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I haven't heard of any cases where a piece of software has been banned from use in a country because of that country's political policies

Huh? A tonn of software — mostly having to do with encryption — can not (or at some point could not) be exported to places like Iran, for example. You "haven't heard" of it?!

The publication is under an undue burden if it has to comply with a license restricting it from doing certain business in countries it otherwise does business with

Not at all. The publication does not need to comply with the software's license, because it does not need to conduct the research. It is already completed research, which was published 11 years ago! People wishing to verify the study's results — reproducibility being a key of scientific method — can do so in another country.

For example, there is a whole list of medical studies currently considered unethical or even illegal. They can not be recreated for this reason, but their but we can still read the results — as well as cite and discuss them.

almost certainly taken on legal grounds

Nope, by all appearances — including the "fuck this Nazi" reaction of many Slashdotters right here — it was political at least in part.

Hence my question of whether this "software availability" policy has ever been applied before by the same publication.

It begs the question: is NASA chartered for space activities or is it a source of pork for every state, no matter how irrelevant? The answer is obvious. NASA has to grease everyone's palm to get any money at all.

This would not be so evil if they had a decent budget in the first place. It would be reasonable for NASA's charter to include everyone no matter what state they live in. But the reality is that they have become horrifically politicized to the point that it is hurting their space charter.

So it's even worse then the effective policy that NASA and the USAF have to spend much of their budgets on Boeing, and that SpaceX is always marginalized. The pork and favored status for incumbent vendors is just another example of how NASA is pure pork from the budget perspective. It's amazing that any science happens at all.

Want hols in the ground to hide in? Ok, done
WAnt private enterprise to send differing robots to the moon? Ok, soon to come
Want companies that provide servies such as launch, communications, and perhaps even power?

I saw that same spot and actually paused it and rewinded it a few times to get a better look.

It's very possible a collapsed lava tube, they call them sinuous rilles.

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/planet_volcano/lunar/sin_rilles/Overview.html

How do you figure? In order for a seismometer to function, it must be anchored to the ground properly, be placed on level ground, and calibrated. You can't just drop one from an orbiter. Same goes for a mirror array.

Now, yes, the Mars rovers were dropped from the sky and functioning on their own within a few days. But (1) That was 2004, not the late 60's or early 70's. And (2) to my knowledge the Mars rovers aren't carrying equipment as sensitive as a seismometer. There really are limits on the kinds of equipment that can be set up or operated by remote/robot. Its why people like this (http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/grp13/question1188.html) still have jobs.

Funny how there was a 20 year "scientifically accurate, data-driven" global cooling scare inbetween.

Neither of these sentences are even remotely close to true. You have been demanding data sources, so where are your sources for this?

Present-day carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from subaerial and submarine volcanoes are uncertain at the present time. Gerlach (1991) estimated a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 mol/yr from volcanoes. This is a conservative estimate. Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times.

After circling many more times, most of the ash settled to the Earth's surface, but some of the smallest fragments and aerosols remained suspended in the upper atmosphere for years.

I beleive you are thinking of Paricutin

And what do you read? Define 'smoke'. If you want to talk CO2, start here.
Then read this. Surprise! The volcano argument is lame.

Your post is exactly what I am talking about; I should have teed off on you instead of that other guy. You have a belief (loosely stated as my poop can't possibly be as stinky as moose poop) and have found support for it with a number that is, by any sane reading of the data, wrong. There's plenty of holes to poke in climate change science, but where the increased atmospheric and oceanic carbon is coming from ain't one of them.

So NASA try to hype up sexy, new, "intelligent" technology, and how it got the pictures soooo fast. And what do they illustrate it with ? An old Landsat photo, taken at the latest in 1994 http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/volc_images/southeas t_asia/indonesia/talang.html

Well, made me laugh :-)

The parent post to this one is somewhat on target. There are numerous reasons for the ozone hole.

The most specific reason for the ozone hole was cold. It takes a temperature of -205 Deg C to create the atmosphere conditions where ozone does not form in presence of sunlight. As a result the "Hole" was a cold spot. The conditions being suppressed in the cold spot, they reverted back with a vengance when the air hit warmer locations. Typically the southern habitable regions saw their Ozone levels rise by nearly double as the "Hole" formed. ( See the Total Ozone Measurment System TOMS site) To add to the nutty stuff over ozone holes, this never formed when any appreciable sunlight could fall in the affected area anyway and the hole always closed by the time appreciable sunlight appeared in the area.

The correspondence to the ozone hole and Mt Erebus volcanic activity was always 1:1. The existence of chlorine in the upper atmosphere was in that area about 99.9% natural in origin. The mountain pumped massive amounts of material into the atmosphere swamping anything man did.

The price paid for this nutty behavior by some "scientists" was very high. In the world as a whole it represented the replacement of very long lived very safe and very efficient CFC based refrigeration systems with ones which use toxic gasses and which are much shorter lived and less in energy efficiency. The resulting energy demand is in no small part the cause of the current pinch in energy supplies the world is experiencing at this time and was completely unnecessary. The whole process was generated by Dupont and the fact that their CFC patents were running out.

Basic Physics of the CFC's indicated why they were used and why they never caused this problem. The first most important reason for their selection was that they were inert and did not mix with air for any extended period. They separate from air like oil and water. CFC's by this means were safe to work with, and did not ruin machinery. They were heavier than air so they fell to the ground and penetrated into the ground rapidly. CFC-12 has the same mass ratio to air as a cannonball of solid steel has to a lake it is being shot into. Since lakes are unlikely to have cannon balls floating around on the top of them, it is just as likely for CFC's to migrate to the upper atmosphere and subsequently float around up there.

Just for the Moderators: This isn't troll. It's fact. If you don't like it post what you don't like or go get a life. You still will not change the facts.

I am aware that some people have attached themselves to this like "Ozone Hole" stuff like it was a religion. I am sorry if your feelings get hurt by the facts. We have damaged our world greatly as we bought off on this nutty theory of "Ozone and CFC's." The damage is quite severe. Our atmosphere is highly polluted by wasted energy generation that this caused. People see economic troubles and the earth is damaged by the energy shortage that results. I appreciate the desire to help and make things better. This time you had good intentions but bad delivery. Try improving your aim! Shoot at real targets and bring real solutions please. We need them.

I'm not sure how this got modded up, just a quick Google search reveals that FreeBSd clustering is very doable.

Check out LAM/MPI or see pages by people who've done it

I do remember seeing something very similar when I was younger too.
How acid lakes are formed.
Another description.
You were thinking about Maurice and Katja Krafft, the French vulcanologists that lost their lives in Japan in 1991.

The googles, they do nothing.

I would have guesses the existing technology used for robotic spider could have been re-used.
Should be cheaper to build - with little or no problem of falling, balancing s/w could be reduced. Also, there is no issue of falling in case of catastrophic failure in anything.
Maybe it might be unsuitable to bipedal based enviornments, but should be better than wheels.. right ?

Hint: Volcanoes (and the platonic shifts effecting them), solar flares, et cetera. All of which dwarf ALL human activity into a single fisherman wizzing off the side of a boat into in an ocean full of causality.

Secondly, I challenge you to explain what effect solar flares have on atmospheric CO2 levels. You call me naive yet you can't even form a coherent argument.

The following web site has a major time line of human population:

Ice Age

Circa 700AD: Plagues halve European population.

763AD-764AD: From about 400 A.D. to around 900, the climate became much colder. The winters of 763-764 and 859-860 were extraordinarily cold, with the ice so thick in the Adriatic near Venice that it could hold up heavily-loaded wagons. There was ice even on the Nile.
(From a website reviewing book on climate change by H. H. Lamb, Climate History and the Modern World.) ...

850AD: (12). Four hundred years later, the agricultural base of the Tiwanaku civilization of the central Andes collapsed as a result of a prolonged drought documented in ice and in lake sediment cores (13). In Mesoamerica, lake sediment cores show that the Classic Maya collapse of the 9th century A.D. coincided with the most severe and prolonged drought of that millennium (14). In North America, Anasazi agriculture could not sustain three decades of exceptional drought and reduced temperatures in the 13th century A.D., resulting in forced regional abandonment (15).
See Harvey Weiss and Raymond S. Bradley, 'What Drives Societal Collapse?', Science, Jan. 26, 2001.



I tried doing a search for volcanic eruptions in the 700AD - 850AD era.

The following web site has an article about a massive volcanic eruptions at the headwaters of the White River 1250 years ago (750AD)

White river volcanic eruption

Below this black soil lies a thin layer of white ash from a massive volcanic eruption that occurred near the headwaters of the White River 1,250 years ago. This event was one of the largest volcanic explosions the world has seen over the past 10,000 years. Most of central and southern Yukon was covered by the ash, and traces can be found even in the Northwest Territories. With deposits more than one metre thick near the source, the White River eruption was an ecological disaster that killed many plants and animals and probably forced people to move away from the area near the eruption for many generations, until plants and animals began to return. At Annie Lake, howhttp://www.planetforlife.com/gwarm/globclimate. htmlever, the ash is thin--only several centimetres, and it is possible the impact of the eruption was not so severe here as in other places in the Yukon. Perhaps the main result of the White River eruption was that new people moved into the Annie Lake area from regions hard hit by the ash.


This site mentions a later eruption at 800AD:

Extending the Alaska Tree-Ring Record


White spruce (Picea glauca) in this region is preserved as relict trees that are dead but not decayed due to low temperatures. Subfossil trees are preserved in permafrost, glacial sediment deposits and in the White River Ash (pictured above). This last deposition resulted from a major volcanic eruption in the Wrangell Mountains around 800AD


Volcanic eruption of 1783

The Laki eruption lasted eight months during which time about 14 cubic km of basaltic lava and some tephra were erupted. Haze from the eruption was reported from Iceland to Syria. In Iceland, the haze lead to the loss of most of the island's livestock (by eating fluorine contaminated grass), crop failure (by acid rain), and the death of one-quarter of the human residents (by famine). Ben Franklin noted the atmospheric effects of the eruption (Wood, 1992).

It is estimated that 80 Mt of sulfuric acid aerosol was released by the eruption (4 times more than El Chichon and 80 times more than Mount St. Helens).

The volcanic eruption in 1783 caused the winter average temperatu

>Animals and volcanoes produce far more CO2 than cars and industry. CO2 and Methane are greenhouse gasses, but they are also naturally occuring.

Completely incorrect.

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html

"Present-day carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from subaerial and submarine volcanoes are uncertain at the present time. Gerlach (1991) estimated a total global release of 3-4 x 10E12 mol/yr from volcanoes. This is a conservative estimate. Man-made (anthropogenic) CO2 emissions overwhelm this estimate by at least 150 times."

Hehe, reminds me of Computer Bomb article

Why not just use the one at devil's tower. Seems a shame to go to the trouble of building a new one when there's one already up and running.

Since you mention it, there may be signs that volcanism in the western US increased in frequency after the removal of several hundred meters of ice overburden. For example, the Craters of the Moon area in Idaho in the Snake River valley near Idaho Falls had a series of eruptions that seem to have crudely declined in frequency and strength since the end of the last ice age 12k-14k years ago. This volcanic activity is distantly linked to the Yellowstone supervolcano BTW and is probably residual magma from when the hotspot was in the area.

Actually a partial collapse of the bench did happen in August 2005, taking ~11 acres (second to last paragraph).

As for the deaths, I'm repeating what the park ranger told me. Maybe he was telling the truth, or maybe he wanted to scare tourists and exaggerated it, but it looks like others have heard the same.

Are you just getting your info from Google, or do you have some first-hand knowledge of the situation?

• http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/g rp4/question1465.html
• http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/HawaiiQuest/gen_hawa ii_volcs/question10.html

Actually a partial collapse of the bench did happen in August 2005, taking ~11 acres (second to last paragraph).

As for the deaths, I'm repeating what the park ranger told me. Maybe he was telling the truth, or maybe he wanted to scare tourists and exaggerated it, but it looks like others have heard the same.

Are you just getting your info from Google, or do you have some first-hand knowledge of the situation?

• http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/frequent_questions/g rp4/question1465.html
• http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/HawaiiQuest/gen_hawa ii_volcs/question10.html

the Devil's Tower.

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Parks/devils_tower/d evils_tower.html

The idea of dissolving CO2 in oceans is incredibly reckless. Look at the consequences of degassing of a small lake and you can dismiss this silliness out of hand. The earth's natural mechanism for CO2 removal is limestone formation. Perhaps would be wiser to imitate that.

What the AC is talking about is a situation like this:

At high pressures (great depths) CO2 will remain in solution. All is well. However, if conditions change, this CO2 can suddenly release to the surface killing animals/people.
look at this for more info on how deadly it can be

This normally isn't a problem with lakes because of the temperature change with the seasons cause the water to cycle, and CO2 on the bottom will be released subsequently. (This happens because water density changes with temp, and if the top layer is denser than the bottom layer, it will sink and the bottom layer will rise.)

Now, when the water doesn't cycle because the surface temp doesn't change- such as near the equator, CO2 buildup can reach extremely high levels. Thus, when the CO2 is released, it's a deadly concentration.

The fear is that if the oceans suddenly change and CO2 will be released making deadly concentrations.

Grump
Univ. of Calif. Riverside,
Environmental Sciences (senior)

To summarize this link http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/climate.html its the sulphur dioxide reaching the stratosphere that blocks solar radiation. Man released SO2 doesn't typically make it all the way up to the stratosphere.

Unfortunately intentionally cranking this stuff into the upper atmosphere isn't a solution to global warming since SO2 leads to ozone breakdown.

My undergraduate university's Aerospace department has a product that competes directly with Blackboard, called HTMLeZ. The main college has Blackboard, while the Aerospace college (which includes the Computer Science department I graduated from) uses HTMLeZ. Students who have to use both (most anyone at some point) vastly prefer HTMLeZ. There are other competing products out there, so this doesn't give Blackboard a monopoly on the market - it just gives them a better cornering of the market for crap.

My undergraduate university's Aerospace department has a product that competes directly with Blackboard, called HTMLeZ. The main college has Blackboard, while the Aerospace college (which includes the Computer Science department I graduated from) uses HTMLeZ. Students who have to use both (most anyone at some point) vastly prefer HTMLeZ. There are other competing products out there, so this doesn't give Blackboard a monopoly on the market - it just gives them a better cornering of the market for crap.

My undergraduate university's Aerospace department has a product that competes directly with Blackboard, called HTMLeZ. The main college has Blackboard, while the Aerospace college (which includes the Computer Science department I graduated from) uses HTMLeZ. Students who have to use both (most anyone at some point) vastly prefer HTMLeZ. There are other competing products out there, so this doesn't give Blackboard a monopoly on the market - it just gives them a better cornering of the market for crap.

http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/man.html

Kilauea kicks out only 8,000 tons a day.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v351/n6325/ab s/351387a0.html;jsessionid=47E7825B96884284A97B6E5 C50343A70

Etna kicks out 13+-3Tg/yr, or roughly 1,171,000 US tons of CO2 per year...

Seems like a lot, but, US CO2 production is something a billion tons of CO2 per year. So, the volcanos give out 1/1000 of CO2 as the USA does.

Rock on!

400-1200 metric tons per day is absolutely nothing. Humans release 16 million metric tonnes per day (and displace additional absorption). As a long term average, volcanoes produce about 500 million tonnes of CO2 annually, compared to ~6 billion for humans. Furthermore, volcanoes are overall coolers because of the aerosols and sulfuric gasses they release, unlike humans.

First, Ash does and can fall right out of the sky during an eruption, it is called a nuee ardente or pyroclastic flow. http://www.geo.mtu.edu/volcanoes/hazards/primer/py ro.html It happened at St. Helens and if the eruption is significant enough it will most likely produce one. It is more common than rare. If the eruption is big enough to cause this type of eruption, you can be assured that the ash can and often does reach into the upper limits of the atmosphere and can have a long term effect on the atmosphere and even cause climate changes and disrupt the ozone layer.

Second, volcanoes can develop quite rapily, Paricutin for example.http://vulcan.wr.usgs.gov/Volcanoes/Mexico /description_mexico_volcanoes.html

Third, Krakatoa's devopement was due to subduction and did have the high silicic lava that causes plugging, but the explosive event it created was due more to the ocean water getting into the crater that resulted from the huge amount of magma loss resulting in a collapse of the island. This ocean water was super heated and is called a phreatomagmatic erruption. This is what is thought to be mostly responsible for the resultant tsunami and destruction of Krakatoa.http://www.drgeorgepc.com/TsunamiVolcanic Mechanisms.html

Forth, As for Mars, there is no source for internal heating that drives the processes that lead to vulcanism anymore. The current belief is that the heat source is either to small or has cooled sufficiently to have ceased any geological surface processes. It has probably been more than 20 million years since a volcano has errupted on Mars.http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/planet_volcano/ mars/Overview.html

Fifth, As for igneous rock "not flexing" it is pretty flexible in the molten state. It is no less "flexible" than other rock types, metamorphic and sedimentary. Usually geologists discuss rocks in terms of hardness using the standard Mohs scale where talc is 1 and diamond is 10.http://geology.about.com/library/bl/blmohsscale .htm

I believe to retain credibility it is helpful to have facts straight before stating them.

Talk to these people

It's primarily a Learning Management System, but they do integration with other web sites for content posting.

Mt. Pinatubo put 20 Mt of SO2 into the atmosphere. Reliant's Keystone plant in Pennsylvania produces 171,000 tons of SO2 every year - so that's 1/117th of Pinatubo, every year, from just one power plant in Pennsylvania. http://volcano.und.edu/vwdocs/Gases/pinatubo.html http://www.ems.org/nws/2005/05/11/newsreport_50_di

http://blizzard.rwic.und.edu/~nordlie/robotics/mar k6.html

Mount Saint Helens

Well, it'd be pretty hard to pre-position yourself to get such a shot, unless you were in an airplane.... trust me, volcanoes can regularly send out clouds that big.

For comparison, look at These pics of a volcano in Japan I used to live near. The pics show ash not steam, so it's a different color but you get the idea. The ash cloud would regularly blanket the nearby cities like a fog, and settle on everything. Keep in mind there was a major city across the bay about 3km away, about as far as Bremerton is from Seattle.

I'm suprised that a volcano like St. Helens only does that much ash and steam, to be honest.

or for some kid related information, great if you have young ones asking about Mt. St helens, head on over to VolcanoWorld

12 months ago I had to make a choice...

Stick with RedHat and purchase the licenses or move to something w/out that "disability." In the end, we chose Debian. It's worked so well for us. We have a strong LDAP infrastructure on Dell servers and we've documented everything in our own TWiki.

We've successfully moved from RedHat to Debian stable. We've documented our entire experience. We use all Dell Poweredge Servers.

Real-life Migration

For your article from late 2001, I'll give you an article from the very same agency.

Then, how about looking at the various timescales?
Yes, earth has been warmer in the past, and over the 2-4billion years of its existance, there are longer periods warmer. Imagine the universe is only 3K warm. Great. What does that mean for our situation at hand?

Now have a look at the very same link you provided, which is probably more of our concern, the time of human civilisation. As you can see,
the climate has been actually colder in average (Hence the often cited "fear of the Ice Age" in the 70s). But not only that, judging from the previous curves, 2000 AD should be the peak of its curve.

But, a time-scale which has ticks every 10 millenia is also a bit out of scale. Strangely enough, most people are more concerned about the next decades up to a century, not millenia.

Have a look at the curve, which is probably more of our concern. Should that not be recent enough, here some more, including one from 2003.

> But how much, and is it even measurable compared to a massive volcanic eruption?

Let's start with the fact that vulcans contribute their CO2 regardless whether humans contribute or not. So anthrophogenic CO2 is added to their exhaust.

Now to the data. According to these geologists, anthropogenic CO2 emissions are roughly 150 times the estimated emissions of volcanos.

Mine does, and many others do if you are not staying with relatives within 30 miles of the university. It is part campus involvement, part most for the university, and also part keeping freshman alive for the first year...

Volcanoworld

I remember reading a column he did on the visit, but didn't see a link anywhere for it (of course I didn't spend THAT much time looking either).

Check out the HABP page for more details, but this group and many others have been doing long range HAM radio communications for years using balloons. Stick some electronics on a balloon, along with a repeater, and you can get several hundred miles out of radios that would previously give you 20 miles.

Here are just a few router stat graphics from my university. As you can see, Kazaa/Morpheus is 85% of the outbound traffic!! Inbound isn't quite as bad, only 63% or so.

http://volcano.und.edu/linux-2.4.11.tar.gz

And if you do go with raised floors (good idea!), you will need something capable of pulling new cable runs under the floor, and have some fun doing it! Take a look at the Mark VI

Another example of balloon (in)stability can be found at http://balloons.aero.und.edu/habp/project_13/ I'm part of this balloon group, with our goal being inexpensive proof of concept type flights. (We are hoping to send a Tiqit matchbox computer up soon, although hard drives don't like going above 20k feet.)

Read Here

and and here

It appears I was wrong about the CFC's. The main issue with them appears to be they actually reached the stratosphere.

However those links do point out a few interesting things about how much chemicals things liek the ocean and volcano's generate (Yes its VERY significant) such as sulfur as mnuch as half of the sulfur in the atmosphere comes from colvano's (Liberal statement)

Another thing to point out is the Ozones damn near disappearance over anartica, no one can explain it and were pretty sure humans didnt cause it

Its another one of those "Earth cycles we dont understand" i was talking about.

I just think that we wont contribute very much and who knows maybe 1 or 2 percent is enough to FUCK us all

Maybe it isnt, i dont lose any sleep over it and I give the "environmentalist" approach as much effort as my life can. I wasnt necesarilly trying to be insightful or anything with my comment, its just pretty well known that we understand very little about things such as the weather and the patterns of earth we are a blink in the eye of earth, and I think no matter how bad we fuck things up earth will recover maybe more slowly, but whose not to say dinosaurs did the same thing, whose to say what we are doing is not a natural part of this process we are a part of the planet, thats all my point is that no matter what people say, no one can honestly know for sure, and it didnt take a graduate degree for me to come to this conclusion..

Jeremy