There's a 1001 things that could go seriously wrong on Earth without it affecting Mars, and very few that would affect both. Gamma ray bursts and something wacky happening to the sun are the only things I can think of were a Mars colony probably wouldn't help. The list of possible extinction level events on Earth were a Mars colony would help - asteroid collision, supervolcano, nuclear war, sudden rapid climate change (>8C change), airborn virus with long (contagious) symptom free incubation period and extreme mortality rate, + a hundred more we haven't thought about yet.
We need a large colony on Mars. Preferably > 100 000 people. That's not going to happen this century, BUT - if we keep putting off doing ANYTHING, nothing will ever happen.
We need to start solving some of the problems and create a plan for putting a long term manned research base on Mars.
Until then, you're much better off building condos in the sahara with nice swimming pools because that will be a a lot cheaper and a MUCH MUCH easier sell.
Yes, that makes perfectly sense. Because as we all know sahara is immune to all extinction level events.
Also, consider this: What if FTL is impossible? Matter would then be in short supply for a Type II civilization. How much IR radiation do we expect to come from an energy->matter conversion? Would we be able to observe anything at all (expect gravitational forces) from a star system where 99.9% of the total energy output was used to create matter?
This particular study was looking for Type III civilizations. It's entirely conceivable that Type III civilizations doesn't exist anywhere - simply because the technology required to harness the total energy output of a galaxy cannot be created (the great filter is in our future).
Type 0 - type I civilizations would be hard to observe from earth unless they were actively trying to get noticed or just happened to have their (probably short) window of high-power radio era just at the right time for us to observe them. Our own high-power radio era is almost over.
Our understanding of the physics required to create a type II or type III civilization (if at all possible) is probably so incomplete that we wouldn't know what to look for anyway.
The supplier is responsible, but the customer can in some cases be held liable for the suppliers tax evasion.
This only applies to some types of services typically delivered at the customer's home. The law does not apply to any retail setting or for services rendered at the supplier's place of business.
No, not from the US. Every bank here have a common electronic system for passing payments back and forth. It's used for both bills and person to person transactions. Depending on the bank it costs between $0 and $0.15 per transaction. Processing is done 4 or 5 times a day, but a system for instantaneous transfers is underway.
The infrastructure for passing payments between the various banks, paved the way for a common e-invoice system that's connected to me as a person (not my bank account), this means I can log on and pay the invoice from any of my accounts (in different banks, or charge it to a credit card).
Didn't quite understand what you meant about ATMs and checks? Do you have ATMs that will let you cash checks? Never seen anything like that.
Over here sales tax is 25% on both goods and services. In addition to being liable for the sales tax, you are liable for any income tax, employment tax or company tax if the payment ended up being off-book.
Processing a check costs time and money and is an extremely wasteful way of transferring money. Last time I checked the price list for bank services, the fee for cashing a check was $20 (or $40 if you do not have an account where you cash it).
I've used at least one check this year, to pay a plumber. I use checks for a lot of things involving real estate. Money going to relatives is often in the form of a check for me, since a lot of my family is tech-averse. I grew up with my father paying bills using physical checks (and he still trusts them over online bill payment services) and with my mother paying for groceries by check, around the time that credit cards were still usually used with a mechanical imprinter.
It sounds odd to me not to have seen checks in 30 years. Apparently we've had very different life experiences.
I've used at least one check this year, to pay a plumber.
Paying a contractor with a check or in cash for anything above $1000 is actively discouraged where I live, you will be held accountable for any unpaid taxes on the payment if you pay in cash (or check).
A brief history of our recent banking history (to explain why checks are considered a relic of the past): Checks were introduced in the 60s. In the early 70s a common (digital) system for transferring funds between any accounts in different banks was introduced (giro transfers). All banks used the same form, and a standardised accountnumber that also identified the bank. The system was expanded to accommodate telepay, pay by letter and automatic payments. ATMs were introduced in the late 70s. ATMs, payment terminals and direct payment (giro) replaced checks during the first half of the 80s. A system for debit-card payment that worked with bank cards issued by any bank (no VISA/MC/AE-fees, direct digital transfer) was introduced early in the 90s. Many shops stopped accepting checks around the same time. Internet banking started up in 1996 and was considered mainstream by 2001. By the end of 2003 55% of all inhabitants age 15 and above used internet banking. By the end of 2014 90% of all inhabitants age 15 and above used internet or mobile banking. E-invoicing is replacing paper invoices at a rapid pace, for both B2C and B2B payments. E-invoicing is compulsory for government contractors.
Sun to electric power conversion is ~15-25% efficient. Microwave power transmission is up to 50% efficient.
Satellite power provides power 24/7 and does not need any form of energy storage, and would be a full replacement for traditional base-load power generation (like hydro, nuclear and coal). Solar power is limited to roughly 8 hours a day, and needs either energy storage or other base-load generation. Power storage is either inefficient or costly.
The only relevant question is if it is possible to make it cheap enough, without the pie-in-the-sky Skylon. What would it cost with Falcon-9 or Falcon-Heavy as launch vehicle for the satellites?
There's also a Wikipedia page in English with statistics for parts of 2014:
During the first quarter of 2014 all-electric car sales reached a record 14.5% market share of new car sales, and for the first eight months of 2014 the all-electric segment market share was 13.0%, and climbs to 14.2% when plug-in hybrids are accounted for.
EV sales the last quarter of 2014 dropped a bit, probably in part because almost everyone with a Tesla-order with delivery in that quarter changed their order to the 4WD 85D with delivery in 2015.
The MIT camera doesn't capture that many frames pr second. The video they create show a trillion frames per second, but it's created from a gazillion movies of identical light pulses.
Just make sure your gaming rig is less noisy than her gaming rig. And don't put either of them in the living room.
My system is practically noiseless. Silent water cooling and 140mm fans. No HDDs, just a stack of SSDs.
My wife's gaming rig is noisy as hell. Old i7 920 ("frying pan" early stepping) with a HD6970 and 24GB 1.65V ram, a couple of 2nd generation SSDs and a stack of HDDs. Doubles as space heater during the winter.
15 points is a huge difference. A person with an IQ of 85 will be severely disadvantaged and would have problems completing any higher education. Past a certain point higher IQ does not directly translate to higher success rate (social, economical, health etc), but in the interval 70-130 it does.
Northern Europe here. The country of electric car fanatics. Think we're the 2nd largest marked in the world, behind California, despite being only 5M people.
New cars (non-electric ones) are HEAVILY taxed here. A modest family car costs $60-70 000. A decent SUV costs $200 000 (and the roads are full of them).
A Tesla S and a low end 5-series BMW or E-class Mercedes costs about the same here.
Where I live the rule of thumb is that you spend between 1/2 year and 1 year household income (before tax) on car(s) every 5-6 years. Average household income for dual income households ( most are) is slightly above $160 000, which puts the Tesla D within the car spending budget of almost half the households over here.
I'm just pissed I didn't hold out another 2 months before ordering mine early in September.
I don't know of any way to get it to work on a Rpi at the moment.
If you have a x86/x64 server somewhere in the house you could try to stream the output from the browser running on the server - or something like that. But I'm guessing the DRM will get in your way.
http://www.playon.tv/playon does something like this from a Windows PC to XBMC - but at $70 I would look elsewhere.
Desktops won't go away, but the industry will have to adapt and find new markets / new products when the upgrade rate changes from once every 24 months to once every 10 years. As a technology driver, desktops are dying (or dead).
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There's a 1001 things that could go seriously wrong on Earth without it affecting Mars, and very few that would affect both.
Gamma ray bursts and something wacky happening to the sun are the only things I can think of were a Mars colony probably wouldn't help.
The list of possible extinction level events on Earth were a Mars colony would help - asteroid collision, supervolcano, nuclear war, sudden rapid climate change (>8C change), airborn virus with long (contagious) symptom free incubation period and extreme mortality rate, + a hundred more we haven't thought about yet.
We need a large colony on Mars. Preferably > 100 000 people.
That's not going to happen this century, BUT - if we keep putting off doing ANYTHING, nothing will ever happen.
We need to start solving some of the problems and create a plan for putting a long term manned research base on Mars.
Until then, you're much better off building condos in the sahara with nice swimming pools because that will be a a lot cheaper and a MUCH MUCH easier sell.
Yes, that makes perfectly sense. Because as we all know sahara is immune to all extinction level events.
Good point.
Also, consider this:
What if FTL is impossible?
Matter would then be in short supply for a Type II civilization. How much IR radiation do we expect to come from an energy->matter conversion?
Would we be able to observe anything at all (expect gravitational forces) from a star system where 99.9% of the total energy output was used to create matter?
This particular study was looking for Type III civilizations.
It's entirely conceivable that Type III civilizations doesn't exist anywhere - simply because the technology required to harness the total energy output of a galaxy cannot be created (the great filter is in our future).
Type 0 - type I civilizations would be hard to observe from earth unless they were actively trying to get noticed or just happened to have their (probably short) window of high-power radio era just at the right time for us to observe them. Our own high-power radio era is almost over.
Our understanding of the physics required to create a type II or type III civilization (if at all possible) is probably so incomplete that we wouldn't know what to look for anyway.
The supplier is responsible, but the customer can in some cases be held liable for the suppliers tax evasion.
This only applies to some types of services typically delivered at the customer's home. The law does not apply to any retail setting or for services rendered at the supplier's place of business.
No, not from the US.
Every bank here have a common electronic system for passing payments back and forth.
It's used for both bills and person to person transactions. Depending on the bank it costs between $0 and $0.15 per transaction. Processing is done 4 or 5 times a day, but a system for instantaneous transfers is underway.
The infrastructure for passing payments between the various banks, paved the way for a common e-invoice system that's connected to me as a person (not my bank account), this means I can log on and pay the invoice from any of my accounts (in different banks, or charge it to a credit card).
Didn't quite understand what you meant about ATMs and checks? Do you have ATMs that will let you cash checks? Never seen anything like that.
Over here sales tax is 25% on both goods and services.
In addition to being liable for the sales tax, you are liable for any income tax, employment tax or company tax if the payment ended up being off-book.
Processing a check costs time and money and is an extremely wasteful way of transferring money. Last time I checked the price list for bank services, the fee for cashing a check was $20 (or $40 if you do not have an account where you cash it).
I've used at least one check this year, to pay a plumber. I use checks for a lot of things involving real estate. Money going to relatives is often in the form of a check for me, since a lot of my family is tech-averse. I grew up with my father paying bills using physical checks (and he still trusts them over online bill payment services) and with my mother paying for groceries by check, around the time that credit cards were still usually used with a mechanical imprinter.
It sounds odd to me not to have seen checks in 30 years. Apparently we've had very different life experiences.
I've used at least one check this year, to pay a plumber.
Paying a contractor with a check or in cash for anything above $1000 is actively discouraged where I live, you will be held accountable for any unpaid taxes on the payment if you pay in cash (or check).
A brief history of our recent banking history (to explain why checks are considered a relic of the past):
Checks were introduced in the 60s.
In the early 70s a common (digital) system for transferring funds between any accounts in different banks was introduced (giro transfers). All banks used the same form, and a standardised accountnumber that also identified the bank. The system was expanded to accommodate telepay, pay by letter and automatic payments.
ATMs were introduced in the late 70s.
ATMs, payment terminals and direct payment (giro) replaced checks during the first half of the 80s.
A system for debit-card payment that worked with bank cards issued by any bank (no VISA/MC/AE-fees, direct digital transfer) was introduced early in the 90s.
Many shops stopped accepting checks around the same time.
Internet banking started up in 1996 and was considered mainstream by 2001.
By the end of 2003 55% of all inhabitants age 15 and above used internet banking.
By the end of 2014 90% of all inhabitants age 15 and above used internet or mobile banking.
E-invoicing is replacing paper invoices at a rapid pace, for both B2C and B2B payments.
E-invoicing is compulsory for government contractors.
A few weeks ago, I looked at my checkbook and the last paper check I wrote was January. Of 2014.
Stuff is starting to change fast.
You used checks last year?
I don't think I've seen a checkbook or anyone using one after 1985.
Sun to electric power conversion is ~15-25% efficient.
Microwave power transmission is up to 50% efficient.
Satellite power provides power 24/7 and does not need any form of energy storage, and would be a full replacement for traditional base-load power generation (like hydro, nuclear and coal).
Solar power is limited to roughly 8 hours a day, and needs either energy storage or other base-load generation. Power storage is either inefficient or costly.
The only relevant question is if it is possible to make it cheap enough, without the pie-in-the-sky Skylon.
What would it cost with Falcon-9 or Falcon-Heavy as launch vehicle for the satellites?
I guess this would be most useful for potential next-gen superchargers with really thick cables (400V, 1000A?).
You cannot legally issue DMCA takedown notices for trademark infringement.
New cars registered last year: 144 202
Zero emission cars: 18 094, of which 4 were hydrogen and 18 090 were EV.
100 * 18090/144202 = 12.54%
Source: http://www.ofvas.no/aktuelt-1/... (in Norwegian)
There's also a Wikipedia page in English with statistics for parts of 2014:
Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
EV sales the last quarter of 2014 dropped a bit, probably in part because almost everyone with a Tesla-order with delivery in that quarter changed their order to the 4WD 85D with delivery in 2015.
The EV sales accounted for 12.5% of new cars sold last year where I live - it's already mainstream.
The economics of fossil fuel is also hidden. We're do not pay to offset the environmental it causes. Gas should be at least $10/gallon, probably >$20.
The 4790t does not have 8 cores. It's 4 cores with hyper-threading.
Still massively impressive at just 45W.
The MIT camera doesn't capture that many frames pr second. The video they create show a trillion frames per second, but it's created from a gazillion movies of identical light pulses.
Just make sure your gaming rig is less noisy than her gaming rig. And don't put either of them in the living room.
My system is practically noiseless. Silent water cooling and 140mm fans. No HDDs, just a stack of SSDs.
My wife's gaming rig is noisy as hell. Old i7 920 ("frying pan" early stepping) with a HD6970 and 24GB 1.65V ram, a couple of 2nd generation SSDs and a stack of HDDs. Doubles as space heater during the winter.
15 points is a huge difference. A person with an IQ of 85 will be severely disadvantaged and would have problems completing any higher education.
Past a certain point higher IQ does not directly translate to higher success rate (social, economical, health etc), but in the interval 70-130 it does.
Northern Europe here. The country of electric car fanatics. Think we're the 2nd largest marked in the world, behind California, despite being only 5M people.
New cars (non-electric ones) are HEAVILY taxed here. A modest family car costs $60-70 000. A decent SUV costs $200 000 (and the roads are full of them).
A Tesla S and a low end 5-series BMW or E-class Mercedes costs about the same here.
Where I live the rule of thumb is that you spend between 1/2 year and 1 year household income (before tax) on car(s) every 5-6 years.
Average household income for dual income households ( most are) is slightly above $160 000, which puts the Tesla D within the car spending budget of almost half the households over here.
I'm just pissed I didn't hold out another 2 months before ordering mine early in September.
I don't know of any way to get it to work on a Rpi at the moment.
If you have a x86/x64 server somewhere in the house you could try to stream the output from the browser running on the server - or something like that. But I'm guessing the DRM will get in your way.
http://www.playon.tv/playon does something like this from a Windows PC to XBMC - but at $70 I would look elsewhere.
It already works with XBMC on Linux with pipelight and full screen browser to show he video.
Desktops won't go away, but the industry will have to adapt and find new markets / new products when the upgrade rate changes from once every 24 months to once every 10 years. As a technology driver, desktops are dying (or dead).