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Most industrialized countries are seeing their birth rates plummet (like Italy). People are also feeling a law of diminishing returns of more stuff. So, it is not clear our population or per-capita energy demands are likely to continue to grow that much. Not saying they won't (evolution argues fast growing subpopulations might expand and dominate) , but there are certainly counter trends to exponential growth. Nature has a way of turning exponentials into S-curves...

One the plus side, expanding into the galaxy could give humanity another 1000 years or so of exponential expansion. :-)

But here is an important point. As Julian Simon points out in "The Ultimate Resource", the human imagination is the ultimate resource, since it creates all other rsources (often by figuring out how unused stuff can be made into resources or existing stuff can be reorganized into better resources).
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/

The USA once faced a "Peak Whale Oil" crisis in 1846. Yet we moved past that because someone figured out you could get a form of oil from the ground instead of just from whales. See:
http://io9.com/5930414/1846-the-year-we-hit-peak-sperm-whale-oil

If our population continued to grow exponentially, there would be quadrillions of people around to imagine new ways to deal with this issue of energy. I don't know what they might be in those four areas I mentioned (wants, efficiency, distribution, and availability). Or maybe it will be an innovation in some new area somehow. For example, maybe someone will figure out how to tap the zero point energy of the vacuum as both a source and sink of energy and matter? Or maybe someone else will figure out multiple universe theory, or some notion of our universe as a simulation.

I don't know for sure what it would be, or that someone would find it. But, are you willing to bet on your current conception of physics as being undeniable 100% accurate fact that sets hard limits for all time against the imaginations, research, and hard-work of many quadrillions of people (and sentient AIs) working together for hundreds of years? Are you willing to wager on that certainty to the point where, as with TFA where the author says essentially it would be better that all those quadrillions of people should never exist? Wouldn't that claim of omniscient certainty be an ultimate definition of self-centered hubris? Or at least, wouldn't it be "non-scientific", given scientists should always be open to falsifying their theories?

See also, as just one example from:
"They really ought to have known better."
http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~fringwal/stoopid.lis
""Our future discoveries must be looked for in the sixth decimal place."
      -- A. A. Michelson, 1894
[On the occasion of the dedication of a physics laboratory in Chicago, noting that all the more important physical laws had been discovered]"

See also Isaas Asimov's short-story "The Last Question", with the recurring line:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Question
  "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER".

Online here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ojEq-tTjcc0

You may well be right in the end. But there are a lot of uncertainties before then... And clearly there are a lot more obvious possibilities than TFA considers.

For example, Europe just issued a patent for for Francesco Piantelli's LENR process (aka "cold fusion"):
http://pesn.com/2013/01/24/9602268_LENR-to-Market_Weekly_January24/

Long live Ivor Biggun and the D-Kups!

Might it have anything to do with her own goddamn campaign banner choices? Jesus, what a vapid, self-victimizing post! Whatever reason will martyr her in your eyes, you'll take it, I guess.

He reads like a luddite blueblood snob. I enjoyed the article so much, it might actually be satire. I'm going to send a terribly illiterate, blogish flamemail to mailto:michaelg@@csufresno.edu and I think everyone else should too.

Personally I'd be curious to look at the difference in his brain activity when he is dealing with one of his specialities as opposed to when he is trying to find a spoon.

Well, the CNN article is characteristically light on details, but it says the tests will include MRI and "computerized tomography" (i.e., a PET scan). The PET scan can be used for examining things like flow of blood and oxygen, as well as which parts of the brain are utilized for a given task. Unfortunately, even though PET research can focus on a specific "task", it can't really be used for monitoring tasks that last very long.

I think I would actually be more interested in EEG test results. One can monitor EEG during longer tasks, but I'm especially interested in what kind of "zone" Peek is in when he's consuming information. Certain states of consciousness or "arousal levels" are conducive to super-learning, but are ill-suited to other tasks.

Btw, if you're interested in what Peek looks like, check this page from CSU Fresno's University Journal.

Explanation is here, and here and more in google

Here in Fresno, CA (a city the size of Portland), there are exactly 0 electronica/techno stations, 0 jazz stations, 0 classical stations (save for the scant moments when NPR isn't Bush bashing or begging for funding), 0 stations for progressive rock (old or new), 0 metal stations, 0 other random experimental/avant-garde stations, 0 international/world/"ethnic" stations (except for music from the exotic paradise of Mexico), 0 blues statiopns, and 0 true urban/rap stations (just some canned MTV processed hip-hop).

If we're going back to the moon and need a heavy launch rocket I wouldn't be suprised if they reverse engineer some stuff from the Saturn V down there (since supposedly the plans have all been lost to time).

Sorry...The plans are not lost. They never were lost. That is a myth .

A friend of mine said tires have been a problem on his Prius. I did a quick web search and came up with this and this. It's not a show-stopper, but it is something you want to be aware of.

Word up
to my moms,

Space Dogs
in a Killer Kostume ate my balls

Dude, my shitty school decided to PS throughout their whole system. Everything from student records, financial aid, class schedules...

What a monstrous POS, man. I can't describe the headaches this caused for the first year. Even now, the system is unbelievably slow, bloated, and cumbersome to navigate. Pure crap.

Spacecraft aren't the only things that move. Clouds do, too. And high clouds will appear quite similar to observers spread over a large area. If you can point me to some footage from the eclipse date that was filmed by a camera held reasonably steadily that shows both the UFO and the ground (or some other fixed object) in the frame for reference, then I'll revisit my tentative conclusion.

I'm curious, actually--are we discussing the same event? I'm referring to sightings before and during the solar eclipse visible from Mexico City on July 11, 1991. There have been other sightings reported in the same area, from around that time, and in the years since.

I am open to any "reasonable" explanation but venus is not a reasonable explanation. Venus does not move, venus does not disappear suddenly after appearing suddenly.

I reiterate my requests for additional information as stated above. Show me some good footage, with a solid reference point in it. (And make sure we're talking about the same day.)

Like I said there have been many incidents all over the world that have been videotaped. Most of them by people who have no means of faking videotapes (which is very hard to do and require lots of money) not all of them are venus, not all of them are swamp gas, and no matter how hard they try the skeptics can not explain all of them. Which leaves the question. What are they?

As I have stated before, I'm not addressing all the reports of UFOs. Many will quite probably turn out to be misinterpretation of subjective evidence, or hithero unknown natural phenomena (very exciting in itself--many UFO sightings can now be attributed to recently discovered exotic forms of lighting). Some incidents are quite intriguing and warrant additional study.

I don't pretend to have an explanation for all UFO sightings, and I would be thrilled if there existed an unambiguous case for one or more of them being visitors from another world. Nevertheless, in this case, for this one group of sightings, even pro-UFO groups like MUFON tend to accept the Venus hypothesis. The fact that there exist sightings for which no good explanation exists does not mean that all sightings represent alien visitations. Such a conclusion would be a most regrettable "logical fallacy".

If you want to discuss some of the other sightings in Mexico or elsewhere, that might be more fruitful. I also look forward to any further evidence that you might have regarding the July 11 events.

http://www.solstation.com/stars/asteroid.htm
http://zimmer.csufresno.edu/~fringwal/w11b.asteroi ds.txt
http://galaxy.ngc.peachnet.edu/~jjones/astr1010hom e/a1010out.html

You have the internet, you have Google, use them.

Around the time I was starting to look for a new job, an article entitled "Resume Writing" by Christopher M. Russo appeared in the July 2000 issue of ;login: (the USENIX journal). It is written from a hiring manager's perspective and targeted specifically at resumes for sysadmins. I found the advice extremely useful in tightening my own CV and focusing on the requisite details; I highly recommend it to others.

If you are a USENIX member, you can read the article online. Alternatively, a quick search on Google found another, freely accessible copy here.

Basic advice: remember that your experience should illustrate exactly how you used the skills and technologies listed elsewhere in your resume. Don't just say "administered large server farm and deflected dumb luser queries"; say how you went about doing these things (e.g. wrote automated Perl scripts, installed project tracking s/w, etc.).

Good hunting,
Ade_
/

Over the past week the Motion Picture Association of America has intensified its efforts to bully and harass individual Internet users by sending out a new series of email threats. Using little more than bluff and bluster they've also managed in recent weeks to shut down countless websites, convince employers to fire employees, and get schools to take disciplinary actions against students for doing little more than taking part in an act of solidarity on their private homepages.

John Young, who maintains the Cryptome, is one of the hundreds of John Doe defendants in the California DVD case. In addition to a copy of DeCSS, Young published a copy of the now-infamous Hoy Declaration, in which the DVD Copy Control Association inadvertently included a copy of the very information they were trying to suppress in public court filings. He was among the first to bear the brunt of a wave of cease and desist letters for posting the source code to DeCSS. The letter reads in part:

The Superior Court of Santa Clara County, California also recently granted a preliminary Injunction against the Internet posting of DeCSS.

If you are bound by an injunction, maintaining the DeCSS utility on your system or network violates the above injunction[s] and risks court sanctions for contempt.

Over the past week, we have received numerous reports of this threatening letter being sent to web site owners worldwide. It appears the MPAA is simply going down the list of mirrored sites and sending a letter to everybody.

Geography and national sovereignty are clearly foreign concepts to this multinational corporation. The effects of globalization seem to have impaired their faculties more than previously thought. They proceeded to send similar letters to people all over the world. Tom Vogt, also named as a defendant in the California case, resides in Germany. The letter the MPAA sent him insisting that he comply with the California injunction, refers to the preliminary draft of an unratified convention. That's right, the best they could do was threaten him with an unsigned treaty.

Earlier this month Grant Bayley received a cease and desist letter for hosting DeCSS on his webpage for the Australian 2600 meeting. Both Bayley and the server are located in Australia. As expressed in the meeting guidelines, 2600 meetings are organized on their own, anyone can start one, and they are pretty much autonomous. According to an Australian journalist who spoke with the chief counsel for the MPAA, 2600 Australia is being singled out simply because of its name. Presumably this is also why they chose to go after A.Sleep, operator of the Connecticut 2600 meeting's webpage in his very own federal lawsuit. One can only imagine what the MPAA must be thinking.

In an age where anyone is capable of exercising free speech to mass audiences via the Internet, there is a disturbing trend that this freedom is limited not by the strength of one's convictions nor one's access to technology. Rather it is dependant on the will and resources of one's Internet Service Provider. It is common for ISPs to cancel accounts or remove content at the first hints of any controversy. It didn't take long for big business to figure this out and they've been exploiting lawsuit-fearing ISPs ever since. One can hardly blame the average ISP for bowing to such impressive cease and desist letters. Often they're barely breaking even as it is, and nuking one $10 a month webpage is a simple business decision when being threatened with a million dollar lawsuit.

What's far more troubling is the ease in which traditional safe havens for free expression, like universities and other academic institutions, are willing to sell out their students. Zach Karpinski stands out as one such victim. A student at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, Zach was summarily fired from his job of two and a half years at Student Technology Services, an organization he helped build. The letters he and his school received accusing him of using school servers for illegal activities were enough to trample this student's rights and reputation in favor of some perverse idea of political "damage control." They should be more concerned with controlling the damage done to their student's academic freedom and civil liberties than satisfying the whims of Jack Valenti and the MPAA. Sadly, Zach is not alone. A student from California State University at Fresno wrote in to report that he had to take down his school-hosted DeCSS mirror and that the MPAA requested that he be fired from his school employment. (Fortunately, he wasn't fired).

We first took a stand in the DVD battle back in November, when the first cease and desist letters were being sent out. We joined in the mirroring campaign to lend our support to those who had been subjected to hollow threats and harassment from the DVD industry, but were forced into compliance due to circumstances beyond their control. They knew they were right, they knew they could win, but they lacked the resources to stand up for their convictions. As evidenced above, that fight is ongoing. Our modest mirror list has grown substantially and continues to grow, despite mirrors being removed from time to time. The success of the DeCSS mirroring campaign demonstrates the futility of attempts to suppress free speech on the Internet. It is distributed hosting at its most basic and a proven defense from censorship. Make no mistake, DeCSS is out there, it can never be eradicated. Not only will DeCSS be preserved regardless of whether there are any mirrors, the tyrannical actions of the MPAA have ensured that it will live on forever in history, law books, and all the communities it has effected.

There's also a copy here.
JMR