Solipsism Gradient

Noted SF writer and physics professor Gregory Benford writes about what should come “Beyond the Shuttle”. (Excerpted on Brad deLong’s blog.) The article is also discussed on SlashDot.

Here’s an update to my previous post about this.

HighLift Systems has a proposal for a small-scale space elevator. Instead of a large-diameter (5 to 20 meters) full-scale beanstalk, they propose a 10-20 cm wide ribbon which would be only fractions of a millimeter thick. This is based on a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts study.

This design would drive costs down into the $10-billion range – much less than what AOL/TimeWarner lost last year – and allow payloads of a few tons.

The ribbon would be 100,000 km long and weigh about 750,000 tons. There’s a FAQ which answers many questions about safety. For instance, the ribbon would wrap 2.5 times around the Equator if it fell down… but such a thin ribbon would be mostly evaporated during re-entry. Dana Blankenhorn elaborates further on problems and opportunities. However, Carey Gage, among others, makes the point that such a structure is presently impossible to defend.

Rafael Fischmann, um dos donos/sócios/fundadores/responsáveis pelo excelente MacMagazine mudou para a Nova Zelândia para um programa de intercâmbio de um ano.

Para manter contato com os amigos, está publicando um blog com fotos e outras evidências do choque cultural. Claro que imediatamente contratou uma linha ADSL para poder continuar mantendo o MacMagazine no seu copioso tempo livre… realmente a geografia está ficando irrelevante!

Ernie the Attorney explains why filesharing is good for the music industry, inspired by an article in Salon:

Embrace file-sharing, or die

A record executive and his son make a formal case for freely downloading music. The gist: 50 million Americans can’t be wrong…

Syndic8 indica os sites brasileiros que publicam via RSS. Hoje são só 4… o único de notícias é o do “Globo”, e parece que ou está desatualizado, ou os links estão quebrados.

Update: Um dos problemas é que poucos sites declaram sua localização. Pesquisando por sites em português aparecem mais de 60, mas muitos são de Portugal. Entre outros, o site do “Jornal do Brasil” também parece estar com problemas.

De blogs brasileiros, achei entre outros o Interney.net . Depois procuro mais…

A week ago, in a comment on the Eldred v. Ashcroft decision, I pointed at Spider Robinson‘s short story, “Melancholy Elephants”, where he argues against perpetual copyrights.

Dori Smith & Tom Negrino’s Backup Brain today points at an editorial called “The Mouse’s pro Bono project”, also written by Spider Robinson, about the decision.

First of all, it seems that “Melancholy Elephants” won the 1983 Hugo Award for best short story. My apologies for overlooking that fact in my first comment.

In the editorial, Spider writes:

Prof. Lessig argues that Congress only has the right to permit copyright within limits: Apparently, in his view, 50 years is a limit but 70 somehow is not. To explore this, let’s shift perspective 180 degrees from Disney, and focus on the exact opposite end of the financial spectrum: me.

…I’ve written 32 books so far. I believe I’ve earned what money they’ve brought me (and then some!), and I hope they’ll stay in print awhile after I’m gone.

So when I do snuff it, I’d like to leave them, and any money they may fetch (the wee percentage the publishers, producers and taxmen won’t keep) to my daughter Terri — just like any other craftsman would. I don’t think that’s an outrageous, capitalist-pig desire: It’s a large part of why the stories exist in the first place.

…I wish we were done with irony now. “Melancholy Elephants” was originally dedicated to the remarkable Virginia Heinlein, Robert Heinlein’s widow. On Jan. 18, Ginny passed away in her sleep in Florida, surrounded by family and friends. She leaves several descendants – one 3 years old – and I don’t see why they should get ripped off because “information wants to be free.”

Well, I sympathize with Spider’s point… up to a point. Certainly individual author’s surviving spouses and children should be entitled to continue holding the copyright for a reasonable time – perhaps for the lifetime of the spouse and until the children reach majority or a certain age. I’m not sure I agree about grandchildren or great-grandchildren…

I certainly don’t think that corporations should be similarly entitled, or for the same time span as individuals; the humanitarian argument certainly is inappropriate here. 95 years, as currently established, is clearly aimed solely at protecting the interests of a very small minority of powerful corporations.

Lawrence Lessig has published a very interesting proposal:

…I describe a proposal that would move more work into the public domain than a total victory in the Supreme Court would have. The basic idea is this: 50 years after a work has been “published,” a copyright owner would be required to pay a copyright tax. That tax should be extremely low – this proposal says $50, but it could be $1. If the copyright holder does not pay the tax for 3 years, then the work is forfeit to the public domain. If the copyright holder does pay the tax, then its contacting agent would be made a matter of public record. Very quickly we would have a cheap, searchable record, of what work is controlled and what work is free.

This sounds both effective (at least in its intent to revive the public domain) and doable, although it fails to distinguish between individual and corporate copyright owners. Raising the value – say, to $50,000 – would only give the Disneys another unfair advantage, as this would still be insignificant to them. Hm…

Maddog ran into a classic example of good user interface design at the Schipol airport in Holland.

Hmm… I wonder if this can be retrofitted…

Update: I was looking around Maddog’s weblog a little more after posting this, and there are many interesting posts; I liked the ones about micropayments. He went to Brazil for Christmas 2001 and wrote several articles about it (he’s from Toronto).

I’ve been to Toronto several times, but had no weblog then . Perhaps that’s an idea: tourists exchanging weblogs?

James Lileks has a very interesting section on his site where he comments on several currencies. Worth a look.