Part of the problem with headers and comments is the exact same problem with pseudocode: they're not maintained. If they're wrong, the code program doesn't break. Largely true but not required to be. Python has a test feature which has you define/code/show the test in the comments. It takes the test from the comments and attempts to execute it. If you've changed the code but not the comments, the test will report failure.
What I fail to see is why it's important what hardware is being used as long as it does the job it needs to do!
It depends on how broadly you define "needs to do". If you can get the "job done" in terms of performance (i.e. concurrent users) yet get it for significantly less money on different hardware, and no software/UI changes for the end users, would you consider it? Especially if the other hardware had a longer life expectancy?
Life expectancy and cost are factors included in "gets the job done" IMO. Cost is more than just price as well. There is hardware support which includes parts and maintenance, as well as power and floor space consumption. Anyone renting space at a co-lo facility will attest to that, as will anyone running a singificant sized data center.
These are but some of the reasons why which hardware is being used is important.
But ethanol is a crappy idea - it's got a lot of drawbacks, and it essentially needs to be "grown".
So you don't like that it comes from a source that you believe has to be grown. Fair enough. But...
A much better alternative is the old Vegetable oil way of doing things - BioDiesel.
How the hell do you think we get vegetables?!?! Hint: we grow them!
An acre of bamboo can produce around 2000 gallons of ethanol per year. Oil production for biodiesel from plants is a very small fraction of that. About one tenth, actually. Sure they talk about maybe getting 500 gallons per acre (oil palm come sin at 635gal/acre), but that is still a quarter of what bamboo can provide. Most biodiesel is made from soybean which provides a paltry 48-70 gallons per acre.
"old way" of doing things? The Model T ran on ethanol, not biodiesel.
We don't actually need to grow crops specifically for ethanol either. We burn off an amazing amount of ethanol feedstock each year as agricultural waste. Collecting that and converting it would provide a very significant source of ethanol without dedicating a single acre of crop.
Of course humans contribute to global warming! Each human puts out around 380 BTU of heat per day if they are sedentary. At 5 billion people that is what about 1.9 TRILLION BTUs per day! Figure in the active people and we are talking at least 2.5 trillion BTUs per day in a state of nature!!
Your analogy is flawed. If anything when made a valid analogy it argues against the ability to predict climate in a hundred years. If you claim as you seem to that the falling of the sand is the weather, that means the end position of the sand is climate. You seem to make that argument,.
But then you argue for a precision of "a few meters". This is an unreasonable comparison. The claims of predicting the climate involve a change of one or two percent change from initial conditions. A handful of sand is in an area a few centimeters apart and you want to able to predict it's position after a fall of say half a meter to within several meters; more than an order magnitude greater level of positional precision than existed in the initial conditions and several times the distance travelled. That's absurd as a comparison.
If you want your analogy to be more accurate, you must seek the same degree of accuracy. Ask for a few millimeters of accuracy on where the sand will wind up. Alternatively, let me drop the sand from 1 kilometer above the floor. Now predict to a few meters where the sand will end up. How about we turn on a few oscillating fans of varying strengths to blow everything around.
Start looking at the whole picture and you'll find it easier to see why models are not a good basis for creating valid data: the conditions and rules are usually set to meet the desired end result.
Your "analogy" demonstrates precisely why models are to be suspect for either side.
When you get used to biking to work, you'll wonder how you ever lived without doing so. It helps mentally separate your work from your *life*, it's good for your body, and it's a lot of fun.
Driving a manually shifted sports car to work can do the same thing.;)
so it's not as if my commute is very long -- only about 2.5 miles
So assuming you work 260 days per year (5 days/week for 52 weeks) that's 1,300 miles per year. At 25mpg that's a savings of 52 gallons per year. Not even a blip on a blip on a pixel of the radar. Do it for health or personal reasons, but just don't beleive that biking to work has any impact on the oil industry or pollution. A false belief you are helping is worse than not helping.
Also, I agree 100% that if it's hard to cut emissions now, why would it be easier ten years from now?
Uhmmm perhaps because technology improves? I've got a V8 powered car pulling 25 MPG in the city and nearly 40 on the freeway. How much harder woudl that have been 10, 20, 30 or 50 years ago? Significantly. Why? The technology improved.
The Kyoto protocol (Which I'm sure you've all read too much about over the last couple days) in my opinion is only a start. It'll reduce human-caused temperature forcing by something like 5% if fully implemented
So if we have assume a two degree rise over 100 years, and we assume that 100% of it is human induced, we'll only see a rise of 1.9 degrees. yes, that is a very minor and statistically insignifcant variance. If you can not prove a statistically significant difference, you can not prove you had an effect. Thus you would be asking people to make trillions of dollars in economic changes on something you can not prove will work. IIRC, the guy who started the global warming concern has indicated he believes it would not have any appreciable effect.
Do you think it's going to be any easier to cut GHG emissions even more drastically in 10 years
Do you think technology is at a standstill? Do you think we need the KPA to advance technology? Do you think we have invented all we will need? I don't.
History has shown us that many things do in fact get easier. Especially in pollution prevention, reduction, and mitigation. Go back to the US industrial revolution and using the technology available back then try to put in place far more stringent pollution controls. You will find it to be easier several years later. So much so that you'll find it easier to clean up the mess later than to prevent it in the first place.
Yes, things will get easier to handle later. History and a rational expectation of science demonstrates this to be so.
Also we have a ton of oil here. Which you wouldn't be able to use do to increasing restrictions on use of it. Not that a ton of oil is that impressive.;)
Biking to work is great for individuals, but not for a society. It can also lead to more pollution than other lifestyle changes. For example, my neigbor bikes to work. But he still needs his car for other things. His work trip is short, almost as short as mine. His non-work travel is far more pollution causing than his work trip.
On the other hand, my "big nasty" SUV runs on E85 - 85% ethanol 15% gasoline. My SUV contributes less pollution per mile travelled than a Toyota Prius (go ahead, do the math and research). The net result is that I don't bike to work and despite driving more than he does I pollute less. Not only that, I am aiding in building the demand for an alternative fuel. My neighbor biking to work fails to aid in establishing a demand for alternative fuels. Many people want there to be alternative fuels, but don't want to help make it happen.
I'm not saying don't bike to work. If you can, great do so. My neighbor started it for health reasons and those are very valid. But don't believe your biking to work is somehow better for the environment than someone driving an E85 powered SUV; it is demonstrably not. Indeed, my neighbor is considering a new SUV for the ability to run E85, as are several of my friends. For those who neither want nor are able to purchase a new vehicle (E85 ability is not extra btw), you can run E10 (10% ethanol) and lower your gasoline consumption while improving your vehicle's condition. If not available where you are, lobby for it. It will have far greater impact than biking to work.
understand that we don't need to care what they think? We keep hearing how we are arrogant for not accepting what people outside the US think, yet they are not arrogant for not accepting what we think. People outside the US are just as susceptible to their media and government. They are nto better, nor worse. It is the height of arrogant irony to attack a people for being arrogant while doing the very thing you justify your claim of their arrogance upon. (not you, the poster personally, the general "you").
I mean, it isn't even a topic of debate outside the US, people accept it as fact.
Lots of things are accepted as fact outside the US. That doesn't make them fact. In a matter of science, why should I care what the general populous outside (or inside) the US thinks or accepts? I shouldn't.
The general population accepts as fact that babies should be forced into the regimen of their parents, that babies should be forced to "cry it out" when they are sad, that babies should be fed on mom's schedule and if they are hungry and not on shcedule, tough tit. In my house, we don't go by those rules. Yet our children's behaviour and temperament are the envy of those who parent the other way. And they refuse to acknowledge our methods have anything to do with it. They even wish bad children on us. The point? Just because people accept things as fact does not make it so. Look at religion if you need further evidence.
It was an accepted fact outside the US last year that John Kerry would soundly defeat George bush. We see how that "accepted fact" turned out.
1) We have a plausible mechanism of action. CO2 traps infrared light (simple spectral tests easly back this up), and therefore we have reason to believe that all else being equal, increased CO2 might cause the earth to warm up.
2) We have 400,000 years of CO2 records, CO2 has recently reached higher concentrations than at any point in the last 400,000 years, and it's climbing at an incredible rate. 7) Is it crazy to assume that the earth is warming because the CO2 levels are higher, just as a naieve model would predict?
Yet we also have records that show larger rises of CO2 level w/o the temperature increase. That data is important. If there is a direct relationship between CO2 level increases and temperature increases, we should not have periods in history where we've had CO2 rises w/o temperature rises. Is it crazy to assume that CO2 increases are causing any alleged temperature increase? Given that we've had CO2 increases w/o temperature increases it may be.
We also have records showing temperature rises w/o CO2 rises. Given a history of CO2 rises w/o resultant temperature rises, and temperature rises w/o CO2 rises, it is folly IMO to conclude that our current alleged temperature rise must be due to the CO2 rises. If we can not correctly explain previous known temperature variations, we can not accurately predict them.
As a result we get a lot of tit-for-tat style "reports". Group A says X is happening because of Y, then groub B points out that Y doesn't cause X, or X happened w/o Y. Then it repeats with different "causes" and "results".
That is why, IMO, it boils down to these questions:
Is there a temperature variance? If so, is there a cycle happening? If so is the variance within the cycle?
Is the resultant change a "problem"? If so, how much and can it be mitigated or turned into an advantage?
We don't understand enough about any of it to answer those questions to even a 25% level, let alone make "final conclusions".
Unfortunately, politics is involved so even if a breakthrough is made and mass answers are available, we won't be able to use it. I do note that the "oncoming ice age" people in the seventies were the ones who got politics involved. Many of them turned into the global wamring disasterbators.
The ultimate question is not whether it exists, or how it may be caused, but what we in the end do with what we have. Given the ability of man to turn catastrophe into advantage - to find new opportunity in the face of defeat - my faith is in man and nature adapting and overcoming in ways the disasterbators refuse to dream of.
No, Linus said that ports *of existing drivers* to use the kernel code are acceptable, but new from cloth kernel modules are not. Thus there can be binary only modules. For example, nvidia took their initial code from their windows drivers and ported it to Linux. Thus those drivers are legal according to Linus.
But if nvidia had no drivers at all and made a binary only kernel module, Linus' statement is that those are violations.
You can't see it because you are looking in the wrong spot. You are only thinking of what NASA has told us is "science" on Mars: poking and scraping rocks and taking pictures of dirt.
Your assertion regarding Hubble returning more scientific data per dollar is specious. The Apollo program has resulted in hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars worth of scientific data and technological advancement and products. Even as recent as the last 9 months has some of the original Apollo data been used to create/do more -- in particular physical therapy. What the Apollo project did for science and technology is staggering. Despite it being a mere flag and footprints set of missions. Hubble's contributions while not insignifcant, are hardly up to the scale of Apollo, let alone Mars. Primarily due to it's extreme limitation.
Furthermore, the roughly 5-6 billion the Hubble cost would have paid for some truly awesome observatories capable of producing images that rival Hubble's for a small fraction of the price. For example this telescope set cost under 170 million to build: http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/geninfo/about.php
This one is about a billion: http://www.eso.org/projects/owl/
It is a matter of physics that the Moon is a very poor choice of refeuling station for interplanetary travel. Stopping at the moon for feul when goingfrom Earth to Mars is like going from LA Pheonix and refeuling in Portland, OR. The exact same launch capability that took us to the Moon can take you right on to mars w/o "refeuling". Surface to surface, Earth to Mars is cheaper (lower delta-v) than Earth to Earth-Moon.
The best route (in terms of technology, resuability, and performance) is a series of tethers from LEO to GEO and GEO to Mars (GMO and then LMO) for example. The catch is the mass needed to make the tethers. Launched from Earth it is not workable. However, a mission to Mars that established the production facilities to make these would do it quite well.
Mars provides the resources needed to sustain life quite well while making the tethers. You go from Mars surface to LMO and put a LMO to GMO tether in place. Then you utilize this capability to put the GMO tether in place. Now you have Mars surface to Geosynchronous Mars orbit using rockets that are comparatively small (read: already developed) as they only need to go to LMO, rising out of a much shallower gravity well.
With this you could go two ways. You can then build a Mars Space Elevator. We don't need carbon nanotubes for that. Kevlar 49, IIRC, has plenty of wiggle room for doing that on Mars. Again, the shallower gravity well is a boon, as well as it only neededing to be about 10,500 Km on Mars. Of course, a LMO with the tether launch to GMO would make it even easier to make.
Instead of or in addition to the MSE, you put up a GMO->GEO tether. Using these systems you can launch from Mars to Earth using either the MSE, or Surface-LMO rocket power. The tether you put in GEO is then added to the system and you use it to put one in LEO.
Now you have launch windows spanning many months, and transit times as low as 90 days.
The scientific return on manned Mars missions is not necessarily geological. It's largely biological, ecological, and technological. Doing the same thing on Luna is not only an order of magnitude more expensive to start with, it is also going to return less usable data per dollar.
If you go by the old way of NASA Mars, yes it'd be one helluva boondoggle. If you insist on space stations and moon bases to do it, it'd be a ruinous one for all aspects.
The ISS building costs alone are above (last I recall) 60 billion dollars billion, with annual costs to exceed 3 billion. Given it's estimated 10 year life that's 30 billion dollars. So when it is said and done, the ISS will have cost us about 100 billion dollars, and it's scope and capacity have been decreased.
That is a financial boondoggle as well as a serious setback in space exploration.
And so how would you expect that to make any difference on mars? You would be have to be sure of the results to start. Until we know we are global warming here I say we hold off and not try experiments over a whole planet.
So you'd rather we all be the lab rats? It seems much more humane to experiment on a planet w/o intelligent life than on one with a vibrant ecosystem. In fact, that makes it *easier* on Mars: it's less complex. Not to mention a lot smaller.
Not to mention, it doesn't do anything for us to create a thicker atmosphere without a magnetic field. It'll just be a warmer deadly place.
Actually yes it does. A thicker atmosphere provides better UV protection (we don't really need that much more but it'd be nice). A thicker atmosphere allows aircraft to be smaller (more pressure). The thicker atmosphere would give the duststorms more pressure while probably slowing them down. As a result there may be an increased possibility of wind power.
The thicker atmosphere increases convection; heat is shared better. The warmer atmosphere increases the zone of potential plant life. The warmer atmosphere could make the subsurface water and water that appears periodically to stick around in liquid form for much longer, perhaps on a more "permanent" basis. A temperature rise of four degrees Kelvin would put surface temperatures at the southern pole above the water vapor point. Releasing that would cause an estimated 100 - 150 millibar pressure atmposhpere.
Get it warm enough (about 10 degrees kelvin manmade increase) and some of the water that is currently stuck in the upper levels of regolith and at the poles would no longer be trapped. This would provide a readily available source of water for settlers at a lesser energy cost to them. On that note, a warmer, atmosphere improves building conditions.
Non-hab "space" suits can be built lighter as the pressure difference is less. This means more maneuverability and range of movement. The warmer atmosphere also means the suits need less thermal regulation. Same is true for Mars habitats. A warmer, thicker atmosphere would allow the construction of thinner domes (temperature) and less risk of dome blowout (higher pressure). A 120 millibar atmosphere is about 1.5 PSI, and would be the result of the 4 degree K manmade rise. That is approximately what the Habs and interplanetary spacecraft currently are designed to use, IIRC.
That means that while the air would not be breathable, the pressure removes the need for pressure suits and pressurized habs. Now your airlocks are simply airlocks, and thus less complex and more reliable.
A thicker atmosphere shields better against meteorite strikes. This improves the safety of Mars settlements and settlers. Further the thicker atmosphere increases the lag time between suit/hab breach and dangerous levels of decompression.
Indeed, once you reach human tolerable pressures, your domes and habs switch to primarily providing housing for breathable air. Given the much lower gravity and the need to only worry about keeping air in (and not also provide pressure, etc.), you can make domes of staggeringly large scale under which you maintain breathable air.
That level of pressure can be reached in the first 25-35 years or so.
So yes, it most certainly does do a *lot* for us to have a thicker, warmer atmosphere -and I didn't even cover all of the benefits. It makes Mars a *far less* deadly place. Earth is deadly place with it's warm and thick atmosphere. How about you hang out in ~120 millibar of atmosphere, then try the 6 millibar that currently is on Mars. I'd ask for the results, but once you tried the 6 millibar, someone else would be reporting your demise.
And finally, all this means the parent post was not only non-insightful, it was (and is) dead wrong (no pun intended). Even if all teh other benefits fell away into some mysterious dimension, removing the lethality of the 6 millibar atmosphere has enourmous windfalls in terms of survivability and habitability.
If you guys, and that O'Keefe bozo (formerly) at NASA have their way, a WORKING, and SCIENTIFICALLY SIGNIFICANT telescope will be left to die even while it's STILL producing amazing results!!
Fine, you want it up, YOU pay for it. Organize a group of astronomers and research agencies and let them foot the bill for repairing Hubble. Maybe you can form a company to foot the bill using investment capital and then sell time on the Hubble.
Dear Shopper: Our records indicate you have been purchasing a pair of reading glasses each month for the last two years, and have not done so for the last two months. As a result of your loyal shopping here, we hereby award you a Bonus Shopper Reward: Your next purchase of 50 dollars or more will get you 15% off your next reading glasses purchase!
Offer valid for this month only, void where prohibited by law. Offer is non-transferable, and can be revoked at any time including at the time of use. Not responsible for price errors.
Scenario:
- you apply for health insurance;
- your insurer looks up your loyalty card records, and says "I see you've been buying fatty foods, pizza, chips, chocolate. "
- same insurer checks your credit card records: "I see no Gym payments here, you don't work out, do you?"
- "At least you don't smoke, then we'd refuse to insure you at all."
- "OK, we can insure you, it will just cost you much more, because of your lifestyle. We will use any excuse to charge you more."
The same goes for life insurance, or car insurance if you are noted buying alcohol.
On the other hand: Scenario:
- you apply for health insurance;
- your insurer looks up your loyalty card records, and says "Hmm low consumption of sweets, high consumption of natural and healthy foods, vitamins, exercise equipment and sporting goods; no tobacco products, only an occasional alcohol purchase"
- insurer tries to look at credit card records and fails because that would be considered an investigative consumer report and beyond his legally pemritted report set.
- "Ok we can insure you and it will cost you XX less due to your healthy lifestyle becuase we know to do otherwise would get our asses in the frying pan since we charged that fat slob who was in here before more for his pathetic lifestyle choices"
But loyalty cards won't be any good for this unless they can reasonably track the data to *you* specifically. That would be pretty much impossible in a family scenario. My wife does 99% of the grocery shopping. What, are they going to think I and the kids don't eat at all?
As far as access to data in a seperate industry, not unless they want to pay for it. Why should the CC companies give any data to your insurer? it benefits them not a bit. Why should the CC companies care what food you bought last Tuesday? They don't. So even if it were legal it'd cost a good chunk of money to get that data.
We already have a cost/risk analysis in insurance, it goes with the industry and is a good thing. It is why I pay less for the insurance on my C5 than someone who drives a new Honda the average annual distance. I drive my C5 to work year round, but since I work 2 miles from my home I put only a couple thousand miles a year including racing miles.
I also have a clean driving record. Therefore I'll pay less than someone who has tickets. I'm also married. Since, statistically speaking, married people are safer drivers espcially in a sports car. So again, factors toward me paying less.
But the only people complaining about combining the factors and distributing the cost commensurate with the risk of automtive accidents are those who are the higher risk drivers. Is it that the only people complaining that health insurance would love to get their hands on this data to raise rates of those who don't take care of themselves are the ones who are NOT taking care of themselves? If so, why should I, who do take care of myself, pay more for your lifestyle choices?
But store purchase history unless directly tied to a specific individual and with strong evidence to show that you don't buy food for other people is not very helpful to medical insurers. It can also be the case that the people who "eat healthy" also go to the doctor more often just to keep checking and thus may cost more money to insure.
Ultimately, the law can allow it but if it isn't any good to the insurers, they won't use it. Especially since it becomes a liability if they can not show it is failry used. That means if they charge you more for "unhealthy" foods, they have to charge you less for "healthy" ones. And for insurers, it's *all* about risk.
How did police get the record of his Safeway purchases??? Can I go to my local safeway and see my personal record of purchases? What is Safeways Privacy policy... OH NEVERMIND... forgot we live in post 9/11 america.
By SUBPEONA probably, or by simply asking and the Safeway manager going "here you go". Just as they would have done BEFORE 9/11. The police state mechanisms have been built over a few decades, not just the last few years.
If you could carry enough rocket power to stop that speed, you could carry enough rocket power to build up that speed, and we wouldn't need exotic ground-based propulsion systems.
There seems to be a bit of metaphoric slight of hand there. It *might* be possible to carry enough fuel to slow down. It *might* be possible to carry enough fuel to get going. But it is probably not "possible" to carry enough fuel to get up to that speed *and* slow down. At least based on what we know.
As far as slowing down using a destination beam the paint would not have to be on the same sail as the launch sail.
I suspect the math is not technically off but not accurate either. I suspect the article/proponents figured straight line distance in their time calculations, whereas going to Mars is not a straight line shot.
Personally I think a mutli-tether system that provided 90 day trips would be plenty, only requires the thrust to get to LEO, and is technically feasible today.
Of course, that means getting hundreds of tons of material to various orbits. Thats best done from Mars so it will require a settelement there in the first place. So we go there in rockets (180 transit time) and "build" our way back using tethers and a martian space elevator (no need for carbon nanotubes when kevlar 49 will do).
Understanding the physics behind something is a long cry from having a viable, economical, mass-producable, product which can be sold to the masses at tiny profit margins.
True, but it also works the other way. It isn't like we understood the physics behind electricity, the light bulb, internal compression engines, and radio before we started seeing those on the market at tiny profit margins. We understood enough to make and use it. To get started, that's all we really need.
Of course our great nation of laws was designed for the possibility that an extremist party might gain power and attempt to stack the courts with extremist judges. Thats why their is a filibuster in the Senate so a supermajority is required to approve controversial laws or judges. It prevents a majority party in power from going off the deep end, in law or judicial appointments, and is a critical element of checks and balances.
Ok, time to back up that assertion. Show me where the filibuster is in the constitution. here, I'll help you get started: http://www.constitution.org/cs_found.htm Article 2, Section 2 is the part you are looking for. Guess what, it isn't there. In fact, there is in there a 2/3rds clause for some actions of the Presdient. Namely:
He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur;
Yet it continues on to mention the appointment of Judges:
and he shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, Judges of the supreme Court, and all other Officers of the United States, whose Appointments are not herein otherwise provided for, and which shall be established by Law: but the Congress may by Law vest the Appointment of such inferior Officers, as they think proper, in the President alone, in the Courts of Law, or in the Heads of Departments.
So, it appears that your claim that the filibuster was somehow designed to act as a check on Supreme Court nominees is pure unadulterated truth-free bunkola. If the founders wanted a 2/3rds requirement it would have been right there. Now on to the filibuster itself, since you clearly do not know what one is.
First, it is no accident it derives from the Dutch word for "pirate". Prior to 1917, the Senate allowed unrestricted debate. In other words, debate would continue until they shut up and voted. It was not until 1917 that Woodrow Wilson sugested a Senate Procedural Rule to end debate with a 2/3rds vote. In 1975 it was dropped to 3/5ths. But that is not all.
At the same time, they changed the process of filibustering. Until that time, to filibuster meant getting up and not yield the floor during debate (or to time it such that your fellow filibusterers got it). This put a realistic time limit on debate. Strom Thurmond holds the record at a bit over 24 hours. But in 1975 the Senate changed things. Now to filibuster is merely a procedural event.
In reality, the changes in 1975 (nearly 200 years after this coutnry's legal mechanisms and checks and balances were defined) have led to the opposite of your claim. It allows an extremist party in the minority to "vrijbuiter" (pirate) the Senate floor. By definition, in an elective government, the majority is not the extremist party as they represent the greatest success in the polls which would ostensibly indicate the most common agreement among the body.
Your ignorance of what a filibuster is is why you think the act of filibustering can be eliminated. Since filibustering in it's raw usage in the Senate is to stand and talk, whether giving speech or debate, to push off the vote, it can not be ended. What can, and should be ended, is the procedural "right to filibuster" that requires no actual action. The "filibuster" as used today *prevents debate*, and as such is detrimental to society.
Yes, it prevents debate. If you actually look at the records of what happens, everyone knows in advance what bills will be filibustered for procedure. This results in more procedural wrangling with it not going to debate. This results in we the people losing visibility to what goes on in the Senate. This too is detrimental to society. One result of the procedural filibuster is the addition of riders that have nothing to do with the bill at hand. Indeed, often a Senator
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Part of the problem with headers and comments is the exact same problem with pseudocode: they're not maintained. If they're wrong, the code program doesn't break.
Largely true but not required to be. Python has a test feature which has you define/code/show the test in the comments. It takes the test from the comments and attempts to execute it. If you've changed the code but not the comments, the test will report failure.
A small step, perhaps, but a step nonetheless.
What I fail to see is why it's important what hardware is being used as long as it does the job it needs to do!
It depends on how broadly you define "needs to do". If you can get the "job done" in terms of performance (i.e. concurrent users) yet get it for significantly less money on different hardware, and no software/UI changes for the end users, would you consider it? Especially if the other hardware had a longer life expectancy?
Life expectancy and cost are factors included in "gets the job done" IMO. Cost is more than just price as well. There is hardware support which includes parts and maintenance, as well as power and floor space consumption. Anyone renting space at a co-lo facility will attest to that, as will anyone running a singificant sized data center.
These are but some of the reasons why which hardware is being used is important.
But ethanol is a crappy idea - it's got a lot of drawbacks, and it essentially needs to be "grown".
...
So you don't like that it comes from a source that you believe has to be grown. Fair enough. But
A much better alternative is the old Vegetable oil way of doing things - BioDiesel.
How the hell do you think we get vegetables?!?! Hint: we grow them!
An acre of bamboo can produce around 2000 gallons of ethanol per year. Oil production for biodiesel from plants is a very small fraction of that. About one tenth, actually. Sure they talk about maybe getting 500 gallons per acre (oil palm come sin at 635gal/acre), but that is still a quarter of what bamboo can provide. Most biodiesel is made from soybean which provides a paltry 48-70 gallons per acre.
"old way" of doing things? The Model T ran on ethanol, not biodiesel.
We don't actually need to grow crops specifically for ethanol either. We burn off an amazing amount of ethanol feedstock each year as agricultural waste. Collecting that and converting it would provide a very significant source of ethanol without dedicating a single acre of crop.
You can't do that with biodiesel.
Sears.
What about Snake River?
Actually we already have a lot of tech company work here. HP, Agilent, Micron, and so on.
How about you load the containers up in the proportion present on Mars? Then mix and see what happens.
Actually, he's right. If there is water, we can get oxygen and with that, we can breathe. And we know there is water there.
Of course humans contribute to global warming! Each human puts out around 380 BTU of heat per day if they are sedentary. At 5 billion people that is what about 1.9 TRILLION BTUs per day! Figure in the active people and we are talking at least 2.5 trillion BTUs per day in a state of nature!!
Your analogy is flawed. If anything when made a valid analogy it argues against the ability to predict climate in a hundred years. If you claim as you seem to that the falling of the sand is the weather, that means the end position of the sand is climate. You seem to make that argument,.
But then you argue for a precision of "a few meters". This is an unreasonable comparison. The claims of predicting the climate involve a change of one or two percent change from initial conditions. A handful of sand is in an area a few centimeters apart and you want to able to predict it's position after a fall of say half a meter to within several meters; more than an order magnitude greater level of positional precision than existed in the initial conditions and several times the distance travelled. That's absurd as a comparison.
If you want your analogy to be more accurate, you must seek the same degree of accuracy. Ask for a few millimeters of accuracy on where the sand will wind up. Alternatively, let me drop the sand from 1 kilometer above the floor. Now predict to a few meters where the sand will end up. How about we turn on a few oscillating fans of varying strengths to blow everything around.
Start looking at the whole picture and you'll find it easier to see why models are not a good basis for creating valid data: the conditions and rules are usually set to meet the desired end result.
Your "analogy" demonstrates precisely why models are to be suspect for either side.
When you get used to biking to work, you'll wonder how you ever lived without doing so. It helps mentally separate your work from your *life*, it's good for your body, and it's a lot of fun.
;)
Driving a manually shifted sports car to work can do the same thing.
so it's not as if my commute is very long -- only about 2.5 miles
So assuming you work 260 days per year (5 days/week for 52 weeks) that's 1,300 miles per year. At 25mpg that's a savings of 52 gallons per year. Not even a blip on a blip on a pixel of the radar. Do it for health or personal reasons, but just don't beleive that biking to work has any impact on the oil industry or pollution. A false belief you are helping is worse than not helping.
Also, I agree 100% that if it's hard to cut emissions now, why would it be easier ten years from now?
Uhmmm perhaps because technology improves? I've got a V8 powered car pulling 25 MPG in the city and nearly 40 on the freeway. How much harder woudl that have been 10, 20, 30 or 50 years ago? Significantly. Why? The technology improved.
The Kyoto protocol (Which I'm sure you've all read too much about over the last couple days) in my opinion is only a start. It'll reduce human-caused temperature forcing by something like 5% if fully implemented
;)
So if we have assume a two degree rise over 100 years, and we assume that 100% of it is human induced, we'll only see a rise of 1.9 degrees. yes, that is a very minor and statistically insignifcant variance. If you can not prove a statistically significant difference, you can not prove you had an effect. Thus you would be asking people to make trillions of dollars in economic changes on something you can not prove will work. IIRC, the guy who started the global warming concern has indicated he believes it would not have any appreciable effect.
Do you think it's going to be any easier to cut GHG emissions even more drastically in 10 years
Do you think technology is at a standstill? Do you think we need the KPA to advance technology? Do you think we have invented all we will need? I don't.
History has shown us that many things do in fact get easier. Especially in pollution prevention, reduction, and mitigation. Go back to the US industrial revolution and using the technology available back then try to put in place far more stringent pollution controls. You will find it to be easier several years later. So much so that you'll find it easier to clean up the mess later than to prevent it in the first place.
Yes, things will get easier to handle later. History and a rational expectation of science demonstrates this to be so.
Also we have a ton of oil here.
Which you wouldn't be able to use do to increasing restrictions on use of it. Not that a ton of oil is that impressive.
Biking to work is great for individuals, but not for a society. It can also lead to more pollution than other lifestyle changes. For example, my neigbor bikes to work. But he still needs his car for other things. His work trip is short, almost as short as mine. His non-work travel is far more pollution causing than his work trip.
On the other hand, my "big nasty" SUV runs on E85 - 85% ethanol 15% gasoline. My SUV contributes less pollution per mile travelled than a Toyota Prius (go ahead, do the math and research). The net result is that I don't bike to work and despite driving more than he does I pollute less. Not only that, I am aiding in building the demand for an alternative fuel. My neighbor biking to work fails to aid in establishing a demand for alternative fuels. Many people want there to be alternative fuels, but don't want to help make it happen.
I'm not saying don't bike to work. If you can, great do so. My neighbor started it for health reasons and those are very valid. But don't believe your biking to work is somehow better for the environment than someone driving an E85 powered SUV; it is demonstrably not. Indeed, my neighbor is considering a new SUV for the ability to run E85, as are several of my friends. For those who neither want nor are able to purchase a new vehicle (E85 ability is not extra btw), you can run E10 (10% ethanol) and lower your gasoline consumption while improving your vehicle's condition. If not available where you are, lobby for it. It will have far greater impact than biking to work.
understand that we don't need to care what they think? We keep hearing how we are arrogant for not accepting what people outside the US think, yet they are not arrogant for not accepting what we think. People outside the US are just as susceptible to their media and government. They are nto better, nor worse. It is the height of arrogant irony to attack a people for being arrogant while doing the very thing you justify your claim of their arrogance upon. (not you, the poster personally, the general "you").
I mean, it isn't even a topic of debate outside the US, people accept it as fact.
Lots of things are accepted as fact outside the US. That doesn't make them fact.
In a matter of science, why should I care what the general populous outside (or inside) the US thinks or accepts? I shouldn't.
The general population accepts as fact that babies should be forced into the regimen of their parents, that babies should be forced to "cry it out" when they are sad, that babies should be fed on mom's schedule and if they are hungry and not on shcedule, tough tit. In my house, we don't go by those rules. Yet our children's behaviour and temperament are the envy of those who parent the other way. And they refuse to acknowledge our methods have anything to do with it. They even wish bad children on us. The point? Just because people accept things as fact does not make it so. Look at religion if you need further evidence.
It was an accepted fact outside the US last year that John Kerry would soundly defeat George bush. We see how that "accepted fact" turned out.
1) We have a plausible mechanism of action. CO2 traps infrared light (simple spectral tests easly back this up), and therefore we have reason to believe that all else being equal, increased CO2 might cause the earth to warm up.
2) We have 400,000 years of CO2 records, CO2 has recently reached higher concentrations than at any point in the last 400,000 years, and it's climbing at an incredible rate.
7) Is it crazy to assume that the earth is warming because the CO2 levels are higher, just as a naieve model would predict?
Yet we also have records that show larger rises of CO2 level w/o the temperature increase. That data is important. If there is a direct relationship between CO2 level increases and temperature increases, we should not have periods in history where we've had CO2 rises w/o temperature rises. Is it crazy to assume that CO2 increases are causing any alleged temperature increase? Given that we've had CO2 increases w/o temperature increases it may be.
We also have records showing temperature rises w/o CO2 rises. Given a history of CO2 rises w/o resultant temperature rises, and temperature rises w/o CO2 rises, it is folly IMO to conclude that our current alleged temperature rise must be due to the CO2 rises. If we can not correctly explain previous known temperature variations, we can not accurately predict them.
As a result we get a lot of tit-for-tat style "reports". Group A says X is happening because of Y, then groub B points out that Y doesn't cause X, or X happened w/o Y. Then it repeats with different "causes" and "results".
That is why, IMO, it boils down to these questions:
Is there a temperature variance?
If so, is there a cycle happening?
If so is the variance within the cycle?
Is the resultant change a "problem"?
If so, how much and can it be mitigated or turned into an advantage?
We don't understand enough about any of it to answer those questions to even a 25% level, let alone make "final conclusions".
Unfortunately, politics is involved so even if a breakthrough is made and mass answers are available, we won't be able to use it. I do note that the "oncoming ice age" people in the seventies were the ones who got politics involved. Many of them turned into the global wamring disasterbators.
The ultimate question is not whether it exists, or how it may be caused, but what we in the end do with what we have. Given the ability of man to turn catastrophe into advantage - to find new opportunity in the face of defeat - my faith is in man and nature adapting and overcoming in ways the disasterbators refuse to dream of.
No, Linus said that ports *of existing drivers* to use the kernel code are acceptable, but new from cloth kernel modules are not. Thus there can be binary only modules. For example, nvidia took their initial code from their windows drivers and ported it to Linux. Thus those drivers are legal according to Linus.
But if nvidia had no drivers at all and made a binary only kernel module, Linus' statement is that those are violations.
Then why is there an installer for OSX?
You can't see it because you are looking in the wrong spot. You are only thinking of what NASA has told us is "science" on Mars: poking and scraping rocks and taking pictures of dirt.
Your assertion regarding Hubble returning more scientific data per dollar is specious. The Apollo program has resulted in hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars worth of scientific data and technological advancement and products. Even as recent as the last 9 months has some of the original Apollo data been used to create/do more -- in particular physical therapy. What the Apollo project did for science and technology is staggering. Despite it being a mere flag and footprints set of missions. Hubble's contributions while not insignifcant, are hardly up to the scale of Apollo, let alone Mars. Primarily due to it's extreme limitation.
Furthermore, the roughly 5-6 billion the Hubble cost would have paid for some truly awesome observatories capable of producing images that rival Hubble's for a small fraction of the price. For example this telescope set cost under 170 million to build: http://www2.keck.hawaii.edu/geninfo/about.php
This one is about a billion:
http://www.eso.org/projects/owl/
It is a matter of physics that the Moon is a very poor choice of refeuling station for interplanetary travel. Stopping at the moon for feul when goingfrom Earth to Mars is like going from LA Pheonix and refeuling in Portland, OR. The exact same launch capability that took us to the Moon can take you right on to mars w/o "refeuling". Surface to surface, Earth to Mars is cheaper (lower delta-v) than Earth to Earth-Moon.
The best route (in terms of technology, resuability, and performance) is a series of tethers from LEO to GEO and GEO to Mars (GMO and then LMO) for example. The catch is the mass needed to make the tethers. Launched from Earth it is not workable. However, a mission to Mars that established the production facilities to make these would do it quite well.
Mars provides the resources needed to sustain life quite well while making the tethers. You go from Mars surface to LMO and put a LMO to GMO tether in place. Then you utilize this capability to put the GMO tether in place. Now you have Mars surface to Geosynchronous Mars orbit using rockets that are comparatively small (read: already developed) as they only need to go to LMO, rising out of a much shallower gravity well.
With this you could go two ways. You can then build a Mars Space Elevator. We don't need carbon nanotubes for that. Kevlar 49, IIRC, has plenty of wiggle room for doing that on Mars. Again, the shallower gravity well is a boon, as well as it only neededing to be about 10,500 Km on Mars. Of course, a LMO with the tether launch to GMO would make it even easier to make.
Instead of or in addition to the MSE, you put up a GMO->GEO tether. Using these systems you can launch from Mars to Earth using either the MSE, or Surface-LMO rocket power. The tether you put in GEO is then added to the system and you use it to put one in LEO.
Now you have launch windows spanning many months, and transit times as low as 90 days.
The scientific return on manned Mars missions is not necessarily geological. It's largely biological, ecological, and technological. Doing the same thing on Luna is not only an order of magnitude more expensive to start with, it is also going to return less usable data per dollar.
If you go by the old way of NASA Mars, yes it'd be one helluva boondoggle. If you insist on space stations and moon bases to do it, it'd be a ruinous one for all aspects.
The ISS building costs alone are above (last I recall) 60 billion dollars billion, with annual costs to exceed 3 billion. Given it's estimated 10 year life that's 30 billion dollars. So when it is said and done, the ISS will have cost us about 100 billion dollars, and it's scope and capacity have been decreased.
That is a financial boondoggle as well as a serious setback in space exploration.
But if you g
And so how would you expect that to make any difference on mars? You would be have to be sure of the results to start. Until we know we are global warming here I say we hold off and not try experiments over a whole planet.
So you'd rather we all be the lab rats? It seems much more humane to experiment on a planet w/o intelligent life than on one with a vibrant ecosystem. In fact, that makes it *easier* on Mars: it's less complex. Not to mention a lot smaller.
Not to mention, it doesn't do anything for us to create a thicker atmosphere without a magnetic field. It'll just be a warmer deadly place.
Actually yes it does. A thicker atmosphere provides better UV protection (we don't really need that much more but it'd be nice). A thicker atmosphere allows aircraft to be smaller (more pressure). The thicker atmosphere would give the duststorms more pressure while probably slowing them down. As a result there may be an increased possibility of wind power.
The thicker atmosphere increases convection; heat is shared better. The warmer atmosphere increases the zone of potential plant life. The warmer atmosphere could make the subsurface water and water that appears periodically to stick around in liquid form for much longer, perhaps on a more "permanent" basis. A temperature rise of four degrees Kelvin would put surface temperatures at the southern pole above the water vapor point. Releasing that would cause an estimated 100 - 150 millibar pressure atmposhpere.
Get it warm enough (about 10 degrees kelvin manmade increase) and some of the water that is currently stuck in the upper levels of regolith and at the poles would no longer be trapped. This would provide a readily available source of water for settlers at a lesser energy cost to them. On that note, a warmer, atmosphere improves building conditions.
Non-hab "space" suits can be built lighter as the pressure difference is less. This means more maneuverability and range of movement. The warmer atmosphere also means the suits need less thermal regulation. Same is true for Mars habitats. A warmer, thicker atmosphere would allow the construction of thinner domes (temperature) and less risk of dome blowout (higher pressure). A 120 millibar atmosphere is about 1.5 PSI, and would be the result of the 4 degree K manmade rise. That is approximately what the Habs and interplanetary spacecraft currently are designed to use, IIRC.
That means that while the air would not be breathable, the pressure removes the need for pressure suits and pressurized habs. Now your airlocks are simply airlocks, and thus less complex and more reliable.
A thicker atmosphere shields better against meteorite strikes. This improves the safety of Mars settlements and settlers. Further the thicker atmosphere increases the lag time between suit/hab breach and dangerous levels of decompression.
Indeed, once you reach human tolerable pressures, your domes and habs switch to primarily providing housing for breathable air. Given the much lower gravity and the need to only worry about keeping air in (and not also provide pressure, etc.), you can make domes of staggeringly large scale under which you maintain breathable air.
That level of pressure can be reached in the first 25-35 years or so.
So yes, it most certainly does do a *lot* for us to have a thicker, warmer atmosphere -and I didn't even cover all of the benefits. It makes Mars a *far less* deadly place. Earth is deadly place with it's warm and thick atmosphere. How about you hang out in ~120 millibar of atmosphere, then try the 6 millibar that currently is on Mars. I'd ask for the results, but once you tried the 6 millibar, someone else would be reporting your demise.
And finally, all this means the parent post was not only non-insightful, it was (and is) dead wrong (no pun intended). Even if all teh other benefits fell away into some mysterious dimension, removing the lethality of the 6 millibar atmosphere has enourmous windfalls in terms of survivability and habitability.
If you guys, and that O'Keefe bozo (formerly) at NASA have their way, a WORKING, and SCIENTIFICALLY SIGNIFICANT telescope will be left to die even while it's STILL producing amazing results!!
Fine, you want it up, YOU pay for it. Organize a group of astronomers and research agencies and let them foot the bill for repairing Hubble. Maybe you can form a company to foot the bill using investment capital and then sell time on the Hubble.
i read that title as "boson argon arrest"
Dear Shopper:
Our records indicate you have been purchasing a pair of reading glasses each month for the last two years, and have not done so for the last two months. As a result of your loyal shopping here, we hereby award you a Bonus Shopper Reward:
Your next purchase of 50 dollars or more will get you 15% off your next reading glasses purchase!
Offer valid for this month only, void where prohibited by law. Offer is non-transferable, and can be revoked at any time including at the time of use. Not responsible for price errors.
Scenario:
- you apply for health insurance;
- your insurer looks up your loyalty card records, and says "I see you've been buying fatty foods, pizza, chips, chocolate. "
- same insurer checks your credit card records: "I see no Gym payments here, you don't work out, do you?"
- "At least you don't smoke, then we'd refuse to insure you at all."
- "OK, we can insure you, it will just cost you much more, because of your lifestyle. We will use any excuse to charge you more."
The same goes for life insurance, or car insurance if you are noted buying alcohol.
On the other hand:
Scenario:
- you apply for health insurance;
- your insurer looks up your loyalty card records, and says "Hmm low consumption of sweets, high consumption of natural and healthy foods, vitamins, exercise equipment and sporting goods; no tobacco products, only an occasional alcohol purchase"
- insurer tries to look at credit card records and fails because that would be considered an investigative consumer report and beyond his legally pemritted report set.
- "Ok we can insure you and it will cost you XX less due to your healthy lifestyle becuase we know to do otherwise would get our asses in the frying pan since we charged that fat slob who was in here before more for his pathetic lifestyle choices"
But loyalty cards won't be any good for this unless they can reasonably track the data to *you* specifically. That would be pretty much impossible in a family scenario. My wife does 99% of the grocery shopping. What, are they going to think I and the kids don't eat at all?
As far as access to data in a seperate industry, not unless they want to pay for it. Why should the CC companies give any data to your insurer? it benefits them not a bit. Why should the CC companies care what food you bought last Tuesday? They don't. So even if it were legal it'd cost a good chunk of money to get that data.
We already have a cost/risk analysis in insurance, it goes with the industry and is a good thing. It is why I pay less for the insurance on my C5 than someone who drives a new Honda the average annual distance. I drive my C5 to work year round, but since I work 2 miles from my home I put only a couple thousand miles a year including racing miles.
I also have a clean driving record. Therefore I'll pay less than someone who has tickets. I'm also married. Since, statistically speaking, married people are safer drivers espcially in a sports car. So again, factors toward me paying less.
But the only people complaining about combining the factors and distributing the cost commensurate with the risk of automtive accidents are those who are the higher risk drivers. Is it that the only people complaining that health insurance would love to get their hands on this data to raise rates of those who don't take care of themselves are the ones who are NOT taking care of themselves? If so, why should I, who do take care of myself, pay more for your lifestyle choices?
But store purchase history unless directly tied to a specific individual and with strong evidence to show that you don't buy food for other people is not very helpful to medical insurers. It can also be the case that the people who "eat healthy" also go to the doctor more often just to keep checking and thus may cost more money to insure.
Ultimately, the law can allow it but if it isn't any good to the insurers, they won't use it. Especially since it becomes a liability if they can not show it is failry used. That means if they charge you more for "unhealthy" foods, they have to charge you less for "healthy" ones. And for insurers, it's *all* about risk.
How did police get the record of his Safeway purchases??? Can I go to my local safeway and see my personal record of purchases? What is Safeways Privacy policy... OH NEVERMIND... forgot we live in post 9/11 america.
By SUBPEONA probably, or by simply asking and the Safeway manager going "here you go". Just as they would have done BEFORE 9/11. The police state mechanisms have been built over a few decades, not just the last few years.
Not sure why that was modded insightful.
;)
Me either. Same for your post.
If you could carry enough rocket power to stop that speed, you could carry enough rocket power to build up that speed, and we wouldn't need exotic ground-based propulsion systems.
There seems to be a bit of metaphoric slight of hand there. It *might* be possible to carry enough fuel to slow down. It *might* be possible to carry enough fuel to get going. But it is probably not "possible" to carry enough fuel to get up to that speed *and* slow down. At least based on what we know.
As far as slowing down using a destination beam the paint would not have to be on the same sail as the launch sail.
I suspect the math is not technically off but not accurate either. I suspect the article/proponents figured straight line distance in their time calculations, whereas going to Mars is not a straight line shot.
Personally I think a mutli-tether system that provided 90 day trips would be plenty, only requires the thrust to get to LEO, and is technically feasible today.
Of course, that means getting hundreds of tons of material to various orbits. Thats best done from Mars so it will require a settelement there in the first place. So we go there in rockets (180 transit time) and "build" our way back using tethers and a martian space elevator (no need for carbon nanotubes when kevlar 49 will do).
Understanding the physics behind something is a long cry from having a viable, economical, mass-producable, product which can be sold to the masses at tiny profit margins.
True, but it also works the other way. It isn't like we understood the physics behind electricity, the light bulb, internal compression engines, and radio before we started seeing those on the market at tiny profit margins. We understood enough to make and use it. To get started, that's all we really need.
Ok, time to back up that assertion. Show me where the filibuster is in the constitution. here, I'll help you get started:
http://www.constitution.org/cs_found.htm
Article 2, Section 2 is the part you are looking for. Guess what, it isn't there. In fact, there is in there a 2/3rds clause for some actions of the Presdient. Namely:
Yet it continues on to mention the appointment of Judges:
So, it appears that your claim that the filibuster was somehow designed to act as a check on Supreme Court nominees is pure unadulterated truth-free bunkola. If the founders wanted a 2/3rds requirement it would have been right there. Now on to the filibuster itself, since you clearly do not know what one is.
First, it is no accident it derives from the Dutch word for "pirate". Prior to 1917, the Senate allowed unrestricted debate. In other words, debate would continue until they shut up and voted. It was not until 1917 that Woodrow Wilson sugested a Senate Procedural Rule to end debate with a 2/3rds vote. In 1975 it was dropped to 3/5ths. But that is not all.
At the same time, they changed the process of filibustering. Until that time, to filibuster meant getting up and not yield the floor during debate (or to time it such that your fellow filibusterers got it). This put a realistic time limit on debate. Strom Thurmond holds the record at a bit over 24 hours. But in 1975 the Senate changed things. Now to filibuster is merely a procedural event.
In reality, the changes in 1975 (nearly 200 years after this coutnry's legal mechanisms and checks and balances were defined) have led to the opposite of your claim. It allows an extremist party in the minority to "vrijbuiter" (pirate) the Senate floor. By definition, in an elective government, the majority is not the extremist party as they represent the greatest success in the polls which would ostensibly indicate the most common agreement among the body.
Your ignorance of what a filibuster is is why you think the act of filibustering can be eliminated. Since filibustering in it's raw usage in the Senate is to stand and talk, whether giving speech or debate, to push off the vote, it can not be ended. What can, and should be ended, is the procedural "right to filibuster" that requires no actual action. The "filibuster" as used today *prevents debate*, and as such is detrimental to society.
Yes, it prevents debate. If you actually look at the records of what happens, everyone knows in advance what bills will be filibustered for procedure. This results in more procedural wrangling with it not going to debate. This results in we the people losing visibility to what goes on in the Senate. This too is detrimental to society. One result of the procedural filibuster is the addition of riders that have nothing to do with the bill at hand. Indeed, often a Senator