While your comment is relevant to referenda and elections, petitions are all about not-necessarily-representative minorities. They are used to determine if enough people care about an issue/candidate/party to bring it to the wider population. If all the signers of a petition use the internet, or are named Jilles, it doesn't matter, as long as there are enough signatures.
And this is exactly how it works today. By gathering signatures door-to-door, or through mailings and calls to members, all sorts of groups with limited appeal manage to get issues, candidates, and parties on ballots.
You and the FBI are both making a very important omission: the FBI investigates US RESIDENTS! They are not in charge of protecting us from foreign enemies!
As US residents, we once had rights like due process, the right to know all evidence gathered against you, and prohibition of illegal search and seizure. It is not just reasonable, but should be required, that we know exactly how law enforcement is gathering evidence.
It is not about how to best obtain security, it is about putting our liberty back into the equation.
Assuming that gravity behaves like quantum forces (no sure bet at this time), you could imagine an experiment like those that "detect" quarks without actually separating them from each other.
Assume we can fling massive (order of the black hole itself) objects about at near light speed. No problem:-)
Fling such an object past the black hole at a close distance, and observe the path of the object, plus the gravity waves from it and the black hole.
What I don't know is what current theory would predict about the results of this experiment: would it let you observe the internal structure of the black hole indirectly -- in a sense, would you hear how it rattles, and know what's in the box?
The paradox for me is that the gravitons (again assuming they exist) would travel at the speed of light, and thus not escape the event horizon any better than anything else, but still the existence of the event horizon depends on the effects of the gravitons. Huh?
"The theory goes (extremely roughly) that as individual particles reach the "edge" (event horizon?) of the black hole (crossing this line means you never come back), some of them are torn apart, half of the particle going in, half going out, and some energy is released during this fission"
Sorry, but that's a little too rough. Particles are not ripped in two. Rather, at the event horizon, just like everywhere else, virtual particle/antiparticle pairs are constantly being formed and annihiliated as allowed by the uncertainty principle (they don't last long enough to be detectable, so they don't violate any conservation laws). However, being at the event horizon, some of these pairs get formed, and then one of the two particles gets trapped by the black hole, and its partner does not annihilate undetectably quickly, but rather sticks around long enough to collide with other matter or decay or both, thus producing Hawking radiation.
Now someone can correct my rough explanation and eventually we'll get this straight...
You've kind of hit upon the whole reason for making these theories in the first place. In the time when quark theory was developed, and even somewhat today, the "model" for elementary particles was often criticized as "zoology" -- a mindless listing of all the wondrous variety of particles with no explanation of why there are so many, or why they behave as they do.
The Higgs theory is one among many that starts by guessing at an explanation for what is seen, then develops a rigorous model for the explanation, which leads to a prediction of what will be seen if we keep looking.
The prediction isn't so much a recipe for finding the particle as it is a police sketch of the suspect. And the experiments to find the particle are only "designed" to find it in the same way that a microscope is "designed" to find bacteria -- if the bacteria doesn't exist, the most powerful microscope in the world won't make it seem to.
After all, the experiment is quite crude in concept: bash particles into each other at high enough speed that lots of energetic things fly out, then watch for the suspect by recording all the trails these energetic things take, which will tell you their mass, charge, spin, and what they decay into. If one of them fit's the suspect's description, you've confirmed the theory.
The problem comes with the negative result -- if you don't find the particle, or don't see your favorite strain of bacteria, that doesn't mean they're not out there. But if you keep on increasing energy (magnification), and you run enough experiments, you can at least determine how rare the beast is.
I hope this answers the question and gives some credence to the idea that there's not a circular logic going on.
Disclaimer: there may be some property of matter that we haven't seen yet that gives better insight into how things occur, and the experiments are NOT designed to see that -- of course, without a negative or confusing result, we have no reason to believe such a property exists.
Other disclaimer: just because there is a critter that fits the description of the Higgs, doesn't mean there isn't another theory that also explains its existence -- it does mean that that theory probably is equivalent to Higgs' theory in some situations, just as Newton's theory of gravitation makes the same predictions as Einstein's theory of relativity within a certain range of observations.
I don't think we could all get more confused than that article left us, but let me try by asking a few questions:
The article is trying to reveal something surprising, but which is it:
That mid-mass black holes are just as INefficient as super-massive black holes, thus bringing an unexpected phenomenon into a new realm of scale?
or
That mid-mass black holes are just as powerful, and thus considerably MORE efficient than, super-massive black holes, thus limiting the odd inefficiency of super-massive black holes to only the highest mass scales?
In any case, I don't think it means that the mid-mass black holes are inexplicably efficient.
Some questions about the low-efficiency super-massive black holes:
Doesn't the mass that gathers around these holes "dilute" the gravitation as you get closer to the black hole, and are surrounded by mass in all directions? Assuming this has been accounted for, how much more inefficient are these holes than expected?
Could the supermassive black holes be decaying, thus weakening the rate at which new mass gathers, while still being surrounded with the mass and radiation to be expected from their large initial mass? Isn't decay a prediction of Hawking's?
Lame-ass speculation is of course perfectly welcome in lieu of real answers...
Maybe Slashdot needs a new kind of discussion where posters review product releases. How about a reverse Slashdot Interview that asks US to review a new product by day and time X, and at that time post the article to which we can post reviews or comments?
There will of course be no way to eliminate trolls, but the mod system will at least have some more-informed posts to chew on.
Does slashdot have a suggestion box? Time to hunt...
If we do see an alien intelligence, or it sees us, I'm not so sure that we (or they) would easily determine that intelligence exists.
For example, it seems that apes have a rudimentary (or better) intelligence, and dolphins even more so. It also seems they have their own rudimentary languages. We may have taught Washoe and Koko (anyone know any talking dolphins?) to sign, but we haven't learned their language (correct me if I'm wrong), at least not well enough to lay to rest any doubts of their intelligence.
Why? Perhaps we just are too arrogant to spend the effort necessary to think at their level. Perhaps we're not so smart ourselves. Perhaps it's just damn nigh impossible. Perhaps there is some unknown trait they don't possess that makes their intelligence inherently inadequate (so far the differences all seem to be a matter of degree). Perhaps the sensory experiences are just too different to cross the gap.
Virtually any human group can figure out how to communicate with virtually any other human group, and usually fairly quickly, but here we don't really communicate with any of several species that appear capable. I wonder if we can ever figure out how to speak dolphin -- an alien that finds us might wonder the same.
Not that I know anything about Malaysia, but I think Korea's experience with MS might awaken some local tech businesspeople to the potential pitfalls of MS "helping" the government. I'm sorry I don't have a link, but Linux Today did a whole series on it a while back. Look for articles regarding the president of MS Korea resigning.
Too bad it's Sunday and no one will read this. If it's true (I just finished deleting a few urban legends from my email box), it informed me. Assuming all the facts are true, the most cynical possible spin on it would be something like this:
Someone with a connection to Oak Ridge (in Al's home state) or DoD or somesuch puts a bug in Al's ear that they'd really like some pork for a network project they're working on. In an effort to dress up the pork, Al (or one of the other co-authors or co-sponsors) tosses around some language about this bringing computing to the masses. A few decades of sweat, genius, and innovation from people who had nothing to do with Gore, and voila! Al's claiming he invented the internet...
Even in that cynical light, Al doesn't come off looking too bad. Making laws that help your constituents and your election most immediately, but that include provisions that could let everyone benefit is how it's supposed to work. Sure, if Al's not there, someone else figures out that two computer heads are better than one, but the point is that he was there and he did do it and he didn't hold it up or insert some lame-ass provision about late-term abortions or whatever.
I'm not ready to have him replace Vint Cerf, but I think Al can take some credit. (Assuming the above is true.)
You could easily make the same argument for any of them getting paid more for the work they do, and perhaps doing more work because of it.
But if we value the work of these professions only in terms of money, the value of their work diminishes: it's not as honest, as challenging, as self-sacrificing, as useful, as impartial, as thorough when it is done in an atmosphere where its value is set only by who finds it valuable.
Think about it. What's worth more money? A report on how product X kills, or a report on how product X grows hair on your scalp? If the makers of product X can't pay for the report, it's a toss-up. If they can, it's a slam-dunk that they'd pay well for the good news, and pay even better to suppress the bad.
There's another element here: competition for scarce resources. The universities are conveniently NOT part of the corporations that are providing funding, so that they can claim credibility, or at least plausible deniability. Rather they are sub-contractors, looking for the customers with the deepest pockets, and eschewing the research that is just costly overhead, or even merely low-margin.
Don't underestimate this later point. Think about the harm to all of us from the fact that the best:
serve the communities and individuals with the most money, and the worst of these professions serve those of lesser means.
What matters is not that we keep these professionals poor. What matters is that they work for values other than money, and that we avoid systems like the one brewing at universities that punishes professionals that attend to anything other than money.
Back at my first programming job in college, I would try to explain the problem I was having to the receptionist or data-entry clerk, and although I would really try to explain it in English, they would always stare blankly at me with no idea what was going on.
Didn't matter, though, because by talking it out I always talked myself into an answer. I'd say "That'll work. Thanks!" and go back to my desk with them staring at my back, puzzled (and probably frightened).
Do NOT follow the temptation to go into project management or somesuch, if your programming job isn't enjoyable anymore! I tried that, and am now pining away for the sort of job I used to whine about.
But, I have done more than pine, I have used the tight job market to my advantage and have cried enough to get a promise that I can go back to coding and move into design/architecture when I get up on some new tools.
Now I just have to "finish my homework" and doc up this part of the project, and my reward will be doing some coding on the next part. Talk about a mental block -- knowing I have to keep slogging away before I can do what I'd like...Aaarghh!
So, about the only advice I can give is to know what you really want to do, then make a fscking pest of yourself until your employer lets you do it.
And if you're still coding for a living, count your blessings.
When it comes to free speech issues, they say that it's the speech that is most challenging that must be defended most vigorously.
If you don't defend a right, you don't have it. RIAA has made peace with MP3.com, so there is nothing to defend there.
Put another way, if we let Napster go down with just a shrug, more "legitimate" challenges to the current IP orthodoxy can be beaten down with the precedent created by Napster's defeat.
There are plans to send neutrinos underground from Fermilab to a particle detector in the 1500-foot deep Soudan mine in northern Minnesota. The purpose is detecting decays or oscillations to demonstrate/measure neutrino mass. I don't know the status of this idea.
I also don't know whether that means you can transmit armed forces radio via neutrino:-)
Solar and wind are exactly the things to use, and here's why:
While the efficiency of power conversion may be low, remember that what you are converting is free.
While solar and wind can't generate intense power or power on demand, "storing" them in the form of hydrogen allows for intense and demanding applications.
Nothing in solar or wind requires large-scale generation to be efficient, thus allowing production close to where you need it -- on your roof, for instance. This contributes to system-wide efficiency, and allows generation capacity to grow and shrink with demand.
Some success scenarios:
A poor country with no electrical infrastructure and few mineral resources but lots of shoreline deploys photoelectric cells on booms around an offshore electrolysis station. Hydrogen is transported out via a pipeline or tanker to the major cities, where residents can refuel their cars and home cells. Voila! an electrified, gasified country that doesn't have to build an electric grid or import oil.
A ranching town in the Australian Outback builds a series of hydrogen-producing wind turbines on a windy ridge. The citizens have car and home fuel cells to make use of it, and now the government doesn't have to run the electric grid or oil pipelines out there, and people can move to the town without huge startup costs.
A rural American city far from its power source can convince the local manufacturer, already attracted by cheap land and labor, to build their next plant here as well, as the city kicks in for its own hydrogen-provided electrical capacity. Maybe the state helps out, seeing as how it brings jobs AND relieves the pressure on the capital city's growing electrical needs.
You see, the Hydrogen Economy concept has more benefits than saving the planet (like open source has more benefits than users' rights). It is also about independence, flexibility, and global availability. Everywhere that people live, there's sun, wind, and water. That's all the fuel that's needed.
That's where the Hydrogen Economy concept comes in: you use efficient, or even (gasp!) clean electric generation to separate hydrogen from water, then you distribute it through pipelines to where it can power fuel cells in homes and cars, creating water as a byproduct.
Of course there are inefficencies involved, but renewable energy generation costs no fuel, and hydrogen fuel is a more efficient and flexible means of power transmission than the grid.
Of course, what's holding it up is technology, infrastructure, and price:
Cheap fuel cells aren't efficient enough yet, and efficient fuel cells are made with platinum, which is so scarce there's not enough of it to power the cars in just the U.S., let alone the world.
A hydrogen distribution infrastructure would need to be set up, and the technology for making such a system safe is still being worked out.
And finally, generation by renewables is just too expensive compared to cheap oil. But the squeeze keeps getting tighter as oil prices go up and renewable tech gets cheaper and more efficient.
The first signs of this dam breaking has been serving the market in places that can't access an electric grid, and the infrastructure built for that market will bring the price for the rest of us down. Fortunately, this infrastructure does not rely on massive, central power plants, and thus can be more easily adopted.
Another X factor is that electrical generation capacity in the U.S. is becoming inadequate, and NIMBY attitudes are keeping conventional capacity from being easily built (especially nuclear).
So, as usual, it's the market holding things up, and it will be the market that will finally allow the breakthrough.
Although any of your objections may well remain obstacles, here are some possible answers:
Power them the same way that the helicopter intends to be powered (plutonium heat to charge batteries), only smaller, or perhaps with a fuel cell that doesn't require an oxidizing reaction, but does rely on common local compounds.
Get them to the surface the same way as the helicopter: retros or parachutes or whatever. Remember that the helicopter will be much more delicate, with gyros and rotors and all.
Communicating with an omni RF antenna shouldn't be a problem. If FM can go through your living room wall, I'm sure it can get through ethane fog. As for composition, there's plenty of bandwidth to choose from.
The funding could be an issue, as there are some elements of operation that won't burn money any slower, but the data gathering and data processing would burn money more slowly.
I don't see why the orbiter should be incapable of lasting 10 years; as the Voyagers demonstrated, plutonium-powered probes can have exceedingly long lives. There is however the matter that it takes more power to sustain orbit than to just maintain telemetry and make a manuever every few years.
It seems that the main argument for the helicopter is speed. Now this is probably nuts, but given the decades between our likely launches to Titan, couldn't we deploy snakebots on the surface and wait patiently for the data to trickle in?
Perhaps we could have an orbiting surveyor that drops a bot when it sees something interesting, or when the data from a previous drop indicate to the mission scientists back on Earth what an interesting site might look like.
If made small enough, the power consumption should be low enough to allow years of power or even local regeneration/refueling.
I know what you're going to say: Titan is too big to explore with snakes. But given the smaller size, complexity, and power of the snakes, you could have hundreds of them in the same weight/cost as one helicopter.
I see no reason why a once-a-decade mission can't take a decade to complete its data-gathering.
Actually, I was trying to say that survival requires big cutbacks, not that they'll survive. (Although I'd say odds are that they will.)
As for how to make money once a product GPL's to the community? It would have to be that they package or add-on or distribute or support better than others (which, compared to Linux software vendors, they do, except support).
But, hey, I'm worried enough that I sold before it dropped off the board. Wishful thinking had already cost me my gains, I didn't want it to cost me my initial investment.
The thing is, they are trying to keep their feet in both Windows and Linux, which may some day pay off strategically, but is right now a big costly pain in the ass. And what's it getting them? Their Windows app revenue is plummeting (they took too long getting the version 9 of everything out, and don't have the marketing cash, shelf space, or OEM clout of MS), while the Linux app revenue is barely a blip.
Right now they're getting all the pain of open source (low price) and none of the gain (code donations). They need to go on a job-cutting spree, encourage the code donations (GPL), and hope that their products can be nurtured by the community long enough for them to gain momentum and revenue. Of course, if they GPL everything, it won't necessarily be Corel that gets to cash in on the momentum...
This is why commercial software companies need to be wary about opening established products too fast -- they've already made the investment in their commercial products, and opening them up just undermines their ability to make a short-term return.
BTW, I feel for your stock story -- I got in at 4 last June, watched it go to 45, and then finally gave up and sold at, you guessed it, 4. Kinda like a bad dream -- no harm done but a lot of lost sleep along the way!
Slashdot Mirror
While your comment is relevant to referenda and elections, petitions are all about not-necessarily-representative minorities. They are used to determine if enough people care about an issue/candidate/party to bring it to the wider population. If all the signers of a petition use the internet, or are named Jilles, it doesn't matter, as long as there are enough signatures.
And this is exactly how it works today. By gathering signatures door-to-door, or through mailings and calls to members, all sorts of groups with limited appeal manage to get issues, candidates, and parties on ballots.
You and the FBI are both making a very important omission: the FBI investigates US RESIDENTS! They are not in charge of protecting us from foreign enemies!
As US residents, we once had rights like due process, the right to know all evidence gathered against you, and prohibition of illegal search and seizure. It is not just reasonable, but should be required, that we know exactly how law enforcement is gathering evidence.
It is not about how to best obtain security, it is about putting our liberty back into the equation.
Assuming that gravity behaves like quantum forces (no sure bet at this time), you could imagine an experiment like those that "detect" quarks without actually separating them from each other.
:-)
Assume we can fling massive (order of the black hole itself) objects about at near light speed. No problem
Fling such an object past the black hole at a close distance, and observe the path of the object, plus the gravity waves from it and the black hole.
What I don't know is what current theory would predict about the results of this experiment: would it let you observe the internal structure of the black hole indirectly -- in a sense, would you hear how it rattles, and know what's in the box?
The paradox for me is that the gravitons (again assuming they exist) would travel at the speed of light, and thus not escape the event horizon any better than anything else, but still the existence of the event horizon depends on the effects of the gravitons. Huh?
So, what would this experiment do?
You said:
"The theory goes (extremely roughly) that as individual particles reach the "edge" (event horizon?) of the black hole (crossing this line means you never come back), some of them are torn apart, half of the particle going in, half going out, and some energy is released during this fission"
Sorry, but that's a little too rough. Particles are not ripped in two. Rather, at the event horizon, just like everywhere else, virtual particle/antiparticle pairs are constantly being formed and annihiliated as allowed by the uncertainty principle (they don't last long enough to be detectable, so they don't violate any conservation laws). However, being at the event horizon, some of these pairs get formed, and then one of the two particles gets trapped by the black hole, and its partner does not annihilate undetectably quickly, but rather sticks around long enough to collide with other matter or decay or both, thus producing Hawking radiation.
Now someone can correct my rough explanation and eventually we'll get this straight...
Damn! Here I was thinking that Windows was perfectly optimized for keeping recipes.
You've kind of hit upon the whole reason for making these theories in the first place. In the time when quark theory was developed, and even somewhat today, the "model" for elementary particles was often criticized as "zoology" -- a mindless listing of all the wondrous variety of particles with no explanation of why there are so many, or why they behave as they do.
The Higgs theory is one among many that starts by guessing at an explanation for what is seen, then develops a rigorous model for the explanation, which leads to a prediction of what will be seen if we keep looking.
The prediction isn't so much a recipe for finding the particle as it is a police sketch of the suspect. And the experiments to find the particle are only "designed" to find it in the same way that a microscope is "designed" to find bacteria -- if the bacteria doesn't exist, the most powerful microscope in the world won't make it seem to.
After all, the experiment is quite crude in concept: bash particles into each other at high enough speed that lots of energetic things fly out, then watch for the suspect by recording all the trails these energetic things take, which will tell you their mass, charge, spin, and what they decay into. If one of them fit's the suspect's description, you've confirmed the theory.
The problem comes with the negative result -- if you don't find the particle, or don't see your favorite strain of bacteria, that doesn't mean they're not out there. But if you keep on increasing energy (magnification), and you run enough experiments, you can at least determine how rare the beast is.
I hope this answers the question and gives some credence to the idea that there's not a circular logic going on.
Disclaimer: there may be some property of matter that we haven't seen yet that gives better insight into how things occur, and the experiments are NOT designed to see that -- of course, without a negative or confusing result, we have no reason to believe such a property exists.
Other disclaimer: just because there is a critter that fits the description of the Higgs, doesn't mean there isn't another theory that also explains its existence -- it does mean that that theory probably is equivalent to Higgs' theory in some situations, just as Newton's theory of gravitation makes the same predictions as Einstein's theory of relativity within a certain range of observations.
I don't think we could all get more confused than that article left us, but let me try by asking a few questions:
The article is trying to reveal something surprising, but which is it:
That mid-mass black holes are just as INefficient as super-massive black holes, thus bringing an unexpected phenomenon into a new realm of scale?
or
That mid-mass black holes are just as powerful, and thus considerably MORE efficient than, super-massive black holes, thus limiting the odd inefficiency of super-massive black holes to only the highest mass scales?
In any case, I don't think it means that the mid-mass black holes are inexplicably efficient.
Some questions about the low-efficiency super-massive black holes:
Doesn't the mass that gathers around these holes "dilute" the gravitation as you get closer to the black hole, and are surrounded by mass in all directions? Assuming this has been accounted for, how much more inefficient are these holes than expected?
Could the supermassive black holes be decaying, thus weakening the rate at which new mass gathers, while still being surrounded with the mass and radiation to be expected from their large initial mass? Isn't decay a prediction of Hawking's?
Lame-ass speculation is of course perfectly welcome in lieu of real answers...
Maybe Slashdot needs a new kind of discussion where posters review product releases. How about a reverse Slashdot Interview that asks US to review a new product by day and time X, and at that time post the article to which we can post reviews or comments?
There will of course be no way to eliminate trolls, but the mod system will at least have some more-informed posts to chew on.
Does slashdot have a suggestion box? Time to hunt...
Search for Other Terrestrial Intelligence?
If we do see an alien intelligence, or it sees us, I'm not so sure that we (or they) would easily determine that intelligence exists.
For example, it seems that apes have a rudimentary (or better) intelligence, and dolphins even more so. It also seems they have their own rudimentary languages. We may have taught Washoe and Koko (anyone know any talking dolphins?) to sign, but we haven't learned their language (correct me if I'm wrong), at least not well enough to lay to rest any doubts of their intelligence.
Why? Perhaps we just are too arrogant to spend the effort necessary to think at their level. Perhaps we're not so smart ourselves. Perhaps it's just damn nigh impossible. Perhaps there is some unknown trait they don't possess that makes their intelligence inherently inadequate (so far the differences all seem to be a matter of degree). Perhaps the sensory experiences are just too different to cross the gap.
Virtually any human group can figure out how to communicate with virtually any other human group, and usually fairly quickly, but here we don't really communicate with any of several species that appear capable. I wonder if we can ever figure out how to speak dolphin -- an alien that finds us might wonder the same.
Not that I know anything about Malaysia, but I think Korea's experience with MS might awaken some local tech businesspeople to the potential pitfalls of MS "helping" the government. I'm sorry I don't have a link, but Linux Today did a whole series on it a while back. Look for articles regarding the president of MS Korea resigning.
Too bad it's Sunday and no one will read this. If it's true (I just finished deleting a few urban legends from my email box), it informed me. Assuming all the facts are true, the most cynical possible spin on it would be something like this:
Someone with a connection to Oak Ridge (in Al's home state) or DoD or somesuch puts a bug in Al's ear that they'd really like some pork for a network project they're working on. In an effort to dress up the pork, Al (or one of the other co-authors or co-sponsors) tosses around some language about this bringing computing to the masses. A few decades of sweat, genius, and innovation from people who had nothing to do with Gore, and voila! Al's claiming he invented the internet...
Even in that cynical light, Al doesn't come off looking too bad. Making laws that help your constituents and your election most immediately, but that include provisions that could let everyone benefit is how it's supposed to work. Sure, if Al's not there, someone else figures out that two computer heads are better than one, but the point is that he was there and he did do it and he didn't hold it up or insert some lame-ass provision about late-term abortions or whatever.
I'm not ready to have him replace Vint Cerf, but I think Al can take some credit. (Assuming the above is true.)
Many posters have been crying "what's wrong with formerly starved researchers making a little money?"
Well, instead of researchers, let's put in the words:
artists
politicians
judges
journalists
policemen
teachers
doctors
You could easily make the same argument for any of them getting paid more for the work they do, and perhaps doing more work because of it.
But if we value the work of these professions only in terms of money, the value of their work diminishes: it's not as honest, as challenging, as self-sacrificing, as useful, as impartial, as thorough when it is done in an atmosphere where its value is set only by who finds it valuable.
Think about it. What's worth more money? A report on how product X kills, or a report on how product X grows hair on your scalp? If the makers of product X can't pay for the report, it's a toss-up. If they can, it's a slam-dunk that they'd pay well for the good news, and pay even better to suppress the bad.
There's another element here: competition for scarce resources. The universities are conveniently NOT part of the corporations that are providing funding, so that they can claim credibility, or at least plausible deniability. Rather they are sub-contractors, looking for the customers with the deepest pockets, and eschewing the research that is just costly overhead, or even merely low-margin.
Don't underestimate this later point. Think about the harm to all of us from the fact that the best:
researchers
artists
politicians
judges
journalists
policemen
teachers
doctors
serve the communities and individuals with the most money, and the worst of these professions serve those of lesser means.
What matters is not that we keep these professionals poor. What matters is that they work for values other than money, and that we avoid systems like the one brewing at universities that punishes professionals that attend to anything other than money.
Back at my first programming job in college, I would try to explain the problem I was having to the receptionist or data-entry clerk, and although I would really try to explain it in English, they would always stare blankly at me with no idea what was going on.
Didn't matter, though, because by talking it out I always talked myself into an answer. I'd say "That'll work. Thanks!" and go back to my desk with them staring at my back, puzzled (and probably frightened).
Do NOT follow the temptation to go into project management or somesuch, if your programming job isn't enjoyable anymore! I tried that, and am now pining away for the sort of job I used to whine about.
But, I have done more than pine, I have used the tight job market to my advantage and have cried enough to get a promise that I can go back to coding and move into design/architecture when I get up on some new tools.
Now I just have to "finish my homework" and doc up this part of the project, and my reward will be doing some coding on the next part. Talk about a mental block -- knowing I have to keep slogging away before I can do what I'd like...Aaarghh!
So, about the only advice I can give is to know what you really want to do, then make a fscking pest of yourself until your employer lets you do it.
And if you're still coding for a living, count your blessings.
When it comes to free speech issues, they say that it's the speech that is most challenging that must be defended most vigorously.
If you don't defend a right, you don't have it. RIAA has made peace with MP3.com, so there is nothing to defend there.
Put another way, if we let Napster go down with just a shrug, more "legitimate" challenges to the current IP orthodoxy can be beaten down with the precedent created by Napster's defeat.
There are plans to send neutrinos underground from Fermilab to a particle detector in the 1500-foot deep Soudan mine in northern Minnesota. The purpose is detecting decays or oscillations to demonstrate/measure neutrino mass. I don't know the status of this idea.
:-)
I also don't know whether that means you can transmit armed forces radio via neutrino
Solar and wind are exactly the things to use, and here's why:
While the efficiency of power conversion may be low, remember that what you are converting is free.
While solar and wind can't generate intense power or power on demand, "storing" them in the form of hydrogen allows for intense and demanding applications.
Nothing in solar or wind requires large-scale generation to be efficient, thus allowing production close to where you need it -- on your roof, for instance. This contributes to system-wide efficiency, and allows generation capacity to grow and shrink with demand.
Some success scenarios:
A poor country with no electrical infrastructure and few mineral resources but lots of shoreline deploys photoelectric cells on booms around an offshore electrolysis station. Hydrogen is transported out via a pipeline or tanker to the major cities, where residents can refuel their cars and home cells. Voila! an electrified, gasified country that doesn't have to build an electric grid or import oil.
A ranching town in the Australian Outback builds a series of hydrogen-producing wind turbines on a windy ridge. The citizens have car and home fuel cells to make use of it, and now the government doesn't have to run the electric grid or oil pipelines out there, and people can move to the town without huge startup costs.
A rural American city far from its power source can convince the local manufacturer, already attracted by cheap land and labor, to build their next plant here as well, as the city kicks in for its own hydrogen-provided electrical capacity. Maybe the state helps out, seeing as how it brings jobs AND relieves the pressure on the capital city's growing electrical needs.
You see, the Hydrogen Economy concept has more benefits than saving the planet (like open source has more benefits than users' rights). It is also about independence, flexibility, and global availability. Everywhere that people live, there's sun, wind, and water. That's all the fuel that's needed.
That's where the Hydrogen Economy concept comes in: you use efficient, or even (gasp!) clean electric generation to separate hydrogen from water, then you distribute it through pipelines to where it can power fuel cells in homes and cars, creating water as a byproduct.
Of course there are inefficencies involved, but renewable energy generation costs no fuel, and hydrogen fuel is a more efficient and flexible means of power transmission than the grid.
Of course, what's holding it up is technology, infrastructure, and price:
Cheap fuel cells aren't efficient enough yet, and efficient fuel cells are made with platinum, which is so scarce there's not enough of it to power the cars in just the U.S., let alone the world.
A hydrogen distribution infrastructure would need to be set up, and the technology for making such a system safe is still being worked out.
And finally, generation by renewables is just too expensive compared to cheap oil. But the squeeze keeps getting tighter as oil prices go up and renewable tech gets cheaper and more efficient.
The first signs of this dam breaking has been serving the market in places that can't access an electric grid, and the infrastructure built for that market will bring the price for the rest of us down. Fortunately, this infrastructure does not rely on massive, central power plants, and thus can be more easily adopted.
Another X factor is that electrical generation capacity in the U.S. is becoming inadequate, and NIMBY attitudes are keeping conventional capacity from being easily built (especially nuclear).
So, as usual, it's the market holding things up, and it will be the market that will finally allow the breakthrough.
Although any of your objections may well remain obstacles, here are some possible answers:
Power them the same way that the helicopter intends to be powered (plutonium heat to charge batteries), only smaller, or perhaps with a fuel cell that doesn't require an oxidizing reaction, but does rely on common local compounds.
Get them to the surface the same way as the helicopter: retros or parachutes or whatever. Remember that the helicopter will be much more delicate, with gyros and rotors and all.
Communicating with an omni RF antenna shouldn't be a problem. If FM can go through your living room wall, I'm sure it can get through ethane fog. As for composition, there's plenty of bandwidth to choose from.
The funding could be an issue, as there are some elements of operation that won't burn money any slower, but the data gathering and data processing would burn money more slowly.
I don't see why the orbiter should be incapable of lasting 10 years; as the Voyagers demonstrated, plutonium-powered probes can have exceedingly long lives. There is however the matter that it takes more power to sustain orbit than to just maintain telemetry and make a manuever every few years.
It seems that the main argument for the helicopter is speed. Now this is probably nuts, but given the decades between our likely launches to Titan, couldn't we deploy snakebots on the surface and wait patiently for the data to trickle in?
Perhaps we could have an orbiting surveyor that drops a bot when it sees something interesting, or when the data from a previous drop indicate to the mission scientists back on Earth what an interesting site might look like.
If made small enough, the power consumption should be low enough to allow years of power or even local regeneration/refueling.
I know what you're going to say: Titan is too big to explore with snakes. But given the smaller size, complexity, and power of the snakes, you could have hundreds of them in the same weight/cost as one helicopter.
I see no reason why a once-a-decade mission can't take a decade to complete its data-gathering.
I think that's called poetic license, and I fell off my chair laughing at the imagery of it.
:-)
No, not literally
Actually, I was trying to say that survival requires big cutbacks, not that they'll survive. (Although I'd say odds are that they will.)
As for how to make money once a product GPL's to the community? It would have to be that they package or add-on or distribute or support better than others (which, compared to Linux software vendors, they do, except support).
But, hey, I'm worried enough that I sold before it dropped off the board. Wishful thinking had already cost me my gains, I didn't want it to cost me my initial investment.
The thing is, they are trying to keep their feet in both Windows and Linux, which may some day pay off strategically, but is right now a big costly pain in the ass. And what's it getting them? Their Windows app revenue is plummeting (they took too long getting the version 9 of everything out, and don't have the marketing cash, shelf space, or OEM clout of MS), while the Linux app revenue is barely a blip.
Right now they're getting all the pain of open source (low price) and none of the gain (code donations). They need to go on a job-cutting spree, encourage the code donations (GPL), and hope that their products can be nurtured by the community long enough for them to gain momentum and revenue. Of course, if they GPL everything, it won't necessarily be Corel that gets to cash in on the momentum...
This is why commercial software companies need to be wary about opening established products too fast -- they've already made the investment in their commercial products, and opening them up just undermines their ability to make a short-term return.
BTW, I feel for your stock story -- I got in at 4 last June, watched it go to 45, and then finally gave up and sold at, you guessed it, 4. Kinda like a bad dream -- no harm done but a lot of lost sleep along the way!
A few weeks ago, an analyst on CNBC was asked by a caller about the short and long term prospects for Corel. His response:
"For Corel, there is no long term."
And he wasn't smiling.
Indeed. That post should be the classic application for the "slipped on his own vomit" mod.