The Final Frontier

Like it or not, space travel is here to stay. Traveling into the unknown is the ultimate risk, and has some foreseeable benefits in the future. With some large private sector entries into space travel, an unprecedented surge in space travel technology is on its way.

Forget about sky diving, that's for people with no adventure. Why not take a rocket into space and dive back from there? Or, if your not an adrenaline junkie like me, why not at least go to the edge of space with Virgin Galactic. These are two of many attempts to give anyone a trip into space. Of course prices will be out of range for the average person, but they will continue to drop as people continue to use the space services.

As for benefits, think asteroids. They have many valuable resources that are just sitting there waiting to be exploited. Nickel, iron, and platinum are some of the mineral deposits. Space Mining could some day be a major industry, and, if space travel is handled properly, in the future, we should have no mineral shortages. It is estimated that an asteroid with a diameter of 1 kilometer has aproxmately 150 billion dollars worth of platinum on it alone! (more info here)

Planets also are the key to our history. We can try to make educated guesses, but by examining our neighboring planets and other parts of the solar system and universe, we can find more clues to our past, present and future.

If we can break through a few barriers, the possibilities for space travel are almost endless. One of the largest barriers to overcome is speed. How can we possibly get anywhere with our current speed? Even 1 light year would take us a long enough time. Our major break through in space travel will come when we break that barrier. In my opinion, its not a question of will we achieve speeds close to the speed of light, but a question of when? And even light speed does not seem sufficient to explore all the realms of existence. I also believe that it is possible to travel at speeds faster than the speed of light. The private space companies popping up everywhere will surely expand our technologies and views of space. After all, slow advancements are slow profits!

So, with lack of major space advancements from NASA for many years, I say, give it a go private sector! Look what the private sector did for computers! And for anyone interested, theres a book about the great minds of our starting private space age. I haven't come across this book yet, but it seems very interesting. So check it out, and let me know how it is! Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space

Quote of the Week

"Too many people are thinking of security instead of opportunity. They seem to be more afraid of life than death." -James F. Bymes

Sorry, took a little while to think of a quote worth posting.

Quote of the Week

"If you asked me to name the three scariest threats facing the human race, I would give the same answer that most people would: nuclear war, global warming, and Windows." - Dave Barry

Digital Downloads: The Grass Is Greener On the Other Side

Digital downloads are starting to take off, as technology makes it easier for the everyday consumer to download content without any deep understanding of technology. Content is starting to appear more and more on the internet, and is available to anyone at the click of a mouse. Larger companies are starting to see the benefit of the digital age, even if, they still insist on digital rights management. Media companies are always afraid of jumping to new methods of distribution, if you want a definition of conservative, look no further. In this article, we shall examine a couple benefits of digitalization, as well as some possible downsides. In the end, it will hopefully be clear, that going digital favors everyone.

Ease of use is one of the reasons why technology is being developed so rapidly. The computer is now becoming the central controller of media in households. Whether your streaming video to an Apple TV, downloading music, or watching the latest trailer or political campaign on websites such as Youtube, a computer can be used as the final destination for anything media. This central hub is eliminating the use of physical media, no more getting up and putting that damn disc into a player. So it's only logical to start putting the major media on it.

The most significant benefit of digitalization has to do with earth itself. As our population grows, our needs and wants are starting to impact the earth's resources in a large way. Forests are being cut down at an enormous rate, our small supplies of fresh water are being polluted by industries and deemed unsafe. Littering from excess packaging is starting to cover our land. Digitalization of media can help slow down the process of destroying our planet. There would be no more need to package DVDs, music cds, software, or games. Stopping this excessive, and unnecessary mass production could be a big helping hand to returning earth to a better state. And who knows, it might help a few people tidy up their cluttered homes!

With every positive solution comes negative ideas. Because of the internet architecture of openness, some people enjoy downloading content without paying, or in any way benefiting the producers/owners. Now, some say this is killing the industry. I stick with the idea that the people who watch the content without giving back their support would not have payed for it in the first place. While people argue that this is a very ignorant way of looking at it, I believe this to be true. The market is not affected if the people who watch the illegally downloaded content were not going to buy it in the first place. I also think of the content as a free trial. Chances are, if someone enjoys the content, they will likely want to support the provider to create more of it. And they might not have otherwise seen it if they hadn't downloaded it. Its a give and take circle that, in my opinion, benefits everyone.

Maybe, we're accusing people of stealing without looking further into the issue. Perhaps the downloading of illegal content is the result of lacking a decent, easy to use, unobtrusive service. Take a look at iTunes. Before iTunes, music was taken off the internet from peer to peer programs like Kazaa. If all people were taking music off the internet with the sole intention of theft (which companies try to make it look like), would iTunes have then boomed? There are many other services coming with the same idea in mind, provide a service with a legal means of downloading content. Yahoo Unlimited is a promising idea based on renting music. There are some services in the works that plan to give away music for free, using instead, advertising revenue to pay for it.

Most of the technology is here already. Most people have a computer in their household. Hard drive storage space is increasing, and bandwidth is becoming cheaper everyday. Consumer internet speeds are increasing as content on the internet demands more speed. We are approaching a tipping point, one which will fall towards virtual instead of physical content. Even if downloading times aren't instant, you can see there is a demand by looking at systems such as netflix. If people wanted their movies right now, they would go to a movie rental store and rent them. Instead, they order online, and are willing to wait for it to arrive in the mail. So, with this attitude in mind, people wouldn't be bothered much if they had to wait a few hours for downloads to finish. Digital content is the future. Its environmentally friendly, and people want it. So, the only question that remains is, how long will the corporate world keep consumers waiting, trying to push away the inevitable? How much money will companies lose staying out of these new markets that are being created across the internet, one of the few markets that has little regards to borders?

The Unfortunate State of Democracy in the 21st Century

Here we are, a little past the beginning of the 21st century. We have made many great leaps, we are doing the previously impossible. Indeed, we are a constantly changing civilization of freedom and liberty. But, with all these advancements, we cannot be so naive, for there exists something stronger than our civilization, and it has existed since the first of man. We call it power.

Power is the main driving force behind any political system. Democracy is dependent on a balance of powers, to make sure that a single individual doesn't gain too much. Thomas Jeffferson once said "I hope our wisdom will grow with our power, and teach us, that the less we use our power the greater it will be". There will always be those who will seek power. As history teaches us, power corrupts.

As with everything else, voting is being transformed by newer technology. Voting is not like other technology. Voting is one of the major driving forces behind democracies. And this, is where democracy is being attacked. At its foundation. Electronic voting machines are starting to gain popularity. These machines are not being taken seriously enough. There are no computer systems in our age that are perfectly safe. They mostly have been proven unreliable, and, if they have not, then its only because they have not revealed the "brains" of their machine. Machines have been in use for quite a while, but until recently, they were still in little use. Now, with them dreadfully becoming widespread, we are going to see more problems become visible, but by then, it may be too late.

Machines are not alive, they are not magical, they are logical. Unlike humans, machines do not have a sense of patriotism, guilt, or reluctance. They do exactly what they are told. Just recently, a group from the University of Berkeley were given full reign on a variety of voting machines, and they were all hacked successfully. There are those who believe that the United States elections of 2004 had votes altered. A group of people formed the organization Black Box Voting, fighting to stop ballot tampering. There is an HBO documentary on ballot tampering, where Black Box Voting uncovered some scandalous facts.

While I don't live in the United States, it makes me sick to see the power of democracy falling out of the people's hands. Lives were given in its name, and the power is being whittled away from we, the people. Here in Canada, the use of electronic systems are starting to come about. I have yet to encounter one, but it seems only inevitable as the seducing flood of "apparently reliable and safe" technology comes about. For an underlying foundation of our political systems, our approach to new technology is a joke. In Canada, I believe the ballot counting should remain the way it mostly is, in peoples hands, not machines.

Voting is a time for people to put their heads together, and to decide on the fate of their country. It is one of the few times that direct democracy almost occurs. It's a process of openness. We, the people, see how the process works while we control the counting. When we use machines, we cannot see how their "brains" work, the doing of proprietary code. We are depending on a select group of people. Are we slowly on our way to a dictatorship? After all, we can consider the select few as an "elite group of people" at the forefront of decision making.

Edit: Kate pointed out this article - Surprise: U.S. Electronic Voting Systems Fail Security Tests!, showing some of the actual security exploits. Thanks Kate!

Quote of the Week

"There is no good or evil: only power and those too weak to seek it." - J. K. Rowling