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True, but what that means is that other folks should always be looking for other theories that might better fit the data. Unfortunately, most of the folks on the other side seem to think that "unsettled" means "I can ignore this because it is inconvenient," which is not the same thing.

No, not at all. That's the strawman constructed and attacked. Go check out Watts Up With That, and you'll find 99.9% of the posters acknowledge some warming, but are skeptical that it is all man-made and it all comes from CO2. Rather, the appearance of trends as I linked tend to show a high likelihood that much of the warming is natural. So perhaps we need to re-think our priorities and budgetary allocations based upon data, rather than models that simply do not match the real world.

The problem is that their alternative explanations only fit the data over a very short period of time [skepticalscience.com], geologically speaking. These theories have been debunked repeatedly by trivial comparison with the actual data.

Actually, no. Not a single IPCC model accounts for the rise of temperature from 1890 to 1940, then the plunge from 1945 to 1975, let alone the general pause in the 2000s. However, there are models that correlate nicely with the past and also have predicted - more reliably than the IPCC models - the current 2000s. They come from geologists, though, not from climatologists. In fact, looking at past inter-glacial periods, we see a continual cyclic pattern of ever-increasing temperatures until the entire system "flips" into deep cooling. In other words - what we see today, is not unprecedented.

That said, there's a lot we don't know. It is possible (nay, almost certain) that we will eventually hit an equilibrium point at which more plants are growing, and the temperature change levels off.

When it levels off, that's when it starts falling. A few hundred million years says that's the way it happens. Typically glaciated over most of the Northern hemisphere, with occasional blips of warmth - like we have now.

The big unanswered questions are how many major cities will be underwater when it does, whether we will have enough arable land to feed the earth's population as temperatures and rain patterns shift, and whether the cost of reducing our greehouse gas emissions exceeds the cost of dealing with the effects of climate change over the long term. And *that* is where there is a lot of room for speculation, debate, etc.

Sea levels historically happened 4X faster than now, food production is skyrocketing, and there still isn't any real effect from increasing CO2.

Rather than sweat over something that has NOT been shown to be a cause of disaster (CO2 increases driving climate change), I fully agree with Bjorn Lomborg that we should look to spend our money on real, defined, understood problems.

Dr. Don Easterbrook has a pretty compelling case that it is because of natural cycles, and his data seems to be quite compelling. So far, his prediction seems to be fairly accurate provided one ignore the claims about global temperature made without tolerance/error bars stated (it's hard to say things are warmer by 0.03 deg C when your tolerance/error bar is 1 deg C).

Note that Dr. Spencer is not a "denialist", he's a NASA scientist who believes we are warming, but that CO2 is not the primary cause. He does what a scientist should do: collects data, and then draws conclusions. If his hypothesis doesn't stand up to the data, he tosses the hypothesis (which is pretty much exactly the opposite of what the IPCC does). And he's using the 90 models from the IPCC - not cherry picked at all. These are the actual models the IPCC uses to reach its claims. And continues to use, even though the data shows the models are wrong. Additionally, the data shows the warming "pausing" for around 10-12 years, from ~2002 to 2015.

In fact, there is ONE model that actually seems to fit the measured data: the oceanic oscillations model of Professor Don Easterbrook. His model not only tracks the historical record - but seems to match the current satellite record as well. I know that Professor Easterbrook is typically ignored by a lot of the pro-AGW side because he's not a "climatologist", but he is a geologist with a lot of good training, and a background in oceanic/land interactions. More importantly, his model actually fits better than those from the climatologists. Shall we ignore his model - even though it is better - because his background isn't "acceptable"?

Pretty much how the media worked out and now it'll be on to other things.

Where's the left-wing mainstream media? We have fox news which is right-wing propaganda from a bunch of billionaires. Is George Soros going to launch his own channel?

The only two ways any of the other news networks can be considered liberal is if you're asking a conservative or if you're comparing it to fox. They couldn't even let people know the basic facts of the Iraq war.

No. 6000 years. Not 4000. (This isn't helping your argument to authority btw.)

It is now currently 2015AD. The earliest true written language examples come from 3200BC.

http://pandora.cii.wwu.edu/vaj...

That's 6000 years. Not 4000.

The major breakthrough that fed the industrial revolution was the discovery of easily manufactured steel using the bessemer process. Prior to this, steel was too inconsistent and too expensive to create the industrial equipment needed for rapid technological advancement. (other metals are too soft, too brittle, too heavy, or too expensive.) The materials required to produce mass manufactured steel are not very rare, and the properties of them were well known well prior. Most were known at the time language was first being put down in permanent form. (In fact, fired clay tablets-- requiring kilns-- are the best surviving examples of such early literature, and many such texts discuss the shipment of smithable ores, indicating that the humans knew the properties of those metals in sufficient detail to be able to construct a bessemer reactor if they had the idea for it. That idea came about in the western world in less than 120 years-- Human understanding of those metals went from simple metalurgical formulae and psudo-religious hogwash in the dark ages to structured science after the renaissance during that time, permitting the creation of the theory behind the bessemer reactor.)

The big factor was probably a population requirement not being met previously-- a situation exacerbated by warring over resources and over gods and politics. You need sufficient population numbers to sustain a boom in technological growth, and the ancient world lacked the workforce.

However, this has more to do with the fact that our planet had several events that nearly wiped out the human race, putting our numbers at low values initially. Things like the Toba eruption, and of course, the ice-age. Things like the black death also would have played significant roles in reaching the required number of humans needed for an industrial revolution. Humans have a surprisingly small amount of genetic diversity, indicating a prior genetic bottleneck in the past, hinting at such a catastrophe early in our history.

It is foolish to assume that all possibly intelligent creatures would have such setbacks both in nature and in culture.

As a consequence, even if we take the linked article at face value, and have 2 G type star systems with habitable planets forming at exactly the same time, there is a pretty good chance that they could have us beaten technologically by now.

Some temperature records are constantly adjusted in the past. Given that the history is constantly being revised - how do we know what the actual trends are?

The RSS data set is about the most accurate we have, given it has a constant reference background (deep space), and covers the entire globe equally with the same set of instruments, and has done so for the last 35 years. And that record shows no warming for nearly 18 years.

One scientist, Don Easterbrook got it right. His model - based upon the cycles of the oceans - appears to fit the current pause quite nicely as well as matches the past. Perhaps he's on to something, in that his model more accurately tracks historical records AND the current situation than the IPCC/CO2 driven models.

While that may be true at your town's middle school, university faculty to administrator ratios are different. Western Washington University did some sampling. A graph on page 4 shows that it's about a 1:1 ratio.

Here are several papers from just one scientist that counter the concept of human-induced climate change. And they were published as well. Now how accurate is that "0% of scholarly papers" claim? Especially in light of the fact that Dr. Easterbrook's climate model (which does NOT base itself on CO2) accurately matches the past - AND predicted the current 17 year pause in warming, something none of the IPCC CO2-based models accomplished.

There's no need to waste ammo or even go all Monte Carlo on this problem, especially if you have a reliable source of cheap, low-grade meat. http://www.wikihow.com/Calcula... Read here about the grandfather of the above tutorial, the Buffon Needle Experiment: http://mathnexus.wwu.edu/websi...

Please check the link. You'll see the average IPCC model misses measured data by 0.6 deg C; the vast majority of models are off by 0.4 deg C or more. Given that there is so much wailing and gnashing of teeth over a projected 1 deg C change over the next half century, I'd say an error of 0.4 deg C over 17 years is significant.

Now there IS ONE model that actually got the current stall spot-on. Of course, that model doesn't rely upon CO2, and it's not by a climatologist (just a geologist), so many discount it. But considering he nailed the stall - and has a rational, reasonable explanation as well, it is worth considering.

"The value is in the halls, not in the presentations" - this was a comment in an article on academic conferences (Let there be stoning!, pdf link). Unfortunately, the article hits the nail on the head - most academic talks are atrocious.

And mingling in the halls is still a human activity - you really don't like to do it virtually. It's like going to a virtual bar with your friends. Even if you have the best cocktail at home, the crowd, the sounds, etc. all play a role in keeping you in the mood.

The only advantage I see is in reducing some of the ridiculous conference registration rates I have seen (I'm looking at you IEEE - student registration of $400?). But I don't expect this to take off.

.
Now, if you look at the predictions by Professor Don Easterbrook you find he accurately fits the warming of the 90s AND the cooling of the 00s - and fits them quite nicely. His model doesn't rely on CO2, however - and thus most AGW supporters ignore it.

If your model doesn't match reality, then the model is wrong. Models based on CO2 driving the climate don't match reality (either the MWP or the little ice age or the current cooling); it's time to start looking at other variables that affect climate change.

Here are some statements with supporting compiled statistics.
The purpose of these statements is to demonstrate that the WWU CSci department is a very good department with needs within WA state. It's existence is still well within the stated purpose goals of WWU (something like "high qualtiy education","serve the needs of WA residents").

The WWU CSci department has a quality curriculum and excellent graduates.
+ accredited CSci Bachelors program from Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) . http://www.abet.org/AccredProgramSearch/AccreditationSearch.aspx (do a search by State)
+ Among 177 graduates from scores of the ETS® Major Field Test for Computer Science between Winter 2007 and Winter 2011 (inclusive), results were:
++ Mean (average): 166.2
++ Median (middle score): 167
++ Mode (most common score): 170
++ According to http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/MFT/pdf/MFT%20PDFs%202007/ComputerScience4CMF.pdf
+++ The 90th percentile for individuals starts at 173.
56 of 177 students scored 173 or better.
+++ The 95th percentile for individuals starts at 179.
31 of 177 students scored 179 or better.
+++ The 95th percentile for institutions (based on mean score) starts at 164.
+ WWU Collegiate Cyber Defense team took second (a very close second) to UW (who went on to win nationals) at the Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
https://www.piersystem.com/go/doc/1538/1053947/WWU-Team-Places-Second-at-4th-Annual-Pacific-Rim-Collegiate-Cyber-Defense-Competition

The WWU CSci department cost is slightly below average for an engineering department at WWU.
+ Among departments within the WWU College of Sciences and Technology, the Computer Science department uses
++ the average amount of State funds (roughly)
++ has the 2nd highest student contributions to it's cost (10%).
From page 93 of WWU OPERATING BUDGET FISCAL YEAR 2011

There is a demonstrable need for Computer Science.
+ Computer science has the highest field related employment and average salary of any degree WWU offers (after lumping education departments together).
From http://www.careers.wwu.edu/surveyapplicationX/statusdefaultXX.asp (concluded by J Anderson)

Thanks to C Reedy, J Bucher, N Fitzgerald, B Costa, JT Moon, J Anderson for statistics,

-J_Tom_Moon_79 '00-'-05

off-topic political point: I am partial to the view that the state should not be involved in education. However, state planning is the reality and I'm not debating that with this post. The fact remains, the WWU CSci department provides a very high quality education for a needed discipline (albeit, paid by WA state residents and businesses that may or may not have any interest in such a program).

Here are some statements with supporting compiled statistics.
The purpose of these statements is to demonstrate that the WWU CSci department is a very good department with needs within WA state. It's existence is still well within the stated purpose goals of WWU (something like "high qualtiy education","serve the needs of WA residents").

The WWU CSci department has a quality curriculum and excellent graduates.
+ accredited CSci Bachelors program from Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) . http://www.abet.org/AccredProgramSearch/AccreditationSearch.aspx (do a search by State)
+ Among 177 graduates from scores of the ETS® Major Field Test for Computer Science between Winter 2007 and Winter 2011 (inclusive), results were:
++ Mean (average): 166.2
++ Median (middle score): 167
++ Mode (most common score): 170
++ According to http://www.ets.org/Media/Tests/MFT/pdf/MFT%20PDFs%202007/ComputerScience4CMF.pdf
+++ The 90th percentile for individuals starts at 173.
56 of 177 students scored 173 or better.
+++ The 95th percentile for individuals starts at 179.
31 of 177 students scored 179 or better.
+++ The 95th percentile for institutions (based on mean score) starts at 164.
+ WWU Collegiate Cyber Defense team took second (a very close second) to UW (who went on to win nationals) at the Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition
https://www.piersystem.com/go/doc/1538/1053947/WWU-Team-Places-Second-at-4th-Annual-Pacific-Rim-Collegiate-Cyber-Defense-Competition

The WWU CSci department cost is slightly below average for an engineering department at WWU.
+ Among departments within the WWU College of Sciences and Technology, the Computer Science department uses
++ the average amount of State funds (roughly)
++ has the 2nd highest student contributions to it's cost (10%).
From page 93 of WWU OPERATING BUDGET FISCAL YEAR 2011

There is a demonstrable need for Computer Science.
+ Computer science has the highest field related employment and average salary of any degree WWU offers (after lumping education departments together).
From http://www.careers.wwu.edu/surveyapplicationX/statusdefaultXX.asp (concluded by J Anderson)

Thanks to C Reedy, J Bucher, N Fitzgerald, B Costa, JT Moon, J Anderson for statistics,

-J_Tom_Moon_79 '00-'-05

off-topic political point: I am partial to the view that the state should not be involved in education. However, state planning is the reality and I'm not debating that with this post. The fact remains, the WWU CSci department provides a very high quality education for a needed discipline (albeit, paid by WA state residents and businesses that may or may not have any interest in such a program).

The university's statement (referenced by the article) is remarkably poorly written, especially given its source. Consider, for example, the first paragraph under the heading 'Academic Programs', which begins thus: "Rebasing does not mean, exclusively, looking at the programs we will have. And, those we will no longer have."

Yes, older thermometers are less reliable and hence temperature data has to be corrected for just like things like urban island effect has to be corrected for today.

Unfortunately, it appears the modus operandi is to correct the real rural stations UP to match the urban stations, exactly opposite what any rational person would do.

And apparently my joke went over your head. Yes, of course the ice core data is used by AGW proponents (and climatologists in general). The seeming discrepancies in the ice core data, at least in recent time, is well accounted for in models, actually; I don't mean fudged, btw--things like the Medieval Warm Period occurring in Greenland and/or Europe doesn't mean that it was a global event (Souther Hemisphere data indicates it wasn't). It very well might have had to do with the North Atlantic Current.

Sorry, I missed the joke. Currently the Southern hemisphere really isn't seeing warming anywhere near the trends of the Northern hemisphere; perhaps the relative lack of land down South stabilizes the temperatures (being so totally dominated by oceans)? Nevertheless, data is data, and many of the most vocal proponents of AGW appear to have no issues with tossing data that doesn't fit the model, which is pretty much the opposite of what the scientific method calls for.

The real question to ask is, why is it that current models only map well to current temperatures when man-released CO2 is a significant component in the noted global warming; that is why don't things like methane, natural CO2, solar variance, etc account for nearly all the warming?

Perhaps because CO2 is something that can be taxed and controlled, as opposed to solar output or ocean currents. There's at least one scientist with a model that appears to tie climate change to the Sun and currents, and does so quite accurately.

But then, if it's not something we can control then there's no justification for taxation by Governments meaning why finance that type of research?

"5-15 years when it goes from laboratory process to initial commercial production ... and another 10 for large-scale usage."

Probably not what you were thinking entirely. But, I hate that we have no ability to invest in a future. Sometimes I think that countries like China will surpass the US not because of money... well that too. But because they aren't up for election every 4 years, more tech will get invested in.

Anyways back on topic. People suck balls at doing cost benefit analysis when it comes to human lives. A lot of people think it is uncouth to assign a life a number value so we pretty much pick values at random. http://www.cbe.wwu.edu/Krieg/Econ.%20Documents/1603902-00.jpg is one example, look at the asbestos banning hilarity. Other examples are air quality or health insurance. Where human lives drop under 50k. Or we could callously wander around the globe and see that lives are worth like 9$ a pop. You might not care a shit ton about other countries people but when the ratio is several thousand of them to one of you it becomes harder to tell them to piss off and feel ok. My apologies for my socialist thoughts w/e.

You have to think about the costs of Not over treating swine flu. Really it was the media that screwed us on the pricetag. If the gov didn't spend billions on the swine flu hilarity there would be mass panics, riots, politicians would hang. There'd be con-men on the street selling sugar pills that fixed swine flu. Think about this. The US didn't use adjuvants in the swine vaccine they spread. I would have been WAY cheaper and MORE effective. But the paranoid ignorant masses thought it killed baby jesus or w/e. So it wasn't used. Why would they use it. The theater idea "Give the people what they want and they will love you for it" applies fully to politics (I believe the quote is from the gladiator movie). And I don't blame politicians for it. Why should they give up power and control to their rivals because the masses are stupid? Better to burn a billion dollars. The impression of control for the people is worth the cost.

.
Fitting old data is not science, that's statistics. And they get even statistics really wrong. To be a valid theory it not only has to fit the old data, but reliably predict future data; the CRU's model has shown it cannot predict future data, and now that we have a view into their process and some of the model, we see that it does not even fit the old data - not only the use of magic numbers to skew individual years, but the wholesale tossing of data that doesn't fit their model.

If data and models don't fit, the first thing you question is the model, not the data.

There's only one model that I know that fit the old data AND properly predicted the current cooling trend, and it doesn't use CO2 - it uses solar cycles and cosmic rays. Yet we'll all go on, cheerfully fitting models to old data, watching the predictions miss time and again, and spend trillions of dollars on wasted efforts.

The model fits the old data, and so far has been very accurate in predicting future behavior, yet because it doesn't use CO2 it's thrown out by many "esteemed" climatologists. It goes against the current orthodoxy so it must be ignored. The religion that AGW has become will not tolerate dissent and will not accept data that doesn't fit the model. That's not science, that is religion.

I'm not tossing all climate research out; I'm tossing out that which is based on the CRU or is "validated" because it appeals to its agreement with the CRU. Just like they tossed out data that didn't fit their model (regardless of the accuracy of that data).

The densities of sea life in the past is apparent in the history of its harvest. Were the oceans more prolific because of the amount of fish mixing? Mixing creates more interface, so wouldn't that affect tiny organisms because they get more exposure on the food chain?

I recently read history of herring runs spawning in the Salish Sea so abundantly that the water was white, and that eggs were laid on everything in the water, such that they could be collected simply by submerging cedar branches. Not to mention historical quantities of fish all over the world...

Just heard a flying astronaut again describing how thin a veil the atmosphere is and I realized that for how big a volume the earth is, its livable surface area(biosphere) isn't really that large at all. *duh* but I never connected spherical geometry (area vs volume) and the concept of how profoundly we could affect our environment when the earth is soo big.

RTFA. He's mostly working for free on these RIAA cases. I, for one, salute his efforts.

Am I the only one who notices a resemblance between NYCL's photo (in TFA) and Isaac Asimov? If Ray grew a set of insane giant sideburns he'd be a ringer for Asimov!

A ball player's life expectancy in the nineteenth century was about sixty years. For Love, for Money, for Real Money: Life Expectancy Among 19th Century Baseball Players

There is scarcely need to screen the general population for prostate cancer if your fittest males are dead at age sixty of other causes.

Diet matters in diseases like diabetes. Quit smoking and you reduce your risk of cancer. But talk of prevention forty or sixty years after a disease has taken root isn't terribly helpful. Asbestos was in every home for decades - as a fire retardant, thermal insulation and so on. You could argue quite plausibly that it saved - or extended - more lives than it harmed.

You rarely get an unambiguous answer to the questions "What should I do?" or "What should have been done?" You can't speak of a strategy for "preventing Alzheimer's Disease" or other diseases of aging with any degree of confidence. Particularly if your goal is to do it on the cheap.

What the elderly most need is outside contact, a secure and yet stimulating environment. Not the warehousing of the nursing home but something more intimate and humane. That costs money - rather a lot of money = and it doesn't eliminate the need for conventional medical care.

This site give the coefficient of thermal expaansion for gasoline: http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/Topics/Th ermal/ThermExpan.html. For a 20 C increase in temperature I get about a 2% increase in volume or a 6 cent difference for $3/gal gas. So the article seems about right.
--
Get solar power with no installation cost, pay for only what the system produces: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

...that is why the founders of this country took up arms and fought back.

Whoa! Slow down there, Cowboy! By the time you're 17, you'll find out that it didn't go down exactly like that. It wasn't all Guns and Roses --Vitae summa beavis sperm...er...it wasn't all Peaches and Cream? Pffft! Maybe not that kind anyway.

>Jesus, do Slashdot editors actually *do* anything?

Yes, they tow the slashdot line "OSS good, commercial software bad." Facts don't matter. Repeat that to yourself: facts dont matter here. If any other news outlet or corporation would make these kinds of slanderous claims against OSS then the cries of oppression and people being paid shills would be deafening, but when slashdot does it we just swallow our own hyposcrisy. No wonder so few people take OSS and especially its promoters seriously. Slashdot is still seen as a 'kiddie' site, and this is more justification of that view.

Hell, even the summary is wrong. Anyone who has even installed IE7 knows it wasnt exactly forced on them. Even if you have auto updates on, there;s a big splash screen asking you if you want to install the damn thing. You can see it here.

there is one and only one social responsibility of business-to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game, which is to say, engages in open and free competition without deception or fraud.

From "The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase Its Profits", The New York Times Magazine, September 13, 1970
copies here or here (annotated)

Yeah uh the major flaw in your argument is that the technology didn't exist when we where developing. The technology now exist for them to NOT PRODUCE those levels and maintain current productivity levels. Them meeting our same standards will not harm them. Also mentioned is this seems to only deal with co2 what about the sulphides they are spitting into the air like mad from burning Coal. (think London late 1800's)
warning link is to download a pdf

http://fire.biol.wwu.edu/trent/alles/AirPollution. pdf

http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_rec.php?id=19757

That's right folks, we're all going to starve!!!. Run for the hills, it's all over.

First of all, you can request more than one record at a time - the specification explicitly allows for more than one Question in the message.

If you're a server, what do you set RCODE to if one of the requests returns NXDOMAIN and the other returns a record? What if, instead of NXDOMAIN, you get SERVFAIL?

Having QDCOUNT>1 is ambiguous, and is basically a bug in the RFC. The author of MaraDNS did some research a while ago, and determined that no DNS server really supports it. I quote from doc/en/misc/multiple.qdcount in the MaraDNS distribution:

Neither DjbDNS, BIND, nor MSDNS support queries where QDCOUNT > 1. DjbDNS ignores queries where QDCOUNT > 1. Microsoft DNS server replies with a "format error", and the qdcount is set to the number of questions sent to the server. BIND 8 replies with a "format error", and QDCOUNT is set to zero.

Realistically, DNS servers should probably reply with "not implemented" instead of "format error".

Some discussion of the fact that QDCOUNT > 1 queries are not handled by modern-day DNS servers:

http://www.ietf.org/proceedings/98aug/I-D/draft-ie tf-dnsind-edns-03.txt
http://www.vpnc.org/ietf-ipsec/96.ipsec/msg00779.h tml
http://www.wcug.wwu.edu/lists/ipng/200005/msg00080 .html

In summary, the nitty gritty implementation details of handling multiple question queries in a single packet make this difficult to correctly handle.

I'm making the handling of multiple QDCOUNT queries a low priority in MaraDNS.

Of course, it would be possible to update the standards---and every existing DNS implementation---to support QDCOUNT>1 in some specific way, for this purpose, but by the time it's deployed, we probably won't care much about IPv4 compatibility any longer.

Yeah, it's not like the crusaders didn't plunder, kill or rape. /sarcasm

By the way, there was a muslim empire that stretched all the way from the middle east to spain. (on the african side) I heard somewhere they only punished other religions with slightly more tax. (could be wrong though)
I really dont know shit about this, though.
You're missing that the word Jihad has different meanings for different people, just like crusade..

Not the actual CS intro classes, but instead what amount to "feeder" classes that are designed to get students interested in CS who might not otherwise think about the field.

We have two such classes, Intro to Game Programming, and Intro to Robotics.

I know that the CS Department managed to get at least one of them designated as a GUR (General University Requirements) course for Mathematics and Logic, hoping that students will find Health = Health - ShotVelocity*ShotPower more interesting than y = x^2 - x.

Personally I find both interesting. :)

In what could be the second CS course you take in our program, the first Functional Programming course (there are 2 series of courses taken at the same time, one traditional Procedural/OO and the second is Functional), you end up programming a 3D Raytracer. This either inspires students, or causes them to change major. More of the latter I am afraid.

What about improving the efficiency of cars? We can make cars at best an order of magnitude more energy efficient.

Ahh do believe that ahh detect th' aroma of fresh fertilizer. "An order of magnitude", you say... are you thinking binary? If not, your statement seems, to me, to require a second-law violation (unless you think that cars are < 10% efficient, as is). Or are you suggesting that we'll be able to use cars as breeder reactors?

Let's think about this, a bit... To approach the issue of efficiency logically, one could say that an internal combustion engine is a form of a heat engine, which could be described (in an ideal case) as a Carnot engine. Using the combustion temperature of gasoline ~ 2300 K, and the operating temperature of the engine as 100 C (373 K) (should be between 70 and 110 C, but we'll assume pure water, at one atmosphere of pressure as the coolant, for this case), then we get a [theoretical] maximum efficiency of (2300-373)/2300 ~= 84%. Some sources place the working temperature of the steel at 925K, bringing us into the realm of 60% efficiency.
IIRC, the best efficiency that has been managed, in a diesel engine, is around 52%. In modernOtto Cycle engines, one can expect to get an efficiency of somewhere around 32%. An "order of magnitude" improvement would put that at ~320%.

Think about what that implies.

[Of course, if you were thinking in binary, that would be 00 10 00 00 going to 01 00 00 00, putting us in the realm of 64%, which is theoretically possible.]/i

The specific heat of steel is 452 joules per kilogram per degree C.

The melting temperature of steel is 1370 degrees C (room temperature is 20 degrees), so the the lightsaber has to raise the temperature 1370-20=1350 degrees C).

Now (to pull some numbers out of my ass) let's say our hypothetical jedi swings a 1-meter-long-and-.02-meter-wide lightsaber through a bulkhead in a circular fashion, sweeping out a 120 degree arc. The volume of steel he has to melt is (120/360) * (pi*r^2) *width, where r = 1 meter and width = .02 meters -- 0.0209 cubic meters of steel.

The average density of steel" is 7.85 grams/cubic centimeter. According to google calculator, 1 gram per cubic centimeter equals 1000 kilograms per cubic meter; therefore, 7.85 grams/cubic centimeter = 7850 kilograms/cubic meter.

Thus: the lightsaber must melt (7850 kilograms/cubic meter) * (0.0209 cubic meters) = 164.065 kilograms of steel. This will require (164.065 kilograms) * (452 joules per kilogram per degree C. ) * (1350) = 100112463 joules of energy. QED.

The school in question is Western Washington University.

The class is Computer Security CS461, taught by David Bover. (He also happens to be the head of the CS department.)

http://www.bit-tech.net/modding/2005/10/19/wmd_g-g nome/5.html

the fabricator notices that he keeps dulling his drill bits. There are two reasons for that.

First, drill bit rpm is TOO HIGH. Stainless steel has poor thermal conductivity, and will not draw heat away from the drill bit very well. The drill bit cutting edge will go over temperature and soften and dull over.

This nice PDF chart should be printed out and put next to your drill press:

http://www.etec.wwu.edu/faculty/McKell/rpm%20ipm%2 0charts.pdf

It shows an allowable speed (surface feet per minute) of 30 for stainless steel. Note this is the same as for titanium.

Convert to rpm

http://www.maintenanceresources.com/ReferenceLibra ry/CNC/scratching.htm#sfm-rpm

or here:

http://www.drillmasters.com/speedfeed.shtml

using the formula RPM=SFM ÷ 0.262 ÷ DRILL DIA

and you end up with for a 1/4 inch hole 30 ÷ 0.262 ÷ .25 = 458 RPM

Thats about 7 revolutions per second.. pretty slow.

These reccomended RPMs/SFM are for factory production where time is money. I usually run at a lower RPM than (half as fast or less) because I am not in a hurry. The drill will last much longer the slower you go.

The second problem is the work hardening of stainless steel. If the drill bit is allowed to rub the surface without making a chip for even one revolution, the surface of the stainless will harden and dull the bit. You must press hard so that chips start forming immediately. If you must stop to raise the drill to clear chips for deep holes then raise the bit very quickly. Don't let the bit rub in the hole without cutting at any time.

Finally, the cutting lubricant: I use rubbing-alcohol+water mixture. It boils away in the drill hole to cool the bit, and does not leave an oily mess on the work.

If you consider "America" to mean the collective economic endeavors of the Establishment, then invading parts of Southwest Asia is *precisely* "protecting America". When you say that phrase is being perverted, you're really just feeling the fact that they deleted a very crucial letter of "protecting Americans". Another way they could have described what they're doing is to say "protecting very very very wicked rich Americans" but that's nowhere as effective propaganda because the bumper stickers would have to be like six feet wide. See also: "Support the election-year campaigns of the people who deploy the troops because these people are takign a REALLY HARD LINE on mega-criminals!"

Invading Korea - totally different, in that there's no considerable natural resources to pillage, and certainly minimal petroreserves. I guess you gotta keep the industry in South Korea predictable? The fact that there's not a obvious thing to buy from the people there is probably why this is pretty low on the war.radar. And make no mistake, if you were using a billion of something a day and there was a lot of it in the backyard of a obvious motherfucker who has been a true dick on the world stage, and you had 300 million people whose lives you were responsible and you had any balls at all, you would pretty much have to go over there and relieve that dude of his post. The choice to

It's this pussyfooting and lying and dishonesty about "yellowcake uranium" and "aluminum tubes" and "oh yeah that's fake but all these WMDs! this is an obvious bunker here here and these guys are holding a bucket of "liquid death" they could put this in the water folks! and then we're all well and truly fucked aren't we??? oh well we found some stuff they could have used to make hydrogen gas, who knows right? and the terrists used a binary chemical shell in a IED anyway, right?" And "freedom". If you want to call the freedom to buy anything you want from any corporation that you want, yes, we are giving the Iraqis freedom and thats *terrific* but why can't the government figure out a way to just break it down and convince people of something by explaining it using logic and science?

"The world is going down. We wan't to be on top at the end. We're pretty well positioned but we've got a lot of work to do and the clock is ticking."

Anyone who can't explain this without resorting to lies about nukes and Islam and Saddam's war crimes and Freedom is not very convincing, http://www.nationmaster.com/graph-T/ene_oil_con_th o_bar_dai_sha_of_tot&int=-1 and, say, http://physics.wwu.edu:8082/jstewart/physics101/wo rldconsumption.pdf just make it seem so obvious: we're going to be at a turning point soon. Is there more that our society be doing to prepare for this, or should we let the boys in tan & brown & green & black try and fight our way into the future all by themselves?

vvj

Most of the CS degree holders I meet describe long hours of tedious study of useless (in the vast majority of computer related jobs) COBOL on ancient and limited systems. Some describe hours of Novell training (and not the cool new SUSE-based stuff, I mean bindery context and the like) or, even worse, a lot of M$ crap that's not relevent to enterprise level computing. People who look at me like I've grown another head when I tell them to shift something right two bits or similar low-level concept.

As I remember ice is always ice, that is to say no such thing as 33 degree ice, likewise no such thing as 31 degree water (pure).
The ice changes to water when the level of caloric heat increases past a given point.
Ice will continue to absorb heat until enough heat causes the H+ crystalline bonds break off. This is not a quick change, a large amount nust be added, to have phase change.
This alsp applies to liquid water to stream vapor.

http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~vawter/PhysicsNet/Topics/Th ermal/PhaseChangeWater.html
Nice graphic.

Jessup

Has anyone mentioned Malthus yet?
http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/malthus/malthus.0.h tml

I bet Thomas Malthus would know.

Physicians consider male gays specifically "at risk" because intercourse for these individuals essentially means anal sex (a behavior many physicians consider risky), not because of lack of commitment between partners. Lesbians, AFAIK, share no such designation.

As far as I know, there is no evidence to indicate that either straight or gay individuals are more or less committed in long term relationships. If there is, I'd like to see it, and you can chalk it up to my ignorance on two fronts: 1) I'm not gay and 2) I think marriage (well, at the very least modern marriage) is a hilarious load of bullshit.

Comparing gay "life partners" to legal marriages is about as blatantly unfair as you can get. A buddy of mine is "married", but has been separated from his wife for over two years and freely sees other women. I'm sure any study of "life partners" would have considered that relationship over two years ago.

Other than these sorts of controlled experiments it is 'just a theory' supported by observation (but not direct experimentation) that the forces which effec an atomic clock in a fast mover also cause the various observations of uncontrolled (by humans) processess.

Seems to me likewise you could 'prove' climate change by showing the effect in a laboratory.

Eg if adding green house gasses to a system which is heated by the sun (or a radiant heat source producing the same wavelengths as the sun) causes temperatures in the system to rise, global warming is as proven as relativity, given the limits of our ability to demonstrate large scale processes within controlled environments...

Zu Mangani bundolo numa? Rota!

Go here to translate from Ape to English.

Absolutley, all modern high end lighting systems are computer based, and the issue is with the the input. Yes they do require up/down movement. My complaint isin't really about the user interface, though, it's about the range of input devices available with these systems.

Even using keyboard shortcuts limits you to changing one thing at a time, I have ten fingers, I can change ten sliders at once, plus these changes are nearley instant, changing with the keyboard, I have to either choose a level by typing in a number, or use pgup/dn to change ten percent at a time, still not fast enugh.

As for the note about the midi controlers, most light boards allready offer wheel control, letting you change hundreds of values the same time, these are usally the level/rate wheels, one to shift all the selected channels up/down, the other to speed up or slow down fades.

All of these pc based systems that I know of offer side panels with the standard lighting controls, but once you've added one you're back up into the price range of a dedicated light board.

The only reason that we're moving to Emphasis to as our primary lighting controller in our mainstage theatre is beceause it allows us to integrate more of our workflow onto one platform, that's important when you have 3-4 people handling 300+ events per year.

The other thing that you have to realise is that having a mouse on a lighting controller will outright scare some people who will be using your facilitys, and will elicit mockery from others.

Is this the trend of the future, yes. But theatre is full of stubborn people, and once they've found something that works, evrything else scares them. The trap that is easy for us to fall into is to get wraped up in the technical side of things, and to put too much attention into the process, it is after all art, and evrything in the production process needs to be focused on the final result.

Knowing that many /. readers are devotees of the command line, I think that they would agree that adding pretty graphical eliments to the user interface dosen't really add to useability. There is a reason that computer lighting controllers have remained essentially the same for the last twenty years, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Absolutley, all modern high end lighting systems are computer based, and the issue is with the the input. Yes they do require up/down movement. My complaint isin't really about the user interface, though, it's about the range of input devices available with these systems.

Even using keyboard shortcuts limits you to changing one thing at a time, I have ten fingers, I can change ten sliders at once, plus these changes are nearley instant, changing with the keyboard, I have to either choose a level by typing in a number, or use pgup/dn to change ten percent at a time, still not fast enugh.

As for the note about the midi controlers, most light boards allready offer wheel control, letting you change hundreds of values the same time, these are usally the level/rate wheels, one to shift all the selected channels up/down, the other to speed up or slow down fades.

All of these pc based systems that I know of offer side panels with the standard lighting controls, but once you've added one you're back up into the price range of a dedicated light board.

The only reason that we're moving to Emphasis to as our primary lighting controller in our mainstage theatre is beceause it allows us to integrate more of our workflow onto one platform, that's important when you have 3-4 people handling 300+ events per year.

The other thing that you have to realise is that having a mouse on a lighting controller will outright scare some people who will be using your facilitys, and will elicit mockery from others.

Is this the trend of the future, yes. But theatre is full of stubborn people, and once they've found something that works, evrything else scares them. The trap that is easy for us to fall into is to get wraped up in the technical side of things, and to put too much attention into the process, it is after all art, and evrything in the production process needs to be focused on the final result.

Knowing that many /. readers are devotees of the command line, I think that they would agree that adding pretty graphical eliments to the user interface dosen't really add to useability. There is a reason that computer lighting controllers have remained essentially the same for the last twenty years, if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Given what a microwave does to a light bulb, I'd expect it would be pretty useful in destroying electronics. Note that a burnt-out lightbulb will still glow in a microwave, and for this reason I doubt that simply disconnecting the antenna from the RFID circuit will have any effect since the whole circuit will be getting irradiated. Also, don't forget to have the clothes in a pyrex pan full of water or something- unless you want there to be a burnt hole in the garment where the RFID tag was.

Bouncy Ball Club

(Score:3, Informative)

Funny? sure
TrollBait? Perhaps but Informative???????!

Those are Canadian "Informatives".

The exchange rate is 5/4 of a Canadian "Informative" is equivalent to one American "Funny".

Were you set up to show my +1 Karma bonus modifier (as you should have been, I've had to whore for a year to keep that bonus!), it would be +4 "Informative" (Canadian), that is, +5 Funny (American).

Simple, once you know the exchange rate.

(Yeah, I was amazed to see it get modded "Informative" too. I thought for sure "Fenian Moviehouse" would have been a tip off. And yes, I was going for "Funny"; I wasn't attempting to troll.)

You forgot the keyboard.

So what could be my secret drive or desire behind that omission, from a Freudian point of view? ;-) I don't know, but the keyboard certainly is my most valuable input device. I feel it is not because of desks; I still do love it sitting in a train with the laptop computer on my knees, or the stripped-down version my cellphone provides me with for typing of short messages, names, or calendar entries. There may be a reason for this even if we imagine fundamentally different input schemes like really perfect speech recognition were widely available. For instance the keyboard allows me to easily pause at any time, or to go back in already written text and edit an arbitrary portion of it. And a great deal of computer usage is some sort of text processing.

I don't believe that the desktop paradigm is the only possible computer user interface. It's only the dominant UI because the people designing, improving and using the UI all work at desks. Once computers become more ubiquitous, even in other parts of the world where there is less of a desktop user population, so the desktop will be more foreign to more users (...)

You have a valid point here, but I think it is not so much because of the way hackers and designers work. Rather, it is the fact that most computers sit on a desk today. I remember some HCI person giving a talk at the local university about research he did in interaction with smartboards, that is, large touchscreens attached to walls. One thing he mentioned was that typical WIMP interfaces as we know them from desktop machines break down entirely there, for a quite simple reason: the display is much larger than a regular screen and the user is closer to it. This makes e.g. locating a button or window on screen much much harder.

However, I do not see too close a relation between physical desks and current user interfaces. It is somewhat misleading to talk about a desktop metaphor here even though we use to refer to those interfaces as desktops. The desktop metaphor may have been a guiding principle when the first GUIs were developed but since then they have become a thing of their own. Do we really draw conclusions about our computers' domain using concepts from the domain of physical desks and offices as suggested by Lakoff's Contemporary Theory of Metaphor?

For instance, I can see a computer IU based on another very well known and mature interface that Tim made a brief reference to- the automobile.

Such interfaces do exist already -- for computers we use to call cars. No, really. A car is kind of a computer today. But frankly, I don't see how this could be employed as a computer UI if the computer does not control a machine that has an engine and wheels. The navigation metaphor you mention (and use) seems misplaced or at least overstretched here. Navigating the Web is pretty different from spatial navigation. For instance the Web is a discrete space where one jumps from one place to another while a network of streets is so only if viewed at a higher level of abstraction which is irrelevant to actual driving tasks like making a turn or changing lanes. Which might be the reason why those 3D information spaces largely failed so far.

s/Merelvengian/Merovingian/g

See http://www.ac.wwu.edu/~stephan/Rulers/merovingian. html for some historical details. They're a line of Frankish kings from the early Dark Ages, and became known for their long greasy hair, corruption and uselessness before Charles "The Hammer" Martel, Pepin the Short, and Charlemagne cleaned house in Western Europe.

For those who studied something productive in school rather than enjoying the four-year binge of drugs and navel gazing that is a liberal arts degree:

The Merovingian line of royalty is believed by some of the more conspiracy-minded to have been a direct bloodline descended from Jesus. (Another theory maintains that they were descended from extraterrestrials, but that's neither here nor there for purposes of this discussion.)

Persephone, the daughter of gods Zeus and Demeter, was kidnapped by Hades (god of the underworld), and through a chain of events better explained elsewhere, she ended up spending part of each year on earth and part of each year in the Underworld.

Now on to the question...

What with Neo (the prophesized "one" who redeems the human race) discovering that he is only one redeemer in a series, and with his lady Trinity having died and been brought back to the land of the living, does anyone else suspect that the next movie will bring a revelation:

...that every "One" ends up presented with the same choice, and makes the same decision that Neo did; and that after making that decision they end up hanging around in the Matrix with the woman that they chose to bring back from death, slightly bitter, disillusioned, and knowing too much...

Or have I just spent too much time hanging out with conspiracy theorists?