In the same sense that the Sun's energy is finite. We'll have evolved to another species before we run out of U, Th and other fissionables. "
Bullshit. The richer deposits are already playing out, and while I'm sure there's a goodly quantity of U ore somewhere in the earth's crust, it will take more and more energy to retrieve it.
"The days of monster SUVs are numbered. "
That's for damned sure!!!:-)
" Supply and demand will take care of this nicely. We have lots and lots of energy availble, just at a price."
Utter bullshit. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics trumps S&D every time. When the _energy_ cost to obtain a unit of energy is more than that energy, it doesn't matter where the price goes - you're done.
" I think you underestimate how clever we can be when needed."
I really, REALLY hope you are correct, and that I am wrong. I must say, I think you are overestimating how clever we can be, and I think you have way too much faith in "supply and demand". The market just can't cope with some of these issues. And the market can't make something from nothing.
I just love the way we tend to assume that every problem has a solution. The problem being "the need for power".
At the risk of sounding unAmerican, can it be there is no supply-side solution? Fossil fuels are finite and dirty, hydro is pretty well tapped out, the other alternatives all limited as described. And guess what? The supply of Uranium is finite, too!
Can it be that the major part of the solution is massive improvements in the efficiency of our energy use, combined with controlling our population?
Not only is population growing, but huge segments of the existing population are trying their damnedest to live like Americans. We don't need cars that get 10 more mpg, we need to rethink the whole damned paradigm.
I think we're in for an energy crisis that will make that of the early 70's look like a joke. I don't see us confronting the issue sensibly in anything like enough time to avoid it.
One other thing to keep in the back of your mind: agriculture. Modern "agriculture" runs on petroleum (and fossil water). Tractors, fertilizers, food transport. When the petroleum crunch comes, sooner than many of you seem to think, there is going to be a big problem with food...
" I wonder what makes us so sure that Britney Spears' ass is NOT hairy. Has anyone on/. even seen her ass and is able to vouch that it is in fact hair free?"
Where are my damned mod points when I need 'em! ROFLM(H)AO!
" I don't think I am nearly geeky enough for/. any more. Touch-screen/graphics tablets just don't arouse those sort of feelings for me. But, man, just take a look at this beauty [wacom.com].
I'm a normal, red-blooded male but when I look at that it just makes me... uh... uh... huuuuu!!
"Commercial exploitation of near-earth asteroids and the Moon is within our reach technologically, and it comes at essentially no cost to us."
WTF? Essentially no cost? How do you propose getting to a near-earth asteroid, mining and refining whatever putative resource might be there, and returning it to Earth "essentially no cost to us"?
"But what good is it to know there's water on the moon or Mars if nobody goes there to use it?"
Someday someone _will_ go there and use it. But before you make your travel plans to Mars, it's a good idea to learn as much as you can about it.
Everybody is in such a hurry! Humans WILL go to Mars - I see it as practically inevitable. But you're in for a disappointment if you think it's going to happen on, say, Zubrin's timescale. I've said it before whenever this sort of topic has come up... SPACE IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT, ESPECIALLY FOR LIVING THINGS. It is difficult financially, politically, energetically, engineering-wise, organizationally, biologically, psychologically, you name it.
Just because we all grew up reading science fiction that describes all sorts of space-faring wonders does not make it easy. Sometimes it seems that y'all think that because Heinlein wrote cheery space-operas, NASA must really willfully suck for holding out on us. Folks, Heinlein et al. wrote great science fiction, but it is fiction!
You write about mining platinum on asteroids so we can have cheap, plentiful fuel cells on Earth. Do you have any clue as to the magnitude of that undertaking? Getting there, extracting/refining the platinum, getting it back to Earth... Do you seriously believe that the bottom line - financially and/or energetically would be positive? If you do, I've got an asteroid to sell you...
The Space Station, for all its problems, will provide several important increments of engineering, organization, and biological/psychological knowledge. I know, it's very hip to put down the ISS, and there surely are some fuckups associated with it. But it's a necessary step. Space exploration is just as much about learning how to administer huge complex systems involving thousands of people and suppliers as it is about rockets blasting spaceward-ho!
Sure, you could probably cobble together a quick and dirty manned mission to Mars within 10 years or so as Zubrin says, but it would be just like the Apollo program everybody whines about - a dead end. Probably end up with some dead space pioneers, too.
I mean, I understand why you'd like to hurry it up: I personally would get a huge thrill out of seeing the first video from folks on Mars. I doubt if I'll see it in my lifetime (I'm 47), but I'd like to. But not if it means cutting corners and rushing. Let's think it through, do it right...
"And until we're all running the exact same hardware..."
I wonder... has there ever been a formal study done on the relative bugginess of Mac vs. Wintel software? Although there are different Mac platforms, there are still far fewer combos than in the Wintel world. I wonder if this manifests itself in reliability.
This is not a troll or anything - I haven't done anything with Macs in years, and I just don't have a sense of it.
" First of all, Microsoft software does stay up for 99.99% of the time for a sample of typical users -- typical users who don't aggressively look for remote exploits."
I am a consultant that supports lots of Windows users, and I'm here to tell you that the above statement is bullshit.
Re:Wolfram's new book and my thoughts on reality
on
Wolframania
·
· Score: 2
"One thing that I get from the book is more support for the idea that information processing may be more important to the Universe than physical matter."
What kind of a statement is that? What is "information"? Where does it reside? Where is "information" "processed"? What the hell does "important" mean to the Universe? What an absurdly useless statement.
The idea is that all these wastes become food or other inputs to other living things, etc. They are exactly saying that it is impossible to not make "waste", but that by proper design, it won't be dead-end, lost-to-the-ecosystem "waste".
Ah yes, the old "anything humans do is natural". What a load of unhelpful semantic bullshit. Yes, humans exist in the real world, and are in that sense "natural", but you know damned well the meaning of the term in the context of these discussions.
Humans are, of course, natural. We need food, water, shelter, etc. One might say that by abstracting ourselves out of the real world, we are able to get ourselves way out on a limb. Which we are busily sawing off on the wrong side. Oh well, natural species go extinct all the time.
It's a good thing that all this water has been found on Mars. But it doesn't mean that now a manned mission to Mars is going to be a simple walk in the park, with terraforming right behind.
It takes a lot of energy to get at that buried ice, a lot of energy to melt it, and a lot of energy to lyse it into O2 and H2. Where is it supposed to come from? Solar?
Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth... less solar flux. Where are the acres of photovoltaic cells going to come from? Not to mention the mining machines, the melters, the tanks, etc.
I'm not against a manned mission to Mars, and I think this finding of water is a good thing. I just don't see how it translates into "now we can easily go to Mars right away, yippee!". That is just pure wishful thinking.
The problem with most of these highly-optimistic manned-space-mission discussions that you get on/. is that people seem to be clueless to the fact that space is extremely fucking difficult.
Yes, there are political and financial hurdles to space exploration, but the bedrock engineering problems are enormous. I'm NOT saying insurmountable - just enormous.
We'll get there. It'll take time. I predict many will die along the way. It won't be easy. Space kind of sucks, really, if you happen to be a living thing.
I hate to pour cold water on anyone's enthusiasm - I have been a space buff since I watched Alan Shephard blast off on the first suborbital flight for America's space program as a lad. Nothing would please me more than to see the first TV from folks standing on the surface of Mars, though I honestly doubt it'll happen in my lifetime.
I just strongly believe that absurdly optimistic characterizations of how easy it's all gonna be will cause more harm than good...
"Yes," he said. "and that reminds me of a story..."
The problem with the Drake Equation...
on
Rare Earth
·
· Score: 1
... is that nobody knows the values of those last few terms. It's not that the concept behind the equation is wrong, it's just that you don't have clue one as to what to plug in there. Nobody has any idea whatsoever the average lifespan of a "technological society". Nobody knows half the other probabilities in the equation.
I actually had some kid at a party state that "it's a mathematical certainty that life exists on other planets". He based that claim on the Drake Equation.
Dudes, having a good sense of what the terms might be is nothing like knowing what values to plug in...
- Steve
Implications are staggering!
on
Stopping Light
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be resolved, global warming reversed, and world hunger ended. I am definitely staggered.
(having one of those days when these sorts of breakthroughs seem ever so slightly irrelevant to the future of life on Earth - could you tell?)
"Let's all sit here on this one little godforsaken planet and hope that nothing comes along and does a number on it."
I hate to interrupt your extropian wet dream, but our little planet is the one place that's not "godforsaken" for a long, long distance.
You talk about people being paranoid about nuclear technology (justifiably paranoid, IMO), but you are willing to rush into space because an asteroid might hit us.
Now look, sooner or later we'll figure out how to get into space in a big way. But it's not worth rushing, and it's not worth poisoning the earth. It's a lovely idea to "leave home", but let's not burn down the house (where our parents still live) while we're at it.
"Solar power, wind power and stuff is nice, but the bottom line is there cannot possibly be enough of it even for our current needs even if we coated the entire countryside with collectors"
Well, my neighbor seems to supply all the electricity he and his family need from 3 rather small photovoltaic panels.
Plus there is still a lot of room for improved efficiencies of things electric.
"My opinion? Theses savages are stupid enough to breed when they can't feed themselves, let alone their larvae. It doesn't take education or literacy to understand the problem; a below-average human intelligence should readily grasp the situation. It's not my problem, and I resent you attempting to make it my problem."
etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Oh boy, another highschool kid discovers Ayn Rand! I was going to respond to several of your confused points, but there's nothing quite coherent enough to deal with. So instead, here's some simpering for you: sticking your head up your ass won't change the facts.
Slashdot Mirror
" The supply of Uranium is finite, too!
:-)
In the same sense that the Sun's energy is finite. We'll have evolved to another species before we run out of U, Th and other fissionables. "
Bullshit. The richer deposits are already playing out, and while I'm sure there's a goodly quantity of U ore somewhere in the earth's crust, it will take more and more energy to retrieve it.
"The days of monster SUVs are numbered. "
That's for damned sure!!!
" Supply and demand will take care of this nicely. We have lots and lots of energy availble, just at a price."
Utter bullshit. 2nd Law of Thermodynamics trumps S&D every time. When the _energy_ cost to obtain a unit of energy is more than that energy, it doesn't matter where the price goes - you're done.
" I think you underestimate how clever we can be when needed."
I really, REALLY hope you are correct, and that I am wrong. I must say, I think you are overestimating how clever we can be, and I think you have way too much faith in "supply and demand". The market just can't cope with some of these issues. And the market can't make something from nothing.
" Wouldn't a modern breeder reactor (of which we have none thanks to the goddamn hippies) "
Yeah, the hippies sure do wield a lot of power, they virtually run things around here.
" We have nuclear powered subs, why not have nuclear powered spacecraft? Am I missing something?"
Gravity?
I just love the way we tend to assume that every problem has a solution. The problem being "the need for power".
At the risk of sounding unAmerican, can it be there is no supply-side solution? Fossil fuels are finite and dirty, hydro is pretty well tapped out, the other alternatives all limited as described. And guess what? The supply of Uranium is finite, too!
Can it be that the major part of the solution is massive improvements in the efficiency of our energy use, combined with controlling our population?
Not only is population growing, but huge segments of the existing population are trying their damnedest to live like Americans. We don't need cars that get 10 more mpg, we need to rethink the whole damned paradigm.
I think we're in for an energy crisis that will make that of the early 70's look like a joke. I don't see us confronting the issue sensibly in anything like enough time to avoid it.
One other thing to keep in the back of your mind: agriculture. Modern "agriculture" runs on petroleum (and fossil water). Tractors, fertilizers, food transport. When the petroleum crunch comes, sooner than many of you seem to think, there is going to be a big problem with food...
Have I cheered you up?
Before you get too excited about soy, check out this site:
http://www.soyonlineservice.co.nz/
Very bad news...
- Steve
Somebody mod this asshole down please. :-)
" I wonder what makes us so sure that Britney Spears' ass is NOT hairy. Has anyone on /. even seen her ass and is able to vouch that it is in fact hair free?"
Where are my damned mod points when I need 'em! ROFLM(H)AO!
" I don't think I am nearly geeky enough for /. any more. Touch-screen/graphics tablets just don't arouse those sort of feelings for me. But, man, just take a look at this beauty [wacom.com].
... uh... uh... huuuuu!!
:-)
I'm a normal, red-blooded male but when I look at that it just makes me
Oh, crap."
My suspicions are confirmed
"...one of the few pieces of hardware that I would consider starting a family with..."
/. any more. Touch-screen/graphics tablets just don't arouse those sort of feelings for me.
I don't think I am nearly geeky enough for
"Commercial exploitation of near-earth asteroids and the Moon is within our reach technologically, and it comes at essentially no cost to us."
WTF? Essentially no cost? How do you propose getting to a near-earth asteroid, mining and refining whatever putative resource might be there, and returning it to Earth "essentially no cost to us"?
"But what good is it to know there's water on the moon or Mars if nobody goes there to use it?"
Someday someone _will_ go there and use it. But before you make your travel plans to Mars, it's a good idea to learn as much as you can about it.
Everybody is in such a hurry! Humans WILL go to Mars - I see it as practically inevitable. But you're in for a disappointment if you think it's going to happen on, say, Zubrin's timescale. I've said it before whenever this sort of topic has come up... SPACE IS EXTREMELY DIFFICULT, ESPECIALLY FOR LIVING THINGS. It is difficult financially, politically, energetically, engineering-wise, organizationally, biologically, psychologically, you name it.
Just because we all grew up reading science fiction that describes all sorts of space-faring wonders does not make it easy. Sometimes it seems that y'all think that because Heinlein wrote cheery space-operas, NASA must really willfully suck for holding out on us. Folks, Heinlein et al. wrote great science fiction, but it is fiction!
You write about mining platinum on asteroids so we can have cheap, plentiful fuel cells on Earth. Do you have any clue as to the magnitude of that undertaking? Getting there, extracting/refining the platinum, getting it back to Earth... Do you seriously believe that the bottom line - financially and/or energetically would be positive? If you do, I've got an asteroid to sell you...
The Space Station, for all its problems, will provide several important increments of engineering, organization, and biological/psychological knowledge. I know, it's very hip to put down the ISS, and there surely are some fuckups associated with it. But it's a necessary step. Space exploration is just as much about learning how to administer huge complex systems involving thousands of people and suppliers as it is about rockets blasting spaceward-ho!
Sure, you could probably cobble together a quick and dirty manned mission to Mars within 10 years or so as Zubrin says, but it would be just like the Apollo program everybody whines about - a dead end. Probably end up with some dead space pioneers, too.
I mean, I understand why you'd like to hurry it up: I personally would get a huge thrill out of seeing the first video from folks on Mars. I doubt if I'll see it in my lifetime (I'm 47), but I'd like to. But not if it means cutting corners and rushing. Let's think it through, do it right...
- Steve
Well, both the ice cream and the salmon will make a turd.
"And until we're all running the exact same hardware..."
I wonder... has there ever been a formal study done on the relative bugginess of Mac vs. Wintel software? Although there are different Mac platforms, there are still far fewer combos than in the Wintel world. I wonder if this manifests itself in reliability.
This is not a troll or anything - I haven't done anything with Macs in years, and I just don't have a sense of it.
" First of all, Microsoft software does stay up for 99.99% of the time for a sample of typical users -- typical users who don't aggressively look for remote exploits."
I am a consultant that supports lots of Windows users, and I'm here to tell you that the above statement is bullshit.
"One thing that I get from the book is more support for the idea that information processing may be more important to the Universe than physical matter."
What kind of a statement is that? What is "information"? Where does it reside? Where is "information" "processed"? What the hell does "important" mean to the Universe? What an absurdly useless statement.
... what you need is a $.49 memo pad and pencil.
Sheesh.
- Steve
Talk about totally missing the point, jackass.
The idea is that all these wastes become food or other inputs to other living things, etc. They are exactly saying that it is impossible to not make "waste", but that by proper design, it won't be dead-end, lost-to-the-ecosystem "waste".
Ah yes, the old "anything humans do is natural". What a load of unhelpful semantic bullshit. Yes, humans exist in the real world, and are in that sense "natural", but you know damned well the meaning of the term in the context of these discussions.
Humans are, of course, natural. We need food, water, shelter, etc. One might say that by abstracting ourselves out of the real world, we are able to get ourselves way out on a limb. Which we are busily sawing off on the wrong side. Oh well, natural species go extinct all the time.
Look folks,
/. is that people seem to be clueless to the fact that space is extremely fucking difficult.
It's a good thing that all this water has been found on Mars. But it doesn't mean that now a manned mission to Mars is going to be a simple walk in the park, with terraforming right behind.
It takes a lot of energy to get at that buried ice, a lot of energy to melt it, and a lot of energy to lyse it into O2 and H2. Where is it supposed to come from? Solar?
Mars is farther from the Sun than Earth... less solar flux. Where are the acres of photovoltaic cells going to come from? Not to mention the mining machines, the melters, the tanks, etc.
I'm not against a manned mission to Mars, and I think this finding of water is a good thing. I just don't see how it translates into "now we can easily go to Mars right away, yippee!". That is just pure wishful thinking.
The problem with most of these highly-optimistic manned-space-mission discussions that you get on
Yes, there are political and financial hurdles to space exploration, but the bedrock engineering problems are enormous. I'm NOT saying insurmountable - just enormous.
We'll get there. It'll take time. I predict many will die along the way. It won't be easy. Space kind of sucks, really, if you happen to be a living thing.
I hate to pour cold water on anyone's enthusiasm - I have been a space buff since I watched Alan Shephard blast off on the first suborbital flight for America's space program as a lad. Nothing would please me more than to see the first TV from folks standing on the surface of Mars, though I honestly doubt it'll happen in my lifetime.
I just strongly believe that absurdly optimistic characterizations of how easy it's all gonna be will cause more harm than good...
- Steve
"Are you conscious?", they asked the computer.
Deep Thought pondered their question.
"Yes," he said. "and that reminds me of a story..."
... is that nobody knows the values of those last few terms. It's not that the concept behind the equation is wrong, it's just that you don't have clue one as to what to plug in there. Nobody has any idea whatsoever the average lifespan of a "technological society". Nobody knows half the other probabilities in the equation.
I actually had some kid at a party state that "it's a mathematical certainty that life exists on other planets". He based that claim on the Drake Equation.
Dudes, having a good sense of what the terms might be is nothing like knowing what values to plug in...
- Steve
The Palestinian-Israeli conflict will be resolved, global warming reversed, and world hunger ended. I am definitely staggered.
(having one of those days when these sorts of breakthroughs seem ever so slightly irrelevant to the future of life on Earth - could you tell?)
"Let's all sit here on this one little godforsaken planet and hope that nothing comes along and does a number on it."
I hate to interrupt your extropian wet dream, but our little planet is the one place that's not "godforsaken" for a long, long distance.
You talk about people being paranoid about nuclear technology (justifiably paranoid, IMO), but you are willing to rush into space because an asteroid might hit us.
Now look, sooner or later we'll figure out how to get into space in a big way. But it's not worth rushing, and it's not worth poisoning the earth. It's a lovely idea to "leave home", but let's not burn down the house (where our parents still live) while we're at it.
"Solar power, wind power and stuff is nice, but the bottom line is there cannot possibly be enough of it even for our current needs even if we coated the entire countryside with collectors"
Well, my neighbor seems to supply all the electricity he and his family need from 3 rather small photovoltaic panels.
Plus there is still a lot of room for improved efficiencies of things electric.
So your premise seems a little exaggerated.
"My opinion? Theses savages are stupid enough to breed when they can't feed themselves, let alone their larvae. It doesn't take education or literacy to understand the problem; a below-average human intelligence should readily grasp the situation. It's not my problem, and I resent you attempting to make it my problem."
etc., etc., ad nauseam.
Oh boy, another highschool kid discovers Ayn Rand! I was going to respond to several of your confused points, but there's nothing quite coherent enough to deal with. So instead, here's some simpering for you: sticking your head up your ass won't change the facts.