The trouble is that many of the global warming skeptics are True Believers. They have made up their minds, and no amount of evidence is ever going to make them change their minds. I see this on both sides of the debate, but it does seem to be particularly prevalent amongst the people who claim to be skeptics.
So, is there any evidence that there have been slight changes in the Sun's energy output that correlate with mean temperatures on Earth? I didn't think so.
If Apple continues to aim at the people who think that they are part of the technological elite, and not worry too much about people who actually are part of the technological elite, they will probably continue to do well. The first group tends to have a lot of disposable income, and is so much larger than the second group, that sales should not be a problem for Apple. The real question is can they continue to come up with innovative products that the first group will want. There is no way to know if that will happen.
>Every country in the world that has an aviation or maritime >industry still uses knots and feet. Most countries would still have >some none-metric units in fairly common use.
People working directly in the various maritime industries still use knots and feet (and fathoms for that matter), but the general public in almost all of these nations uses metric. Even wind speeds tend not to be in knots anymore.
The pint is a traditional unit for measuring beer, and as such is somewhat outside of the standard measurement system. Personally, I prefer the unit "cubic attoparsec" for ordering beer, but I only know of one pub where the bartender understands that unit.
>Personally I'd be in favour of changing to all metric, but road >signs are the major problem. Changing mph to kph and miles to >kilometres across the whole country, then educating everyone >about the change would be crazily hard.
It is not as hard to do as one may think. Canada changes the speed limit signs from mph to km/h in the 1970s, and there were not a lot of problems.
The problem with solid-state drives in laptops is the cost per gigbyte. solid-state drives are still rather expensive, and not really big enough to replace a conventional hard drive for many purposes. If all you are doing with your laptop is surfing the Web and editing a few documents then solid state is great, but if you have 150Gb of data on your hard drive then the cost of going solid state starts to add up. This will change though.
>Why are you comparing SpaceX, approximately 5 years old IIRC, >to NASA, a defunct agency so bound up in red tape thatÃ(TM)s >over 40 years old. If you want to compare do it apples to apples, >not apples to oranges. What did Nasa do in its first 5 years?
Almost all of the Mercury programme occurred during NASA's first five years. The problem with NASA now is not that they are a "defunct agency", but that they are badly underfunded for the mandate that they have been given. Admittedly, the VSE is highly unrealistic, but if that is the path that the US wants to follow then the US needs to be prepared to fund it. Expecting NASA to push the boundaries of manned space flight and then not being willing to put up the funds to do so is a recipe for failure.
>SpaceX, in their area of specialisation (ie propulsion/cargo > delivery) are showing a whole lot more progress than NASA.
Are they? They are progressing rapidly, but are they progressing more rapidly than NASA did during its first six years? Are they ahead of where NASA was in 1963? Don't forget that much of the research and development that SpaceX is using to build their rockets was originally done by NASA. SpaceX is an impressive company, and I hope that they do well, but to claim that they are showing more progress than NASA is simply wrong.
>SpaceX seem to be doing NASA's job better than NASA these >days.
Really? How many telescopes does SpaceX have in orbit? How many active probes does SpaceX have orbiting other planet, or on them for that matter? How many satellites has SpaceX put into orbit this year? SpaceX is doing some amazing stuff, but to pretend that they are ahead of NASA is just plain daft.
The Saturn V was not the "perfect launch vehicle". There were only a dozen or so launches, and we were lucky that none of them failed. It is very likely that if we had used it 100-150 time it is very likely that there would have been fatalities. The Saturn V has achieved a bit of a mythical status, but it was always an experimental vehicle and never really left the test flight stage of development. Yes, we do have the blueprints to start building them again, but I do not see how that would help us because they are still largely untested vehicles.
Suborbital flight is very different from orbital flight, and a lot easier to achieve. To make it to Earth orbit requires far more fuel than a simple up and down light. In terms of the energy required Spaceship One only made it 3% of the way to orbit. I doubt that TAAS has found a way to get 33 times more energy out of what appears t be roughly similar sized fuel tanks. Still, I hope that they succeed. Anything (almost) that gets up further into space is a good thing.
North in the sky is defined to be the point directly above the Earth North Pole of rotation. The northern half of the sky is the part of the sky between the celestial equator and the north celestial pole. For a planet north is defined using the right hand rule of rotation. Curl the fingers of your right hand. That is the direction of the planet's rotation. Stick out your right thumb. That is the direction of the planet's north pole. The same rule applies to Galactic north. Just apply the rotation rule to the Galaxy. Once you get outside the Galaxy supergalactic coordinates are used, which are defined here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergalactic_plane.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was a Heinlein book, but it would still make for an interesting movie. The Loonie sexual ethos would probably need to be stripped out, which would upset a lot of people. However, the basic story was little more than a retelling of the American Revolution set on the Moon, and with spaceships, mass drivers, and super-intelligent computers, which could have a lot of appeal in the US. The script would need to be treated with a lot of care, but I can think of ways to retell the story that would work well as a movie without losing the essential message.
>Uh huh. If Americans were packed into trains like the Japanese > are, people would be knifed daily.
That does not happen in DC, or NYC, or Chicago, where people do use overcrowded mass transit systems. Of course, asking for a cigarette in the NY subway can get you shot.
This is the real question that needs to be asked, and the question of how well the new approach works compared to what was being done before. Was the arrest rate higher or lower than 1% before this new technique was adopted, and was the difference statistically significant. I suspect that the behaviour detection method will produce better results than a purely random approach, but I have not seen any evidence to support that idea.
Slashdot Mirror
It's like when Homer Simpson tried to beat the heat by pitching a tent in front of an open refrigerator door.
The trick will be to find a frequency that does not excite any molecular bonds in substances that our bodies use.
The trouble is that many of the global warming skeptics are True Believers. They have made up their minds, and no amount of evidence is ever going to make them change their minds. I see this on both sides of the debate, but it does seem to be particularly prevalent amongst the people who claim to be skeptics.
>uh you realize that at 100 degrees 30% is nearly 30degrees either
>UP or DOWN?
No. Temperature changes go as the 4th root of the luminosity change.
So, is there any evidence that there have been slight changes in the Sun's energy output that correlate with mean temperatures on Earth? I didn't think so.
If Apple continues to aim at the people who think that they are part of the technological elite, and not worry too much about people who actually are part of the technological elite, they will probably continue to do well. The first group tends to have a lot of disposable income, and is so much larger than the second group, that sales should not be a problem for Apple. The real question is can they continue to come up with innovative products that the first group will want. There is no way to know if that will happen.
>Every country in the world that has an aviation or maritime
>industry still uses knots and feet. Most countries would still have
>some none-metric units in fairly common use.
People working directly in the various maritime industries still use knots and feet (and fathoms for that matter), but the general public in almost all of these nations uses metric. Even wind speeds tend not to be in knots anymore.
The pint is a traditional unit for measuring beer, and as such is somewhat outside of the standard measurement system. Personally, I prefer the unit "cubic attoparsec" for ordering beer, but I only know of one pub where the bartender understands that unit.
>Personally I'd be in favour of changing to all metric, but road
>signs are the major problem. Changing mph to kph and miles to
>kilometres across the whole country, then educating everyone
>about the change would be crazily hard.
It is not as hard to do as one may think. Canada changes the speed limit signs from mph to km/h in the 1970s, and there were not a lot of problems.
The problem with solid-state drives in laptops is the cost per gigbyte. solid-state drives are still rather expensive, and not really big enough to replace a conventional hard drive for many purposes. If all you are doing with your laptop is surfing the Web and editing a few documents then solid state is great, but if you have 150Gb of data on your hard drive then the cost of going solid state starts to add up. This will change though.
For pity's sake, please stop telling people what really happened. We don't want to frighten anyone.
>Why are you comparing SpaceX, approximately 5 years old IIRC,
>to NASA, a defunct agency so bound up in red tape thatÃ(TM)s
>over 40 years old. If you want to compare do it apples to apples,
>not apples to oranges. What did Nasa do in its first 5 years?
Almost all of the Mercury programme occurred during NASA's first five years. The problem with NASA now is not that they are a "defunct agency", but that they are badly underfunded for the mandate that they have been given. Admittedly, the VSE is highly unrealistic, but if that is the path that the US wants to follow then the US needs to be prepared to fund it. Expecting NASA to push the boundaries of manned space flight and then not being willing to put up the funds to do so is a recipe for failure.
>SpaceX, in their area of specialisation (ie propulsion/cargo
> delivery) are showing a whole lot more progress than NASA.
Are they? They are progressing rapidly, but are they progressing more rapidly than NASA did during its first six years? Are they ahead of where NASA was in 1963? Don't forget that much of the research and development that SpaceX is using to build their rockets was originally done by NASA. SpaceX is an impressive company, and I hope that they do well, but to claim that they are showing more progress than NASA is simply wrong.
>SpaceX seem to be doing NASA's job better than NASA these
>days.
Really? How many telescopes does SpaceX have in orbit? How many active probes does SpaceX have orbiting other planet, or on them for that matter? How many satellites has SpaceX put into orbit this year? SpaceX is doing some amazing stuff, but to pretend that they are ahead of NASA is just plain daft.
The Saturn V was not the "perfect launch vehicle". There were only a dozen or so launches, and we were lucky that none of them failed. It is very likely that if we had used it 100-150 time it is very likely that there would have been fatalities. The Saturn V has achieved a bit of a mythical status, but it was always an experimental vehicle and never really left the test flight stage of development. Yes, we do have the blueprints to start building them again, but I do not see how that would help us because they are still largely untested vehicles.
Suborbital flight is very different from orbital flight, and a lot easier to achieve. To make it to Earth orbit requires far more fuel than a simple up and down light. In terms of the energy required Spaceship One only made it 3% of the way to orbit. I doubt that TAAS has found a way to get 33 times more energy out of what appears t be roughly similar sized fuel tanks. Still, I hope that they succeed. Anything (almost) that gets up further into space is a good thing.
Hmm... I made a mistake. I should have said that supergalactic coordinates are described here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergalactic_plane
Actually, the scientific community of the time (such that it was) was mostly convinced by Tycho's observations.
North in the sky is defined to be the point directly above the Earth North Pole of rotation. The northern half of the sky is the part of the sky between the celestial equator and the north celestial pole. For a planet north is defined using the right hand rule of rotation. Curl the fingers of your right hand. That is the direction of the planet's rotation. Stick out your right thumb. That is the direction of the planet's north pole. The same rule applies to Galactic north. Just apply the rotation rule to the Galaxy. Once you get outside the Galaxy supergalactic coordinates are used, which are defined here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supergalactic_plane.
Actually, the US is a republic and a democracy. The two are not mutually exclusive.
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was a Heinlein book, but it would still make for an interesting movie. The Loonie sexual ethos would probably need to be stripped out, which would upset a lot of people. However, the basic story was little more than a retelling of the American Revolution set on the Moon, and with spaceships, mass drivers, and super-intelligent computers, which could have a lot of appeal in the US. The script would need to be treated with a lot of care, but I can think of ways to retell the story that would work well as a movie without losing the essential message.
Not all problems heal themselves. The band-aid analogy was a bad one since it implies a biological injury.
>Uh huh. If Americans were packed into trains like the Japanese
> are, people would be knifed daily.
That does not happen in DC, or NYC, or Chicago, where people do use overcrowded mass transit systems. Of course, asking for a cigarette in the NY subway can get you shot.
> can we try fixing problems instead of fixing symptoms - just
> once?!?!
No.
'Tis sad, but true. Most people would rather put a band-aid over the problem than solve it.
>How does that figure compare to random searches?
This is the real question that needs to be asked, and the question of how well the new approach works compared to what was being done before. Was the arrest rate higher or lower than 1% before this new technique was adopted, and was the difference statistically significant. I suspect that the behaviour detection method will produce better results than a purely random approach, but I have not seen any evidence to support that idea.