Greed and excessive, gratuitous, shows of wealth are rarely beautiful
Nor are they a sole aspect of Capitalism. It doesn't matter what system is in place, greed is an aspec tfo humanity. Even in a system/environment where there is true abundance, greed will exist and will be an issue. As such your rebuttal has nothing to do with Capitalism either.
Greed is not wanting a PS3. Greed is not wanting a PS3 to sell on Ebay for "obscene profit". Greed is not wanting to make a profit, or even large profits. Greed is an excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves. Yup, that makes it relative. if someone is willing to spend 9-12 hour in the cold and then spend 600 bucks for a PS3, that's not a run of greed. They worked for it. How is that any worse than a techie spending half a week at his or her job doing nothing while "supporting" a company's IT department and then spending the money on a PS3?
Excessive and gratuitous shows of wealth? Pyramids, Vatican, Royal Palaces, The Kremlin. Excessive and gratuitous every one. Brass handled drinking fountains in your local county courthouse? Also excessive and gratuitous. And that at the expense of someone buying something for themselves because the government took their earned money from them to do it.
Yet the Vatican, Royal palaces, Kremlin, and the Pyramids are all quite beautiful.
Most such claims of gratuitous displays of wealth and so forth are entirely relative and often made in ignorance. For example, I drive a Corvette. People give me crap about making "so much money" I could afford one. Yet their cars/SUVs/trucks are often more expensive than my Vette.
Show me people paying to get an advantage in a line for an already over-priced luxury item, and you'll be showing me capitalism at its most facile.
Yet also Capitalism at it's finest. yeah, the PS3 is so overpriced that people working at the local fast food joint can afford to quit their job to buy one. This tells us a few things. Either they can easily pick up a replacement job (or figure they can) and still be able to buy the "overpriced luxury item"; or they are able to (or figure they can) make a relatively small investment for good returns.
In the first case, I'd say this argues against the assertion it is an overpriced luxury item. If low-wage workers can afford to get one, quitting their job even, it must not be that overpriced. Not to them anyway.
In the second, here you have low-wage earners investing a relatively small amount for a decent return. Here they leverage what they do have *time*, to multiply their cash, or credit.
Consider this scenario:
You work for 7 bucks per hour. You've got a credit card with a balance of 4,000 and a limit or 5,000, and are making payments of 120/month. For one night of boredom and cold weather, and chargin 600 more on that card, you can turn around in a day or three and sell the product for 3,600. You use that 3,600 to make a lump payment on said credit card and are now down to 1,000 bucks for the balance, having lowered your monthly payments by about 90-100 bucks. How is that not a good thing? Why is this deserving of ridicule?
For those relatively few who want to keep it, they are choosing to spend their time overnight rather than pay a high auction price later. Why is this a bad move? How long would it have taken this person to do it "the acceptable" way by investing that money in a "normal" investment? First, the person above didn't have cash, and isn't going to find an investor for a $600 investment in the US.
That is the opportunity that Capitalism as seen here provides. To me the most fascinating thing about Capitalism isn't Capitalism. It is how the beliefs and attitudes of those who promote or attack it shine through in their arguments. Seek and ye shall find applies directly to looking at Capitalism. If you want to attack it you can find what you need in almost every situation. Same goes for defending or supporting
This is absurd. First, open atmo heating of a selected section will not increase pressure of that section as you have pressure "radiating" out to the lower pressure atmo at a constant and rapid rate. Seriously. High pressure flows to low pressure at the maximum potential it is allowed.
Second, how is this any better than a pressurized dome? It would certainly cost more and take more effort.
A Geodesic dome has a distinct advantage in that the larger the dome the smaller the apparent structures. In other words the supports get small enough that you don't see them any more from the ground. If you have a power outage, your pressurized dome won't suddenly collapse to a vaccum (assuming you could sustain an open-atmo "high pressure zone". A series of large domes (say 200 meters diameter) would provide a redundant system and thus greater safety.
Do the math on how much that "balloon mirror" will weigh. 300 150m diameter balloons. That is what, 283,000 square meters per ballon? At about 175g/m^2, each ballon's skin alone would weigh about 49,525,000 grams, or nearly 50,000 Kg,m or about 55 tons. That's for the skin of ONE ballon. He wants 300 of those! Even if you could get reflective material to weigh in at about 50g/m^2 that is able to do what you want and survive Mars' orbital environment, you are still looking at about 15.5 tons per ballon, for just the skin. Three hundred of these would bring the skin-only total to about 4,670 tons. You still have other issues. If you make the skin "too light" it gets pushed around by the Sun (think solar sail). You've got issues with micrometeorites puncturing and deflating your ballon. You've got thermal variances from dark side to light side. You've also got to get all this moved into place, assembled, and then perform station keeping control. Most likely he would not get below 100g/m^2 - in which case you should substitute the 5,000 tons comments below to 10,000 tons.
Even IF the idea of an open atmo high pressure zone that did not deplete faster than you can replenish somehow worked, exactly how feasible is putting 5,000 tons of ballons into space? Compare that to a pressurized dome city. Particularly since you need only the machinery and a hydrogen feedstock to produce plastics on Mars from native materials. The combination of this native material manufacturing and Mars' light gravity means the construction of kilometer diameter domes is feasible. And without sending 5,000 tons of material from Earth.
Better for solar power on Mars? yeah, because shipping 5,000 tons to focus some light on some solar cells is a good idea anywhere. Solar cells aren't light anyway, and are unable to provide the power a Mars station would require. If you managed to success somehow in creating a square kilometer of "Earthlike" open area on Mars you would also have the same problem solar cells here have. Thicker atmo cuts down on available light. Any gain you might hope to get from this would be eaten up by the atmo heating. Much better power would be a few small nuke plants. 7 Tons will get you a good nuke plant able to crank out 400kW(electric), or 2MW(thermal), or some combination thereof for 25 years at max sustainable burn. Where is the benefit?
Oh you dont' want nukes? Fine, solar concentrators on the surface, running to solar thermal generators working of a low atmo steam system. This requires less thermal energy and thus amplifies the thermal energy you do get. Still less mass than you'd get from the combination of over 5,000 tons of ballonage plus the hundreds of tons of solar cells you'd require.
Better than ballons in space, take the material mass for that 1.5 kilometer group of spheres, cut each sphere in two (to make a dome), and cover 3 square kilometers. But of course that would be ridiculous too considering you can manufacture the material for solid domes on Mars on Mars.
This is seriously unworthy. Looks to me like an attempt to capitalize on the recent Space trend and grab some free money to play around. I just answered his "question", can I have the $9,000?
When someone writes to me and says "reply to joe at gmail dot com" (or whatever), they generally don't get a reply. Why is their time more valuable than mine?
Isn't that what spammers essentially think? They can send out thousands of spam email in seconds rather than take the time to see if everyone on the list is likely to be interested in their service first via non-spam methods and verification taking minutes to days, or you can take a second or so to delete their email if not interested. I'm not defending them, but this is the same argument you make.
That said, you can just use the reply button to respond to them.;)
Well if you are going to be pedantic, do it right. Java is indeed a proper name, thus does need to be capitalized. Being all-caps and capitalized are two entirely different things.;)
You can't build a wave energy capture device that's rugged enough to survicve the storm, corrosion and other hazards at a reasonable cost.
Your assertion is void without defining "reasonable cost".
For this post all monetary terms will be in US dollars. Currently, the best desalination plants are running $2.5-3/1000 gallons (for seawater plants, the target market) in costs. Stated another way that is about $2.5/3.8 cubic meters.
One of these units producing 2000m^3/day means the cost of running that unit would need to not exceed $1300-1570/day on the stated output to be competitive on a simple ongoing basis versus the best the competition has to offer - a high end large scale desalination plant. Right away we are faced with a series of important questions you missed.
How large is the competition's plant? What land surface area is required? What are the turnkey costs for this solution verus the standard plants? What are the ongoing costs? Are up front capital (i.e. construction) costs included in the per-gallon costs above? What is the market like?
Generally speaking, a 25 million gallon/day (MGD) seawater desalination costs about 100 million dollars to build. That's about $4/gallon-day in construction costs. The barrier here is that 100mill isn't chump change. 2000 m^3/day is about.523MGD. If we blindly apply the $4/gal-day ratio above we arrive at a construction cost of about 2 million. Is it possible? Given the simple technology here, I'd say yes, or pretty close. The 100Mill figure doesn't include land or power supply, merely construction costs.
Even if it cost twice as much on a gallon-day basis, you are left with a construction cost of about 4 million dollars.
WHich is easier at a "reasonable cost" estimate? Desalination plants acheive their relatively low cost by being very large. This also makes them cost prohibitive in areas that don't need 25MGD capacity. If you don't need to provide water for about a million people that big plant will be oversized. Got 40K people? Two of these units, at 4 mill apiece is a lot better than that big ole desalination plant that still needs a power source.
Most of the cost of ongoing desalination plants in operation is power. While power requirements have decreased they have done so slower than cost of the power has increased. The result is a net increase in power costs. For a plant with a similar capcity you are looking at about 400K/year in energy costs alone. Can this system beat that? First glance says absolutely. If the cost is 1/3rd, for example, you've got about 300K in annual savings you can "spend" elsewhere. Looked at another way that's 41 cents per gallon less in energy costs, or about
An additional advantage of the smaller scale of the "ducks" is that they have less salinity concentration problems. These units can be spread out over a larger area and thus result in lower salt residue to dispose of versus a decentralized plant's large amounts.
But back to construction and ongoing costs.
You stated; "If it and the pipeline to shore can be built for $10 million, we need to pay at least approx $1.5 mil a year to make headway on the principal and interest." You need to be more specific here, for your figures are not representative of the way business does loans. A 5% interest loan on 10Mil over a short 10 year loan will run you 1.2Mil/year straight. That assumes you'd be borrowing a full 10M. The more likely scenario is that such a business would actually use a 20 year loan resulting in straight payments on the full 10Mil including PI to be under 800,000/year.
Estimating power costs at 100K/year we have so far an operating cost of about 900K/year. Staffing for this requires very few people, so figure in another 200K/year in staffing (less if you aren't in the US;) ). Now we are to 1.1M/year. budget in another 100K/year for maintenance as the parts for this appear to be quite simple and hence cheap. So a total of about 1.2M/yea
Open lakes and resevoirs are susceptible to storm damage as well. They often get quite polluted during and after large sea-based storms.
I do agree with you in general: have backups and build a supply. The supply would be constantly "rotated" to prevent stagnation. It is interestign that detractors point to a problem that already exists as a reason against a new idea. This is yet another case of perfect being the enemy of good enough. Storms on that scale already represent major problems to places that might supplement with a "Desalination Duck". Storms like that disrupt power and supply lives for everything else currently used. They tend to swamp natural sources such as riverways, pools, lakes, and ponds with burdensome filtration requirements.
Yet they don't think about that much.
Given the relatively small size of these devices having spares is reasonable, and a reasonable thing to protect from storms. Float them out after the storm passes and you've got water.
Not necessarily. As much as it may shock people, Bush doesn't have absolute control over Rummy or anyone else. If they decide they want out, they can resign at will. Bush can say he won't get rid of Rummy, but Rummy can say he wants out and do it. Unless Bush talks him out of it, he goes. Bush said he had no intentions to replace Powell, but Powell could and did leave of his own free will.
Why is it so hard for pundits and posters to understand this basic concept?
Now we're paying the price. And much more than just troop loss (which is actually quite minimal, compared to other world conflicts, like, say WWII).
Something important there. Name one military invasion and occupation of another country that size that has had as low a troop loss. Proportionally or direct.
Over the last few decades the US has shown an ability to perform military actions with amazingly low levels of troop loss. Anyone who thinks this not the case is entirely ignorant of history.
For example, in Vietnam in 19966 alone some 5,000+ soldiers lost their lives. From the start of the invasion to November 8th the US Iraq total is 2832 (with 7 awaiting confirmation).
While I as a former special operations man applaud this acheivement, it does have it's penalties. In particular the people. The People seem to think that any troop loss is major and quite frankly it isn't. We need perspective. Sadly, most of you who have never served, or never served in combat operations and put your own neck on the line, have no idea what is really going on and what the troop loss means.
In my opinion those of you who claim that leaving is the only way to "honor" the lives lost are no better than those who insist that hard-nosed staying the course is the only way to "honor" them. Speaking as one who has been shot at and had artillery dropped on my postion the way to honor those who had their lives taken is not so simple. First, you never blame those who sent you for the lives lost, always place the blame on those who took the life. Second, if the objective is just, complete the objective. And third, if leaving is likely to cause more problems in the long run, you finish the job. Sadly, both of the vocal sides of this Iraq argument get it wrong.
As someone who has been trained in tactics and strategy and has experienced their results firsthand, civilians have no idea what can be done with a small well-trained force. As I see it more troops won't do much good against a "terrorist" style enemy. Guerilla fighting versus set-piece nearly always results in a failure to eliminate the enemy by the set-piece side. The larger the sittign force the higher the casualties and the higher the risk. Every combat soldier requires 3-4 support personnel. With large forces these support personnel need to be "in-theatre".
When you read the report about that alleged study, did you note that the 400,000 figure includes support personnel, or was that even reported? My supposition is the latter. Given the ratios I've given above, do you realize how small the number of combat troops is? In the Clinton era the average ratio of support to combat troops was 4:1. Do you realize that the current number of combat troops in Iraq is rather similar? IIRC we officially have about 120K combat troops in-country. Today the ratio is in the neighborhood of 2.8:1. Do the math.
As of 2004 US Active Duty Army consisted of about half a million. That includes support troops. If the report was claiming 400K combat troops to occupy a country the size of California it has serious flaws. Not the least of which is the fact we don't have that many. However, I am extremely sceptik that the report made such a claim. It would be tantamount to making the claim that the US military is not capable of occupying a country the size of California.
Additionally, the restructuring of the US Army from a set-piece dominant Divisional Army to a much more flexible and lean Brigade Army makes troop requirement assumptions form prior to the reorganization non-comparative. A division requires and maintains a much higher level of support crew than a brigade does. Deploying a couple brigades requires fewer overall troop levels than deplaying a full division. If done well the deployment of "sister brigades" results in yet lower troop levels due to more efficient support lines.
Anytiem you see a pundit or worse yet a politician talking about "requried troop levels" to support an occupation of Iraq or other country, be suspicious. It is like comparing total vulnerability reports for two Internet web browsers: smoke and mirrors.
Again, the invasion is a separate issue from the occupation and your posting demonstrates an ignorance of the difference.
Truth told we went into Iraq with far more troops than needed to invade and start an occupation. Anyone with an actual understanding of military operations knows this in hindsight. Personally I prefer to always attack use overwhelming force, so I prefer that type of operation. Nonetheless it is without question by knowledgeable people that the invasion was a stunning success. Accidents and "Friendly fire" took out more troops than combat operations during the invasion.
In a way the overall opinion was reversed compared to reality. The Pentagon (Rummy included) figured on a hard resistance where they'd have a big fight and in the process would wipe out the opposing force's ability to carry out occupation resistance. Reality showed us they chose to essentially avoid a set-piece battle or entirely lacked the capability and thus had no choice.
So the original statement you objected to is correct, and your opposition arguments to it are demonstrative of this. if you want to oppose the argument that the invasion plan worked well, you have to argue to that effect. Arguing about the post-invasion results have no bearing. It's that whole "post-" part that you slipped on.
As far as "lucky" versus opponent, the same functional argument can be made with regards to Vietnam and Korea. Their weaponry was quite outdated, they were much smaller, and had much less resources. In their favor they did have terrain.
Consider also that the USSR failed in Afghanistan versus a much smaller enemy with horribly outdated weaponry. Yes, the US supplied weaponry in later parts of it to counter the Soviets' air dominance. However, this does not detract from the fact that the Soviet Army was monumentally failing outside of air superiority (specifically HiND D).
So your statement is demonstrative of someone who really doesn't know much about military operations. RTS games are not reflective of reality.
Aural, braille, and embossed are all media types that would hide the fields for blind users if done correctly (i.e. used and the reader supports it, which you'd think they would want to). This technique is not the only reason why blind user's tools need to work differently based on mediate type in CSS.
If you can't tag a file "interesting" can you tag a/. post "interesting"?
Or is/. a giant case of prior art for this? After all the combination of scare and "tag" has been used to determine interesting (even if that tag wasn't specifically used), and a method for fitlering the results to limit/show only posts you might find "interesting" is a primary feature of Slashdot, and existed well before Flickr. On the file system side, Nautilus (at least) had icons you could tag files with to differentiate them, meaning each would be interesting to you at a given time. Media players for years have had a similar mechanism - tracking play frequency, whether you let it finish, the genre, and so on.
A "war" on terror or drugs is a "war" that you cannot win with firepower. True. And a "war" on poverty fares no better, indeed it fares worse.
You can't win a "war" on poverty by taxing the means to improve people's outlook. You can not "win" by depressing economic opportunities, by limiting access to economic activities, and by raising the barrier of entry to the world of gainful employment and entrepreneurship. In other words, you can't win the War on Poverty with firepower.We are still fighting that War as well.
Nothing wrong with a War of Ideas, funny you should object to the pointing of it out.
Do the Generals in the Pentagon know whats better for people across the world than their own leaders?
Do the self-centered politicians in Washington DC know what is better for people across the continent than the people themselves?
If the people of the world are trying to influence our thinking, should we ignore them or should we listen?
That depends. If they are trying to tell us that some gvoernmental body will know better what we should be allowed to read/write ont eh Internet, I say we ignore them. If they are trying to tell us that specifically targeting civilians for death in an attempt to sway political opinion is not only a valid method but a preferred one, I say we don't listen. If they are trying to tell us that we need to cut down economic opportunities to satisfy their notion of how the world should work and that these policies have failed in their own countries, I say we don't listen. If they are telling us that we need to do their beidding because "it is better", I say they need to prove it first and then we might listen but make no promise to emulate or acquiesce.
There is nothing inherently right about listening to others. There is nothing inherently right or better about being different or from a different culture. Different is simply different.
It's called being a father (or parent). Anyone who has read the reports or has children know that children can get access to virtually any drug they want at school. So what does criminalization do for you here? If you haven't been a proper parent, or nothing will prevent your child from turning to drugs, no amount of laws will fix it. And yes I am a father.
Experience is often something you get after you needed it.
So what value is there in making substances illegal until you become an adult and are on your own? In Germany, for example, alcohol is not demonized for children. When I was there there was no taboo about it and they had far, far less problems with it than we do. Why? Children learned responsibility instead of blind obedience, and they do so while under the tutelage of their parents, instead of the peer pressure of fellow college attendees.
8. Human Trafficking. Here's a place I can understand goverment being involved in, but it is also one they're doing a terrible job in fighting. The worst concern is my thought that a lot of States might even be involved in this problem. I know the U.S. government trafficks in human lives and bodies. See Guantanemo Bay.
Assertion correct, evidentiary statement incorrect. Guantanemo Bay has nothing to do with trafficking of human lives and bodies, no more so than any prison. Social Security does, however, have a lot to do with trafficking in human lives.
30. Counterfeit Alcohol
Would that be things like Odouls?;) Shouldn't that read Counterfeit Branding of alcohol?
.... Needs some hot coffee.... from McDonalds' Drive-Thru.
Re:One or two percent? That's rich ore.
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No Ice on the Moon
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· Score: 1
Gold is economical to extract from ore that has less than one ounce of gold per ton.
Ever see the sheer size and mass of the equipment for that?
Water is going to be more valuable than gold to someone on the Moon.
Not really. You'd be suprised at how well we can recycle water. Separation of greywater from blackwater combined with greywater reuse and reclamation (wetlands, plant growth, dish tanks) allow not only water re-use but reuse of the material we normally waste - nitrogen for example. It also dramatically reduces your requirement for a group of people.
Water is way easy to extract.
Here on earth where you have easy access to large dirt movers and so forth, sure. Then there is th emaintenance and spare parts, and so forth required to support the operation. And the fuel to power the equipment. You can't simply translate terretrial activity to non-terrestrial ones - you don't ave the infrastructure. You take the infrastructure for granted because you never really see it. Teh gasoline just gets to the station. Occasionally you see a tanker truck. But rarely if ever does someone not working at a gasoline production plant actually see that part.
In order to process water from lunar dust you would need the ability to haul massive (hehe) amounts of regolith into large handlers, supply high heat and air to the regolith to cause evaporation, then extract the vapor and condense it to make water. Since it wasn't specific let us assume they mean 1% by weight. That would mean you would go through all of that to get 20 pounds/ton of processed regolith, or about 2.5 gallons. Now how much do you need? We could take the short route and figure water requirements per day. But it isn't accurate to do so. First you have to consider food.
Food will need to be grown in situ for long term (i.e. permanent) settlement. Food takes more water to grow than humans require. Therefore, if you are growing enough crop-acres to provide your food and use an integrated greywater system, there will be plenty of water for the humans. We can recycle over 94% of the water humans use. Let us be generous and assume the water extraction equipment and infrastructure would only run about 50 tons. 50 tons of water would be an enormous amount of water, and would last for a very long time at even a net 95% recycle rate. Furthermore you'd reduce teh work reequirement of those present.
It is a form of "make versus buy". You have to consider the cost of the infrastrcture to support the manufacturing facilities versus buying it by shipping it from Earth.
1% (speculated proportion of water in the dust) seems like a lot to me. Separating that 1% of water from the dust would probably be more cost effective than bringing it up from Earth.
1% isn't as much as it seems. It's essentially nil. In the Shapotou Region of the Tengger Desert (Northern China), the measured water content of the sand is 1.23%. Bear in mind this is a place that gets rain.
In terms or transport costs you'd be best off shipping water from Mars. The delta-v to get from Mars surface to Lunar surface is significantly better than from Earth surface to Lunar surface. The sheer weight and mass of what it would take to process enough regolith to extract water for one person is extremely prohibitive. In terms of launch costs it might be cheaper to send a water production facility to Mars for H20 shipments to the moon. This has an added advantage of increasing human Martian exploration and settlement.The production facility would largely consist of simple reactions involving hydrogen and the Martian atmo. The result would be water, oxygen, and fuel. The process would be automated as well.
That said, you'd be better off settling Mars instead. More resources, less cost (no, the Moon isn't cheaper to go to. It has a higher energy cost, meaning more money), more opportunity.
Re:hello overreaction
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School Bans 'Tag'
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· Score: 2, Interesting
The problem these schools are seeking to resolve is this: They have all the responsibility for what happens to your little angel/monster but none of the parental immunity that comes with it.
Time for a parent to speak up here. Tell me about parental immunity versus government immunity. You spank your kid, you go to jail. Teacher spanks your kid they might get a talking to. You take on educating your kid and s/he doesn't do "well enough" on mandatory tests: you face child abuse allegations and a visit from CPS (seen it happen to others, and some states have this in their law books). Teacher "educates" your child but child fails to do "well enough" in the same (or easier) mandatory tests: well it was the kid's fault.
So don't tell me that parents have soem sort of magical immunity when the reality of the comparison is that parents' rights have been gutted by the very people promoting and mandating the poor performing "we are not responsible for your child's education" government schools. The courts have decided that the government schools have no responsibility to teach anything.
And this isn't limited to one or a handful of schools. It is many schools. Fellow parents report this happening at various schools from around the country. It is also a combination of this and otehr similar actions that lead to a problem. A key problem is that those making the decisions tend to not be parents and have a vested interest in parents not participating,
It legally dates back at least to when the courts decided schools were acting 'in loco parentis' - in the place of parents. Yet even this is shirked when it suits them,
This is all exacerbated by the so-called teacher's unions and the career path and prerequisites for advancement. None of it is performance oriented at all, and those who dedicate less and less time to teaching will advance quicker.
I also don't belive this to be motivated by the lawsuit threat. However, if these activities are banned that means the teachers and playground supervisors have much less to do, right?
I know there are damned good teachers. But they are the minority, a very very small minority.
P.S. The difference between PE & recess is that you usually have to sign a waiver f liability for athletics. Have yet to see a waiver need to be signed for playing any sport in PE classes. If you don't sign a waiver for your child to be in PE athletics do they get excused from PE? After all, PE is athletics.
While the AI systems are clearly a joke, why focus so much energy on bipedal movement?
You don't need strong AI to perform bipedal movement. The world of researchers does not have to choose between researching bidpeal movement and strong AI capable of interacting with other AIs; this is not a video game - you can research more than one thing in a nation, or even the world.
Oh great a bunch of things that kind of resemble humans can lift something heavy all together. Why not just build a smart forklift to do the same job autonomously.
Perhaps because it is coopoeration in performaing a task that was the object here? How in the hell do you claim that bipedal movement was the goal when this is the description of the bots:
Each Swarm-bot is 19 centimetres high, has a rotating turret, a claw-like gripper and moves using a combination of caterpillar tracks and wheels. Each also has a basic computer and is loaded with the same software.
?
There is nothing insightful about your post since it has no connection to the article. Hell you whining about Japanese obsession with humanoid robots is so aff topic it is ludicrous. Here is why:
The robots were developed by Marco Dorigo at the Free University of Brussels, Belgium, along with colleagues at the Institute of Cognitive Science and Technology in Italy and the Autonomous Systems Laboratory and Dalle Molle Institute for the Study of Artificial Intelligence, both in Switzerland.
Where the hell you get Japanese out of that is beyond rationality. Maybe you should examine your biases a bit.
This experiment was about cooperation between autonomous systems without specific communication between them. This is a very promising direction with benefits ranging from more realistic RTS exploration routines to automated housing construction systems and site security systems. For example: Imagine a series of small bots that detect an intruder. Through coopoeration and without human intervention they track the intruder and keep each other apprised of the goings on in the event one of them observing it gets "taken out". Another example: imagine a series of robots on a construction site that detect a heavy object tipping over. They each see it and react, combining their abilities to prevent the object from causing damage or loss of life. Your automated forklift would simply get smashed. Yeah, fat lot of good that does.
You seem to have intentionally misinterpreted my post.
You ascribe motivation and intention without fact or knowledge.
The previous poster had given a knee-jerk response to a study based on his own initial thoughts.
No, you ASSumed it to be a knee-jerk response. Again, you read into other people's posts what you deem necessary to support your biases.
I made it perfectly clear in my post that I have not read the report but that has nothing to do with anything.
You commented on the report. Therefore whether you have read it or not is relevant.
The report's conclusions may well be completely false, partially false or 100% spot on; but that is for commenting on by academic peers with the appropriate expertise and who cruically has actually read the report, not by some arrogant individual who had obviously not even bothered to do that.
As I said, you admit to not reading it but you comment on it nonetheless. Further you assume that anyone who comments on a report or article that is not in their field of expertise is arrogant. Yet another ASSumption on your part, an accusatory one at that. Indeed since the report did not specify a causative relationship, merely a correlation, and it was the article that implied a causative link, the most rational an non ASSumptive explanation is that the OP was giving an opinion on the article. In which case it would be you misunderstanding the OP.
Congratulations and my gratitude. You perfectly demonstrated, even to put into words, what I said was disturbing, or should be, about your post. You claim that only the so-called experts are allowed to question things. Only those of faith and order are holy enough to discuss or comment on works of the clergy.
This dogma has been a serious setback to science for generations, and continues to be alive and vindictive today - and your posts demonstrates this to a "t". Your written belief and attitude has much in common with the past assaults on those who disagree with the accepted line of belief. It would be a small comfort if those like who actually held yourselves to that standard. As demonstrated however, not even this aspect is immune to sanctimonious disregard.
You write as if peer-reviewed journals are immune to incorrect or incomplete and poorly done reports finding a home between their gilded pages, much as a religious fundamentalist ascribes to a literal interpretation of their gospels. The fact of the matter is that peer reviewed journals are prone to favored treatment for view the referees, editors, and current powers that be have a bias for, or worse yet a vested interest. History is replete with these events.
You are half right on something. There is an arrogant individual in this thread. However, the original poster is not said individual (with regards to this post anyway.;) ). It is the one who tells others what they intended simply for not kow-towing to the enlightened experts, for deigning to offer an opinion on a report, or for calling your arrogance and incorrectness out.
Again, thanks for illustrating my point better than I described it. Guess my work here is done.
Slashdot Mirror
..fewer bad laws are repealed, fewer taxes are lowered, fewer taxes are removed, fewer pork barrel projects are cancelled...
Greed and excessive, gratuitous, shows of wealth are rarely beautiful
Nor are they a sole aspect of Capitalism. It doesn't matter what system is in place, greed is an aspec tfo humanity. Even in a system/environment where there is true abundance, greed will exist and will be an issue. As such your rebuttal has nothing to do with Capitalism either.
Greed is not wanting a PS3. Greed is not wanting a PS3 to sell on Ebay for "obscene profit". Greed is not wanting to make a profit, or even large profits. Greed is an excessive desire to acquire or possess more (especially more material wealth) than one needs or deserves. Yup, that makes it relative. if someone is willing to spend 9-12 hour in the cold and then spend 600 bucks for a PS3, that's not a run of greed. They worked for it. How is that any worse than a techie spending half a week at his or her job doing nothing while "supporting" a company's IT department and then spending the money on a PS3?
Excessive and gratuitous shows of wealth? Pyramids, Vatican, Royal Palaces, The Kremlin. Excessive and gratuitous every one. Brass handled drinking fountains in your local county courthouse? Also excessive and gratuitous. And that at the expense of someone buying something for themselves because the government took their earned money from them to do it.
Yet the Vatican, Royal palaces, Kremlin, and the Pyramids are all quite beautiful.
Most such claims of gratuitous displays of wealth and so forth are entirely relative and often made in ignorance. For example, I drive a Corvette. People give me crap about making "so much money" I could afford one. Yet their cars/SUVs/trucks are often more expensive than my Vette.
Show me people paying to get an advantage in a line for an already over-priced luxury item, and you'll be showing me capitalism at its most facile.
Yet also Capitalism at it's finest. yeah, the PS3 is so overpriced that people working at the local fast food joint can afford to quit their job to buy one. This tells us a few things. Either they can easily pick up a replacement job (or figure they can) and still be able to buy the "overpriced luxury item"; or they are able to (or figure they can) make a relatively small investment for good returns.
In the first case, I'd say this argues against the assertion it is an overpriced luxury item. If low-wage workers can afford to get one, quitting their job even, it must not be that overpriced. Not to them anyway.
In the second, here you have low-wage earners investing a relatively small amount for a decent return. Here they leverage what they do have *time*, to multiply their cash, or credit.
Consider this scenario:
You work for 7 bucks per hour. You've got a credit card with a balance of 4,000 and a limit or 5,000, and are making payments of 120/month. For one night of boredom and cold weather, and chargin 600 more on that card, you can turn around in a day or three and sell the product for 3,600. You use that 3,600 to make a lump payment on said credit card and are now down to 1,000 bucks for the balance, having lowered your monthly payments by about 90-100 bucks. How is that not a good thing? Why is this deserving of ridicule?
For those relatively few who want to keep it, they are choosing to spend their time overnight rather than pay a high auction price later. Why is this a bad move? How long would it have taken this person to do it "the acceptable" way by investing that money in a "normal" investment? First, the person above didn't have cash, and isn't going to find an investor for a $600 investment in the US.
That is the opportunity that Capitalism as seen here provides. To me the most fascinating thing about Capitalism isn't Capitalism. It is how the beliefs and attitudes of those who promote or attack it shine through in their arguments. Seek and ye shall find applies directly to looking at Capitalism. If you want to attack it you can find what you need in almost every situation. Same goes for defending or supporting
But it wasnt a jet plane.
This is absurd. First, open atmo heating of a selected section will not increase pressure of that section as you have pressure "radiating" out to the lower pressure atmo at a constant and rapid rate. Seriously. High pressure flows to low pressure at the maximum potential it is allowed.
Second, how is this any better than a pressurized dome? It would certainly cost more and take more effort.
A Geodesic dome has a distinct advantage in that the larger the dome the smaller the apparent structures. In other words the supports get small enough that you don't see them any more from the ground. If you have a power outage, your pressurized dome won't suddenly collapse to a vaccum (assuming you could sustain an open-atmo "high pressure zone". A series of large domes (say 200 meters diameter) would provide a redundant system and thus greater safety.
Do the math on how much that "balloon mirror" will weigh. 300 150m diameter balloons. That is what, 283,000 square meters per ballon? At about 175g/m^2, each ballon's skin alone would weigh about 49,525,000 grams, or nearly 50,000 Kg,m or about 55 tons. That's for the skin of ONE ballon. He wants 300 of those! Even if you could get reflective material to weigh in at about 50g/m^2 that is able to do what you want and survive Mars' orbital environment, you are still looking at about 15.5 tons per ballon, for just the skin. Three hundred of these would bring the skin-only total to about 4,670 tons. You still have other issues. If you make the skin "too light" it gets pushed around by the Sun (think solar sail). You've got issues with micrometeorites puncturing and deflating your ballon. You've got thermal variances from dark side to light side. You've also got to get all this moved into place, assembled, and then perform station keeping control. Most likely he would not get below 100g/m^2 - in which case you should substitute the 5,000 tons comments below to 10,000 tons.
Even IF the idea of an open atmo high pressure zone that did not deplete faster than you can replenish somehow worked, exactly how feasible is putting 5,000 tons of ballons into space? Compare that to a pressurized dome city. Particularly since you need only the machinery and a hydrogen feedstock to produce plastics on Mars from native materials. The combination of this native material manufacturing and Mars' light gravity means the construction of kilometer diameter domes is feasible. And without sending 5,000 tons of material from Earth.
Better for solar power on Mars? yeah, because shipping 5,000 tons to focus some light on some solar cells is a good idea anywhere. Solar cells aren't light anyway, and are unable to provide the power a Mars station would require. If you managed to success somehow in creating a square kilometer of "Earthlike" open area on Mars you would also have the same problem solar cells here have. Thicker atmo cuts down on available light. Any gain you might hope to get from this would be eaten up by the atmo heating. Much better power would be a few small nuke plants. 7 Tons will get you a good nuke plant able to crank out 400kW(electric), or 2MW(thermal), or some combination thereof for 25 years at max sustainable burn. Where is the benefit?
Oh you dont' want nukes? Fine, solar concentrators on the surface, running to solar thermal generators working of a low atmo steam system. This requires less thermal energy and thus amplifies the thermal energy you do get. Still less mass than you'd get from the combination of over 5,000 tons of ballonage plus the hundreds of tons of solar cells you'd require.
Better than ballons in space, take the material mass for that 1.5 kilometer group of spheres, cut each sphere in two (to make a dome), and cover 3 square kilometers. But of course that would be ridiculous too considering you can manufacture the material for solid domes on Mars on Mars.
This is seriously unworthy. Looks to me like an attempt to capitalize on the recent Space trend and grab some free money to play around. I just answered his "question", can I have the $9,000?
When someone writes to me and says "reply to joe at gmail dot com" (or whatever), they generally don't get a reply. Why is their time more valuable than mine?
;)
Isn't that what spammers essentially think? They can send out thousands of spam email in seconds rather than take the time to see if everyone on the list is likely to be interested in their service first via non-spam methods and verification taking minutes to days, or you can take a second or so to delete their email if not interested. I'm not defending them, but this is the same argument you make.
That said, you can just use the reply button to respond to them.
Well if you are going to be pedantic, do it right. Java is indeed a proper name, thus does need to be capitalized. Being all-caps and capitalized are two entirely different things. ;)
Alright, stop.
You can't build a wave energy capture device that's rugged enough to survicve the storm, corrosion and other hazards at a reasonable cost.
.523MGD. If we blindly apply the $4/gal-day ratio above we arrive at a construction cost of about 2 million. Is it possible? Given the simple technology here, I'd say yes, or pretty close. The 100Mill figure doesn't include land or power supply, merely construction costs.
;) ). Now we are to 1.1M/year. budget in another 100K/year for maintenance as the parts for this appear to be quite simple and hence cheap. So a total of about 1.2M/yea
Your assertion is void without defining "reasonable cost".
For this post all monetary terms will be in US dollars.
Currently, the best desalination plants are running $2.5-3/1000 gallons (for seawater plants, the target market) in costs. Stated another way that is about $2.5/3.8 cubic meters.
One of these units producing 2000m^3/day means the cost of running that unit would need to not exceed $1300-1570/day on the stated output to be competitive on a simple ongoing basis versus the best the competition has to offer - a high end large scale desalination plant. Right away we are faced with a series of important questions you missed.
How large is the competition's plant?
What land surface area is required?
What are the turnkey costs for this solution verus the standard plants?
What are the ongoing costs?
Are up front capital (i.e. construction) costs included in the per-gallon costs above?
What is the market like?
Generally speaking, a 25 million gallon/day (MGD) seawater desalination costs about 100 million dollars to build. That's about $4/gallon-day in construction costs. The barrier here is that 100mill isn't chump change. 2000 m^3/day is about
Even if it cost twice as much on a gallon-day basis, you are left with a construction cost of about 4 million dollars.
WHich is easier at a "reasonable cost" estimate? Desalination plants acheive their relatively low cost by being very large. This also makes them cost prohibitive in areas that don't need 25MGD capacity. If you don't need to provide water for about a million people that big plant will be oversized. Got 40K people? Two of these units, at 4 mill apiece is a lot better than that big ole desalination plant that still needs a power source.
Most of the cost of ongoing desalination plants in operation is power. While power requirements have decreased they have done so slower than cost of the power has increased. The result is a net increase in power costs. For a plant with a similar capcity you are looking at about 400K/year in energy costs alone. Can this system beat that? First glance says absolutely. If the cost is 1/3rd, for example, you've got about 300K in annual savings you can "spend" elsewhere. Looked at another way that's 41 cents per gallon less in energy costs, or about
An additional advantage of the smaller scale of the "ducks" is that they have less salinity concentration problems. These units can be spread out over a larger area and thus result in lower salt residue to dispose of versus a decentralized plant's large amounts.
But back to construction and ongoing costs.
You stated; "If it and the pipeline to shore can be built for $10 million, we need to pay at least approx $1.5 mil a year to make headway on the principal and interest."
You need to be more specific here, for your figures are not representative of the way business does loans. A 5% interest loan on 10Mil over a short 10 year loan will run you 1.2Mil/year straight. That assumes you'd be borrowing a full 10M. The more likely scenario is that such a business would actually use a 20 year loan resulting in straight payments on the full 10Mil including PI to be under 800,000/year.
Estimating power costs at 100K/year we have so far an operating cost of about 900K/year. Staffing for this requires very few people, so figure in another 200K/year in staffing (less if you aren't in the US
Open lakes and resevoirs are susceptible to storm damage as well. They often get quite polluted during and after large sea-based storms.
I do agree with you in general: have backups and build a supply. The supply would be constantly "rotated" to prevent stagnation. It is interestign that detractors point to a problem that already exists as a reason against a new idea. This is yet another case of perfect being the enemy of good enough. Storms on that scale already represent major problems to places that might supplement with a "Desalination Duck". Storms like that disrupt power and supply lives for everything else currently used. They tend to swamp natural sources such as riverways, pools, lakes, and ponds with burdensome filtration requirements.
Yet they don't think about that much.
Given the relatively small size of these devices having spares is reasonable, and a reasonable thing to protect from storms. Float them out after the storm passes and you've got water.
Not necessarily. As much as it may shock people, Bush doesn't have absolute control over Rummy or anyone else. If they decide they want out, they can resign at will. Bush can say he won't get rid of Rummy, but Rummy can say he wants out and do it. Unless Bush talks him out of it, he goes. Bush said he had no intentions to replace Powell, but Powell could and did leave of his own free will.
Why is it so hard for pundits and posters to understand this basic concept?
Now we're paying the price. And much more than just troop loss (which is actually quite minimal, compared to other world conflicts, like, say WWII).
Something important there. Name one military invasion and occupation of another country that size that has had as low a troop loss. Proportionally or direct.
Over the last few decades the US has shown an ability to perform military actions with amazingly low levels of troop loss. Anyone who thinks this not the case is entirely ignorant of history.
For example, in Vietnam in 19966 alone some 5,000+ soldiers lost their lives. From the start of the invasion to November 8th the US Iraq total is 2832 (with 7 awaiting confirmation).
While I as a former special operations man applaud this acheivement, it does have it's penalties. In particular the people. The People seem to think that any troop loss is major and quite frankly it isn't. We need perspective. Sadly, most of you who have never served, or never served in combat operations and put your own neck on the line, have no idea what is really going on and what the troop loss means.
In my opinion those of you who claim that leaving is the only way to "honor" the lives lost are no better than those who insist that hard-nosed staying the course is the only way to "honor" them. Speaking as one who has been shot at and had artillery dropped on my postion the way to honor those who had their lives taken is not so simple. First, you never blame those who sent you for the lives lost, always place the blame on those who took the life. Second, if the objective is just, complete the objective. And third, if leaving is likely to cause more problems in the long run, you finish the job. Sadly, both of the vocal sides of this Iraq argument get it wrong.
As someone who has been trained in tactics and strategy and has experienced their results firsthand, civilians have no idea what can be done with a small well-trained force. As I see it more troops won't do much good against a "terrorist" style enemy. Guerilla fighting versus set-piece nearly always results in a failure to eliminate the enemy by the set-piece side. The larger the sittign force the higher the casualties and the higher the risk. Every combat soldier requires 3-4 support personnel. With large forces these support personnel need to be "in-theatre".
When you read the report about that alleged study, did you note that the 400,000 figure includes support personnel, or was that even reported? My supposition is the latter. Given the ratios I've given above, do you realize how small the number of combat troops is? In the Clinton era the average ratio of support to combat troops was 4:1. Do you realize that the current number of combat troops in Iraq is rather similar? IIRC we officially have about 120K combat troops in-country. Today the ratio is in the neighborhood of 2.8:1. Do the math.
As of 2004 US Active Duty Army consisted of about half a million. That includes support troops. If the report was claiming 400K combat troops to occupy a country the size of California it has serious flaws. Not the least of which is the fact we don't have that many. However, I am extremely sceptik that the report made such a claim. It would be tantamount to making the claim that the US military is not capable of occupying a country the size of California.
Additionally, the restructuring of the US Army from a set-piece dominant Divisional Army to a much more flexible and lean Brigade Army makes troop requirement assumptions form prior to the reorganization non-comparative. A division requires and maintains a much higher level of support crew than a brigade does. Deploying a couple brigades requires fewer overall troop levels than deplaying a full division. If done well the deployment of "sister brigades" results in yet lower troop levels due to more efficient support lines.
Anytiem you see a pundit or worse yet a politician talking about "requried troop levels" to support an occupation of Iraq or other country, be suspicious. It is like comparing total vulnerability reports for two Internet web browsers: smoke and mirrors.
Group A; "We want him out! Now!"
Group B: Fine, he's gone.
Group A: "NoooO! Not yet!!"
Welcome to US Government Politics 101.
Again, the invasion is a separate issue from the occupation and your posting demonstrates an ignorance of the difference.
Truth told we went into Iraq with far more troops than needed to invade and start an occupation. Anyone with an actual understanding of military operations knows this in hindsight. Personally I prefer to always attack use overwhelming force, so I prefer that type of operation. Nonetheless it is without question by knowledgeable people that the invasion was a stunning success. Accidents and "Friendly fire" took out more troops than combat operations during the invasion.
In a way the overall opinion was reversed compared to reality. The Pentagon (Rummy included) figured on a hard resistance where they'd have a big fight and in the process would wipe out the opposing force's ability to carry out occupation resistance. Reality showed us they chose to essentially avoid a set-piece battle or entirely lacked the capability and thus had no choice.
So the original statement you objected to is correct, and your opposition arguments to it are demonstrative of this. if you want to oppose the argument that the invasion plan worked well, you have to argue to that effect. Arguing about the post-invasion results have no bearing. It's that whole "post-" part that you slipped on.
As far as "lucky" versus opponent, the same functional argument can be made with regards to Vietnam and Korea. Their weaponry was quite outdated, they were much smaller, and had much less resources. In their favor they did have terrain.
Consider also that the USSR failed in Afghanistan versus a much smaller enemy with horribly outdated weaponry. Yes, the US supplied weaponry in later parts of it to counter the Soviets' air dominance. However, this does not detract from the fact that the Soviet Army was monumentally failing outside of air superiority (specifically HiND D).
So your statement is demonstrative of someone who really doesn't know much about military operations. RTS games are not reflective of reality.
Use CSS' media types.
Aural, braille, and embossed are all media types that would hide the fields for blind users if done correctly (i.e. used and the reader supports it, which you'd think they would want to). This technique is not the only reason why blind user's tools need to work differently based on mediate type in CSS.
If you can't tag a file "interesting" can you tag a /. post "interesting"?
/. a giant case of prior art for this? After all the combination of scare and "tag" has been used to determine interesting (even if that tag wasn't specifically used), and a method for fitlering the results to limit/show only posts you might find "interesting" is a primary feature of Slashdot, and existed well before Flickr. On the file system side, Nautilus (at least) had icons you could tag files with to differentiate them, meaning each would be interesting to you at a given time. Media players for years have had a similar mechanism - tracking play frequency, whether you let it finish, the genre, and so on.
Or is
A "war" on terror or drugs is a "war" that you cannot win with firepower. True. And a "war" on poverty fares no better, indeed it fares worse.
You can't win a "war" on poverty by taxing the means to improve people's outlook. You can not "win" by depressing economic opportunities, by limiting access to economic activities, and by raising the barrier of entry to the world of gainful employment and entrepreneurship. In other words, you can't win the War on Poverty with firepower.We are still fighting that War as well.
What, are we afraid of ideas?
Nothing wrong with a War of Ideas, funny you should object to the pointing of it out.
Do the Generals in the Pentagon know whats better for people across the world than their own leaders?
Do the self-centered politicians in Washington DC know what is better for people across the continent than the people themselves?
If the people of the world are trying to influence our thinking, should we ignore them or should we listen?
That depends. If they are trying to tell us that some gvoernmental body will know better what we should be allowed to read/write ont eh Internet, I say we ignore them. If they are trying to tell us that specifically targeting civilians for death in an attempt to sway political opinion is not only a valid method but a preferred one, I say we don't listen. If they are trying to tell us that we need to cut down economic opportunities to satisfy their notion of how the world should work and that these policies have failed in their own countries, I say we don't listen. If they are telling us that we need to do their beidding because "it is better", I say they need to prove it first and then we might listen but make no promise to emulate or acquiesce.
There is nothing inherently right about listening to others. There is nothing inherently right or better about being different or from a different culture. Different is simply different.
It's called being a father (or parent). Anyone who has read the reports or has children know that children can get access to virtually any drug they want at school. So what does criminalization do for you here? If you haven't been a proper parent, or nothing will prevent your child from turning to drugs, no amount of laws will fix it. And yes I am a father.
Experience is often something you get after you needed it.
So what value is there in making substances illegal until you become an adult and are on your own? In Germany, for example, alcohol is not demonized for children. When I was there there was no taboo about it and they had far, far less problems with it than we do. Why? Children learned responsibility instead of blind obedience, and they do so while under the tutelage of their parents, instead of the peer pressure of fellow college attendees.
8. Human Trafficking. Here's a place I can understand goverment being involved in, but it is also one they're doing a terrible job in fighting. The worst concern is my thought that a lot of States might even be involved in this problem. I know the U.S. government trafficks in human lives and bodies. See Guantanemo Bay.
;) Shouldn't that read Counterfeit Branding of alcohol?
Assertion correct, evidentiary statement incorrect. Guantanemo Bay has nothing to do with trafficking of human lives and bodies, no more so than any prison. Social Security does, however, have a lot to do with trafficking in human lives.
30. Counterfeit Alcohol
Would that be things like Odouls?
.... Needs some hot coffee. ... from McDonalds' Drive-Thru.
Gold is economical to extract from ore that has less than one ounce of gold per ton.
Ever see the sheer size and mass of the equipment for that?
Water is going to be more valuable than gold to someone on the Moon.
Not really. You'd be suprised at how well we can recycle water. Separation of greywater from blackwater combined with greywater reuse and reclamation (wetlands, plant growth, dish tanks) allow not only water re-use but reuse of the material we normally waste - nitrogen for example. It also dramatically reduces your requirement for a group of people.
Water is way easy to extract.
Here on earth where you have easy access to large dirt movers and so forth, sure. Then there is th emaintenance and spare parts, and so forth required to support the operation. And the fuel to power the equipment. You can't simply translate terretrial activity to non-terrestrial ones - you don't ave the infrastructure. You take the infrastructure for granted because you never really see it. Teh gasoline just gets to the station. Occasionally you see a tanker truck. But rarely if ever does someone not working at a gasoline production plant actually see that part.
In order to process water from lunar dust you would need the ability to haul massive (hehe) amounts of regolith into large handlers, supply high heat and air to the regolith to cause evaporation, then extract the vapor and condense it to make water. Since it wasn't specific let us assume they mean 1% by weight. That would mean you would go through all of that to get 20 pounds/ton of processed regolith, or about 2.5 gallons. Now how much do you need? We could take the short route and figure water requirements per day. But it isn't accurate to do so. First you have to consider food.
Food will need to be grown in situ for long term (i.e. permanent) settlement. Food takes more water to grow than humans require. Therefore, if you are growing enough crop-acres to provide your food and use an integrated greywater system, there will be plenty of water for the humans. We can recycle over 94% of the water humans use. Let us be generous and assume the water extraction equipment and infrastructure would only run about 50 tons. 50 tons of water would be an enormous amount of water, and would last for a very long time at even a net 95% recycle rate. Furthermore you'd reduce teh work reequirement of those present.
It is a form of "make versus buy". You have to consider the cost of the infrastrcture to support the manufacturing facilities versus buying it by shipping it from Earth.
1% (speculated proportion of water in the dust) seems like a lot to me. Separating that 1% of water from the dust would probably be more cost effective than bringing it up from Earth.
1% isn't as much as it seems. It's essentially nil. In the Shapotou Region of the Tengger Desert (Northern China), the measured water content of the sand is 1.23%. Bear in mind this is a place that gets rain.
In terms or transport costs you'd be best off shipping water from Mars. The delta-v to get from Mars surface to Lunar surface is significantly better than from Earth surface to Lunar surface. The sheer weight and mass of what it would take to process enough regolith to extract water for one person is extremely prohibitive. In terms of launch costs it might be cheaper to send a water production facility to Mars for H20 shipments to the moon. This has an added advantage of increasing human Martian exploration and settlement.The production facility would largely consist of simple reactions involving hydrogen and the Martian atmo. The result would be water, oxygen, and fuel. The process would be automated as well.
That said, you'd be better off settling Mars instead. More resources, less cost (no, the Moon isn't cheaper to go to. It has a higher energy cost, meaning more money), more opportunity.
The problem these schools are seeking to resolve is this: They have all the responsibility for what happens to your little angel/monster but none of the parental immunity that comes with it.
Time for a parent to speak up here. Tell me about parental immunity versus government immunity. You spank your kid, you go to jail. Teacher spanks your kid they might get a talking to. You take on educating your kid and s/he doesn't do "well enough" on mandatory tests: you face child abuse allegations and a visit from CPS (seen it happen to others, and some states have this in their law books). Teacher "educates" your child but child fails to do "well enough" in the same (or easier) mandatory tests: well it was the kid's fault.
So don't tell me that parents have soem sort of magical immunity when the reality of the comparison is that parents' rights have been gutted by the very people promoting and mandating the poor performing "we are not responsible for your child's education" government schools. The courts have decided that the government schools have no responsibility to teach anything.
And this isn't limited to one or a handful of schools. It is many schools. Fellow parents report this happening at various schools from around the country. It is also a combination of this and otehr similar actions that lead to a problem. A key problem is that those making the decisions tend to not be parents and have a vested interest in parents not participating,
It legally dates back at least to when the courts decided schools were acting 'in loco parentis' - in the place of parents. Yet even this is shirked when it suits them,
This is all exacerbated by the so-called teacher's unions and the career path and prerequisites for advancement. None of it is performance oriented at all, and those who dedicate less and less time to teaching will advance quicker.
I also don't belive this to be motivated by the lawsuit threat. However, if these activities are banned that means the teachers and playground supervisors have much less to do, right?
I know there are damned good teachers. But they are the minority, a very very small minority.
P.S. The difference between PE & recess is that you usually have to sign a waiver f liability for athletics.
Have yet to see a waiver need to be signed for playing any sport in PE classes. If you don't sign a waiver for your child to be in PE athletics do they get excused from PE? After all, PE is athletics.
You don't need strong AI to perform bipedal movement. The world of researchers does not have to choose between researching bidpeal movement and strong AI capable of interacting with other AIs; this is not a video game - you can research more than one thing in a nation, or even the world.
Oh great a bunch of things that kind of resemble humans can lift something heavy all together. Why not just build a smart forklift to do the same job autonomously.
Perhaps because it is coopoeration in performaing a task that was the object here? How in the hell do you claim that bipedal movement was the goal when this is the description of the bots:
?
There is nothing insightful about your post since it has no connection to the article. Hell you whining about Japanese obsession with humanoid robots is so aff topic it is ludicrous. Here is why:
Where the hell you get Japanese out of that is beyond rationality. Maybe you should examine your biases a bit.
This experiment was about cooperation between autonomous systems without specific communication between them. This is a very promising direction with benefits ranging from more realistic RTS exploration routines to automated housing construction systems and site security systems. For example: Imagine a series of small bots that detect an intruder. Through coopoeration and without human intervention they track the intruder and keep each other apprised of the goings on in the event one of them observing it gets "taken out". Another example: imagine a series of robots on a construction site that detect a heavy object tipping over. They each see it and react, combining their abilities to prevent the object from causing damage or loss of life. Your automated forklift would simply get smashed. Yeah, fat lot of good that does.
You seem to have intentionally misinterpreted my post.
;) ). It is the one who tells others what they intended simply for not kow-towing to the enlightened experts, for deigning to offer an opinion on a report, or for calling your arrogance and incorrectness out.
You ascribe motivation and intention without fact or knowledge.
The previous poster had given a knee-jerk response to a study based on his own initial thoughts.
No, you ASSumed it to be a knee-jerk response. Again, you read into other people's posts what you deem necessary to support your biases.
I made it perfectly clear in my post that I have not read the report but that has nothing to do with anything.
You commented on the report. Therefore whether you have read it or not is relevant.
The report's conclusions may well be completely false, partially false or 100% spot on; but that is for commenting on by academic peers with the appropriate expertise and who cruically has actually read the report, not by some arrogant individual who had obviously not even bothered to do that.
As I said, you admit to not reading it but you comment on it nonetheless. Further you assume that anyone who comments on a report or article that is not in their field of expertise is arrogant. Yet another ASSumption on your part, an accusatory one at that. Indeed since the report did not specify a causative relationship, merely a correlation, and it was the article that implied a causative link, the most rational an non ASSumptive explanation is that the OP was giving an opinion on the article. In which case it would be you misunderstanding the OP.
Congratulations and my gratitude. You perfectly demonstrated, even to put into words, what I said was disturbing, or should be, about your post. You claim that only the so-called experts are allowed to question things. Only those of faith and order are holy enough to discuss or comment on works of the clergy.
This dogma has been a serious setback to science for generations, and continues to be alive and vindictive today - and your posts demonstrates this to a "t". Your written belief and attitude has much in common with the past assaults on those who disagree with the accepted line of belief. It would be a small comfort if those like who actually held yourselves to that standard. As demonstrated however, not even this aspect is immune to sanctimonious disregard.
You write as if peer-reviewed journals are immune to incorrect or incomplete and poorly done reports finding a home between their gilded pages, much as a religious fundamentalist ascribes to a literal interpretation of their gospels. The fact of the matter is that peer reviewed journals are prone to favored treatment for view the referees, editors, and current powers that be have a bias for, or worse yet a vested interest. History is replete with these events.
You are half right on something. There is an arrogant individual in this thread. However, the original poster is not said individual (with regards to this post anyway.
Again, thanks for illustrating my point better than I described it. Guess my work here is done.