Aug. 1st, 2008
I can't help but wonder if there's a factor missing from The Drake Equation, or if not a factor, at the very least a multiplier that makes the fc (fraction of civilizations that actually go on to release detectable signals) factor far smaller than anyone might anticipate.
The Drake Equation is a mathematical formula for "the number of civilizations that might arise in our galaxy with which communication might be possible." Arguments have risen over how each factor should be calculated: the rate of star formation, the average number of planets that can support life, the fraction that develop life, those that go on to be intelligent, and those that might release signals, and how long those civilizations might persist, for examples.
I've proposed in the past that the "signals/duration" part of the equation needs to be rethought: as we shift to ever more esoteric means of exploiting bandwidth, our detectable signals evolve into "noise" for anyone except ourselves, as we have the codecs necessary. It becomes even more noisy and less intelligible as coding/decoding becomes inextricably bound to cryptography and authentication.
But one other issue that's recently come to mind is this: the persistence of a civilization that can release useful signals is directly related to the availability of a local, easily exploited source of high-density energy.
For millions of years, our planet has banked somewhere between two and ten yottajoules (I enjoyed calculating that we used approximately 11.5 zettajoules of energy last year) of absorbed and produced energy in the form of oil and other natural gas sources. We have a pretty narrow window in which to bootstrap ourself into a post-petroleum civilization, and we've been very lucky to have that much easily exploitable energy at hand. We can only hope that our civilization gets its act together and achieves a post-petroluem existence without falling backward economically, with all the pain and terror that would ensue if we did.
I can't help but assume that the fc is much, much smaller than previously thought; it's not just about reaching civilization and not blowing yourselves up: it's about having resources that let you get post-agricultural at all.
The Drake Equation is a mathematical formula for "the number of civilizations that might arise in our galaxy with which communication might be possible." Arguments have risen over how each factor should be calculated: the rate of star formation, the average number of planets that can support life, the fraction that develop life, those that go on to be intelligent, and those that might release signals, and how long those civilizations might persist, for examples.
I've proposed in the past that the "signals/duration" part of the equation needs to be rethought: as we shift to ever more esoteric means of exploiting bandwidth, our detectable signals evolve into "noise" for anyone except ourselves, as we have the codecs necessary. It becomes even more noisy and less intelligible as coding/decoding becomes inextricably bound to cryptography and authentication.
But one other issue that's recently come to mind is this: the persistence of a civilization that can release useful signals is directly related to the availability of a local, easily exploited source of high-density energy.
For millions of years, our planet has banked somewhere between two and ten yottajoules (I enjoyed calculating that we used approximately 11.5 zettajoules of energy last year) of absorbed and produced energy in the form of oil and other natural gas sources. We have a pretty narrow window in which to bootstrap ourself into a post-petroleum civilization, and we've been very lucky to have that much easily exploitable energy at hand. We can only hope that our civilization gets its act together and achieves a post-petroluem existence without falling backward economically, with all the pain and terror that would ensue if we did.
I can't help but assume that the fc is much, much smaller than previously thought; it's not just about reaching civilization and not blowing yourselves up: it's about having resources that let you get post-agricultural at all.
Suddenly there's an entry on the "Coming Soon" portion ofthe sidebar of Pendorwright! Yes, there are new stories coming soon, every two weeks on Monday. The current queue is full until January 5, 2009, at which point I'd better have something new to post or y'all are gonna be mad at me. And you'll have to wait until Monday to get the last Kaede & Eshi story.
What you're getting, for the next few months, is the archive of stuff I'd played with on and off throughout the years, including an Arc that really didn't go anywhere entitled 'A Century of Solitude.' You'll get to meet Tainee and Bambi, deal with a starship screensaver's strange, erotic dreams, meet a sad virginal ghost and a very pissed-off demigoddess. To give you an idea of where this stuff is coming from, the story about three months from now, We'll Always Have..., was first written in 1994.
What you're getting, for the next few months, is the archive of stuff I'd played with on and off throughout the years, including an Arc that really didn't go anywhere entitled 'A Century of Solitude.' You'll get to meet Tainee and Bambi, deal with a starship screensaver's strange, erotic dreams, meet a sad virginal ghost and a very pissed-off demigoddess. To give you an idea of where this stuff is coming from, the story about three months from now, We'll Always Have..., was first written in 1994.
I'm a big fan of Objective-C, much more than I am of C++. C++ is about adding objects to C without impacting system time, but Objective-C is much more about adding objects to C while reducing programmer time.
For reasons that don't bear much looking into, I needed an ObjC CGI (Common Gateway Interface) class the other day. I googled for one, naturally, and nothing at all came up. I looked high and low. I looked far and wide. I consulted other search engines and other toolkits. No love. Most of the conversation I found about the topic was "Just use an application server. There are three of them, you know: WebObjects, GnustepWeb, and SOPE." But an application server is far too heavy for what I wanted to do. I needed something simple and straightforward. I needed a CGI.
Then, in a lonely and cobweb-ridden corner of the internet, I found one, called "CGI-O." As I looked through the source, I had a strange sensation. A funny case of deja-vu. And then I stumbled across this:
/* Is there a better way to write this? Elf? */
It had written this thing. Twelve years ago. It hadn't been touched in all that time.
Sigh. Something else for the project pile: clean it up and put it into the repository. Someday.
For reasons that don't bear much looking into, I needed an ObjC CGI (Common Gateway Interface) class the other day. I googled for one, naturally, and nothing at all came up. I looked high and low. I looked far and wide. I consulted other search engines and other toolkits. No love. Most of the conversation I found about the topic was "Just use an application server. There are three of them, you know: WebObjects, GnustepWeb, and SOPE." But an application server is far too heavy for what I wanted to do. I needed something simple and straightforward. I needed a CGI.
Then, in a lonely and cobweb-ridden corner of the internet, I found one, called "CGI-O." As I looked through the source, I had a strange sensation. A funny case of deja-vu. And then I stumbled across this:
/* Is there a better way to write this? Elf? */
It had written this thing. Twelve years ago. It hadn't been touched in all that time.
Sigh. Something else for the project pile: clean it up and put it into the repository. Someday.
When madness meets nostalgia!
Aug. 1st, 2008 10:35 pmI discovered this evening that the Apache2 redirect mechanism, Wordpress, and Microsoft WebTV (yes, I actually have one, and yes, I can actually get it running in a virtualized environment) do not get along. I can read my LJ, and my story mini-sites come up, but elfsternberg.com and pendorwright.com just result in repeated calls to the server, which returns a 301, which the WebTV client just ignores.
How silly!
How silly!
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