Administrative

F%BR#$@&RFG&!!!

That post title is a vague comic-strip rendition of the curse I emitted when, in attempting to get my machine to reboot after freezing, and getting only a series of long on/off beeps, and repeatedly removing and replacing the half meg of RAM in an attempt to get it working again, one of the end clips popped off the socket.

So much for that mobo.

I didn’t need this. I particularly didn’t need this after moving to Florida, thousands of miles from the nearest Fry’s. I even more particularly didn’t need this after considering that a new mobo will require a Windows reinstallation, and the disk is still packed away somewhere.

But I suppose this is a good excuse to finally finish unpacking office stuff, and attempt to organize it.

Fortunately, it’s not my only machine, but it does have some data on the drive that I’d like access to pronto.

Anyone know a good place to buy a motherboard in Boca Raton and environs? I haven’t noticed any computer places here that hold a candle to Fry’s (or PC Club, or other similar places in California).

[Update]

D’oh!

That’s half a gig, not half a meg of RAM. The machine isn’t that old.

Space

Another Myth Of The Old Space Age

Alan Boyle reports on the inaugural services of Zero Gravity Corporation, an entity that’s been attempting to offer weightless flights to the general public in the US for over a decade. It was held up by FAA regulations.

In full disclosure, I attempted to start a business like this about that long ago, but couldn’t raise the money to get started. We did offer service for a brief time in a much smaller aircraft, but never managed to expand beyond that, though we had plans to do exactly what Zero G has done, using cargo 727s that could be quickly converted on a daily basis using pallets. But had I known what travails Peter Diamandis and company would have to go through, I probably wouldn’t have even made the attempt, and I’m probably lucky that I didn’t have to go through it at all.

I want to take exception to a quote that Alan has in his piece, however:

Cosmic Log reader Ayanna Bryan provides a cautionary note:

“As someone who has gone on parabolic flight several times for research purposes, let me assure you that most people do indeed get sick. And it’s not just nausea. There are other forms of motion sickness that are very unpleasant and sometimes disturbing.

Some people remain sick for several hours after the two-hour flight. Unless medicated (which has its trade-offs: comfort in-flight for discomfort 6 hours later), the normal human vestibular system is easily affected by sharp changes in gravitational level. Some fliers still get sick after taking the Scopolamine/Dexedrine medication. Some people even ‘freak out,’ for lack of a better term, once they experience the effects of increased and then decreased gravity.

I hope fair warning is given to paying customers, and I hope the preflight training is good enough to meet Air Force standards. Otherwise someone could get seriously hurt.”

As someone who has done extensive research in this business, let me point out that this comment is completely spurious. Research flights have a specific goal in mind–research. Comfort of participants is a distant second to that goal. They don’t call NASA’s airplane the “Vomit Comet” for nothing, but there’s no reason to think that such unpleasant side effects can’t be avoided.

For one thing, people who don’t have to perform research can use much more effective anti-nauseants than scope-dex. For another, since the purpose of a NASA research flight is to get as much research in as possible, the plane basically flies, and gets in as many parabolas as possible, until it’s either low on fuel, or until everyone on board has green gills, and no more productive activity is possible. That won’t be the case on these flights, in which the goal is to provide an enjoyable and exciting customer experience. There will be far fewer parabolas, and they will be developed gradually, with low-gravity maneuvers preceding the weightless ones.

If Zero G makes a significant number of people sick, it will be because they’re doing something wrong, not because it’s an intrinsic feature (or in this case, bug…) of the experience. Sadly, this is just the type of misinformation that makes it so difficult to raise money for space tourism ventures.

[Monday morning update]

Clark Lindsey has similar thoughts, and provides a little tutorial on weightlessness, but it requires one bit of clarification.

The “zero g” effect produced by these flights, just like in orbit, is an apparent one. Earth’s gravitational pull doesn’t change and remains as strong as ever. (It decreases as 1/(distance squared) as you move away from the planet.)

Over the top of the parabola, both you and the plane are falling together. You are no longer being pressed against the floor of the plane, which is usually keeping you at a fixed distance from the earth via the lift of its wings. (In the valleys of the trajectory, the plane is having to decelerate and reverse you from the speed gained during the falling portion of the parabola. So you feel higher g force in that case.)

In orbit, the same principle applies except you and the vehicle are falling around the earth because your rocket produced enough horizontal speed to keep you from hitting the ground as you fall. That is, the curve of your falling trajectory matches the curve of the earth.

This last sentence is true only for a circular orbit–it’s not true in general. For suborbit, or elliptical (or hyperbolic trajectories), there’s no relationship between the trajectory and the earth’s curvature. But this is not required for free fall.

Essentially, what you feel when you feel “gravity” is the force of some other object (such as your chair if sitting, or the floor if standing or walking) supporting your weight against it. In a free-fall trajectory, the airplane is basically “flying around you,” following the path that you would take if you’d simply been launched from a cannon (in vacuum), so it never contacts you and can thus not give you any feeling of weight by supporting you against the force.

One more subtle point. What we call a parabola in so-called parabolic flight isn’t a true parabola, mathematically, precisely because of the curvature of the earth. If we were using a flat earth model, in which gravity were a constant, (as Galileo assumed when he first started doing calculations for his pioneering work in ballistics), then it would be a parabola. In reality, it’s a small section of a non-circular ellipse (that is, a suborbit would be an orbit with an extremely low perigee, if the earth didn’t get in the way). However, over the distances involved in subsonic aircraft, flat earth is a reasonable approximation, and the difference between the trajectory and a true parabola are inconsequential, and probably unmeasurable.

[Update at noon eastern]

Here’s a space.com article that describes the (overly onerous, in my opinion) FAA approval process for the flights.

Incidentally, I don’t buy the notion that Zero G can really patent the idea of using cargo airplanes during the day for this that fly at night–it seems almost as silly to me as Amazon’s single-click system. I doubt if that would stand up in court very long.

Whether it does or not, though it looks like the real barrier to entry to this is the FAA certification process (though now that there’s a precedent for the Special Type Certificate it may be easier for a competitor to come in than it was for Zero G, should the market prove robust enough to support one). Space enthusiast Peter Diamandis should welcome this, even if Zero G investor and executive Peter Diamandis doesn’t…

General

Idiot Tech Support

That’s one of my pet peeves. It’s very frustrating to get someone in tech support who a) has no knowledge at all other than what’s on the checklist in front of them and b) certainly doesn’t know as much as you do, particularly when it comes to first principles or logic and c) doesn’t know that they don’t know, and answer your questions with gibberish, often in a condescending way as though you’re the idiot.

This happens all too frequently, and it happened again today with DirecTV.

I’ve got a weird problem. Intermittently, I’ll lose signal on some channels, starting with pixelation and audio breakup, deteriorating into complete loss of satellite signal. The last time I was having a problem like that, in California, it turned out to be a bad LNB, so I went out and bought a new one, and installed it.

The problem persists. Now here’s the really strange part.

When I run a test on the individual transponders while it’s acting up, the odd-numbered ones are fine, with signal strengths in the nineties. The even-numbered ones are zero across the board. What kind of failure would cause this kind of selective behavior? What’s different between odd-numbered and even-numbered transponders that would cause one to be fine and the other useless? I thought it might be something in the logic programming of the receiver, but I hooked another one up, and saw exactly the same behavior.

It seemed like an intriguing problem to me, and I figured that if I talked to DirecTV about it, they’d have some kind of ready explanation. And indeed they might, if you could actually talk to someone who understands how the system works, instead of a drone with a checklist, who not only couldn’t explain it, but didn’t seem to think it remarkable. He simply kept leading me through his check list. When I explained to him that even was bad and odd was good, he could only repeat, “that means it’s seeking signal,” as though that actually meant something significant and useful.

The bottom line was that he said he’d send someone out to look at it. On October 12th. I’m tempted to make another attempt to see if this time I can at least get someone with a little intellectual curiousity, and ability to think, but I’m wondering if anyone out there has any insight.

It’s not the receiver, it’s not the LNB. It could be dish aim, but the problem with this, as with all hypotheses, is that it doesn’t explain why I have a perfect signal on odd transponders and zero on the evens. Same thing with a bad cable, which is the only other thing that I can try at my end.

If someone described the symptoms to me, and I had no other knowledge, my first guess was a problem with the transponders on the satellite itself. But that implies that everyone else would be having the same problem, and it’s hard to imagine that occurring for long without DirecTV doing something about it.

Anyway, I guess I’ll try swapping cables, just because there’s nothing else I haven’t tried, but if that’s the problem, I’ll be very interested to understand what kind of cable failure would affect half the transponders, and only those with even numbers.

[Update on Sunday morning]

Thanks for the input. I finally did get in touch with someone at DirecTV who knew what they were talking about, and he told me that the most common reason for this behavior was cabling, with receiver second, and LNB a distant third. He couldn’t explain the physics of it, but said that in his experience, it was usually a bent pin on a cable, or some similar problem.

I went out this morning, and started tracing the wire. I found a corroded connector where it goes into the house on the active line. When I moved it to the other side (on a line we aren’t currently using), which wasn’t corroded, the problem seems to have gone away. I’ll have to watch for a while to see if it recurs, but that looks like it was the culprit. I’ll have to go to Home Depot and get a replacement for it, and seal it back up out of the weather (it only had electrical tape wrapped around it, which is probably why it went south).

Science And Society

The Evolution Of Democracy

Twenty years ago, a political science professor at the University of Michigan came out with a seminal book titled the Evolution of Cooperation.

In it, he described how cooperative strategies could have evolutionary-beneficial consequences, and thus be selected for. In particular, via a series of computer game tournaments in which algorithms were submitted to play an extended iterated prisoner’s dilemma, he identified a strategy that was the most successful called “Tit for Tat” (TFT). (Read the link for information as to how the game works.)

In this strategy, you retain a memory of past interactions with other entities, and you treat them exactly as they treated you the last time you dealt with them. If they cooperated the last time, you cooperate. If they defected on you the last time, you defect on them the next. If it’s your first interaction, you cooperate.

The strategy has four characteristics that made it successful. It’s simple and can be clearly and easily recognized after a brief period of time, it’s forgiving, it’s provocable and retributive (so that you can’t get away with screwing it), and it’s nice (that is, it never screws anyone for no reason–its default is to cooperate). In essence, it is cooperative, and is rewarded for being that way.

One of the interesting things about it is that the more similar algorithms it has to deal with, the better it does. Put in an environment of non-cooperators, it has a much harder time, but it can still be more successful than them, and if it has a few others to cooperate with, it can survive even in a sea of non-cooperators.

Non-cooperators, on the other hand, don’t do well in a cooperative society. A non-nice strategy (one that always, or occasionally, or randomly defects unprovoked) won’t do well in a world of TFTs, because after the first time they get screwed by it, they will not cooperate with it again, at least until it changes its ways. So while it gets a big payoff the first time, it gets a much smaller one in subsequent exhanges, whereas the TFTs interacting with each other always get the medium benefit.

Thus, it’s possible for a small group of cooperators to “colonize” a larger group of non-cooperators, and eventually take it over, whereas a group of non-cooperators invading a larger group of cooperators will not thrive, and will eventually die out. This is the basis for Axelrod’s (and others’) claim that there is evolutionary pressure for cooperation to evolve.

This may hold the key to fixing Iraq, and ultimately the Middle East. While there’s a lot of bad news coming from that country right now, the fact remains that much of it is calm and at peace–that part doesn’t make the news. It may be that nationwide elections won’t be possible in January, but certainly it should be for some regions (particularly the Kurdish region).

The Jihadists and ex-Ba’athists are determined to prevent a democracy from forming there, but if such can be established in large areas, it will provide an unnurturing environment for them there. Then we can gradually expand them, and tighten the noose around the Fallujahs over time. What we have to pay attention to is not the level of violence, but over how widespread a region it is. As more and more of the country becomes not only pacified, but wealthier, with a stake in continued peace and freedom, we can continue to shrink the territory in which the terrorists, the ultimate non-cooperators, can survive, and eventually kill them or starve them out.

Space

The New Saudi Arabia?

Mark Whittington asks if that’s what the moon will be in the twenty-first century. He also misspells Gerard O’Neill’s name in the process…

I assume that he means in the energy-production aspect, not the exporting-murderous-nutballs-with-a-misogynistic-fascist-ideology aspect.

Maybe, but we’re a long way from it, both in terms of the cost of getting there, and in developing the technologies to make it happen. I think that it’s a race between using space for energy, and developing radical new technologies on earth that will make that unnecessary, and I don’t have my money on either one right now.

Philosophy

It Strikes Me…

…in reading some moronic commentary on Usenet about Dan’s Unexcellent Adventure, that this little incident provides a pretty fool-proof intelligence test. Anyone who still believes, at this point, that the documents are genuine, or even could conceivably be genuine, has to be an imbecile.

Of course, someone who believes that they may be false, but now considers them irrelevant because the underlying story must still be true (and conveniently, because they’re obviously forged), is simply bereft of logic or ethics.

Satire

CBS Stands By Imperial Wardrobe Claims

NEW YORK (APUPI) In the face of rising, even overwhelming skepticism, Dan Rather and CBS News refuse to back down from his blockbuster story that the Emperor wore a new set of clothes in last week’s parade. His network remains one of the last holdouts from the growing consensus that His Highness was, in fact, ambulating down the street completely naked.

“We choose to believe the numerous eyewitnesses who saw the Emperor’s new clothes before they changed their story,” explained a CBS spokeswoman.

The imbroglio started last week when Sixty Minutes did a hard-hitting piece on the latest imperial fashion, with extensive footage of the Emperor as he strode down the street, waving to his subjects. Shortly after the piece aired (though NPR, pointing to a plot on the part of the nudity lobby, and being unable to distinguish between time zones, claims that it actually occurred prior to airtime), a small boy put up a post at the anti-imperial Free Republic website claiming that the Emperor was actually not wearing any clothes at all.

“I’ve been examining the footage of the parade,” he wrote, “and if you look carefully, you’ll see that almost every square inch of his skin is exposed. It looks to me as though he’s not even wearing any underwear, either boxers or briefs. I think that in a couple shots you can actually see his doodle.”

It was apparently a thought that hadn’t occurred to anyone else, at least at first, and this post didn’t receive much attention initially, but a few people started emailing it to some bloggers, who on the next day noted the potential sartorial discrepancy and invited comments from their readership. As others went back to reexamine the CBS footage, the web sites started to become deluged by emails from fashion experts all over the country.

Heated arguments took place on line, with sites like The Daily Kos arguing that the clothes were simply so fine that that they just appeared to be transparent. One commenter at that site named “Joe the Fashion Guy,” who claimed to have worked with famous Parisian designer Foofoo LaDerriere, pointed out that it was quite common for celebrities’ clothes to present the illusion of nudity. Subsequent investigation, however, determined that he was simply a night watchman in the LA Fashion District.

Some bloggers and other web site owners did their own experiments, taking pictures of themselves with and without clothing, and posting the results to demonstrate the difference. Many of them used animated gifs to offer instant A/B comparisons.

The results ranged from fascinating to frightening, resulting, in some of the latter cases, in charges of grotesque internet obscenity. For additional contrast, some of them demonstrated a state in between, by donning pajamas. The other networks and newspapers started to pick up the story. As a result, over the course of a couple days, it became clear to most non-imperial partisans that His Majesty had suffered a major-league wardrobe malfunction, and that CBS had been snookered.

Despite this, the network and Rather stuck to their guns. They dragged out other footage of prior clothed instances of His Majesty, and noted that even if that particular footage displayed a naked emperor, it didn’t matter, since the general story was true. Flanked by the imperial tailors, they also attacked critics as partisan, and opposed to the vital, albeit expensive, imperial clothing budget.

One of the few publications to stand by the network, the Boston Globe, ran a story in which it quoted Mr. Blackwell as saying, “The Emperor was clearly completely and resplendently clothed during the entire event.” The famous clothes critic later complained that he was misquoted.

“If by ‘completely and resplendently clothed,’ they meant ‘naked as a jaybird,’ then I guess they got the quote correct,” he told this correspondent.

“In fact, after examining the footage to be used in the piece, I actually warned CBS that the Emperor wasn’t wearing any clothes before it aired, but they didn’t pay any attention to me. I told them that I couldn’t verify the authenticity or fashionability of clothes that didn’t exist, but they chose to go ahead anyway.”

Columnist Maureen Dowd at the New York Times tried to help out as well, quoting one of the critics as saying, “I…think…the Emperor was not…naked.”

But by the end of the week, the strain was clearly getting to the CBS staff. “Who are you going to believe, me, or your lying eyes?” snarled the veteran anchorman in a brief press conference last week in front of CBS headquarters.

“We don’t have to prove that the Emperor was wearing any clothes. It’s up to our critics to prove that he wasn’t.”

Recently, though, there have been some signs that the network may be preparing to back down from some of its more extreme clothing claims. A spokesperson said today that “…we stand by the general theme of our story, and we certainly believed at the time that the Emperor was finely garbed. We believed that the clothes were authentic, and it remains inconclusive whether or not he was actually dressed at that particular point in time.”

In related news, the FCC is investigating the long display of nudity during prime time, and is expected to levy fines that make the half-million paid by CBS for the Janet Jackson Superbowl incident look like couch-cushion change.

General

New Network Problem

My server is having trouble with DNS. It can ping the internet by IP, and when I ping by name, it makes an attempt and echos the IP, but cannot ping. My /etc/resolv.conf file contains only “nameserver 192.168.2.1” which is the address of the wireless router.

Am I doing something wrong?

[Update]

I finally found the DNS servers for AT&T. When I put them in resolv.conf, everything seems to work fine. Thanks for the suggestions.

General

Networking Problem

I’ve got a weird (at least to me, I’m hoping that it will be obvious to someone else) problem with my network.

I’m running an 802.11(g) router. I’ve got my server and my desktop ethernetted to it, and I’m using my laptop in wireless mode. All machines are seeing the router fine (and getting Internet access), but the laptop is not able to see the other two machines and vice versa on the network. The laptop can ping everyone, but the laptop cannot be pinged. I’m running in encrypted mode on the wireless connection, and wondering if that might be the problem. It doesn’t seem like it should be, because I would think that the signal is being decrypted by the router and available through ethernet.

Does anyone have any ideas?

[Update]

D’oh!

I’d changed my network from 192.168.1.* to 192.168.2.* and forgot to tell Zone Alarm on the laptop.

Problem solved.

Biting Commentary about Infinity…and Beyond!