"Lots of patents are 40 years and older. In fact these are the best kind of patents because they constitute published technology that everyone is free to use."
Haha. Got me. But I meant patents that are active and can be enforced.
There are 2 big issues here that the politicians need to start considering, much more than they have been:
(1) The fact that a certain technology CAN be used, and might even represent monetary savings, is largely a different question that whether it SHOULD be used.
(2) That improved technology works both ways: not only do you have the ability to move surveillance to the sky, but also: civilians have drastically improved ability to bring it down. And strong motivation to do so.
What is up these politician's asses? Besides their heads, I mean.
This isn't a war. But some of the politicians seem dead set on making it one.
Hint, politicians: today it is not only quite possible, but not even that difficult to make a drone-killing missile in one's basement, complete with propeller- or heat-seeking electronics. And they'd never see it coming. ("Missile" might be misleading: it might be simpler and cheaper to make a self-guided ballistic projectile.)
I'm not suggesting that I would do that. I don't even have a basement. But you can count on the fact that somebody would.
"And the costs of not transitioning from fossil fuel energy to renewable energy are even bigger. They're just a bit further in the future and easier to ignore."
That's probably true, but it's also a different argument.
They did in fact CLAIM that it was true, but they make it very clear that the claim is not based on their actual data, but rather on their initial assumtion: that AGW is fact.
The effect is the same: the study does not in fact indicate what you say. It merely shows a correlation. The data does not support the conclusion that either "side" is right or wrong.
"You're almost there. They basically showed what you said is true in regards to right-wingers."
No, they didn't. You are both wrong.
What they said was that the results of education were correlated with political leanings. They did not show cause-effect.
For example, for all we know, the "right-wingers" who are uneducated might just be incorrect, and the educated "right-wingers" correct. And then the "left-wingers" who are uneducated would be incorrect, and when educated become even more incorrect.
I am not claiming that this is so! I am merely pointing out that this study does not indicate (or even claim) otherwise. It merely shows correlation. Any cause and effect is purely in your own mind, at this point.
I really hate to have to bring up the "correlation does not equal causation" argument here on Slashdot, but that is precisely the issue here. By expressing these unfounded conclusions you force my hand.
I agree with you for the most part, but just one bone to pick:
"But the costs? The sacrifices that should be made to prevent it? Opinion. "
No, the costs are not opinion. They are known. And the costs of actually making a significant difference, assuming that the AGW models are correct, are huge.
No, the costs are not opinion at all. Whether to spend them is where evaluation and opinion come in.
"... but the implications are probably toxic to feminist ears."
They are. Believe me. To some feminists, anyway.
There are those who actually pay attention to nearly every study done in this area, which have overwhelmingly concluded that the "shortage" of women in IT is due to the simple fact that women do not choose IT as a career in the first place... I mean, deciding that clear back in high school, not as a college junior and sure as hell not after they enter the workforce.
Then there are those who simply prefer to ignore the facts and treat it like some kind of giant male conspiracy.
I think you can tell which side of that fence I am on.
She complains about a phenomenon that is caused by women (since studies for over 20 years have repeatedly and consistently shown that women simply tend not to choose to go into STEM careers in the first place), then uses that as a springboard to further complain that she doesn't get enough Federal assistance for women!
I mean, come on! It's one thing to discuss the issue of "not enough women in IT" (which has been discussed to death already), and quite another to so blatantly whine about it.
I don't think the recent failures have much to do with ad-supported news being non-viable, at all. I think it has had a lot more to do with poor implementations than anything else.
Almost without exception, newspapers started out being free and entirely ad-supported. Several small papers in my area still are.
Of course, many newspapers moved on to a pay-per-issue model, while still containing all the advertising, if not more. That does not mean it is necessary. Clearly it is not, as the counterexamples demonstrate. It merely means they are greedy. News is a lucrative business.
I see absolutely no reason why news cannot continue to be ad-supported. I stopped reading the New York Times when they erected their paywall, and I don't miss it. (Their paywall is a very shitty implementation, by the way. It is full of errors. It continually asks me to log in to read articles, even after I am logged in. Evidently it is a cookie-based system. I finally just said "screw it, I don't need this". And I don't.)
"Sentience is not necessarily about self awareness..."
Doug Hofstadter would definitely disagree with you on this point. I don't remember Penrose's stance on the issue, but I think he would probably lean more toward your side.
On the other hand, I think Penrose stumbled, big-time, in his giant leap from physics to metaphysics. I believe he made a huge logical error on the way to his conclusion that self-awareness and free will are illusions.
Re:It's not just specialization, there is also fea
on
Where's HAL 9000?
·
· Score: 1
"Is there a human unconscious?"
Not yet, but come on over to my place and we can arrange it.
Re:It's not just specialization, there is also fea
on
Where's HAL 9000?
·
· Score: 1
"If you argue that they do not truly understand the language, then we also do not truly understand the language that we are currently using."
Not so. That is a classical example of anthropomorphizing. Among other problems, you run into definitional issues, like "What do you mean by 'understand'?"
In no way do they "understand" the language in any manner similar to the way you and I "understand" something. It is a matter of both quantity and quality. As Douglas Hofstadter would say: you and I can think abstractly about that language without using it, but the little robots are incapable of doing so. Therefore, there is no "understanding" in the human sense.
It is glaringly obvious that you lived there, and if you think I'm a moron, come sit next to me and we'll take the same IQ test, see who comes out on top.
The fact that you lived there impresses me not at all. In this case it simply indicates to me that your indoctrination is showing.
As it happens, I know a great many people who lived there, and very few of them, if any, agree with you. Which is why they no longer live there.
Further: it is not reasonable or rational, during the transition from a corrupt socialist state to an even more corrupt semi-capitalist economic system, to expect old systems to work the same way they used to.
"Dust is not going to be a large problem on the moon for the same reasons you stated - the moon has no atmosphere."
There may not be any "dust in the wind", as it were, but when it is kicked up, it is kicked WAY up. Lack of atmosphere and low gravity also mean that there is little to impede it when it rises.
Dust was a very major problem during the manned missions. It got onto and into everything. Admittedly, the rover won't be kicking up dust like humans jumping around did, but at the same time, it is going to be there a while, it will be moving around, and it has moving parts. In addition, there could very well be electrostatic attraction.
"Spirit and Opportunity also had a retro-rocket "sky crane" component."
But it couldn't carry them all the way down to the surface. True, and I should have clarified that. But obviously the tetrahedral "beach balls" were not dropped all the way from orbit.
"he trouble with "web of trust" schemes like that is fake "people", i.e. dummy accounts."
No. See my other post above. The REAL problem with the "web of trust" is that the parties you are supposed to be trusting are untrustworthy. Third parties spoofing certs is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
"Without an arbiter (or arbiting class), all you have are records of who trusted certifications that other people trusted and who trusted certifications that few others trusted."
The real problem here is that the whole "trust" model of CAs is broken, and has been from the beginning.
It does little good to verify certificates, as this scheme proposes, if the majority of the real security problem is with the CAs themselves, or with improper end-user implementation of certificates.
In a study done a few years ago, EFF found that among other things, there were too many CAs, and many of them were not following the rules. For a few examples: (A) some CAs were improperly selling multiple certificates for the same domain, (B) other CAs were (even worse!) selling the same certificate to multiple domains, and (C) as much as 80% of sites had their certificates installed improperly. In many cases the certificates were installed on a subdomain (such as www.) when it should have been on the main domain name, or vice versa.
Bolstering the "trust" of the certificates themselves does damned little good if the "authorities" that validating them are not following the rules, or people are not using the certificates properly in the first place.
All in all, this proposal would do little to solve anything, because it is proven that it is precisely the parties you are supposed to trust who are untrustworthy, when it comes to setting up or validating certificates.
More concerning is the task of keeping it from melting after fifteen days of intense solar radiation and no atmospheric cooling.
Actually, this should not be much of a problem. For example, slightly pressurized helium (which has a high thermal conductivity) could carry the heat of the solar panel to a radiative "heat sink" in the shadow behind it, or it could be physically coupled by thermally conductive metal to the heat sink.
Radiative heat sinks in the shadow of a panel is a technique is used by nuclear-powered space probes (the Voyagers, for example). In fact it has been shown that the radiation (photons) from the heat sinks, impacting the backside of the antenna reflector, has acted like a "reverse solar sail", and has "negatively-bootstrapped" the probe: slowing it down in its path.
Slashdot Mirror
"Lots of patents are 40 years and older. In fact these are the best kind of patents because they constitute published technology that everyone is free to use."
Haha. Got me. But I meant patents that are active and can be enforced.
"Why is no one asking the question if this stuff actually makes communities safer?"
Another good point. I would make that #3. And that brings up:
(4) Safety is not the end goal of all existence. You cannot make everything 100% safe without taking all the meaning and enjoyment out of life.
But there * IS * something wrong with 40-year-old patents.
Clarification:
There are 2 big issues here that the politicians need to start considering, much more than they have been:
(1) The fact that a certain technology CAN be used, and might even represent monetary savings, is largely a different question that whether it SHOULD be used.
(2) That improved technology works both ways: not only do you have the ability to move surveillance to the sky, but also: civilians have drastically improved ability to bring it down. And strong motivation to do so.
What is up these politician's asses? Besides their heads, I mean.
This isn't a war. But some of the politicians seem dead set on making it one.
Hint, politicians: today it is not only quite possible, but not even that difficult to make a drone-killing missile in one's basement, complete with propeller- or heat-seeking electronics. And they'd never see it coming. ("Missile" might be misleading: it might be simpler and cheaper to make a self-guided ballistic projectile.)
I'm not suggesting that I would do that. I don't even have a basement. But you can count on the fact that somebody would.
"And the costs of not transitioning from fossil fuel energy to renewable energy are even bigger. They're just a bit further in the future and easier to ignore."
That's probably true, but it's also a different argument.
Self-correction:
They did in fact CLAIM that it was true, but they make it very clear that the claim is not based on their actual data, but rather on their initial assumtion: that AGW is fact.
The effect is the same: the study does not in fact indicate what you say. It merely shows a correlation. The data does not support the conclusion that either "side" is right or wrong.
"You're almost there. They basically showed what you said is true in regards to right-wingers."
No, they didn't. You are both wrong.
What they said was that the results of education were correlated with political leanings. They did not show cause-effect.
For example, for all we know, the "right-wingers" who are uneducated might just be incorrect, and the educated "right-wingers" correct. And then the "left-wingers" who are uneducated would be incorrect, and when educated become even more incorrect.
I am not claiming that this is so! I am merely pointing out that this study does not indicate (or even claim) otherwise. It merely shows correlation. Any cause and effect is purely in your own mind, at this point.
I really hate to have to bring up the "correlation does not equal causation" argument here on Slashdot, but that is precisely the issue here. By expressing these unfounded conclusions you force my hand.
"But the costs? The sacrifices that should be made to prevent it? Opinion. "
No, the costs are not opinion. They are known. And the costs of actually making a significant difference, assuming that the AGW models are correct, are huge.
No, the costs are not opinion at all. Whether to spend them is where evaluation and opinion come in.
"Or put those claiming it isn't a pollutant in a 10% CO2 atmosphere for 1/2 hour."
In order to increase O2 concentration by the same amount, you would have to have an atmosphere that was many, many times greater than 100% oxygen.
And 100% oxygen will kill you pretty damned quick, too. So your argument is nonsense.
"... but the implications are probably toxic to feminist ears."
They are. Believe me. To some feminists, anyway.
There are those who actually pay attention to nearly every study done in this area, which have overwhelmingly concluded that the "shortage" of women in IT is due to the simple fact that women do not choose IT as a career in the first place... I mean, deciding that clear back in high school, not as a college junior and sure as hell not after they enter the workforce.
Then there are those who simply prefer to ignore the facts and treat it like some kind of giant male conspiracy.
I think you can tell which side of that fence I am on.
Talk about crybabies. Sheesh.
She complains about a phenomenon that is caused by women (since studies for over 20 years have repeatedly and consistently shown that women simply tend not to choose to go into STEM careers in the first place), then uses that as a springboard to further complain that she doesn't get enough Federal assistance for women!
I mean, come on! It's one thing to discuss the issue of "not enough women in IT" (which has been discussed to death already), and quite another to so blatantly whine about it.
I should have added:
I don't think the recent failures have much to do with ad-supported news being non-viable, at all. I think it has had a lot more to do with poor implementations than anything else.
Almost without exception, newspapers started out being free and entirely ad-supported. Several small papers in my area still are.
Of course, many newspapers moved on to a pay-per-issue model, while still containing all the advertising, if not more. That does not mean it is necessary. Clearly it is not, as the counterexamples demonstrate. It merely means they are greedy. News is a lucrative business.
I see absolutely no reason why news cannot continue to be ad-supported. I stopped reading the New York Times when they erected their paywall, and I don't miss it. (Their paywall is a very shitty implementation, by the way. It is full of errors. It continually asks me to log in to read articles, even after I am logged in. Evidently it is a cookie-based system. I finally just said "screw it, I don't need this". And I don't.)
"This seems to suggest that due to these alternatives, people are less willing to pirate and pay the publishers for entertainment."
Downloading is NOT piracy! They are two very different things. Stop doing the copyright trolls' jobs for them by calling it what it isn't.
"Sentience is not necessarily about self awareness..."
Doug Hofstadter would definitely disagree with you on this point. I don't remember Penrose's stance on the issue, but I think he would probably lean more toward your side.
On the other hand, I think Penrose stumbled, big-time, in his giant leap from physics to metaphysics. I believe he made a huge logical error on the way to his conclusion that self-awareness and free will are illusions.
"Is there a human unconscious?"
Not yet, but come on over to my place and we can arrange it.
"If you argue that they do not truly understand the language, then we also do not truly understand the language that we are currently using."
Not so. That is a classical example of anthropomorphizing. Among other problems, you run into definitional issues, like "What do you mean by 'understand'?"
In no way do they "understand" the language in any manner similar to the way you and I "understand" something. It is a matter of both quantity and quality. As Douglas Hofstadter would say: you and I can think abstractly about that language without using it, but the little robots are incapable of doing so. Therefore, there is no "understanding" in the human sense.
"I lived there, you moron!"
It is glaringly obvious that you lived there, and if you think I'm a moron, come sit next to me and we'll take the same IQ test, see who comes out on top.
The fact that you lived there impresses me not at all. In this case it simply indicates to me that your indoctrination is showing.
As it happens, I know a great many people who lived there, and very few of them, if any, agree with you. Which is why they no longer live there.
Further: it is not reasonable or rational, during the transition from a corrupt socialist state to an even more corrupt semi-capitalist economic system, to expect old systems to work the same way they used to.
"Dust is not going to be a large problem on the moon for the same reasons you stated - the moon has no atmosphere."
There may not be any "dust in the wind", as it were, but when it is kicked up, it is kicked WAY up. Lack of atmosphere and low gravity also mean that there is little to impede it when it rises.
Dust was a very major problem during the manned missions. It got onto and into everything. Admittedly, the rover won't be kicking up dust like humans jumping around did, but at the same time, it is going to be there a while, it will be moving around, and it has moving parts. In addition, there could very well be electrostatic attraction.
"Relax about the dust. It's only going to be a 90 day mission..."
And so were Spirit and Opportunity.
"Spirit and Opportunity also had a retro-rocket "sky crane" component."
But it couldn't carry them all the way down to the surface. True, and I should have clarified that. But obviously the tetrahedral "beach balls" were not dropped all the way from orbit.
"he trouble with "web of trust" schemes like that is fake "people", i.e. dummy accounts."
No. See my other post above. The REAL problem with the "web of trust" is that the parties you are supposed to be trusting are untrustworthy. Third parties spoofing certs is a drop in the bucket in comparison.
"Without an arbiter (or arbiting class), all you have are records of who trusted certifications that other people trusted and who trusted certifications that few others trusted."
The real problem here is that the whole "trust" model of CAs is broken, and has been from the beginning.
It does little good to verify certificates, as this scheme proposes, if the majority of the real security problem is with the CAs themselves, or with improper end-user implementation of certificates.
In a study done a few years ago, EFF found that among other things, there were too many CAs, and many of them were not following the rules. For a few examples: (A) some CAs were improperly selling multiple certificates for the same domain, (B) other CAs were (even worse!) selling the same certificate to multiple domains, and (C) as much as 80% of sites had their certificates installed improperly. In many cases the certificates were installed on a subdomain (such as www.) when it should have been on the main domain name, or vice versa.
Bolstering the "trust" of the certificates themselves does damned little good if the "authorities" that validating them are not following the rules, or people are not using the certificates properly in the first place.
All in all, this proposal would do little to solve anything, because it is proven that it is precisely the parties you are supposed to trust who are untrustworthy, when it comes to setting up or validating certificates.
More concerning is the task of keeping it from melting after fifteen days of intense solar radiation and no atmospheric cooling.
Actually, this should not be much of a problem. For example, slightly pressurized helium (which has a high thermal conductivity) could carry the heat of the solar panel to a radiative "heat sink" in the shadow behind it, or it could be physically coupled by thermally conductive metal to the heat sink.
Radiative heat sinks in the shadow of a panel is a technique is used by nuclear-powered space probes (the Voyagers, for example). In fact it has been shown that the radiation (photons) from the heat sinks, impacting the backside of the antenna reflector, has acted like a "reverse solar sail", and has "negatively-bootstrapped" the probe: slowing it down in its path.