"Jurisdiction as Property" makes the SSRN Top Ten List

I'm happy to announce that my paper "Jurisdiction as Property" made the top 10 list for all time most dowloaded papers in legal history on the Social Science Research Network, the standard site for posting scholarly legal papers here in the U.S. Alas, the number of downloads is not quite as overwhelming as this suggests -- academic interest in the crucially important area of legal history is depressingly small -- but then again they are not counting the larger number of downloads of the paper from my own web site. Here's my brief description of the paper:

In medieval and renaissance England jurisdictions were often held as property. Relationships between these jurisdictions were property relations. The basic laws of jurisdiction were trespass and title. Infringement of a jurisdiction was a trespass, and abuse of a defendant by a court could be a trespass. In addition, the king could use his writ of right to challenge title to a franchise. In determining title, a crucial idea was seisin, which for franchises generally meant proper and continual use, and for jurisdictions in particular came to mean the following of proper procedure. Defense of trespass by and seisin of a franchise court came to imply obligations of protecting individual rights and serving the public good as well as private gain. Thus the property relations between franchises played a significant role in the development of English jurisdictional and procedural law.

Ron Paul, Internet culture, and the new generation gap

Ron Paul scored a respectable, if hardly leading, 10% among Republicans in the Iowa caucus,and will probably garner an even higher share of the vote in New Hampshire. (For my overseas readers, the United States is currently in the "primary elections" which determine the nominees of each party for the next President of the United States). Yet, at one extreme, traditional media has rarely mentioned Paul, considering him to be an unthinkably fringe candidate, while judging from the Internet buzz you'd think that Ron Paul was the leading Republican candidate. Google trends shows that "Ron Paul" (A, in light blue) has for the last few months been searched for on the Internet more than any of the other major Republican candidates, and "Huckabee"(red) the second most:

The large Internet presence of Ron Paul and Mike Huckabee is confirmed by the number of mentions as indicated by Yahoo search results:

"Ron Paul" 52.5 million
"Mike Huckabee" 32.4 million
"Mitt Romney" 28.6 million
"John McCain" 26.5 million
"Rudy Giuliani" (+ "Rudolph") 22.5 million
"Fred Thompson" 18.3 million

This vast discrepancy between Paul's Internet presence and his traditional media presence has given rise to all sorts of conspiracy theories, for example that the mainstream media's polls are rigged against Paul, or that the Ron Paul effect is just a spam campaign being run by some eccentric millionaire. (In fact, while there may be a bias against cellphone-only young voters from doing landline polls, the 7.3% mean of polls was within the margin of error of Paul's actual 10%, and Google and Yahoo to protect their ad revenues go to great lengths to prevent spam from rigging search results). But there is something interesting, and far bigger than any particular candidate or ideology, going on.

CNN entrance polls from Iowa showed the following vote distribution among 17-29 yearolds: Huckabee 40%, Romney 22%, Paul 21%, McCain 7%, Giuliani 5%, Thompson 4%. Paul garnered more than twice the support of this demographic than he did among older age groups. I expect Paul to come in second among the under-29s in New Hampshire, behind Romney but ahead of Huckabee and McCain, but to rank below most of these candidates in older age groups.

Here's a very oversimplified theory, but one worth thinking about: mainstream media is Baby Boomers and old people, and Internet is young people. By "is" I mean both the producers and the consumers of the media. And, as with the "generation gap" in the 1960s, they mostly don't talk to each other. (Along the same lines, the 1960s generation gap may have had much to do with television. But that's a story for another day). Furthermore, as with the monk's scribal culture versus the new print culture during the Renaissance and Reformation, and as with pre-1960s versus post-1960s culture, traditional media culture and Internet culture are very different cultures with very different views of the world. (Ironically, Ron Paul himself is an old codger like John McCain and Fred Thompson. He seems to be as surprised as anybody else about his support, which seems from the point of view of traditional media culture to have come out of nowhere).

One could have used Internet search and result figures months ago to predict stronger showings by Huckabee and Paul than polls then showed, and especially to predict their relative strength among youth. The Fox/talk radio axis ignore Paul and dump on Huckabee, not so much intentionally (they do have some reasons of self-interest to do so, but that's beyond the scope of this post) as out of habitual cultural and generational differences and the simple fact that they and their audiences are not very aware of Internet culture and the fading of their mass media culture as being representative of conservatism.

Mass media, both left and right, have long assumed their overwhelming influence on elections from selecting politicians for coverage. Although that influence remains very strong, the desertion of the young to the Internet is starting to erode that king-making power, and will erode it further in future elections. Paul's message of extremely small federal government, in particular, is very threatening to federal government employees and the journalists who habitually socialize with those employees and depend on them for stories. In the past this has been evidenced by the mainstream media coverage given to the Libertarian Party (to which Paul's message most closely hews) -- i.e. by the practically complete lack of any such coverage. In the past Paul's message of adhering to the U.S. Constitution's enumeration of a handful of federal powers, which include neither welfare handouts nor wars undeclared by Congress, though entirely mainstream in terms of U.S. history, would have achieved no media coverage except being the butt of occasional jokes about "whackos". Now not only have the "whacko" yuks greatly increased and gotten shrill (methinks they protest too much!), but some serious coverage of Paul has started to occur as well. (Most of the latter, though, has been from left wing journalists who consider Paul's anti-war message to be mainstream). As for Huckabee, his southern Baptist evangelism, perceived by non-evangelists to be uncompromsising, is very alien and threatening to the owners, advertisers, and journalists in right-wing media, very few of whom are southern Baptists. (There is much evidence of this religious war within the right wing -- another example was the right wing media attack on the Harriet Myers nomination to the Supreme Court -- but that thread is beyond the scope of this post).

Admittedly, there are also other things going on with the Internet results, such as Paul's popularity among technology entrepreneurs and workers who, along with young people, are more likely to use the Internet for political discussion and to learn about the candidates. But the growing gap between Internet and mass media cultures, which is also in part a generation gap, should not be underestimated. Fueled by the Internet, I expect these gaps to grow more severe, and political ideologies and other cultural norms to trend more towards the developing Internet culture, in the coming years.

In what ways does your vote count?

In what ways does your vote count? Should you vote for the candidate you most agree with or for the least objectionable candidate who can win? I can't put it any better than this comment by Mark Bahner, which deserves its own blog post:

...I don't think my one vote can't change the course of a presidential election, I know it can't, to greater than 99.99+ percent certainty.

So why vote? For the same reason that some people (I admit I'm not one of them) agree to respond to Nielson TV-watching polls.

It's a poll. And for the president, your one vote can't possibly change who gets elected. (This is in contrast to local politics, in which a school bond in my parents town actually finished with a tie, with some 10,000+ votes cast.)

That's why it makes sense (if you're going to vote at all) to vote for the presidential candidate who is closest to your political views. If you are a libertarian, there is only one libertarian running in either party. That's Ron Paul. Mitt Romney is not even in the same league, stadium, or country as Ron Paul, as a libertarian. Ron Paul is a libertarian. Mitt Romney is not. And neither is any other other Democratic and Republican candidate.

The main thing you do with a vote is send a signal to political players about your views. The second thing you do with a vote is create a power bloc with which other candidates may have to negotiate and compromise. Very far down on the list of things your vote might be good for is changing who wins. Only for this last inconsequential reason to vote is the "they can't win" argument relevant. If you are not voting for the candidate you most agree with, regardless of their chances of winning, you truly are throwing away your vote.

Ron Paul for President

This blog has never before expressed an opinion about a specific political election. Unenumerated takes a long view and electioneering is generally not the most effective means of political action. Occasionally, however, there is a remarkable exception. Ron Paul's candidacy for President of the United States is the most remarkable such exception of our era.

Among the makeup-encrusted crop of TV-hyped politicians, Ron Paul stands alone in working, not to propagate mass media mythologies, but to preserve and restore our genuine freedoms and our highly evolved traditions. Where other politicians go on and on about "freedom" in order to justify wars and suppressions that deprive people of their lives, liberties, and properties, Ron Paul throughout his long career has labored to preserve and restore our freedoms. Ron Paul has worked to heal the wounds to liberty and the damages to our essential institutions that were inflicted by barbaric politics over the last century: the wars, the ethnic cleansings, the nationalizations, and the corruptions that have worked in tandem to destroy many of the freedoms our forefathers held dear. From property rights to privacy, the rights to bear arms and defend ourselves and our loved ones, rights to speak freely via technology old and new, rights to be free from false arrest and torture, the list of freedoms we once held but are now losing is long. Without a libertarian surge, a rising of people to rebuke the evils of the century now thankfully over, the barbarity of that century will have become fixed as the only reality we know, and we will be plunged into a long dark age.

Because Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate who puts a high priority on preserving and restoring property rights, the bedrock institution of modern economies, it is no surprise that he recently raised more money in a single day than any other person in U.S. political history. Ron Paul is the only presidential candidate in touch both with our highly evolved past and our networked future. He has moved beyond the mass-media prejudices that caused the twentieth century to march lock-step into genocidal wars and nationalization. So it is no surprise that Ron Paul's main strength is on the Internet and his main weakness is in the mass media.

Even if, as mass media polls currently imply, Ron Paul does not win the 2008 Republican nomination, his staying power and independence give him the potential to exert a libertarian influence on United States politics far beyond recent experience. Even if he doesn't win a single state, Paul is demonstrating that he has a substantial and loyal following. He will stay in the race to the very end, and Republicans will have to make valuable concessions to prevent him from becoming an independent candidate who would throw the election. No one man can heal the many injuries that freedom has suffered, nor the many damages that have been done to our highly evolved institutions. But Ron Paul's success will inspire many more lovers of our once and future liberties to step forward and make that future.

United States politics is delicately balanced between the traditional poles of right and left and may only need a small shove to push it in the orthogonal libertarian direction. This is particularly true with respect to the institution with the most impact on our freedoms: the Supreme Court. If Paul falls short of becoming the Republican candidate I recommend to him that he request one or more Supreme Court nominees of his choice as the price of his support for the non-libertarian Republican candidate. On the Supreme Court there are four justices on the traditional left and four on the traditional right. As a result the one moderate justice, Justice Kennedy, exerts an overwhelmingly disproportionate influence. Four years of libertarian influence on the Presidency, with two or three seats on the Court up for grabs, could tilt the Court quite heavily towards a restoration of our libertarian Constitution, a restoration of life, liberty, and property rights in the United States.

Uniquely among mainstream politicians, Ron Paul thinks beyond mass media hype. He remembers and cares about the basic institutions that have made the United States a bastion of world liberty for most of the last 231 years, and will make it a "Shining City on a Hill" again in the future if we work to make it so. For those who love our once and future freedoms, now is the time to strike. Work and vote to elect Ron Paul for President in 2008.

Calveley nukes Amazon one-click patent

Peter Calveley has succeeded in getting the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to throw out most of the claims in Amazon's infamous one-click patent, including the broadest claims. Amazon now has an opportunity to respond and convince the USPTO to change its mind, but its prospects are dim. From Peter's report:

In a recent office action, the USPTO has rejected the claims of the Amazon.com one-click patent following the re-examination request that I filed on 16 February 2006.

My review resulted in the broadest claims of the patent being ruled invalid.

In its Office Action released 9 October 2007, the Patent Office found that the prior art I found and submitted completely anticipated the broadest claims of the patent, U.S. Patent No. 5,960,411.

I had only requested the USPTO look at claims 11, 14, 15, 16, 17, 21 and 22 but the Office Action rejects claims 11-26 and claims 1-5 as well!

I reported on this soon after it got started and am proud to have assisted Peter in this endeavor. Here is Peter's full report.

The new gigaprojects

A new era of commercial gigaprojects is upon us, and the source is almost entirely our insatiable demand for hydrocarbons. Despite high political risks, global warming and "peak oil" fears, and shortages of skilled employees, there are dozens of energy-related projects in the works or on the drawing boards in the multi-billion dollar range, with several topping $10 billion. Is it the sign of a petroleum bubble, or does it simply reflect the new reality of a long-term higher worldwide demand for hydrocarbons? Here are some of the more interesting projects. Note that the dollar cost of these projects is often a bit higher than quoted here because of depreciation of the dollar versus most currencies since the cost quotes in my sources were made.

One of the biggest expansions into relatively new territory is that of tar sands. It is estimated that over $100 billion will be invested in Canadian tar sands projects over the next decade. Two of these projects are Petro-Canada's Fort Hills Project($25 billion) and the Chinese/Canadian Northern Lights Project ($4.5 billion).

Many of the biggest projects are to extract natural gas (methane). $11 billion of investment was recently completed for Qatargas II, and China is cooperating with Iran on the $16 billion project to develop the Iranian North Pars field. Woodside Corp.'s $9 billion investment in the Pluto project is expected to eventually top out at over $30 billion. Sakhalin 2 is a $20 billion project of Shell and Gazprom to extract oil and gas from beneath the coast of Sakhalin Island, along the east coast of Russia.

Oil tends to be a bit more dispersed than natural gas, and consequently inidividual oil projects tend to be smaller. But in total, OPEC countries have projects underway or plans for $254 billion worth of oil field development and expansion. The largest projects tend to be pipelines: a proposed pipeline from Siberia to China and the Sea of Japan for $12-$16 billion, Malaysia wants to build a $7 billion pipeline to save oil tankers from the troubles and risks of sailing through the Straits of Malacca, and a $4 billion pipeline is being built between Chad and Cameroon. But other oil-related gigaprojects are in the works. Kuwait is planning a $14 billion monster oil refinery. CONOOC and Shell have agreed to build a $4.3 billion plastics (ethylene and propylene) factory in Guandong Province, China. Investors have ponied up more than $1 billion simply to search for oil in New Zealan's Great South Basin. And oil revenues have allowed Saudi Arabians to dream of building a city from scratch for a cool $26 billion. But topping our list of gigaprojects, the overall cost of developing the Kashagan fields in Kazakhistan is now estimated at $136 billion, which may make it economically unviable.

Meanwhile, there are also numerous offshore oil operations being developed in the $500 million - $2 billion range, with a few such projects (such as the Hebron field off Newfoundland, $5.6 billion) surpassing that range. More on deep sea projects -- now including not just oil, but diamonds and other minerals -- here.

Secure time broadcast

From my article Advances in Distributed Security:

Broadcasts using sound or radiation, from sources such as bell towers, radio towers, satellites, and pulsars, must send out the same value to every receiver. A remote beacon such as a pulsar has perfect security: the access structure is any party, and its complement, the attack structure, is the empty set. For human controlled broadcasts, the attack structure consists only of the broadcaster and the access structure is any receiver.

Natural broadcasts are thus immune to the problem, described in the discussion of the Byzantine Generals problem below, of a transmitter sending different values to different receivers. Indeed, as we will see below, distributed researchers have gone to great lengths just to recreate this simple property on the Internet with logical broadcast protocols.

Nature provides clocks that are oblivious to the malicious intentions of any outside parties. In the case of a remote high-energy system such as a pulsar, this means anybody. Pulsars are many orders of magnitude more accurate than random delays that face attackers on the Internet. If critical Internet servers were synchronized to natural clocks in a secure and timely fashion, they would be immune to attacks that relied on uncertainties in timing.

More here.

Detecting pulsars is still, alas, a difficult process, but not so hard that amateurs have had no success doing so. Amateurs have had some success tracking pulsars with software defined radio and quagi antennas combined with digital signal processing.

Real options analysis for space projects

For the purposes of estimating the value of a project, risk has for simplicity often been treated as spread out evenly over the life of a project. For normal projects these risks can usually be fairly approximated by estimating risk per unit time. This occurs in, for example, the net present value (NPV) formula for estimating the value of a project where a constant interest rate risk premium is used. In a typical space mission, however, risk tends to be concentrated at particular events such as launches, burns, flybies and landings. Just floating out in space is relatively quite low risk, which is why we can fly to Jupiter and Saturn with failure rates not significantly greater than missions to the moon or Mars. All four of the spacecraft that have so far intentionally been flown beyond Saturn -- Pioneers 10 and 11, and Voyagers 1 and 2 -- had many initial glitches. But since passing beyond Saturn they have travelled on for nearly two decades, far beyond Pluto, with no substantial and unexpected failure. The Voyagers continue to send back valuable data on the very edge of the solar system, where the solar wind gives way to the interstellar influence -- more than 80 times as far from the sun as our own earth.

There is a small risk of component failure that tends to obey a Poisson distribution that grows over time. But the risk in even earth-orbiting satellites is dominated by launch and orbit-insertion failures, and other failures at the start of the satellite's lifetime, which are unrelated to the satellite's expected lifetime.

Thus the vast majority of the risk of most space projects does not grow exponentially with their duration, and indeed is usually not closely correlated to their duration in any way. We would thus get an exponentially wrong answer by a line of reasoning that estimated the risk of a generic deep space mission as X%/year, and deduce by plugging that risk into the net present value (NPV) equation that, for example, an 8 year mission is substantially costlier (due to a risk that grows exponentially over time) than a 2 year mission. An example of this fallacy is NPV analysis that assumes a constant risk premium for comparison of futuristic lunar and asteroid mining scenarios. All such papers that I've seen (e.g. this one) fall victim to this fallacy. To use NPV properly we need to account for the risks of particular events in the mission (in the mining scenario primarily launches, burns, and mining operations) to estimate a total risk, and divide that total risk by the duration of the mission to get a risk premium. The risk premium per year for the longer mission will thus probably be substantially lower than for a shorter mission (implying an overall risk slighly higher for the longer mission, all other things being equal).

An even more accurate method for evaluating risk in space projects is called real options analysis. It has changed valuation from the old static NPV model to a dynamic model based on specific risks. One improvement this brings is removing the assumption of constant risk, which we've seen is wildly inappropriate for deep space missions. Another idea real options brings us is that designing a project to postpone choices adds value to the project when there will be better information in the future. A science mission example: if a scientific event could occur at either target A or target B, it's best to postpone the choice of target until we know where the event is going to occur. If that's possible, we now have a scientifically more valuable mission.

Orbital planning for deep space missions tends to plan for a fixed mission ahead of time. Real options analysis says that the project gains value if we design in options to change the project's course in the future. For orbital mechanics that means designing the trajectory to allow retargeting at certain windows, even at some cost of delta-v and time. (Whether the tradeoff is worth it can be analyzed using real options mathematics, if we can make comparison estimates of different scientific targets using a common utilitarian scale).

In the context of an Jupiter orbiter swinging by various Jovian moons, such options might include hanging around an interesting moon longer or changing the trajectory to target. The idea is instead of plotting a single trajectory, you plot a tree of trajectories, with various points where the mission controllers can choose trajectory A or trajectory B based on mission opportunies.

A shorthand way to think of real options analys is that the project is modeled as a game tree with each node on the tree representing a choice (i.e. a real option) that can be made by the project managers. The choices are called "real options" because the math is the same as for financial options (game trees, Black-Scholes, etc.) but they represent real-world choices, for example the option of a vineyeard to sell its wine this year or let it age at least another year, the option of a mine to open or close, or expand or shrink its operations, etc.

The orbital planning I've seen tends to plan for a fixed mission ahead of time. Real options analysis says that the project may gain value if we design in options to change the project's course in the future. For orbital mechanics that means designing the trajectory to allow retargeting at certain windows, even at some cost of delta-v and time. (Whether the tradeoffs between delta-v, time, and particular real options are worth it can be analyzed using real options mathematics, if we can compare different scientific targets using a common utilitarian scale).

In the context of the Jovian moons project, such options might include hanging around Europa longer if a volcano is going there (like the one discovered on the similar moon Enceladus) or if some evidence of life is found (or leaving it sooner if not), or changing the trajectory so that the next target is Europa instead Ganymede if a volcano suddenly springs up on Europa, or to Io if an interesting volcano springs up there. The idea is instead of plotting a single trajectory, we plot a tree of trajectories, with various points where the mission controllers can choose trajectory A or trajectory B (sometimes with further options C, D, etc.) based on mission opportunities. Other trajectory options might include hanging around a particular moon for longer or changing the view angle to the target. We may trade off extra delta-v, extra time, or both in order to enable future changes in the trajectory plan.

Here is more on real options analysis. Real options analysis is also quite valuable for the research and developoment phase of a project. Here is a good paper on real options analysis for space mission design. My thanks to Shane Ross and Mark Sonter for their helpful comments on space project evaluation and planning.

UPDATE: This post is featured in the Carnival of Space #22.

Tamper evident numbers

From The Playdough Protocols:

Evolving beyond clay tokens, accounting was the first use of the external marks and started to take a familiar form. Along with the tamper evident clay, the Sumerians developed a kind of virtual tamper evidence. It took the form of two sets of numbers. On the front of the tablet, each group of commodities would be recorded separately -- For example on the front would be recorded 120 pots of wheat, 90 pots of barley, and 55 goats. On the reverse would simply be recorded "265" -- the same objects counted gain, probably in a different order, and without bothering to categorize them. The scribe, or an auditor, would then verify that the sum was correct. If not, an error or fraud had occured. Note the similarity to tamper evident seals -- if a seal is broken, this meant that error or fraud had occured. The breaker of the seals, or the scribe who recorded the wrong numbers, or the debtor who paid the wrong amounts of commodities would be called on the carpet to answer for his or her discrepancy.

Checksums still form the basis of modern accounting. Indeed, the principle of double entry bookeeping is based on two sets of independently derived numbers that must add up to the same number. Below, we will see that modern computers, using cryptographic methods, can now compute unspoofable checksums.

Mining the vasty deep (iii)

In the first two parts of this series I described undersea oil and diamond mining operations. In addition at least two startup companies, Neptune Minerals and Nautilus Minerals, are moving into mining the seafloor for metals. They're planning to dig into extinct black smokers for copper, and possibly also zinc, gold, silver, and other minerals. David Heydon, CEO of Nauilus Minerals, says of the remarkably high quality of the ores, "we haven’t seen these types of mineral deposits since the beginning of modern mining."

Nautilus and Neptune don't plan to mine live black smokers, which would be dangerous (black smokers are hot springs with temperatures well above 200 centigrade, although not boiling because at high pressure) and environmentally questionable (live black smokers team with exotic chemosynthetic life). Rather, they plan to mine the probably far greater number of extinct and lifeless black smokers that populate the oceans.
autilus paydirt:
Cutting of an extinct black smoker at 1,600 meters.

Geologist Steven Scott, a longtime advocate of sea mining, describes the geology of seafloor massive sulfides (SMS's). "These deposits are essentially metalliferous mud formed from hot, dense brines." They form within and around black smokers, the famous deep-sea vents discovered in 1979. Black smokers deposit "sinter-like mounds and chimneys of metal sulfides, oxides, silica and sulfates. Veins, disseminations and stockworks of relatively low metal grade impregnate the underlying lavas."

Curiously, we may already be mining black smokers: billion-year-old, long-extinct black smokers whose remains now lie on dry land. "The [current live black smoker] deposits have similarities to so-called volcanogenic massive sulfide ores being mined on land in Canada and elsewhere and which formed in ancient oceans as much as 2700 million years ago. Elements of potential commercial interest in both the modern and ancient deposits are copper, zinc, lead, silver, gold and barium. About 150 seafloor sites are known, most of which lie between 1500 and 3500 meters water depth."

Neptune paydirt, topside.

Both Neptune and Nautilus recently performed assays of several promising extinct smokers. Nautilus' assay was performed by two methods: a drill based on a ship (but dropped through 1600 meters of water) and a remotely operated vehicle (ROV) that took cutting samples. Here are at least some of the results. Heydon observes that "with 97% of the ocean floor yet to be extensively explored, it is likely that numerous deposits remain undiscovered."

Here is more from Steven Scott.

Business Plans

Nautilus estimates that it could cost as much as $300 million to ramp up to full-scale mining. Its plans include a $120 million specialized mining ship, the Jules Verne. This ship is similar to the FPSO used for deep sea oil, but will separate ore from sludge and water rather than oil from water. A large ROV, based on the trencher ROV used to lay pipes in the deep sea oil industry, but adding a large rotating drum scraper like those used in coal mining, will scrape the smokers creating sludge which will be pumped up to the Jules Verne and processed. Since the most expensive FPSOs can cost upwards of $800 million, the $120 million is a relative bargain. Indeed, the basic mothership/ROV setup is taken straight from the deep sea oil industry FPSO/ROV methodology.

Nautilus will contribute $120 million to develop undersea tools, including pumps, pipes and two subsea crawler-miners. It will also partner with a group of engineering companies with expertise in drilling and geophysics. If Jules Verne is in place by 2009, it could stay at the Papua New Guinea site until 2014, before moving on to exploit other deposits. Nautilus estimates that it will be able to mine 6000 tonnes a day from its target site.

Although there are technological hurdles to be overcome, ... 'the technology already exists; it just hasn't been integrated in this way. One beauty of the sea floor model is that a floating equipment production chain is our one main investment. Once we have the chain we can easily bring it up and redeploy it to another area.'

(More on Nautilus' plans here).

Nautilus' ROV with cutting arm to take samples.

Like many start-ups, Nautilus has a speculative and risky business plan, but the payoff could be vast:

[Nautilus] doesn't expect to reach first-scale production until 2009. There's no comparable traditional mining business model, since many of the individual deposits underwater are too small to be economically viable if they were on land. But because offshore drilling operations can move, whereas mines on land are stuck, the combined value of deposits in a wider area makes the operation worthwhile.
...
The worth of the oil, gas and minerals in the world's oceans is estimated to be in the trillions of dollars. If Mr. Heydon's estimates are correct, deep sea mining could have the potential to supply the world's growing demand for gold, copper and silver, among other metals. The resulting revenue could be in the billions of dollars for deep sea mining companies, of which only two currently exist.
...
Disputes over who owns what in the ocean have been a fact of global politics for decades. For reasons of security, potential resources and sometimes just pride, countries are constantly claiming control over new chunks of underwater property. As an indicator of just how rare it is to be able to mine hassle-free in the ocean, the exploration licence Papua New Guinea granted Nautilus was a world first.

More here. See also here.

In forthcoming posts in this series, we will look at some of the technological, environmental, political, and legal considerations involved in this new endeavor.

Partial and total orders

From Advances in Distributed Security:

A basic issue of security and fault tolerance that must be resolved is the secure determination of which order events occured in. If a contract specifies a deadline and it goes down to the wire, how can a relying party or third party adjudicator determine whether the deadline was met? The outcome itself, and its fairness, may rest on fairly deciding who came first. If Alice tries to double-spend a piece of digital cash [C82], only the recipient who checks with the bank first is entitled to its value. But if the bank servers are replicated, which of the two recipients Bob or Charles checked with the bank first? In the case of a replicated property title service [S98] we have a similar problem -- if Alice transfers her title to two other owners, which new owner actually received the deed? If property is homesteaded on a first-come first-serve basis, which of two or more "land rushers" competing for a lucrative parcel is entitled to the land?

Lamport (Causal) Order

Imagine a network where computers don't know how to keep time very well -- they are always getting out of synchronization. (Alas, all you have to really think of here is the actual Internet with PCs). Such a network, called an asynchronous network, lacks an accurate and secure global clock time by which computers can determine the order in which events, which might be messages sent or instructions executed on a particular local machine, have happened. Lamport [L78] was among the first to tackle the problem of how to determine the order of events in such a network.

A partial order means that we know in what order some of the elements are, but we aren't sure about some of the others, or some of the others may be equal. An example is the "less than or equal to" relationship among a group of integers, some of which can repeat. Some of the integers we know are less than some others, but an integer paired with itself is equal. A total order, on the other hand, is like the "less than" relationship among unique integers -- we can always tell when one integer is less than another -- there is no ambiguity left. In the case of events, a partial order means for some pairs of events we know whether one occured before another, and for some others we don't know. We use the same symbols as we would use for the analogous case of the integers, so that "x <= y" means "x either occured before y or we don't know whether it occured before or after y". In a total of events, we know for any two events which one happened first. We write "x < y" meaning "x occured before y."

Lamport's answer to the event ordering problem was to show that parties (or, we use the terms equivalently here, nodes on the network) can agree on a partial order of events based on causal relationships between these events -- or at least the subset of events where we can determine that causation could occur. On a network, parties influence each other by talking to each other -- in other words, by sending each other messages. Lamport used these messages as the basic building block for constructing his partial order, according to the following rules:

• 1. If an event is local to node P, every nonfaulty node agrees on P's opinion of it.
• 2. Every correct node agrees that every message was sent before it was received.
• 3. If we agree that event A occured before event B and that event B occured before event C, then we agree that event A occured before event C. In other words, this partial order is transitive.

Breaking Ties -- Creating a Fair Total Order

The partial order leaves us with the need to agree on how to break ties -- how to resolve the ambiguities where we can't agree which event took place first -- and thus create a total order of events. We want to do so in a way that is fair, in other words, in a way that cannot be manipulated to the advantage of any particular party.

An unfair way to create a total order would be to impose a certain predictable rule for breaking ties. For example, we could decide on a total order for the processes and break ties in the causal order by referring to this total order.

However, such a procedure creates a bias that may, depending on the application, favor certain servers over others, and therefore allow those servers to favor certain clients over others.

One way to break ties fairly is have the participants toss fair coins -- in other words, generate random numbers in a way that cannot be manipulated and then assign those random numbers to events. There are several ways to toss fair coins over a network and we describe one such way below.

Another way to break ties fairly is to have the participants agree to a global clock time that is more accurate than the message delays faced by those who would manipulate timing in favor of some party. This entails using a network with very predictable message lag for the clock synchronization protocol and a less predictable one for the other services.

More here.