From: Michael R. Irwin (mirwin@harborside.com)

Subject: Re: IS/SRR Ludicrously advanced goals and implications of success.

Newsgroups: sci.space.policy Date: 2000-12-30 13:44:38 PST

Some further thoughts:

To avoid the appearance of potential graft or corruption as operations grow a double entry bookkeeping method may be useful.

While this might prototyped via cheap palmtops it may be useful to examine the use of portables and wireless technologies.

Idle portables could be contributing processing cycles to various activities in exchange for credits of possible use elsewhere.

Open engineering of a solar panel and battery power supply system suitable for long term road use globally might be a good market for lunar or mar vehicle component manufactures.

Wireless technology would potentially extend capillary action worldwide with the exception of isolated regions or islands (unless aircraft and boats become active Free Agents) while providing market for satellites.

This also makes each Fractal Food Bank Agent a potential access point for email or messaging services. This level of service might require professionals making a living off of various services, it would be a large time sink for volunteers.

OTOH Some "volunteers" might find funding of gas expenses and a solar powered wireless portable internet access equitable compensation for the nuiscance of talking to their neighbors occassionally. Clearly this is an advanced phase of operations dependent on previous success to be prototypable.

Satellites require launch services, design services, operational services and maintance or replacement.

Alternatively, Clarke and Heinlein style old fashioned trilateral equatorial manned antenna farms could be evaluated. Starting from either skylab style cans or spacehab modules.

Regards, Mike Irwin

P.S. When I asked what the Red Cross bloodmobile cost to equip and operate, nobody was quite certain. Guesses ranged from hundreds of thousands to over a million.

Blood is avialbable from the Red Cross for surgery at prices (IIRC) ranging somewhere between $60-$100/pints. Discounts used to be available if arrangements could be made for donors to designate blood towards a specific surgical procedure.

I suspect the testing and processing implied in the per pint price of blood in the USA supports a lot of medical and laboratory professionals.

From: Derek Lyons (elde@hurricane.net) Subject: Re: IS/SRR Ludicrously advanced goals and implications of success. Newsgroups: sci.space.policy Date: 2000-12-31 11:11:26 PST

"Michael R. Irwin" <mirwin@harborside.com> wrote:

>Some further thoughts: > >To avoid the appearance of potential graft >or corruption as operations grow a double >entry bookkeeping method may be useful. >

'I do not think that term means what you think it means'.

D. ------------------------------ Proprietor, Interim Books http://www.interimbooks.com USS Henry L. Stimson homepage http://www.interimbooks.com/derek/655/ Derek on Books http://www.interimbooks.com/derek/books/ ------------------------------

From: Michael R. Irwin (mirwin@harborside.com) Subject: Re: IS/SRR Ludicrously advanced goals and implications of success. Newsgroups: sci.space.policy Date: 2000-12-31 17:35:04 PST

Derek Lyons wrote: > > "Michael R. Irwin" <mirwin@harborside.com> wrote: > > >Some further thoughts: > > > >To avoid the appearance of potential graft > >or corruption as operations grow a double > >entry bookkeeping method may be useful. > > > > 'I do not think that term means what you think it means'. >

Which term?

Double entry bookkeeping? I did the books for my own firm for 3 years before hiring a bookkeeper. I still do the accounting. I programmed the payroll in Excel, the bookkeeping program we used initially had some inconvenient features and it was easier to build and use the spreadsheet sum sheets.

As a consulting and services firm we did not do much with inventory control. A occasional analysis for a client, rare as material control in factories is fairly specialized.

Another term may be more appropriate and in common usage when using the techniques to track material and credit/debit/cash flows through a distributed warehouse system. Would you happen to know appropriate buzzwords?

I assure you the methods can be applied to dollars, books, boxes of fish, or aluminum cans whether double, quaduple etc. sources of half transactions are used and regardless of whether the data vectors (real term from data flow analysis techniques) are called bills of laden, inventory count sheet, daily register, or individual purchase transactions.

It is of course necessary to build the equations and/or procedures such that the various checks and balances are compared to one another appropriately and money (fish, books, etc.) are not counted multiple times in various checksums in the final results.

The purpose of course is to have sufficient information from diverse sources to detect errors and pinpoint them for correction.

It is interesting to note that many of the techniques are similar whether they are called:

accounting methods conservation of mass/energy calculations statics/dynamics data flow diagrams

or some other title implying arcane application of arithmetric to a specialized field where data, money value or mass/energy elements are transformed but totals are approximately constant with known sources and sinks.

Regards, Mike Irwin

PS IIRC The original post involved palmtop or portable computers. It would be possible to have a very simple menu driven system where transactions between Free Agents were tracked and fed to a central source for processing. While the steady unknown sources and sinks would make precision such as is used in a standard warehouse logistics system impossible, some trending information could certainly be extracted. Statistics is a useful field of which I am woefully ignorant so I shall not speculate much further in this direction without some assistance.

Note however that certain materials flowing have fairly localized sinks. It would not be reasonable for a couple thousand Michigan return deposit cans to be sinking in an Illinois based vehicle through normal loss mechanisms. A brief correspondence with the Agents in the area might pinpoint the problem for easy resolution or the network might decide to route around the agent with the local problem. Notice this could be a kid or a vandal, it will usually not be a Free Agent if they understand the nature of the transaction tracking. The purpose of locks/procedures is to keep honest men honest and provide accurate feedback for improvement when the inevitable errors occur.