroactive extension did not deserve the revenues from retroactive extension in the first place (they only deserve the copyright that existed when the work was originally published, because that copyright provided sufficient incentive for the original author to publish), these parties who stand to lose financially from repealing retroactive copyright may complain very loudly (and may be politically influential).  For example, they may complain that they have already made business decisions based on the expected revenue stream from the retroactive extension.  In order to appease these parties, I propose a limited-time tax credit to partially cover the documented expected loss in retroactive royalties caused by this legislation.  The tax credit will ultimately be offset by the tax revenues from the increased economic output, the MANY JOBS CREATED, by this legislation.

[rnsatggq] Open-source cloud computing

The world has not quite realized (implemented into reality) the power of open source software and cloud computing.

Instead of having to rely on a big service provider to compute something computationally expensive for you, you can do it yourself on ten thousand cloud servers rented by the millisecond, so you get an answer not adulterated by a third party outside of your control.

For example, consider Google.  It runs proprietary trade-secret software on its server farms.  You want to search for something.  But Google is not directly interested in returning to you the most relevant result: it serves you the result that maximizes their advertising revenue, because that's their bottom line.

Open-source software prevents such behavoir.

Big computation often uses big data, so we need to remove copyright restrictions on noncommercial copying.

Many enemies: lots of current companies' business models will lose money.  But the battle retains a similar flavor to Microsoft trying to kill off Linux.

[wyjrrwia] Legislation predictions

For every vote a legislator casts, let the reasoning behind the vote also be recorded (kind of like appellate court opinions).  Most importantly, let the reasoning be dependent on the advice of experts making measurable predictions of what will happen (whether it is good for the country) if the legislation passes or does not pass.

Then, over time, one can grade experts on their ability to make good predictions, and grade legislators on their ability to discern good experts.

[voadzicj] Democracy as distributed computing

Feynman's observation about the Millikan oil drop experiment and subsequent cargo-cult science "confirmations" unfortunately demonstrate that very smart people (physicists) may be fooled in a black-and-white field (physics) for which they even have tremendous expertise.  So how can we hope to come up with the correct answers for even harder questions in social science?

The one thing that could be smarter than a single human is a group of people discussing.  The larger the group, the more difficult a question may be tackled.  Thus, the most difficult questions may be posed to the entire population: an election.

This is how a democracy is supposed to work!  People trying to get to the bottom of it, rather than people trying to convince each other.

Perhaps technology can help: natural language processing AI to moderate and coordinate discussion.

[qwxtsguc] Romeo and Juliet, happily ever after

Solve cultural conflicts by intermarriage.

Babies are born innocent.

The hatred of the other culture runs deep, is historically justified, and indoctrination begins at birth.  No rational argument (e.g., promoting "tolerance") can reverse it later in adulthood.

But love (and perhaps only love -- the second strongest instinct) can conquer all because of the biological imperative to procreate.  For a couple in love, between the two of them, the quibbles of the real world seem just not that important anymore.  With love, they will find a way to work out their cultural differences.

How can we implement this?  We need a mechanism by which young people of opposing cultures can meet, ideally during their rebellious teenager phase when they are most likely to be able to reject the hatred with which they've been indoctrinated since birth.  Perhaps the education system.

After falling in love, the couple, and especially their children, must be given a legally protected class, and discrimination against them is prohibited and severely punished.  Crimes against them are prosecuted as hate crimes and punished extra severely.  Speech against them is punished as hate speech. (When is it justifiable to limit freedom of speech? How about for trying to solve a centuries old conflict for which so much blood has already shed?)  These protections especially include the couple's protection from their parents and relatives, who will likely be upset at their relationship.  Extend laws for emancipated minors, as well as welfare for them as they may now be unsupported by their families.  The state recognizes that THEY ARE THE FUTURE FOR PEACE.

The solution thus described, we can see why a cultural conflict persists for generations, how the hate manifests itself on very personal levels.  Parents go to great length, for example segregated private schooling or a segregated neighborhood (or country!), to prevent their children from meeting the enemy.  The commandment that one must marry within the culture is the most important commandment, and the threats of shunning, excommunication, disinheritance for violating it keep the children in line just in case the childhood indoctrination wasn't enough.  All this is couched in a language of "preserving the culture".  No, culture is not something to be mindlessly preserved; it is something to be built by each new generation, to improve upon the failures of ancestors.

It will be a bold move for a culture to abandon the current adult generation as already "lost", the hate too deeply entrenched, and to take the leap of faith and place its hope in the rebellious teens of the next generation.  I cannot imagine a democracy making such a move (but I would be glad to be proved wrong): the parents will outvote the children, if not by voting age then by sheer numbers.  The only way I can see this happening is in a absolute monarchy or dictatorship where an enlightened leader can unilaterally implement this and inflict punishment on any who may oppose with him/her.  Perhaps an emirate?

Inspired, among other things, by Hinduism: why does Hinduism have so many gods?  Because two cultures met, mixed, and formed a new culture with the set union of their gods, and this happened thousands of times.  This can work!

[xysiijys] Untrademark symbol

Create a "untrademark" symbol which, if prominently marked, absolves an entity of possible trademark infringement.  Complements TM or circled R trademark symbols.

The symbol should be a stylistic representation of the word "not", and semantically means that.  For example, a company "Bar" marketing a product in packaging similar to trademarked packaging by company "Foo" need only prominently display "not Foo" but otherwise may look indentical to "Foo".

This is to prevent big guys from squashing little guys with abuses of the trademark system and litigation.

[bbhdjivi] History and Monopoly patents

The patent system is broken in many ways.  Here is one possible way to start attacking the problem.

Nowadays, patents attempt to provide solutions to two problems: first, a historical, time-stamped record of who invented what when, and second, a granting of a limited economic monopoly on uses of the invention to the patent holder.

I propose separating these concerns.  We'll call the two classes of patents a History-class patent, and a Monopoly-class patent.

After inventing something, first one applies for, and is usually fairly easily granted, a History-class patent.  The only requirement is that the patent is clearly written, as decided by the patent examiner.  The patent is published for anyone to read.

A History-class patent does not grant any economic monopoly.  Thus anyone, including multiple firms competing, can develop the patent into a product.  To offer incentive to publish History-class patents, the government awards publicly funded prizes, whose prize value depends on the increase in GDP the patent caused.  (Thus, the government pays for the public good of information.)

Sometimes, developing a patent into a product is desirable for the greater good, but the initial cost of developing are too high for any firm to touch it.  To this end, Monopoly-class patents are awarded to grant a limited-time, perhaps even geographically limited, economic monopoly to an invention to allow monopoly profits to offset initial development costs.

The Monopoly-class patent is granted to a firm likely to successfully develop the product.  It may not be the original History-class patent holder, though if it isn't, the History-class patent holder may be appropriated a share of the revenues from the product, depending on how much of the revenue is attributable to the original idea inspiration, and how much is the perspiration of developing, marketing, manufacturing, and selling the final product.

There may be multiple History-class patent holders applicable, and only to a partial extent does the first one granted get priority.  If a later History-class patent is more clearly, specifically, and usefully written, then the later patent holder might get more revenue: this discourages overly broad, vaguely written patents nowadays that patent trolls favor.

When a developer applies for a Monopoly-class patent, they must show that: (1) The History-class patent in question has thus far failed to be developed; perhaps a waiting period of a few years, and (2) They can and credibly will try to develop the patent into a product.  Almost certainly the application for a Monopoly-class patent will include a business plan.

There will be no more defensive patents or holding a patent for strategic purposes only.  Granting a patent requires a promise to attempt to develop it; perhaps in fines or simply an up-front fee for being awarded it or loss in likelihood of ever being awarded a Monopoly-class patent again.

Software patents and stupid business method patents will likely be less of a problem, because they have little if any initial development costs, so will rarely be eligible for Monopoly-class patents.  They do remain eligible for prizes for History-class patents.

Update: a problem with chains or connected patents. And update 2: solution

[zmzcqtef] Libraries of the future

I see libraries of the future as great storehouses of the world's information, much like the libraries of yesteryear and today.

With much information digital and digitized, libraries will have within them large data centers, storing immense quantities of digital information.  Libraries will be electronically connected peer-to-peer (in the same philosophy as "interlibrary loan") to other libraries and to their local community.

Libraries today store and share copyrighted works; so should libraries of tomorrow.

One portion of a library's data store should serve as a temporary cache for what the local patrons of the library access.  This will allow future patrons to rapidly access the data again.  The other portion is a "permanent collection" managed by librarians, who qualitatively identify what is worth not disappearing if an item were to disappear from all other caches of the peer to peer network: perhaps items of local significance.  In this way, libraries and librarians continue to serve as a means for preservation of information.  A librarian may go as far as creating tape, paper, and other physical backups of important information.

Another mode of use for a physical library is to prefetch data for the patron.  A patron comes in with a research request, perhaps an item of data which will take a long time to gather, perhaps because of its size or because currently the only copy resides in a distant, low bandwidth, portion of the network.  The library's servers patiently gather the data, obviating the need for the patron to run a personal server 24x7.  When the data is complete, the patron can come in and either do research on-site (perhaps complicated analyses of the data which are only convenient if the entire data set is available on local disk), or the patron can bring in a external hard drive to permanently "check out" the data.

Of course, for many small items of data, patrons can also access the library, in fact all libraries, on-line, by simply participating in the same peer to peer network as the library.  Of course, a patron will likely experience higher bandwidth to the local library.  By participating in peer-to-peer, the patron can also contribute to the world's storehouse of information, hopefully to be catalogued and permanently stored in this library network even if the patron's original computer should go away.

Librarians will serve an important role in libraries of tomorrow, in addition to maintaining the data center and selecting the permanent collection, already mentioned.  A patron comes in with a desire for information; the librarian helps formulate this into a query of the peer to peer network as well as post process (e.g., filter, convert format, MapReduce) the result to the answer the patron was seeking. 

Librarians will also spend a lot of time cataloguing, especially sorting out the crap and spam from not-crap, by tagging and cryptographically signing tags with meta information.  This meta information can be used to help formulate queries in the future.  In a digital information age where you never know whom to trust, your local librarian, perhaps who is paid by you by community taxes, serves as a trustable, human, agent.

Of course, we'll need to see some changes in law. We are on the cusp about whether this era will be the best recorded era in history or the worst recorded (another Dark Ages), and it all depends on the greediness of our big entertainment companies.

[wrzcrdbg] How to save your empire

Be sure your empire (nation, etc.) is founded on ideals, not customs.

Not what you are, but what you want to be.

[afupetoi] Express small probabilities in terms of dollars

Humans have a difficult time understanding small probabilities.

Solution: multiply small probabilities by L=5000000 and express the resulting product in dollars.

The value L represents a "round" actuarial estimate of the value of a human life.  This method also has the handy feature that, if the probability is that of death, it gives the risk-neutral amount you should be willing to spend to avoid death by that cause.

[gevyogez] Capitalism prices

The way to encourage market competition and discourage price fixing (game theoretically predicted to be mutually beneficial to producers) is the forbid two producers from offering the same price on the same product. They must differ by at least one cent, or for items where the consumer typically buys at least 5 at a time, differ by at least a tenth of a cent per unit (e.g., gasoline).

We need one piece of technology: a time-stamped price announcement and unannouncement system. When two producers conflict on the same price, the one who started using the price first gets to keep their price; the other must change. Furthermore, the system needs to be aware when a producer has changed its price, allowing another producer to start using that former price. And, we need a way to check check that the announced price is the price the producer is actually charging consumers.

We could have a "futures" mechanism to make an announcement of a future price, so long as that price is not currently in use, or there is an earlier-announced (futures must also be time stamped) future that could be being exercised.  A competitor may use the future price until the exercise date. The right to block someone from using your price begins when you actually start using it, not when you announce it.  I think we also need conditional futures, which allow a price unless it is already in effect. 

Should consumers be permitted to exercise the future price?  This could thwart bogus future announcements.

This is getting complicated.

Perhaps it can be rolled out for gasoline, first.

Bertrand duopoly