How can we be sure that extraterrestrials (if there are any) are broadcasting radio waves? What makes us think they would be communicating in an 'Earth-like' way?
Because they, too, have found smoke signals to be inadequate.
Radio waves are a natural phenomenon, which can be controlled by technology. They aren't specific to humans - stars and gas and lots of stuff emit radio.
Also, "radio" is just part of the EM spectrum, and not even a specific part. From a few Hertz to, well what's the border between microwave and infrared? We Earthers say "about a terahertz." I suspect the border is defined by your equipment;-)
Add to it that amplitude modulation is such a simple, obvious way of transmitting information, and the clearest, easiest form of AM is CW (continuous wave suitable for Morse code, not country-western).
Some of our FM schemes are probably human-specific, like stereo FM with the stereo sep information carried above the frequency of human hearing (a 38kHz wave for a Nyquist of 19kHz IIRC), and may differ from country to country. But AM and especially CW are easy and obvious, you might even say "natural," things to do with a radio wave.
(Our TV schemes are even more human-adapted than FM.)
Radio is as natural a way of communicating in the universe as hollering is in Earth's atmosphere. Think of the wide variety of hollerin' life we have here, from cicadas to Amy Lee.
(IIRC -- was the mail of a British colonial governor -- web searches haven't helped my memory so I'm going to do something else now and let others do the research)
It is almost always better to have one big engine than several small ones.
Roughly speaking, there's lower friction/power ratio in a big engine - two big parts rubbing together have less surface area than a lot of smaller parts, and so on.
Also at some point between pickup truck and locomotive, the efficiency of the two-stroke diesel is higher than its four-stroke counterpart.
This is true of other kinds of powerplants too. Lots of little generators aren't as good as one Big Generator.
(I'm not a mechanical engineer but I did own a V8 Chevy.)
There is no democracy in USA, it was lost decades ago. It is a two party dictatorship. (Not exactly - It is actually the Corporate rule) Proof: Try finding answers to the following on internet. (Rest of the media is a PR tool of the dictators)
(Emphasis added to mark what I'm talking about)
You have it backwards w.r.t. media and politicians. The politicians are the tools of the media.
Why do politicians have to raise so much money? To pay the media, who by the way also report bought opinion as fact.
There's an investigative idea that goes, "follow the money." The media only follows campaign money upstream, to its sources. Evil corporations, with slimy lobbyists, and so on, they unbiasedly report. Never follow it downstream, to themselves!
Because it is the media who picks the winner -- by declaring victory for a candidate before the polls are closed (media voter suppression!), reporting fraud as fact, running hit piece after hit piece.
When by accident or skill, the Other Guy wins, the media will run stories about how these machines cannot be trusted, how a cop in a doughnut shop scared off voters walking to the polls, how voting on a weekday discriminates against Third-Day Adventists.
When their guy wins? Silence concerning the method of voting, and gushing purplish-yellow reportage congratulating their victorious buddies.
There will never be an accounting of the monetary value of the media gifts lavished on The Media Candidate. How many millions of dollars is a nationally broadcast ten minute hit piece worth?
Greenland, being the possesion of Iceland, or Denmark, or Norway, or someone somewhat civilized like that -- well, we give 'em money, they give us oil.
Without patents, patent-heavy fields like pharmaceutical research fall into cutthroat, razor-thin-margin price wars - but that is not a bad thing. In fact, it's not too different than desktop computers, where we've seen manufacturers keep up with Moore's law for a remarkable amount of time, even while having to struggle to break even on almost every product.
And you will have drugs that are just as reliable as the $350 computer your cousin Zeke built.
And it's WOPR that Broderick hacks. And it's WOPR that doesn't realize the "game" is real, its missile control outputs having been directed to the control of real missiles. And the humans, having been removed from the decision loop, aren't in a position to stop it.
I'd piss on a spark plug if I though it would help.
Learn it, use it, love it -- the incredible new unit fresh from the SI, the house.
One house is roughly equivalent to 1 kilowatt, but here the resemblance to the watt ends.
Because, if the reporter likes the way the energy is made, a house can be as little as 500 watts. So the reporter can double the number of houses powered by the project!
"One million households" sounds like a lot. But, using the maximum allowable value of 1kW/house, it is really only about 1 gigawatt, which is stupidly tiny by today's standards.
Using the minimum discovered value for house, the windmill scheme might be as small as 500 megawatts.
I am looking forward to the fair and balanced press to begin using the "blow dryer" and "microwave oven" SI units, which are bigger (!) than a house, and used only to describe coal and nuclear plants.
(The page is written for a general audience, which is why I explain powers-of-two and other computery things.)
It is a bad image which should never have been printed, but the mistake was purely technical and is the same level of mistake as using too much red-eye correction or bad white points, or out-of-focus even.
The mistake was much more on Reuters's photo editor deciding to print such a messed-up picture, than their stringer who through haste submitted it. It's the editor's job to decide what, *if anything*, to print to accompany a story. It's the photographer's job to provide a lot of options for the editor. In the olden days, proof sheets full of options.
I know all the real editors are dead. A shame. Journalism used to be almost respectable!
(I did the photography/journalism stuff for six years in school, never at a professional level. I've done digital audio synthesis since the late 70s, and DSP professionally a few times since the mid-80s, including coding testing and releasing dust removal software. Thus the disastrous image immediately struck me as familiar, similar to testing situations.)
Slashdot Mirror
Radio waves are a natural phenomenon, which can be controlled by technology. They aren't specific to humans - stars and gas and lots of stuff emit radio.
Also, "radio" is just part of the EM spectrum, and not even a specific part. From a few Hertz to, well what's the border between microwave and infrared? We Earthers say "about a terahertz." I suspect the border is defined by your equipment
Add to it that amplitude modulation is such a simple, obvious way of transmitting information, and the clearest, easiest form of AM is CW (continuous wave suitable for Morse code, not country-western).
Some of our FM schemes are probably human-specific, like stereo FM with the stereo sep information carried above the frequency of human hearing (a 38kHz wave for a Nyquist of 19kHz IIRC), and may differ from country to country. But AM and especially CW are easy and obvious, you might even say "natural," things to do with a radio wave.
(Our TV schemes are even more human-adapted than FM.)
Radio is as natural a way of communicating in the universe as hollering is in Earth's atmosphere. Think of the wide variety of hollerin' life we have here, from cicadas to Amy Lee.
Engineering is the application of materials sciences.
+
Software is not made of material.
=
There is no such thing as "Software Engineering."
If you would learn the distinction between "legal" and "illegal" your arguments might be worth reading.
So go crack open a dictionary and get off your moral unicorn.
Mexico deports more illegal aliens than does the United States.
But I see what you mean, they do not "worry" about it. They do something about it.
If Bush were to cure cancer tomorrow, the bashers would complain he did it for Halliburton, or his daddy, or his daddy's Halliburton.
So did Benjamin Franklin.
(IIRC -- was the mail of a British colonial governor -- web searches haven't helped my memory so I'm going to do something else now and let others do the research)
It is almost always better to have one big engine than several small ones.
Roughly speaking, there's lower friction/power ratio in a big engine - two big parts rubbing together have less surface area than a lot of smaller parts, and so on.
Also at some point between pickup truck and locomotive, the efficiency of the two-stroke diesel is higher than its four-stroke counterpart.
This is true of other kinds of powerplants too. Lots of little generators aren't as good as one Big Generator.
(I'm not a mechanical engineer but I did own a V8 Chevy.)
(Emphasis added to mark what I'm talking about)
You have it backwards w.r.t. media and politicians. The politicians are the tools of the media.
Why do politicians have to raise so much money? To pay the media, who by the way also report bought opinion as fact.
There's an investigative idea that goes, "follow the money." The media only follows campaign money upstream, to its sources. Evil corporations, with slimy lobbyists, and so on, they unbiasedly report. Never follow it downstream, to themselves!
Because it is the media who picks the winner -- by declaring victory for a candidate before the polls are closed (media voter suppression!), reporting fraud as fact, running hit piece after hit piece.
When by accident or skill, the Other Guy wins, the media will run stories about how these machines cannot be trusted, how a cop in a doughnut shop scared off voters walking to the polls, how voting on a weekday discriminates against Third-Day Adventists.
When their guy wins? Silence concerning the method of voting, and gushing purplish-yellow reportage congratulating their victorious buddies.
There will never be an accounting of the monetary value of the media gifts lavished on The Media Candidate. How many millions of dollars is a nationally broadcast ten minute hit piece worth?
Greenland, being the possesion of Iceland, or Denmark, or Norway, or someone somewhat civilized like that -- well, we give 'em money, they give us oil.
Money is peace.
I'd say your head is so far up your ass you're going to die of assfixation.
I'm like, mad at numbers. There's too many of them.
College freshmen struggle with literacy.
As do graduates.
By far, Fessenden's is the most interesting idea for Atlantis:
The Deluged Civilization
There is also some very good economics theory after the Deluge bit.
It's Science Magazine's "Breakthrough of the Year."
Not the entire endeavor of Science.
(Those breakthroughs are noted by the Ig Nobel Prizes.)
When you read about a violent crime, you're usually safe in assuming the criminal was a Democrat.
When Orwell wrote, there were still enough brains on the Left to read his work as a warning.
The post-modern Left reads Orwell as if he wrote instruction manuals.
And you will have drugs that are just as reliable as the $350 computer your cousin Zeke built.
Which is a bad thing.
I'd piss on a spark plug if I though it would help.
You keep using that word, "intellectual."
I do not think it means what you think it means.
Learn it, use it, love it -- the incredible new unit fresh from the SI, the house.
One house is roughly equivalent to 1 kilowatt, but here the resemblance to the watt ends.
Because, if the reporter likes the way the energy is made, a house can be as little as 500 watts. So the reporter can double the number of houses powered by the project!
"One million households" sounds like a lot. But, using the maximum allowable value of 1kW/house, it is really only about 1 gigawatt, which is stupidly tiny by today's standards.
Using the minimum discovered value for house, the windmill scheme might be as small as 500 megawatts.
I am looking forward to the fair and balanced press to begin using the "blow dryer" and "microwave oven" SI units, which are bigger (!) than a house, and used only to describe coal and nuclear plants.
Duh, no shit, "Union of Concerned Scientists" is pretty much the definition of paranopid, insane, whackjob morons.
This is about dams, bridges, and power lines.
Sorry to ruin the conspiracy theories with a fact.
Water supplies. Natural gas pipelines.
Notice in TFA the parts that are direct quotes, and those that are reporter inferences, and of course there's the submitter's obvious bias too.
Railroads. Communications networks.
We now return you to your regular insane paranoid conspiracy whackjob theorizing!
Liberals are again calling for (self) censorship.
Such open minds.
Reminds me of Algore and his bitch.
Absolutely. You can tell how much more efficient wind is by the growing number of sailing cars people are buying.
(Airheaded bullshit like the parent gets a "5 Insightful" must be nice to have no brains)
Here's my analysis of Adnan Hajj's disastrous image,
This Image Is Not Faked
(The page is written for a general audience, which is why I explain powers-of-two and other computery things.)
It is a bad image which should never have been printed, but the mistake was purely technical and is the same level of mistake as using too much red-eye correction or bad white points, or out-of-focus even.
The mistake was much more on Reuters's photo editor deciding to print such a messed-up picture, than their stringer who through haste submitted it. It's the editor's job to decide what, *if anything*, to print to accompany a story. It's the photographer's job to provide a lot of options for the editor. In the olden days, proof sheets full of options.
I know all the real editors are dead. A shame. Journalism used to be almost respectable!
(I did the photography/journalism stuff for six years in school, never at a professional level. I've done digital audio synthesis since the late 70s, and DSP professionally a few times since the mid-80s, including coding testing and releasing dust removal software. Thus the disastrous image immediately struck me as familiar, similar to testing situations.)