I admit the mistake. It is however, one that is hard for me to break.:(
When I read "Prescribe", I see it as a compound of the prefix "Pre", meaning "comes before", and "Scribe", meaning "to write or mark."
So, "prescribe" means "Written in advance". (Such as with a doctor's script. He writes down the course of your treatment in advance of your receiving it. A prescription.)
When I see "Proscribe", I see the prefix "Pro", (antonym of "Con") meaning "In favor of / supporting". (Nevermind that 'conscribe' is not a word, or at least not a proper word.)
So, "proscribe" means "Written in support of." (Like with an editorial, citing a proposed course of action; a proscribed action.)
I accept that this is not conserved by actual definition of those words. It is simply a malfunction in my ability to parse language I guess.
As the site linked to points out, this is a very common mistake, for pretty much exactly the reasoning I pointed out. I understand that English has many special exceptions, but "proscribe" is particularly cumbersome in that respect.
I wouldn't mind apple at all, if apple conducted itself in a manner that wasn't synonymous with being contrite cock gobblers.
Apple's ENTIRE business structure revolves around continual invocation of "The dick move". (We are apple. You want our shiny products! But---- If you want the shiny products, you have to do everything we say! If you dont, we'll break your, or rather, OUR, shiny product to stop your defiance.) [essentially. That and a whole lot more.]
If apple just made products and sold them like any other company, instead of trying to create a bullshit mystique and bullying every other product manufacturer and their own potential user base while lieing through their teeth about being innovative, I wouldnt have any problem with them, much like I dont have any problem with the dozens of other handset makers out there.
I dont have a boner for Google, or Motorola, or HTC, or Samsung, or any of the others. (and, contrary to your seemingly diametrically polarized world view, I actually DISLIKE google for a large number of reasons.)
I just dont like Apple, because Apple conducts itself like a total douche.
It bothers me greatly that such a large number of people are so beholden to Apple, that they would attempt to justify any action it takes, regardless of how horrendous it is, rather than make the personal admission that perhaps their devotion wasnt justified.
I was simply sarcastically pointing out that stories like this draw them out of the woodwork without fail to cast apologetic rhetoric in favor of their preferred tech company.
Companies don't deserve loyalty. They show us absolutely none. They deserve none of ours.
It essentially boils down to Apple trying to "superficially" comply, while actually completely disregarding the purpose behind the order.
For an example, there was recently a sting operation set up to catch a major traffic offender, who routinely drove on the sidewalk to evade stopped traffic from a routine school bus stop that made the news this last week.
As part of her punishment, she has to wear a sign declaring that she is an idiot, and that only an idiot would try to pass a school bus while driving a car, by driving on the sidewalk.
The intent behind the order is very clear, and directly tied to the heart of the infraction it was proscribed for.
If the woman had followed after Apple's example, she would have worn the sign alright, but it would have given counter examples as to why driving on the sidewalk like that was perfectly justifiable, and made allusions that the judge that made her wear the sign was mistaken in his judgement, and that 2 other judges in similar cases (which were improperly conducted for different reasons, or later invalidated in their rulings) concurred with her point of view.
Cue the apple fanbois and their out of control apologetics. This story just wouldnt be complete without their sqealing.
On a more serious note, I agree with the judge. This kind of change could have been implemented in less than one day. Apple probably just wanted more time to try to wrangle some legal way out of putting the directed message on their website in the manner proscribed.
You know what they say-- Tell a lie enough times, and you will begin to believe it yourself. That's the danger of using an RDF.
No, I dont mean trying to interfere two beams of visible light from either side of the moon's circumference. As you point out, this would pose serious problems.
Instead, the optical portion of the array would use large, high resolution CCDs at each node. The data gathered from the CCDs would be processed digitally, and compensation for the viewing angle would be performed digitally. The combined datasets would be statistically filtered to increase the signal to noise.
The resulting images would make use of multiple high resolution optical telescopes, to create a composite optical image mosaic. This is especially important for infrared, which has very large wavelengths, and would be very difficult to focus onto single CCD panels.
It does NOT try to split a single light beam and then measure it at 2 points hundreds of kilometers apart. The physics just wont allow that. Radio wavelengths would be interferometric over the array, but not the optical portion.
The configuration pattern of the nodes themselves allows for detection of polarization of radio frequencies in all three forms, Vertical, Horizontal, and circular.
The problem with radio telescopes on the earth is not atmospheric distortion, but instead terrestrial signal pollution. (Cellphones, TV stations, Radio broadcasts, etc.) Using the moon as a giant occulting filter by putting the array on the dark side greatly reduces this source of noise, improving quality of measurements. (Hundreds of kilometers of rock tends to block radio noise pretty effectively you see.)
Another benefit of a radio telescope on the moon, is that it can be employed alongside a terrestrial one for very wide angle measurements of very distant objects. EG, instead of just the earth's diameter, we could have "Earth-moon orbit" diameter, and with multiple samples per measurement. (which you wont get with a single orbiting satellite listening device.)
So, for the 3rd time, I dont mean trying to analyze visible light using analog physics over that distance. Stop with the strawman already.
"Hey NASA, we know you have this fancy data aggregation and digital image processing system up on the moon, designed to correlate a huge number of discrete data sources. Well, we have a huge number of spy satellites that we want to have processed. If you want more funding, you'd better let us make use of the goods."
No, you are being a dick.:D that is an entirely different problem, and is more yours than mine.
Here: there is no reason why the array cannot be both (local) optical, and (collectively) radio in scope.
The "earth sized" interferomtric radio telescopes you mention, (like the square kilometer array) have fixed angles of observation. A large dedicated array on the moon in the configuration I cited would have multiple graduated angles of interferometry, allowing greater precision of measurement. Being on the dark side of the moon it would not be as subject to terrestrial radio noise sources. It could also be used as a partner to the earth based arrays to give a substantially larger angle than either could provide alone.
As for maintenance.. other than the risk of stuck motors and tin whiskers on electronic devices (issues that also plague orbital telescopes), the use of solid state hardware would remove a staggering portion of it. A lot of the building maintenance on terrestrial optical telescpes, like mona kea, comes from weather and atmosphere interactions. (You know, like corrosion, weathering, peeling paint, birdshit, etc.) On the moon, your biggest problem is energetic charged particles from the sun blasting into the equipment and micrometeorites. (With proper design, this isn't much of a problem. The moon has subsurface moisture in trace amounts, meaning you can hard ground the equipment. This makes protecting computer circuits considerably less difficult. Hardened housings would provide passable protection from micrometeors.)
As for maintenance, you are forgetting that the moon is under 2 light seconds away from earth, and that the construction of the array would require an army. NASA has already designed and tested humanoid telepresence service robots. (Robonaut.) The most cost effective approach would be to drop a bunch of these units at the same time that the components of the array are first delivered, and use telepresence to construct the array.
The robots would remain at the site. If the array needs repair, the robots can be reactivated, and used to perform the maintenance from earth. (Just store them inside the nodes of the array, and capitalize on the shielding the nodes provide.)
The implication was that the array could create composite optical images using local optics on each node, and a massive radio frequency array using the same topology.
You were the one creating strawmen out of whole cloth, implying that I meant trying to collimate the entire quantity of light hitting the dark side of the moon all at once. Yes. I agree, that idea is laughably silly. It is not what I suggested.
Still, using the moon as a stable platform for deep space sensors is a much more sensible application than a human lunar colony. (Even just within our solar system, the array would greatly reduce the need for expensive probe missions for general data collection. An effective aperature of that size would let you see things that even the best terrestrial telescopes could never image. We could use it to listen to the magnetosphere of jupiter, for instance, or to track CMEs as they enter into the outer solar system. Perhaps even listen to the heliopause against the interstellar medium.)
Sadly, the data processing system would probably get coopted by world governments for military purposes, if it ever got built.:(
The worst part, is that this would probably have to be by design in order to get funding.
No. Staying purpetually in the moon's shadow would require lunar-centric orbit. The moon's gravity well is very shallow, and dominated by the earth's. Orbital resonances with the earth would make any spacecraft attempting to stay in the moon's shadow have to actively perform continuous course corrections.
By comparison, the L2 lagrange point is a "calm waters" location, where gravitational influences from both the earth and the moon are balanced perfectly. A spacecraft at this location with the correct momentum will sit there peacefully with only very minimal course corrections.
I was actually envisioning an array of radio telescopes, and smaller optical ones used in concert to create a composite aperature.
We have sufficient data processing technology, and the construction and engineering requirements for the individual nodes of the array are not that different from what is currently in operation.
The difference would be entirely from the location. On the moon, it des not pose an environmental impact on any life forms. It does not run into problems with human economic activities (as pointed out countless times by others, mining on the moon will never be practical), it is far removed from human radio sources on the dark side of the moon, is removed from earth light pollution and atmospheric defraction, and does not need any station keeping equipment.
Freed from all those constraints, and with the potential to be an astronomical array of unprecidented size, it is hard to imagine reasons NOT to do I, if scientific investigation is truly the motivator. (With an aperature that size, the potential to directly image an exoplanetary system becomes plausible, as well as charting the local stellar neighborhood with previously impossible levels of detail.)
If it helps you to imagine what I envision here, I will describe the array for you.
There are 2 concentric circles of discrete radio and optical telescope "nodes" on the dark side of the moon, linked with optical fiber data interconnections. There are 4 additional semicircles that are tangent to the inner circle, and meet at 90 degree intersections with the outer circle. (Forms a diamond shape.) The combined data from these nodes allows the digital reconstruction of what would be observed, as if the entire dark hemisphere of the moon had been completely covered in nodes. (At least for radio wavelenths.)
You would only need a few hundred nodes.
On the light hemisphere of the moon, you construct the communications tower.
I was in no fashion suggesting plastering the entire dark side of the moon with CCDs. That is unfeasible logistically, and unnecessary. The point of having multiple points for interferometry is to permit multiple simultaneous observations of distant objects, and to have a variety of interferometric angles from which to discriminate frequency of emission with.
Eg, the array could track multiple objects, give location, vector, speed, and suggestions on composition for all of them simultaneousy. It could also be used in aggregate to observe a single, very distant object using a statistical approach to resolve signal from noise.
It would be well within our engineering capacity.
It would just cost an unbelievable amount of money.
Unlike an artificial satellite however, it only needs to be made ONCE.
I keep seeing aburd rhetoric like this. At this point I am not sure if this can be ascribed to shameless trolling, or to poes's law gone terribly wrong.
Regardless, the concentration of melanin in human skin does not have a demonstrable relationship with mental ability. If it did, there would be a profound trend in medical literature, as people would become dumber after summer sun exposures. This does not occur. Therefore, the color of the skin is meaningless for the ascribed metric.
What you are really trying (and failing) to say, is that you feel that the subset of people who naturally have dark skin pigmentation are statistically more likely to suffer from a medley of social and psychological ills, and appear predisposed toward deleterious behaviors. I would conjecture that this is cultural, and has nothing to do with the actual skin pigmentation level itself, due to the lack of evidence to substantiate such a claim. The pigmentation itself does not appear to have any deleterious effect on human behavior, else getting a tan would have significant effects. Getting said tan does not appear to do so. Thus, skincolor does not appear directly causal.
The issue therefore, (should there even really be such an issue to begin with) is not one of skincolor at all, but with a cultural subsegment which engages in deleterious practices.
History suggests that this subsegment of the population came to exist because of unsubstantiatable biases on the part of the lightly pigmented demographic in the first place. The same outcome would have occured if the conditionals had been reversed.
The assertion that the problem has to do with skincolor, despite the lack of substantiatable evidence, would seem to be nothing more than a perpetuation of the incorrect and insubstantiatable assertions that gave rise to the very problem said assertion claims to address. More of the same will not solve the problem, and only an irrational or insane mind would attempt such when presented with actual data.
Skin color is not the causal factor. Institutional and cultural ostracism, and disenfranchisment is demonstrably at fault for any percieved inequality. Purpetuation of those practices will NOT improve things, no matter how much you want for it to be so.
Accept this fact, divert your attention from skin color to the actual problem, and stop wasting bandwidth.
Of course, if you are just a troll, go die in a fire.
Assembling them and testing all the moving parts? Yes.
Rovers and robots are very robust things, but that level of assembly requires humans still.
Once built, it wouldn't need humans anymore, except for the occasional maintenance or upgrade mission, but the benefits of having it up there would be astounding.
Often, I hear people demanding to know what practical reason humans would have to travel to the moon again. Many people bring up pipedreams like space ports, or lunar mining complexes.
I have a better reason.
The moon is tidelocked with the earth, has a very stable orbit, and a fairly large circumference. We should put an interferometric space telescope on the dark side of the moon. We could then use the entire circumference of the "visible/invisible" hemisphere terminator zone as the effective aperature size, and be free of atmospheric distortions.
The kinds of pictures we could get from such a telescope would make hubble look like a cheap webcam in comparison.
Put the command/control antenna on the visible side of the moon, and have it garanteed to always be pointed at the earth.
They would do better to build their factories in flyover country, where cots of living are lower, average wage is lower, cost of utilities is lower, and all that jazz.
The central US is well connected for large freight shipments by rail.
Let's assume that we have a neptune sized gas giant going through its daily grind around its parent star, and that it has a magnetosphere. (Only 1 in 50 red dwarf systems have a jupiter mass object in orbit, but 1 in 3 has a neptune mass object.)
That close to its parent star, it would collect a tremendous amount of "cold" stellar plasma. (our little dirtball collects enough to create the van allen radiation belts. A neptune sized object would create a radiation torus MUCH larger.) This would inflate the magnetosphere to gargantuan proportions. This means that a great many of the proposed moons orbiting the gas giant would still retain thick atmospheres, unless other cosmic forces were actively at work to strip them. (like I think Enceladus's interaction with Saturn's magnetosphere...) Under such conditions, a rocky body like jupiter's moon Titan, which has a thick nitrogen and hydrocarbon atmosphere would be heated by both tidal heating, and be within the habitable zone. It would have an abundance of volcanic activity, and would get sufficient light that it could theoretically develop a biosphere.
If you throw into the mix all the red dwarf stars in our local star cluster, and the shockingly large number of detected gas giant planets we have detected so far in "inner" solar system orbits, a solution to the problem of potentially habitable bodies in red dwarf systems becoming tide-locked is provided by moons orbiting habitable zone gas giants. Such systems would be well protected from meteor impacts, as the gas giant would sweep the vast majority of objects out of the orbital path of the pair. The gas giant would keep the rotation and orbital period of the moon on a nice even keel, and would provide a strong magnetosphere.
If I were looking for a place to build a colony that could last a VERY VERY long time, I would look for goldilocks gas giants with habitable moons around red dwarf stars. The only niggly problem is the statistical scarcity of light elements like hydrogen in these systems. (M type stars are very rich in metals, but light on hydrogen and helium compared to more larger and more luminous stars. Any moons orbiting such gas giants are more likely to have an excessive amount of crustal oxygen than in other types of system, as metal oxide spectral lines are a mainstay feature of M type stars.) This might be resolvable if the system is "Absurdly old", as the high concentration of heavy elements would suggest a high level of radiological isotopes in the mineral composition of the planetary and satellite objects of such systems. This means that radiologically produced hydrogen from fission reactions over time could provide the missing hydrogen. M type star systems are quite capable of persisting to such advanced cosmic ages.
I would be very interested in the prospect of habitable satellites of massive objects in red dwarf systems, and think that planets like ours get too much attention in the search for habitable bodies.
Assuming they use extensible appendages for locomotion at all.
At that level of local gravity, they are more likely to be something like a gastropod, or aquatic.
pumping blood under 7 Gs is something human hearts require a pressure suit for! Any large bodied creatures from that planet would have to have a very different anatomic makeup from ours.
Subluminal travel runs headfirst into special relativity. The energy costs to accelerate a massive body to a nice fraction of lightspeed follows a log curve (approaching infinity on the far end.)
Then you have all the sticky issues with specific impulse, like mass loss, and the constraints about the size of the vessel he was shipped out in.
Basically, baby superman would have split the earth into ball of high energy plasma, if his pod had been doing even half lightspeed when it "landed". Due to the size, it wouldnt have had sufficient reactant to slow down when it neared Sol. In order for the vessel to not obliterate the earth, it would have to have been traveling SIGNIFICANTLY slower than lightspeed. Ergo, thousands of years.
What I want to know is why kalael sent him to sol, an not another red dwarf. Class M stars are copiously abundant in our local star cluster, and sending his baby boy to a G type star would be like our scientists deciding to send somebody to a blue star. Unless they are a dark skinned baby, they would have a hard time there. (G type stars like ours have considerably higher percentages of UV light compared to M type stars, like "krypton's". This may explain why spuderman is fair complected.)
At subluminal velocities, it would take him thousands of years to reach the earth.
I seem to recall that his pod contained educational materials, and was not a chryopod. (If it was, he would have crash landed as a fishstick, and not as a toddler.)
For the narrative to be believable, the pod must have been traveling at approx 30x the speed of light.
Superman was an infant when his "escape pod" was jettisoned from krypton. He was a toddler when it landed on earth, so about a year and a half flight time. Then, on earth, he aged at least another 20 years before becoming superman.
Then you have any story and plot arcs that have happened between his becoming superman, and deciding to visit the planetarium.
This likely nets us a cozy 30-ish years or so since krypton exploded. Since superman arrived in an FTL capable pod, he can now watch through the telescope as his planet breaks up, from his vantage point on earth, close to 30 LY away. (The starsystem in question is about 27LY from earth.)
(this is a broken comparison. I know it is broken. I don't need to have it pointed out that it is broken. I don't need to have it explained why it is broken, as I already know how it is broken. This is because white collar workers are not endangered by their workplace like blue collar workers are/can be. That is not the point of the comparison. The point of the comparison is that the same outstanding factor from management, creates a dangerous work environment. The type of danger is not conserved, due to the fundamental difference between white and blue collar work. This is an abstract comparison,)
Compare:
"Hey Boss, we really need to work on our OSHA compliance, we're a deathtrap just waiting to get sprung. We spray toxic solvent without respirators, or forced air, not to mention the furnace uses open flame combustion to heat the shop floor in the winter. "
"We cant afford/dont need those things. We get told in advance when OSHA is going to show up, and we will just roll out the red carpet like usual. get back to work."
_________
"Hey Boss, we really need to work on our security certificate store. We have certs in there that a script kiddie could break in just a few hours, that we REALLY need to replace."
"Why? dont they work anymore?"
"Yes, they still work, but it's unsafe."
"If it isnt broke, dont fix it. I cant justify added expenses on the expense report."
_______
Unions strong-arm management into providing the needed/requested infrastructure, that they otherwise would never in a million years provide or implement, because management does not understand the value of the implementation.
For IT, I have three words every worker in that field will shudder over: "Internet Explorer 6." Why does management demand it live forever like a zombie? Because they have software they wrote 20 years ago that they dont want to get rid of, because "It still works", and "replacing it would be expensive/hard."
IE 6 isn't the only thing that persists as the creature from beyond that simply wont die, even though for every conceivable reason, it needs to. There are so many, scattered and specific to particular companies, that I simply cannot list them. IE 6 is just a well known offender. It's the damned "chained to sewing machines" of the IT world.
Trying to do your work with substandard tools can make even a proficient worker look mediocre to sub-par. (while it's true that a craftsman doesn't blame the tools, the tools do have an effect on the quality of the craftsman's work.) Getting better tools is often a lesson in who can go over the most heads, requiring the IT person to also do accounting management's jobs for them if the proper tools are to be acquired. (if I had a nickle for every story I've heard about the PHB buying into the hype from a sales rep, hook line and sinker, I could retire.)
The union does not need to exist because of wages, or dangerous work environments. that's what manufacturing unions are for. The need for an IT union is simply to have more leverage to get what you need, when you need it, and to increase the decision making power of the IT dept for IT related issues, like H-1Bs and setting the employment requirements for HR. (Instead of the other way around.)
So far, all of the "We dont need a union!" replies have revolved around the "Money, Safety, Protection for incompetence" trifecta, none of which apply (or should apply) to IT. The non-sequitor is the mistaken belief that I was implying that those were the reasons for stating that there was a need for a union. It isn't.
The union I see a need for uses collective bargaining to improve IT decision making on the part of management, and increases autonomy of the department to help combat outsourcing, unconsionable use of interns and immigrant laborers, and dangerous operating policies for networks and equipment.
It doesnt use collective bargaining to protect unfit workers, raise wages, or anything like that.
You forgot to include H-1B visas, and outsourced development's combined drain on the market value of the skillset.
There *IS* a reason why tech sector employers ravenously crave both you know.
While a significant portion of the workforce is still domestic is the time to produce a union.
Not after.
Also, it wasn't the pay I was referring to. There are other factors that could necessitate the formation of a union. Specificially, vocational stress, poorly defined hours, and demanding miracles with substandard equipment.
While IT people are unlikely to die or have lasting health complications in their line of work, don't underestimate the value of reduced stress in a less cuthroat office environment.
I haven't heard of any either, but I could clearly see a white collar information technology union. The need for one is quite apparent.
As financial conditions deteriorate, and simultaneously the need for more IT labor increases, the more management is pressured to "get more for less."
Eventually there has to be a breaking point. When whole IT depts are cut down to essentially 2 to 5 people, and miracles are expected, eventually the "I love challenges!" Personality trait many IT people have (especially younger ones. I have suspicions that this is the real reason why manaement craves those 'early 20s' IT workers over more experienced ones) will eventually be overwhelmed, and a huge section of the industry will become disillusioned.
if we assume that the unixware system does not use IDE or some similarly popular interface type, and thus cannot be hooked to a modern system for dd, then you can always mount a network share from the production server itself, and dd from there.
Slashdot Mirror
I admit the mistake. It is however, one that is hard for me to break. :(
When I read "Prescribe", I see it as a compound of the prefix "Pre", meaning "comes before", and "Scribe", meaning "to write or mark."
So, "prescribe" means "Written in advance". (Such as with a doctor's script. He writes down the course of your treatment in advance of your receiving it. A prescription.)
When I see "Proscribe", I see the prefix "Pro", (antonym of "Con") meaning "In favor of / supporting". (Nevermind that 'conscribe' is not a word, or at least not a proper word.)
So, "proscribe" means "Written in support of." (Like with an editorial, citing a proposed course of action; a proscribed action.)
I accept that this is not conserved by actual definition of those words. It is simply a malfunction in my ability to parse language I guess.
As the site linked to points out, this is a very common mistake, for pretty much exactly the reasoning I pointed out. I understand that English has many special exceptions, but "proscribe" is particularly cumbersome in that respect.
I will however, endeavor to correct my usage.
I wouldn't mind apple at all, if apple conducted itself in a manner that wasn't synonymous with being contrite cock gobblers.
Apple's ENTIRE business structure revolves around continual invocation of "The dick move". (We are apple. You want our shiny products! But---- If you want the shiny products, you have to do everything we say! If you dont, we'll break your, or rather, OUR, shiny product to stop your defiance.) [essentially. That and a whole lot more.]
If apple just made products and sold them like any other company, instead of trying to create a bullshit mystique and bullying every other product manufacturer and their own potential user base while lieing through their teeth about being innovative, I wouldnt have any problem with them, much like I dont have any problem with the dozens of other handset makers out there.
I dont have a boner for Google, or Motorola, or HTC, or Samsung, or any of the others. (and, contrary to your seemingly diametrically polarized world view, I actually DISLIKE google for a large number of reasons.)
I just dont like Apple, because Apple conducts itself like a total douche.
It bothers me greatly that such a large number of people are so beholden to Apple, that they would attempt to justify any action it takes, regardless of how horrendous it is, rather than make the personal admission that perhaps their devotion wasnt justified.
I was simply sarcastically pointing out that stories like this draw them out of the woodwork without fail to cast apologetic rhetoric in favor of their preferred tech company.
Companies don't deserve loyalty. They show us absolutely none. They deserve none of ours.
It is as simple as that.
It essentially boils down to Apple trying to "superficially" comply, while actually completely disregarding the purpose behind the order.
For an example, there was recently a sting operation set up to catch a major traffic offender, who routinely drove on the sidewalk to evade stopped traffic from a routine school bus stop that made the news this last week.
As part of her punishment, she has to wear a sign declaring that she is an idiot, and that only an idiot would try to pass a school bus while driving a car, by driving on the sidewalk.
The intent behind the order is very clear, and directly tied to the heart of the infraction it was proscribed for.
If the woman had followed after Apple's example, she would have worn the sign alright, but it would have given counter examples as to why driving on the sidewalk like that was perfectly justifiable, and made allusions that the judge that made her wear the sign was mistaken in his judgement, and that 2 other judges in similar cases (which were improperly conducted for different reasons, or later invalidated in their rulings) concurred with her point of view.
Cue the apple fanbois and their out of control apologetics.
This story just wouldnt be complete without their sqealing.
On a more serious note, I agree with the judge. This kind of change could have been implemented in less than one day. Apple probably just wanted more time to try to wrangle some legal way out of putting the directed message on their website in the manner proscribed.
You know what they say-- Tell a lie enough times, and you will begin to believe it yourself. That's the danger of using an RDF.
Why is this so hard for people to grasp?
No, I dont mean trying to interfere two beams of visible light from either side of the moon's circumference. As you point out, this would pose serious problems.
Instead, the optical portion of the array would use large, high resolution CCDs at each node. The data gathered from the CCDs would be processed digitally, and compensation for the viewing angle would be performed digitally. The combined datasets would be statistically filtered to increase the signal to noise.
The resulting images would make use of multiple high resolution optical telescopes, to create a composite optical image mosaic. This is especially important for infrared, which has very large wavelengths, and would be very difficult to focus onto single CCD panels.
It does NOT try to split a single light beam and then measure it at 2 points hundreds of kilometers apart. The physics just wont allow that. Radio wavelengths would be interferometric over the array, but not the optical portion.
The configuration pattern of the nodes themselves allows for detection of polarization of radio frequencies in all three forms, Vertical, Horizontal, and circular.
The problem with radio telescopes on the earth is not atmospheric distortion, but instead terrestrial signal pollution. (Cellphones, TV stations, Radio broadcasts, etc.) Using the moon as a giant occulting filter by putting the array on the dark side greatly reduces this source of noise, improving quality of measurements. (Hundreds of kilometers of rock tends to block radio noise pretty effectively you see.)
Another benefit of a radio telescope on the moon, is that it can be employed alongside a terrestrial one for very wide angle measurements of very distant objects. EG, instead of just the earth's diameter, we could have "Earth-moon orbit" diameter, and with multiple samples per measurement. (which you wont get with a single orbiting satellite listening device.)
So, for the 3rd time, I dont mean trying to analyze visible light using analog physics over that distance. Stop with the strawman already.
More like:
"Hey NASA, we know you have this fancy data aggregation and digital image processing system up on the moon, designed to correlate a huge number of discrete data sources. Well, we have a huge number of spy satellites that we want to have processed. If you want more funding, you'd better let us make use of the goods."
No, you are being a dick. :D that is an entirely different problem, and is more yours than mine.
Here: there is no reason why the array cannot be both (local) optical, and (collectively) radio in scope.
The "earth sized" interferomtric radio telescopes you mention, (like the square kilometer array) have fixed angles of observation. A large dedicated array on the moon in the configuration I cited would have multiple graduated angles of interferometry, allowing greater precision of measurement. Being on the dark side of the moon it would not be as subject to terrestrial radio noise sources. It could also be used as a partner to the earth based arrays to give a substantially larger angle than either could provide alone.
As for maintenance.. other than the risk of stuck motors and tin whiskers on electronic devices (issues that also plague orbital telescopes), the use of solid state hardware would remove a staggering portion of it. A lot of the building maintenance on terrestrial optical telescpes, like mona kea, comes from weather and atmosphere interactions. (You know, like corrosion, weathering, peeling paint, birdshit, etc.) On the moon, your biggest problem is energetic charged particles from the sun blasting into the equipment and micrometeorites. (With proper design, this isn't much of a problem. The moon has subsurface moisture in trace amounts, meaning you can hard ground the equipment. This makes protecting computer circuits considerably less difficult. Hardened housings would provide passable protection from micrometeors.)
As for maintenance, you are forgetting that the moon is under 2 light seconds away from earth, and that the construction of the array would require an army. NASA has already designed and tested humanoid telepresence service robots. (Robonaut.) The most cost effective approach would be to drop a bunch of these units at the same time that the components of the array are first delivered, and use telepresence to construct the array.
The robots would remain at the site. If the array needs repair, the robots can be reactivated, and used to perform the maintenance from earth. (Just store them inside the nodes of the array, and capitalize on the shielding the nodes provide.)
The implication was that the array could create composite optical images using local optics on each node, and a massive radio frequency array using the same topology.
You were the one creating strawmen out of whole cloth, implying that I meant trying to collimate the entire quantity of light hitting the dark side of the moon all at once. Yes. I agree, that idea is laughably silly. It is not what I suggested.
Next time try being civil and asking questions.
Unfortunately, you are probably right. :(
Still, using the moon as a stable platform for deep space sensors is a much more sensible application than a human lunar colony. (Even just within our solar system, the array would greatly reduce the need for expensive probe missions for general data collection. An effective aperature of that size would let you see things that even the best terrestrial telescopes could never image. We could use it to listen to the magnetosphere of jupiter, for instance, or to track CMEs as they enter into the outer solar system. Perhaps even listen to the heliopause against the interstellar medium.)
Sadly, the data processing system would probably get coopted by world governments for military purposes, if it ever got built. :(
The worst part, is that this would probably have to be by design in order to get funding.
No. Staying purpetually in the moon's shadow would require lunar-centric orbit. The moon's gravity well is very shallow, and dominated by the earth's. Orbital resonances with the earth would make any spacecraft attempting to stay in the moon's shadow have to actively perform continuous course corrections.
By comparison, the L2 lagrange point is a "calm waters" location, where gravitational influences from both the earth and the moon are balanced perfectly. A spacecraft at this location with the correct momentum will sit there peacefully with only very minimal course corrections.
Who said anything about it being optical?
I was actually envisioning an array of radio telescopes, and smaller optical ones used in concert to create a composite aperature.
We have sufficient data processing technology, and the construction and engineering requirements for the individual nodes of the array are not that different from what is currently in operation.
The difference would be entirely from the location. On the moon, it des not pose an environmental impact on any life forms. It does not run into problems with human economic activities (as pointed out countless times by others, mining on the moon will never be practical), it is far removed from human radio sources on the dark side of the moon, is removed from earth light pollution and atmospheric defraction, and does not need any station keeping equipment.
Freed from all those constraints, and with the potential to be an astronomical array of unprecidented size, it is hard to imagine reasons NOT to do I, if scientific investigation is truly the motivator. (With an aperature that size, the potential to directly image an exoplanetary system becomes plausible, as well as charting the local stellar neighborhood with previously impossible levels of detail.)
If it helps you to imagine what I envision here, I will describe the array for you.
There are 2 concentric circles of discrete radio and optical telescope "nodes" on the dark side of the moon, linked with optical fiber data interconnections. There are 4 additional semicircles that are tangent to the inner circle, and meet at 90 degree intersections with the outer circle. (Forms a diamond shape.) The combined data from these nodes allows the digital reconstruction of what would be observed, as if the entire dark hemisphere of the moon had been completely covered in nodes. (At least for radio wavelenths.)
You would only need a few hundred nodes.
On the light hemisphere of the moon, you construct the communications tower.
I was in no fashion suggesting plastering the entire dark side of the moon with CCDs. That is unfeasible logistically, and unnecessary. The point of having multiple points for interferometry is to permit multiple simultaneous observations of distant objects, and to have a variety of interferometric angles from which to discriminate frequency of emission with.
Eg, the array could track multiple objects, give location, vector, speed, and suggestions on composition for all of them simultaneousy. It could also be used in aggregate to observe a single, very distant object using a statistical approach to resolve signal from noise.
It would be well within our engineering capacity.
It would just cost an unbelievable amount of money.
Unlike an artificial satellite however, it only needs to be made ONCE.
I keep seeing aburd rhetoric like this. At this point I am not sure if this can be ascribed to shameless trolling, or to poes's law gone terribly wrong.
Regardless, the concentration of melanin in human skin does not have a demonstrable relationship with mental ability. If it did, there would be a profound trend in medical literature, as people would become dumber after summer sun exposures. This does not occur. Therefore, the color of the skin is meaningless for the ascribed metric.
What you are really trying (and failing) to say, is that you feel that the subset of people who naturally have dark skin pigmentation are statistically more likely to suffer from a medley of social and psychological ills, and appear predisposed toward deleterious behaviors. I would conjecture that this is cultural, and has nothing to do with the actual skin pigmentation level itself, due to the lack of evidence to substantiate such a claim. The pigmentation itself does not appear to have any deleterious effect on human behavior, else getting a tan would have significant effects. Getting said tan does not appear to do so. Thus, skincolor does not appear directly causal.
The issue therefore, (should there even really be such an issue to begin with) is not one of skincolor at all, but with a cultural subsegment which engages in deleterious practices.
History suggests that this subsegment of the population came to exist because of unsubstantiatable biases on the part of the lightly pigmented demographic in the first place. The same outcome would have occured if the conditionals had been reversed.
The assertion that the problem has to do with skincolor, despite the lack of substantiatable evidence, would seem to be nothing more than a perpetuation of the incorrect and insubstantiatable assertions that gave rise to the very problem said assertion claims to address. More of the same will not solve the problem, and only an irrational or insane mind would attempt such when presented with actual data.
Skin color is not the causal factor. Institutional and cultural ostracism, and disenfranchisment is demonstrably at fault for any percieved inequality. Purpetuation of those practices will NOT improve things, no matter how much you want for it to be so.
Accept this fact, divert your attention from skin color to the actual problem, and stop wasting bandwidth.
Of course, if you are just a troll, go die in a fire.
Putting the parts there, no.
Assembling them and testing all the moving parts? Yes.
Rovers and robots are very robust things, but that level of assembly requires humans still.
Once built, it wouldn't need humans anymore, except for the occasional maintenance or upgrade mission, but the benefits of having it up there would be astounding.
Often, I hear people demanding to know what practical reason humans would have to travel to the moon again. Many people bring up pipedreams like space ports, or lunar mining complexes.
I have a better reason.
The moon is tidelocked with the earth, has a very stable orbit, and a fairly large circumference. We should put an interferometric space telescope on the dark side of the moon. We could then use the entire circumference of the "visible/invisible" hemisphere terminator zone as the effective aperature size, and be free of atmospheric distortions.
The kinds of pictures we could get from such a telescope would make hubble look like a cheap webcam in comparison.
Put the command/control antenna on the visible side of the moon, and have it garanteed to always be pointed at the earth.
They would do better to build their factories in flyover country, where cots of living are lower, average wage is lower, cost of utilities is lower, and all that jazz.
The central US is well connected for large freight shipments by rail.
Just to play devil's advocate here.
Let's assume that we have a neptune sized gas giant going through its daily grind around its parent star, and that it has a magnetosphere. (Only 1 in 50 red dwarf systems have a jupiter mass object in orbit, but 1 in 3 has a neptune mass object.)
That close to its parent star, it would collect a tremendous amount of "cold" stellar plasma. (our little dirtball collects enough to create the van allen radiation belts. A neptune sized object would create a radiation torus MUCH larger.) This would inflate the magnetosphere to gargantuan proportions. This means that a great many of the proposed moons orbiting the gas giant would still retain thick atmospheres, unless other cosmic forces were actively at work to strip them. (like I think Enceladus's interaction with Saturn's magnetosphere...) Under such conditions, a rocky body like jupiter's moon Titan, which has a thick nitrogen and hydrocarbon atmosphere would be heated by both tidal heating, and be within the habitable zone. It would have an abundance of volcanic activity, and would get sufficient light that it could theoretically develop a biosphere.
If you throw into the mix all the red dwarf stars in our local star cluster, and the shockingly large number of detected gas giant planets we have detected so far in "inner" solar system orbits, a solution to the problem of potentially habitable bodies in red dwarf systems becoming tide-locked is provided by moons orbiting habitable zone gas giants. Such systems would be well protected from meteor impacts, as the gas giant would sweep the vast majority of objects out of the orbital path of the pair. The gas giant would keep the rotation and orbital period of the moon on a nice even keel, and would provide a strong magnetosphere.
If I were looking for a place to build a colony that could last a VERY VERY long time, I would look for goldilocks gas giants with habitable moons around red dwarf stars. The only niggly problem is the statistical scarcity of light elements like hydrogen in these systems. (M type stars are very rich in metals, but light on hydrogen and helium compared to more larger and more luminous stars. Any moons orbiting such gas giants are more likely to have an excessive amount of crustal oxygen than in other types of system, as metal oxide spectral lines are a mainstay feature of M type stars.) This might be resolvable if the system is "Absurdly old", as the high concentration of heavy elements would suggest a high level of radiological isotopes in the mineral composition of the planetary and satellite objects of such systems. This means that radiologically produced hydrogen from fission reactions over time could provide the missing hydrogen. M type star systems are quite capable of persisting to such advanced cosmic ages.
I would be very interested in the prospect of habitable satellites of massive objects in red dwarf systems, and think that planets like ours get too much attention in the search for habitable bodies.
Assuming they use extensible appendages for locomotion at all.
At that level of local gravity, they are more likely to be something like a gastropod, or aquatic.
pumping blood under 7 Gs is something human hearts require a pressure suit for! Any large bodied creatures from that planet would have to have a very different anatomic makeup from ours.
No. Period.
Subluminal travel runs headfirst into special relativity. The energy costs to accelerate a massive body to a nice fraction of lightspeed follows a log curve (approaching infinity on the far end.)
Then you have all the sticky issues with specific impulse, like mass loss, and the constraints about the size of the vessel he was shipped out in.
Basically, baby superman would have split the earth into ball of high energy plasma, if his pod had been doing even half lightspeed when it "landed". Due to the size, it wouldnt have had sufficient reactant to slow down when it neared Sol. In order for the vessel to not obliterate the earth, it would have to have been traveling SIGNIFICANTLY slower than lightspeed. Ergo, thousands of years.
What I want to know is why kalael sent him to sol, an not another red dwarf. Class M stars are copiously abundant in our local star cluster, and sending his baby boy to a G type star would be like our scientists deciding to send somebody to a blue star. Unless they are a dark skinned baby, they would have a hard time there. (G type stars like ours have considerably higher percentages of UV light compared to M type stars, like "krypton's". This may explain why spuderman is fair complected.)
At subluminal velocities, it would take him thousands of years to reach the earth.
I seem to recall that his pod contained educational materials, and was not a chryopod. (If it was, he would have crash landed as a fishstick, and not as a toddler.)
For the narrative to be believable, the pod must have been traveling at approx 30x the speed of light.
Perhaps not....
Superman was an infant when his "escape pod" was jettisoned from krypton. He was a toddler when it landed on earth, so about a year and a half flight time. Then, on earth, he aged at least another 20 years before becoming superman.
Then you have any story and plot arcs that have happened between his becoming superman, and deciding to visit the planetarium.
This likely nets us a cozy 30-ish years or so since krypton exploded. Since superman arrived in an FTL capable pod, he can now watch through the telescope as his planet breaks up, from his vantage point on earth, close to 30 LY away. (The starsystem in question is about 27LY from earth.)
This makes it an intriguing prospect.
(this is a broken comparison. I know it is broken. I don't need to have it pointed out that it is broken. I don't need to have it explained why it is broken, as I already know how it is broken. This is because white collar workers are not endangered by their workplace like blue collar workers are/can be. That is not the point of the comparison. The point of the comparison is that the same outstanding factor from management, creates a dangerous work environment. The type of danger is not conserved, due to the fundamental difference between white and blue collar work. This is an abstract comparison,)
Compare:
"Hey Boss, we really need to work on our OSHA compliance, we're a deathtrap just waiting to get sprung. We spray toxic solvent without respirators, or forced air, not to mention the furnace uses open flame combustion to heat the shop floor in the winter. "
"We cant afford/dont need those things. We get told in advance when OSHA is going to show up, and we will just roll out the red carpet like usual. get back to work."
_________
"Hey Boss, we really need to work on our security certificate store. We have certs in there that a script kiddie could break in just a few hours, that we REALLY need to replace."
"Why? dont they work anymore?"
"Yes, they still work, but it's unsafe."
"If it isnt broke, dont fix it. I cant justify added expenses on the expense report."
_______
Unions strong-arm management into providing the needed/requested infrastructure, that they otherwise would never in a million years provide or implement, because management does not understand the value of the implementation.
For IT, I have three words every worker in that field will shudder over: "Internet Explorer 6." Why does management demand it live forever like a zombie? Because they have software they wrote 20 years ago that they dont want to get rid of, because "It still works", and "replacing it would be expensive/hard."
IE 6 isn't the only thing that persists as the creature from beyond that simply wont die, even though for every conceivable reason, it needs to. There are so many, scattered and specific to particular companies, that I simply cannot list them. IE 6 is just a well known offender. It's the damned "chained to sewing machines" of the IT world.
Trying to do your work with substandard tools can make even a proficient worker look mediocre to sub-par. (while it's true that a craftsman doesn't blame the tools, the tools do have an effect on the quality of the craftsman's work.) Getting better tools is often a lesson in who can go over the most heads, requiring the IT person to also do accounting management's jobs for them if the proper tools are to be acquired. (if I had a nickle for every story I've heard about the PHB buying into the hype from a sales rep, hook line and sinker, I could retire.)
The union does not need to exist because of wages, or dangerous work environments. that's what manufacturing unions are for. The need for an IT union is simply to have more leverage to get what you need, when you need it, and to increase the decision making power of the IT dept for IT related issues, like H-1Bs and setting the employment requirements for HR. (Instead of the other way around.)
So far, all of the "We dont need a union!" replies have revolved around the "Money, Safety, Protection for incompetence" trifecta, none of which apply (or should apply) to IT. The non-sequitor is the mistaken belief that I was implying that those were the reasons for stating that there was a need for a union. It isn't.
The union I see a need for uses collective bargaining to improve IT decision making on the part of management, and increases autonomy of the department to help combat outsourcing, unconsionable use of interns and immigrant laborers, and dangerous operating policies for networks and equipment.
It doesnt use collective bargaining to protect unfit workers, raise wages, or anything like that.
Ideally, no union is needed. I agree with
I dunno if baseball bats and nail strips would be necessary. Those are just historically employed forms of coersion.
IT workers can be especially painful to people financially, when motivated to do so. Black hats aren't people to take lightly.
You forgot to include H-1B visas, and outsourced development's combined drain on the market value of the skillset.
There *IS* a reason why tech sector employers ravenously crave both you know.
While a significant portion of the workforce is still domestic is the time to produce a union.
Not after.
Also, it wasn't the pay I was referring to. There are other factors that could necessitate the formation of a union. Specificially, vocational stress, poorly defined hours, and demanding miracles with substandard equipment.
While IT people are unlikely to die or have lasting health complications in their line of work, don't underestimate the value of reduced stress in a less cuthroat office environment.
I haven't heard of any either, but I could clearly see a white collar information technology union. The need for one is quite apparent.
As financial conditions deteriorate, and simultaneously the need for more IT labor increases, the more management is pressured to "get more for less."
Eventually there has to be a breaking point. When whole IT depts are cut down to essentially 2 to 5 people, and miracles are expected, eventually the "I love challenges!" Personality trait many IT people have (especially younger ones. I have suspicions that this is the real reason why manaement craves those 'early 20s' IT workers over more experienced ones) will eventually be overwhelmed, and a huge section of the industry will become disillusioned.
That's when I would expect unions.
if we assume that the unixware system does not use IDE or some similarly popular interface type, and thus cannot be hooked to a modern system for dd, then you can always mount a network share from the production server itself, and dd from there.
Slow as hell, but if it gets the image....