This is an illustration of the problems with Kickstarter.
The Fire Piston, hand-made of wood, was "invented" by South American aborigines. It was actually a staple of their lifestyle.
Many years ago, explorers from Europe gave a demonstration of some of the "primitive" technologies that the South American natives possesses. Among the demonstrations was the Fire Piston, and among the audience was a man named Diesel.
You owe the modern internal combustion engine to the South American tribes who used fire pistons. That is not a joke; it is firmly established history.
And now somebody on Kickstarter wants to make money from an idea more than 2000 years old.
"People see prototypes and mockups and don't understand that."
Too bad. That is precisely what the site is all about, and if they don't understand it, they shouldn't be throwing their money at it. I mean really. At some point you have to make people responsible for their own actions.
"We've not had a republic since the civil war which for the most part destroyed the concept of the sovereign nature of the states."
Actually, that's not quite true. That's (sort of) what the Supreme Court said, but the Supreme Court never had the legal authority to say it.
See the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, and in particular, James Madison's "Report of 1800", in which he explains that the Supreme Court is not "supreme" in relation to deciding its own powers.
Um, sorry, WHAT? With very few exceptions, very few of the stipulated war damages (from the Axis powers), and war debts (from the Allies) were ever paid.
The U.S. grew rich in spite of unpaid debts, not by profiting from those debts. But ethically, even that is beside the point: debts are debts, and the U.S. pulled the UK's ass out of the fire.
In fact I thought it was pretty obvious to most people that the fact that "zero point" energy is NOT in fact zero (it is actually pretty huge), has been the motivation for finding ways to "Maxwell's Demon" the quantum vacuum fluctuations. There is nothing theoretically preventing it; one team this year found a possible means of exploiting it. We shall see.
If you are going to refer to Maxwell's equations, you should use caution. Because often what are referred to as "Maxwell's Equations" are actually just Maxwell's simplifications of Heaviside's and Hamilton's quaternion equations, with introductions of arbitrary "constants" to cancel out inconveniences, much like Einstein's "cosmological constant".
There is a good deal of modern evidence that Maxwell's attempt to simplify things may have been wishful thinking, and that Heaviside and Hamilton had it right all along. We rely much on Maxwell, but his conclusions are assumptions. Not only are they not proven, there is significant counter-evidence.
"what, exactly, is the difference between a plea bargain, and a guilty plea to lesser charges?"
Zero. There is no difference.
"I *am* against the abuses of plea deals that happen all too often, but before you say 'ban them' propose a better alternative that doesnt cause more issues then it solves."
I don't agree that it causes more problems than it solves. If you have proof beyond a reasonable doubt (or think you do, enough to involve a jury) then bring the charge. If you don't, then don't. If you think you have evidence of a lesser crime, then bring THAT charge.
There isn't any problem here. It's very, very simple. Accuse somebody of a crime, prove it before a jury. No issues, man.
"You have a lot of faith in government. Look, I *agree* with you. I think it all ought to be to explicit opt-out. I'm just sayin' that the government wouldn't be much of a better steward of the public interest than advertisers are. Too many people being paid off, too many lobbyists. I still predict things'll only get worse."
No, we're still not on the same channel. I have very, very little faith in government.
Nevertheless, a law saying "thou shalt not aggregate user information without the explicit permission of that user" is a very simple thing, and can be enforced pretty simply. Government doesn't even have to do much work, because it is people who use the services who will discover the transgressions... just as they always have.
Not much room for lobbyists to bypass such a simple law.
I will add a tidbit that I picked up last night shortly after I wrote the above.
You mentioned that since the ground state (not your exact words) of the vacuum is "defined" to be 0, then the energy must be negative.
I understand that logic. The problem is that the premise is incorrect.
Planck's equations, as refined by Einstein et al. in 1913, show that in fact the vacuum energy of a quantum system must always be above its "potential well", or the theoretical zero state. Thus, "zero-point" energy is NOT "defined" to be zero, but in fact is always positive, and the Casimir effect then, even using your own framework, is not "negative energy".
"Archimede principle: ice occupy as much space in water as it does once it has melted. The level of the oceans will only raise if inland ice melt such as in Antartica or Groenland."
Actually, the majority of sea rise predicted by IPCC would be due to thermal expansion.
Nevertheless, I find it hard to credit the existence of a "Global Emergency" merely on Hansen's word. He has used every weather event for the last 10 years, it seems as an excuse to cry disaster.
Even for pro-AGW advocates, Hansen is a rather extreme alarmist. His views are not those of the majority.
I will clarify my point a bit, because it has become obvious to me that we do not think much alike; what I think is a straightforward application of logic often does not seem to be so to you, while at the same time, I have often though that you have been taking leaps more of faith than logic. Maybe you feel the same; regardless, we have often not communicated well. I was going to put it in less polite terms, but I am controlling myself.
A force being applied in the context of the Casimir effect is definitely a vector. It has direction. Neither a positive or negative vector implies "negative energy": it simply defines the physical direction in which the energy is directed. The coordinates are arbitrary according to vector calculus.
There are circumstances in which energy can also be considered a vector, but this is not one of them. The Casimir effect is definitely a measurable vector in a particular direction, and he clear implication then is positive energy.
Again, granted: Hawking showed that negative energy might be required for negative mass effects in relation to wormholes. But I have never seen any science indicating that this negative energy is actually related to or a result of the Casimir effect. That is a rather large leap that is not supported in any of the science I have read. The only relationship I have seen is that negative energy is required for certain predicted phenomena; nowhere have I seen any claim that anything related to the Casismir effect is the actual source of that negative energy.
"No nation has ever adhered to a gold standard and any nation that tried to, wouldn't last 5 years. My sig. has the red pill."
You are just about as wrong as it is possible to get.
The United States (and prior to Federation, the colonies) were on a hard-metal standard for 300 years, and price levels remained virtually flat, except for small blips where the government borrowed money for wars, then afterward it went right back to the same healthy, steady level. Look at the damned chart. Those are figures from the most respected economic historians, until the last century, where they are the government's own figures.
Look at the events marked in that chart. You can see blips at wartime. But you can ALSO see, without the need for eyeglasses, 3 events that were related to removing the hard currency standard. If you don't know what they are, look them up. It is pretty easy to find them by year.
Hard, simple numbers show that you are completely wrong. Read some actual history; get a real clue.
"Your idea of putting government in charge of advertising has only one fatal flaw: It assumes that governments will protect the interests of people better."
You have misunderstood me. I have no intention or desire to "put government in charge" of what can be advertised where.
The only "government" part of this is simply mandating by law that people, web sites, info trackers, etc. cannot follow you around the internet and snoop into your affairs without your permission. That is all. Then the government doesn't decide what they can do, you do. That's a very different thing.
"Because they exist in the vacuum outside the plates (which is defined to have zero energy), the energy inside the plates is actually negative."
You're trying to get my goat. Haha. That isn't what it says. According to the article, the force is negative, in relation to the chosen physical framework, which (as it clearly says in the article) merely implies that the energy is lowered when the physical substrates come together. The same phenomenon can be demonstrated with magnets. No "negative energy" is implied.
By your logic, I could demonstrate "negative energy" with a child on a playground swing. All I have to do is choose my coordinates appropriately.
Apologies. I did not see your additional reply until I had already answered. It appears that you do, in fact, know what the Casimir effect is. But I will have to look at it more closely before I will make a judgment about it.
Nevertheless, Hawking's findings did not point at Casimir effect as a source of negative energy; they merely indicated that negative energy was necessary for the negative mass to have the calculated effect. Not the same thing.
"Hawking showed that negative energy is necessary for negative matter to have certain effect on WORMHOLES, in conjunction with just such a negative mass. "
should have read:
"Hawking showed that negative energy is necessary for certain effects on WORMHOLES to take place in conjunction with such a negative mass. But he did not claim that the negative energy was supplied by it."
This is going to be one of my rare responses to your posts. Prepare to be ignored for the most part, from here on in.
"Antimatter certainly isn't common, but it's not "exotic matter". "
Okay, I will concede that point, although it is about a Wikipedia entry. If you really want to argue about those...
But my point is still valid, since Bose-Einstein condensates of macro-size have been manufactured in laboratories since 1998. Thus, "exotic matter" IS being manufactured, in significant quantities, right here in the real world, for 14 years now with no physics violations in sight. ("Exotic Matter", according to your own citation.)
"The Casimir effect is the best known example of negative energy:"
Get a clue. If you are seriously using that link as a citation, then you lose. You did not properly comprehend what it said. The Casimir effect can be modeled mathematically as a negative-mass region; Hawking showed that negative energy is necessary for negative matter to have certain effect on WORMHOLES, in conjunction with just such a negative mass. But that does not establish a direct relationship between the two. It is a very FAR cry from equating negative energy with the Casimir effect.
Dude. I know you are a scientist. But do you even really know what the Casimir effect is? Of course I expect you will by the time you answer (if you do). And if you do answer, I probably won't reply. But at this very moment, at the time you first read this, from what you have already stated, I suspect that you really don't know what it is.
"I fear the overall trend is that privacy will erode further and further though, so this is a losing battle."
It's not a lost cause. The solution is actually quite simple. Making tracking opt-in only, and imposing harsh penalties for violations, can easily solve the problem.
Well, much probably depends on terminology. What exactly do you mean by "erosion of liberty"? Much also depends on your point of view.
What about other peoples' liberties? What about their liberty to go about their business without fear that a serial murderer will escape and start terrorizing victims again? What about their liberty to NOT want to feed, house, and give free TV to such a slimebucket for life?
There is a lot to be said for the argument that keeping someone in maximum-security prison for life is not as humane as death.
Slashdot Mirror
"Did I mention Iran? I was speaking globally and domestically."
That's okay. I was just trying to add to the crowd of "not the usual gaggle of fascists".
Three weeks after Raspberry Pi was actually released, better bang-for-the-buck boards were already on the market.
"They normally have no problem with that, since you are generally consenting. Animals cannot consent to be killed."
Screw leather anyway. They should put their effort into growing human skin instead.
You're off your nut.
Nobody gives a flying sh*t about Iran anymore. We don't need their gasoline, or for that matter anything else they have.
Let them stew in their own juices. Or roast in the lack of them. Whatever. I don't care, and neither should you.
This isn't the 70s or 80s anymore. Iran can go to its own private hell. We don't need to be concerned about it.
This is an illustration of the problems with Kickstarter.
The Fire Piston, hand-made of wood, was "invented" by South American aborigines. It was actually a staple of their lifestyle.
Many years ago, explorers from Europe gave a demonstration of some of the "primitive" technologies that the South American natives possesses. Among the demonstrations was the Fire Piston, and among the audience was a man named Diesel.
You owe the modern internal combustion engine to the South American tribes who used fire pistons. That is not a joke; it is firmly established history.
And now somebody on Kickstarter wants to make money from an idea more than 2000 years old.
"People see prototypes and mockups and don't understand that."
Too bad. That is precisely what the site is all about, and if they don't understand it, they shouldn't be throwing their money at it. I mean really. At some point you have to make people responsible for their own actions.
Twitter is committing slow suicide. If you don't see that, then you don't see very far.
No insult intended; just an observation.
"Could Slashdot finally be ready to grow up?"
"Grow up"? Right. Like 5 years of philanthropy make up for 30 years of outright, coercively, ripping people off.
Bill Gates might be trying to prove to the world that he's not an asshole, but he's doing it with money he gained by being an asshole.
That does not add up to positive.
"We've not had a republic since the civil war which for the most part destroyed the concept of the sovereign nature of the states."
Actually, that's not quite true. That's (sort of) what the Supreme Court said, but the Supreme Court never had the legal authority to say it.
See the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions of 1798, and in particular, James Madison's "Report of 1800", in which he explains that the Supreme Court is not "supreme" in relation to deciding its own powers.
"It then grew rich rebuilding western Europe."
Um, sorry, WHAT? With very few exceptions, very few of the stipulated war damages (from the Axis powers), and war debts (from the Allies) were ever paid.
The U.S. grew rich in spite of unpaid debts, not by profiting from those debts. But ethically, even that is beside the point: debts are debts, and the U.S. pulled the UK's ass out of the fire.
Live with it.
In fact I thought it was pretty obvious to most people that the fact that "zero point" energy is NOT in fact zero (it is actually pretty huge), has been the motivation for finding ways to "Maxwell's Demon" the quantum vacuum fluctuations. There is nothing theoretically preventing it; one team this year found a possible means of exploiting it. We shall see.
By the way:
If you are going to refer to Maxwell's equations, you should use caution. Because often what are referred to as "Maxwell's Equations" are actually just Maxwell's simplifications of Heaviside's and Hamilton's quaternion equations, with introductions of arbitrary "constants" to cancel out inconveniences, much like Einstein's "cosmological constant".
There is a good deal of modern evidence that Maxwell's attempt to simplify things may have been wishful thinking, and that Heaviside and Hamilton had it right all along. We rely much on Maxwell, but his conclusions are assumptions. Not only are they not proven, there is significant counter-evidence.
"what, exactly, is the difference between a plea bargain, and a guilty plea to lesser charges?"
Zero. There is no difference.
"I *am* against the abuses of plea deals that happen all too often, but before you say 'ban them' propose a better alternative that doesnt cause more issues then it solves."
I don't agree that it causes more problems than it solves. If you have proof beyond a reasonable doubt (or think you do, enough to involve a jury) then bring the charge. If you don't, then don't. If you think you have evidence of a lesser crime, then bring THAT charge.
There isn't any problem here. It's very, very simple. Accuse somebody of a crime, prove it before a jury. No issues, man.
"You have a lot of faith in government. Look, I *agree* with you. I think it all ought to be to explicit opt-out. I'm just sayin' that the government wouldn't be much of a better steward of the public interest than advertisers are. Too many people being paid off, too many lobbyists. I still predict things'll only get worse."
No, we're still not on the same channel. I have very, very little faith in government.
Nevertheless, a law saying "thou shalt not aggregate user information without the explicit permission of that user" is a very simple thing, and can be enforced pretty simply. Government doesn't even have to do much work, because it is people who use the services who will discover the transgressions... just as they always have.
Not much room for lobbyists to bypass such a simple law.
I will add a tidbit that I picked up last night shortly after I wrote the above.
You mentioned that since the ground state (not your exact words) of the vacuum is "defined" to be 0, then the energy must be negative.
I understand that logic. The problem is that the premise is incorrect.
Planck's equations, as refined by Einstein et al. in 1913, show that in fact the vacuum energy of a quantum system must always be above its "potential well", or the theoretical zero state. Thus, "zero-point" energy is NOT "defined" to be zero, but in fact is always positive, and the Casimir effect then, even using your own framework, is not "negative energy".
"Archimede principle: ice occupy as much space in water as it does once it has melted. The level of the oceans will only raise if inland ice melt such as in Antartica or Groenland."
Actually, the majority of sea rise predicted by IPCC would be due to thermal expansion.
Nevertheless, I find it hard to credit the existence of a "Global Emergency" merely on Hansen's word. He has used every weather event for the last 10 years, it seems as an excuse to cry disaster.
Even for pro-AGW advocates, Hansen is a rather extreme alarmist. His views are not those of the majority.
I will clarify my point a bit, because it has become obvious to me that we do not think much alike; what I think is a straightforward application of logic often does not seem to be so to you, while at the same time, I have often though that you have been taking leaps more of faith than logic. Maybe you feel the same; regardless, we have often not communicated well. I was going to put it in less polite terms, but I am controlling myself.
A force being applied in the context of the Casimir effect is definitely a vector. It has direction. Neither a positive or negative vector implies "negative energy": it simply defines the physical direction in which the energy is directed. The coordinates are arbitrary according to vector calculus.
There are circumstances in which energy can also be considered a vector, but this is not one of them. The Casimir effect is definitely a measurable vector in a particular direction, and he clear implication then is positive energy.
Again, granted: Hawking showed that negative energy might be required for negative mass effects in relation to wormholes. But I have never seen any science indicating that this negative energy is actually related to or a result of the Casimir effect. That is a rather large leap that is not supported in any of the science I have read. The only relationship I have seen is that negative energy is required for certain predicted phenomena; nowhere have I seen any claim that anything related to the Casismir effect is the actual source of that negative energy.
"No nation has ever adhered to a gold standard and any nation that tried to, wouldn't last 5 years. My sig. has the red pill."
You are just about as wrong as it is possible to get.
The United States (and prior to Federation, the colonies) were on a hard-metal standard for 300 years, and price levels remained virtually flat, except for small blips where the government borrowed money for wars, then afterward it went right back to the same healthy, steady level. Look at the damned chart. Those are figures from the most respected economic historians, until the last century, where they are the government's own figures.
Look at the events marked in that chart. You can see blips at wartime. But you can ALSO see, without the need for eyeglasses, 3 events that were related to removing the hard currency standard. If you don't know what they are, look them up. It is pretty easy to find them by year.
Hard, simple numbers show that you are completely wrong. Read some actual history; get a real clue.
"Your idea of putting government in charge of advertising has only one fatal flaw: It assumes that governments will protect the interests of people better."
You have misunderstood me. I have no intention or desire to "put government in charge" of what can be advertised where.
The only "government" part of this is simply mandating by law that people, web sites, info trackers, etc. cannot follow you around the internet and snoop into your affairs without your permission. That is all. Then the government doesn't decide what they can do, you do. That's a very different thing.
"Because they exist in the vacuum outside the plates (which is defined to have zero energy), the energy inside the plates is actually negative."
You're trying to get my goat. Haha. That isn't what it says. According to the article, the force is negative, in relation to the chosen physical framework, which (as it clearly says in the article) merely implies that the energy is lowered when the physical substrates come together. The same phenomenon can be demonstrated with magnets. No "negative energy" is implied.
By your logic, I could demonstrate "negative energy" with a child on a playground swing. All I have to do is choose my coordinates appropriately.
Apologies. I did not see your additional reply until I had already answered. It appears that you do, in fact, know what the Casimir effect is. But I will have to look at it more closely before I will make a judgment about it.
Nevertheless, Hawking's findings did not point at Casimir effect as a source of negative energy; they merely indicated that negative energy was necessary for the negative mass to have the calculated effect. Not the same thing.
"Hawking showed that negative energy is necessary for negative matter to have certain effect on WORMHOLES, in conjunction with just such a negative mass. "
should have read:
"Hawking showed that negative energy is necessary for certain effects on WORMHOLES to take place in conjunction with such a negative mass. But he did not claim that the negative energy was supplied by it."
"Antimatter certainly isn't common, but it's not "exotic matter". "
Okay, I will concede that point, although it is about a Wikipedia entry. If you really want to argue about those...
But my point is still valid, since Bose-Einstein condensates of macro-size have been manufactured in laboratories since 1998. Thus, "exotic matter" IS being manufactured, in significant quantities, right here in the real world, for 14 years now with no physics violations in sight. ("Exotic Matter", according to your own citation.)
"The Casimir effect is the best known example of negative energy:"
Get a clue. If you are seriously using that link as a citation, then you lose. You did not properly comprehend what it said. The Casimir effect can be modeled mathematically as a negative-mass region; Hawking showed that negative energy is necessary for negative matter to have certain effect on WORMHOLES, in conjunction with just such a negative mass. But that does not establish a direct relationship between the two. It is a very FAR cry from equating negative energy with the Casimir effect.
Dude. I know you are a scientist. But do you even really know what the Casimir effect is? Of course I expect you will by the time you answer (if you do). And if you do answer, I probably won't reply. But at this very moment, at the time you first read this, from what you have already stated, I suspect that you really don't know what it is.
"I fear the overall trend is that privacy will erode further and further though, so this is a losing battle."
It's not a lost cause. The solution is actually quite simple. Making tracking opt-in only, and imposing harsh penalties for violations, can easily solve the problem.
Well, much probably depends on terminology. What exactly do you mean by "erosion of liberty"? Much also depends on your point of view.
What about other peoples' liberties? What about their liberty to go about their business without fear that a serial murderer will escape and start terrorizing victims again? What about their liberty to NOT want to feed, house, and give free TV to such a slimebucket for life?
There is a lot to be said for the argument that keeping someone in maximum-security prison for life is not as humane as death.