It's just like the air traffic control system "upgrade" they've been working on for nearly 30 years. The contractors have ZERO incentive to ever provide a working product. Much better to keep in in development forever.
Next Generation Air Transportation System started initial planning in 2003 (nowhere close to 30 years ago), and the actual implimentation started some time later. It was always planned to be a slow rollout, in part because aircraft would have to be fitted with new equipment, and airlines did want to rush to do that.
Moreover, many parts of the system are already working. For example, see the section in the linked article on noise pollution. The system is efficient in that it can pack more planes in a given amount of airspace and can better make the planes follow the same route. If you live under the flightpath that kind of sucks, since the system being efficient means more noise above your head. The increase in noise pollution complains is a signal that the system is working!
There are many examples of the problem you mentioned, but this isn't really one of them. This is the system working basically as intended: slow but steady progress to update multiple intertwined, critical systems that can't reasonably be replaced all at once.
I've got 18 Mbps ATT DSL, and I don't think that I could hit that cap anyway given that their service is so unreliable. My connection goes down at least once almost every evening... (Granted, it usually comes back 5-10 minutes later, but still.)
In principle, nothing. In practice, the cost of the equipment to do it. Plus, your garage hydrogen generator probably won't be that energy efficient. Industrial-scale hydrogen generation isn't super efficient, so I'd bet that your garage hydrogen generator would be even less efficient.
The equipment would probably be heavily regulated, because this is a lot different than simply having a propane tank in your back yard or an electric car charger in your garage. If you're _generating_ (rather than simply storing) an explosive, highly pressurized gas in a residential neighborhood, your neighbors will want your garage hydrogen generator to inspected periodically to ensure that it's in working order. I certainly wouldn't what a ghetto hydrogen generator next door to me.
The vast majority of the stuff that's getting sent to foreign countries isn't getting reused -- and for good reasons.
First, if something is reasonably valuable, it's probably being reused in the states (e.g. the Dell/Goodwill program mentioned in TFA).
Moreover, old computers and CRTs aren't that useful in the third world. A cheap, new smart phone is much more useful since it has wireless connectivity and a battery (the phone is probably more powerful than a CRT-era desktop to boot). In many developing countries, you're a lot more likely to have a wireless signal than a wired internet connection. Your desktop also won't do much good if the power grid is in poor condition -- or non-existent (you can charge your smart phone from a solar panel). There's a reason that cheap smartphones are popular in developing countries.
No, No, and not really. The valuable parts were stripped and the rest dumped. For example, the dumped parts included cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) from LCD screens. CCFLs contain mercury and should be handled carefully instead of being thrown on the ground (like they were in the article).
Yes, the problem isn't that the waste goes somewhere. The problem is where it goes. That said, the two are strongly connected.
"Recyclers" are probably not shipping this waste somewhere with strict environmental controls; environmental controls cost money to comply with, so it doesn't make much sense to ship to places with meaningful environmental controls. They're not shipping this stuff to Japan, Europe, etc. In principle, they could be shipping it somewhere with strict environmental controls (that are actually enforced) but low enough labor costs to make up for the cost of shipping, but if such a place exists, that's news to me. Indeed, the article documents that fact that a lot of these electronics are being shipped to countries where environmental controls are non-existent or not enforced. In short, the fact that they're shipping this stuff out of the country should raise red flags.
I've looked at the wikipedia page for both the Pentium (586) and Pentium pro (686), and I see that the pro made significant changes under the hood, but I don't see differences in terms of the instruction set (although I may not be reading the article close enough). If the instruction set for the 586 and 686 is identical, then why drop 586 but not 686? I realize that the 586 is slower, but that alone doesn't seem like a good reason to drop support. What am I missing?
It sounds like planting more trees in place of sugar cane could help with this problem. From the article you linked to:
Experts also say that the drought is not a natural disaster but a consequence of decades of bad farming practices.
In recent years, the state government allowed the proliferation of sugar factories owned by local politicians, which led to a sort of gold rush among farmers here to cultivate water-guzzling sugar cane, said Pradeep Purandare, a former professor of water studies at the Water and Land Management Institute.
Seventy percent of the water from the state’s dams goes to cane farms. But cane growers have drawn on groundwater, further sapping the aquifers.
Mostly unrelated but cool fact I learned: planting trees can have serious effects on climate. Take the example of Ascension Island
In 1836 the Beagle voyage visited Ascension. Charles Darwin described it as an arid treeless island, with nothing growing near the coast... In 1843, botanist and explorer Joseph Hooker visited the island. Four years later, Hooker, with much encouragement from Darwin, advised the Royal Navy that with the help of Kew Gardens, they should institute a long-term plan of shipping trees to Ascension. The planted trees would capture more rain and improve the soil, allowing the barren island to become a garden. So, from 1850 and continuing year on year, ships came with an assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Argentina, Europe and South Africa. By the late 1870s Norfolk pines, eucalyptus, bamboo, and banana trees grew in profusion at the highest point of the island, Green Mountain, creating a tropical cloud forest.
Granted, that's a special case that won't be repeated in India. Still, we usually only think of weather affecting the plants -- not plants affecting weather. It's good to remember that it works both ways.
(Not picking on you in particular; it's just that you mention DDT, so this seems like a good place to post.)
For what I can tell, this time round, Malaria was eliminated without a massive DDT campaign (possibly without DDT at all). I can't find a single source on DDT use in this campaign, but here is the summary on how Turkey eliminated malaria recently, and it looks like no DDT was used post 2000 (although it was used heavily earlier).
For those who don't know, DDT use in controversial because it is harmful to birds (and is likely a carcinogen, but then again, what isn't a carcinogen?). However, not using it is also controversial because critics say that environmentalist trying to reduce the use of DDT are causing millions of deaths worldwide by prioritizing wildlife over human lives. FWIW, the World Health Orgainzation still supports using DDT to fight malaria, but it also strongly recommends using newer (and likely less environmentally harmful) pesticides.
The pro-DDT critics of envromentalists often miss one big thing, which gets hammered on in the first liked I posted: a lot of mosquito have gained resistance to DDT (and other pesticides). Just like overuse of antibiotics leads to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, so does the overuse of pesticides lead to pesticide-resistant mosquito. The link makes that pretty clear:
By 1999/2000, resistance to 12 insecticides (DDT, dieldrin, malathion, fenitrothion, pirimiphosmethyl, bendiocarb, deltamethrin, permethrin, lambdacyhalothrin, eofenprox, cyfluthrin and propoxur) was reported for specimens of An. sacharovi, in both laboratory cultures and wild-caught mosquitoes collected in the malarious areas of Adana, Adiyaman, Antalya, Aydn, and Mugla in southern Turkey. In Adana, Adiyaman and Antalya, An. sacharovi was susceptible only to malathion and pirimiphos-methyl.
That's kind of scary. It makes it clear that we need a plan B for killing mosquitoes other than wide-spread use of pesticides, because existing pesticides are already loosing their effectiveness. New pesticides will eventually suffer the same fate too.
That won't work because this is a textbook example of a natural monopoly: almost all their costs are fixed (maintaining infrastructure) and the marginal cost per customer is basically zilch. (You turning on the TV costs them almost nothing.) Even without a government-granted monopoly, their monopoly status would happen naturally.
Why is it a natural monopoly? Suppose you had two different companies, each with their own cables running down your street. The two CEOs would look at eachother and say: why are we wasting all this money maintaining two sets of cables. We should just merge, maintain just one set of cables (saving money in the process), and become a monopoly to boot! (Exercise for the reader: understand why not all situations lead to natural monopolies. E.g. why do we not have natural monopolies in grocery stores?)
That might sound silly, but that's basically what we have now. Many houses have access to only two internet providers: the phone company and the cable company. Since TV signals are digital nowadays, they often offer the same services. The only thing keeping cable and phone companies from merging is government regulation.
What's the best solution? I'm not sure, but taking away their monopoly status will not foster competition on it's own. In my area, it would just lead to an ATT-Charter merger, which sounds horrible...
Sources told KING the disturbance caused by the pumping must have exacerbated the leak: essentially blowing a hole in the aging tank allowing the material to leak more quickly into the outer shell... Tank AY-102 is one of 28 double-shell tanks at Hanford
If I'm reading this right, they have a double-shell tank and then inner shell is leaking material into the outer shell. That's not good, but it doesn't sound like the material has escaped from the tank. The outer shell is there as a failsafe, and it seems to be doing its job. Am I missing something?
PS. An RT.com article, really? A news source controlled by the Russian government has reason to exaggerate US failures.
That's not reinventing! That's iterating! Iterating is approaching a problem with knowledge of previous results and come out with even more knowledge. That is useful. The GP is instead suggesting that the reinvention should be done _independently_; i.e. without knowledge of previous results.
Feynman did not do that. Feynman read a work by Dirac, who had an important insight but didn't do much with it. Feynman realized he could do more with it, and that was the birth of the he path integral formulation of quantum mechanics.
That's the power of iterating vs reinventing. If Feynman hadn't come across Dirac's insight, we wouldn't have his path integrals today.
Heisenberg and Schrodinger were basically inventing the wheel at the same time. Both methods reproduced the hydrogen atom spectrum in 1926 but were developed starting in 1925. So they were not *re*inventing anything; they were inventing the same thing independently (although in slightly different forms).
In another post, I gave the example of a numerical technique that has been independently rediscovered no less than four times (roughly once a decade). In at least one case, the reinvention had errors. That is "reinventing", and it's unequivocally a waste of time. The time would have been much better spent refining the technique instead of rediscovering it and introducing errors in the process.
These defenses of "reinventing" are baffling. Are you two scientists? Do you spend your time rederiving pre-existing results from scratch? How's that working for you?
Independent (re)discovery is a good thing - it means that several sets of brains have come to the same conclusion.
No. Science should be iterative, not repetitive.
Why should multiple people invent the wheel? One person should invent it. Another should say, "Gee, that's cool, but stone is heavy, so I'll make it out of wood!" A third person should say, "It would be better if I greased the axle to make it roll with less friction!" And so on... That is an iterative process. At each step, you improve things while verifying the original result (that the wheel make transportation easier). Simply reinventing the wheel is a waste of time compared to iterating the wheel.
The same thing often happens in science. In the process, if prior results turn out to be bunk, they'll get called out for it. That way there's both progress and verification. That said, there is a place for straight-up verification of past results, but there is no reason for that to be the norm.
I don't know about your field, but in mine -- unless you're doing something absolutely new (unlikely) -- there's always plenty of relevant works (many more than I cite). That's kind of the point. Maybe 20-25 years ago you only _thought_ there were 20-25 relevant papers. That doesn't mean you were right.
I'd go further and say that all the easily available information allows you to make connections you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm using a technique used to model earthquakes and applying it to heat flow in nanostructures. It turns out that research done by seismologists is also relevant to solid state physicists! Who knew? Probably not you.
I can't claim that I've read every single paper. When the reviewer told me to cite certain papers, I did and didn't bother reading them. However, I've read more papers on the topic than I cite. I've been working on this project for a year and a half. If I read one paper every four days (not hard), that gets me to ~135 papers.
For people born before 1990, there was this thing called "research" which took more than 5 seconds to do, thus its need to be described as an actual activity.
The high time cost of "research" before everything was electronic meant that research was often lower quality. (By research, I mean "looking up sources" -- not "doing science" in general.) I'm a physicist, and it's very interesting to look back at old papers (which I do often because it's easy thanks to the internet). Old papers tended to cite few other papers, probably because looking up references was time consuming, and there are only so many hours in a day. E.g. the paper I'm working on cites over 100 other works. Many older papers don't even cite 20 other works.
For example, I was interested in a specific topic (a finite-difference time-domain solution to the Schroedinger equation), so I started digging. It turns out that the technique was "introduced" no less than four times -- basically once a decade since the 1950s. Each paper which "introduced" the technique did not cite previous work on the technique. That's both a dick move and a waste of time and effort. People should have been refining the technique instead of wasting time by rediscovering it. You also see this in even older work. E.g. the "Fokker–Planck equation" is also known as the "Kolmogorov forward equation" because Kolmogorov didn't know that the equation had already been developed.
I wouldn't have been able to learn about the history of the technique if not for electronic records. This research still doesn't take 5 seconds to do. I spend days doing it and discover much more than anyone in 1990 could.
The biggest danger isn't from birds of prey (at least in the USA); the danger is geese. There are serious geese mitigation efforts near major airports (example), and geese have seriously damaged and even brought down planes before (example).
Did you do any research before posting? I've heard about these mitigation efforts, and I don't know anything about flying. Then again, the word "lazy" is in your handle...
Right, I guess you remember the days when people communicated by stone tablets and people had thick enough skin to simply shrug off threats of death/rape/etc.
Are many people being offended by things they should just deal with? Sure.
Are you right to dismiss all forms of online harassment as people being thin-skinned whiners who are perpetually offended? Absolutely not.
There are some real issues here that should not be willfully ignored.
It's true that some people think that way, but I don't see the connection to my previous post. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with my "fertile ground" thesis?
Slashdot Mirror
It's just like the air traffic control system "upgrade" they've been working on for nearly 30 years. The contractors have ZERO incentive to ever provide a working product. Much better to keep in in development forever.
Next Generation Air Transportation System started initial planning in 2003 (nowhere close to 30 years ago), and the actual implimentation started some time later. It was always planned to be a slow rollout, in part because aircraft would have to be fitted with new equipment, and airlines did want to rush to do that.
Moreover, many parts of the system are already working. For example, see the section in the linked article on noise pollution. The system is efficient in that it can pack more planes in a given amount of airspace and can better make the planes follow the same route. If you live under the flightpath that kind of sucks, since the system being efficient means more noise above your head. The increase in noise pollution complains is a signal that the system is working!
There are many examples of the problem you mentioned, but this isn't really one of them. This is the system working basically as intended: slow but steady progress to update multiple intertwined, critical systems that can't reasonably be replaced all at once.
I had Uverse (i.e. DSL+TV) for until last March because they gave me a nice intro offer. It was never any more stable.
I've got 18 Mbps ATT DSL, and I don't think that I could hit that cap anyway given that their service is so unreliable. My connection goes down at least once almost every evening... (Granted, it usually comes back 5-10 minutes later, but still.)
In principle, nothing. In practice, the cost of the equipment to do it. Plus, your garage hydrogen generator probably won't be that energy efficient. Industrial-scale hydrogen generation isn't super efficient, so I'd bet that your garage hydrogen generator would be even less efficient.
The equipment would probably be heavily regulated, because this is a lot different than simply having a propane tank in your back yard or an electric car charger in your garage. If you're _generating_ (rather than simply storing) an explosive, highly pressurized gas in a residential neighborhood, your neighbors will want your garage hydrogen generator to inspected periodically to ensure that it's in working order. I certainly wouldn't what a ghetto hydrogen generator next door to me.
We need to make an internet archive archive!
The vast majority of the stuff that's getting sent to foreign countries isn't getting reused -- and for good reasons.
First, if something is reasonably valuable, it's probably being reused in the states (e.g. the Dell/Goodwill program mentioned in TFA).
Moreover, old computers and CRTs aren't that useful in the third world. A cheap, new smart phone is much more useful since it has wireless connectivity and a battery (the phone is probably more powerful than a CRT-era desktop to boot). In many developing countries, you're a lot more likely to have a wireless signal than a wired internet connection. Your desktop also won't do much good if the power grid is in poor condition -- or non-existent (you can charge your smart phone from a solar panel). There's a reason that cheap smartphones are popular in developing countries.
No, No, and not really. The valuable parts were stripped and the rest dumped. For example, the dumped parts included cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFLs) from LCD screens. CCFLs contain mercury and should be handled carefully instead of being thrown on the ground (like they were in the article).
Yes, the problem isn't that the waste goes somewhere. The problem is where it goes. That said, the two are strongly connected.
"Recyclers" are probably not shipping this waste somewhere with strict environmental controls; environmental controls cost money to comply with, so it doesn't make much sense to ship to places with meaningful environmental controls. They're not shipping this stuff to Japan, Europe, etc. In principle, they could be shipping it somewhere with strict environmental controls (that are actually enforced) but low enough labor costs to make up for the cost of shipping, but if such a place exists, that's news to me. Indeed, the article documents that fact that a lot of these electronics are being shipped to countries where environmental controls are non-existent or not enforced. In short, the fact that they're shipping this stuff out of the country should raise red flags.
I've looked at the wikipedia page for both the Pentium (586) and Pentium pro (686), and I see that the pro made significant changes under the hood, but I don't see differences in terms of the instruction set (although I may not be reading the article close enough). If the instruction set for the 586 and 686 is identical, then why drop 586 but not 686? I realize that the 586 is slower, but that alone doesn't seem like a good reason to drop support. What am I missing?
It sounds like planting more trees in place of sugar cane could help with this problem. From the article you linked to:
Experts also say that the drought is not a natural disaster but a consequence of decades of bad farming practices.
In recent years, the state government allowed the proliferation of sugar factories owned by local politicians, which led to a sort of gold rush among farmers here to cultivate water-guzzling sugar cane, said Pradeep Purandare, a former professor of water studies at the Water and Land Management Institute.
Seventy percent of the water from the state’s dams goes to cane farms. But cane growers have drawn on groundwater, further sapping the aquifers.
Mostly unrelated but cool fact I learned: planting trees can have serious effects on climate. Take the example of Ascension Island
In 1836 the Beagle voyage visited Ascension. Charles Darwin described it as an arid treeless island, with nothing growing near the coast... In 1843, botanist and explorer Joseph Hooker visited the island. Four years later, Hooker, with much encouragement from Darwin, advised the Royal Navy that with the help of Kew Gardens, they should institute a long-term plan of shipping trees to Ascension. The planted trees would capture more rain and improve the soil, allowing the barren island to become a garden. So, from 1850 and continuing year on year, ships came with an assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Argentina, Europe and South Africa. By the late 1870s Norfolk pines, eucalyptus, bamboo, and banana trees grew in profusion at the highest point of the island, Green Mountain, creating a tropical cloud forest.
Granted, that's a special case that won't be repeated in India. Still, we usually only think of weather affecting the plants -- not plants affecting weather. It's good to remember that it works both ways.
(Not picking on you in particular; it's just that you mention DDT, so this seems like a good place to post.)
For what I can tell, this time round, Malaria was eliminated without a massive DDT campaign (possibly without DDT at all). I can't find a single source on DDT use in this campaign, but here is the summary on how Turkey eliminated malaria recently, and it looks like no DDT was used post 2000 (although it was used heavily earlier).
For those who don't know, DDT use in controversial because it is harmful to birds (and is likely a carcinogen, but then again, what isn't a carcinogen?). However, not using it is also controversial because critics say that environmentalist trying to reduce the use of DDT are causing millions of deaths worldwide by prioritizing wildlife over human lives. FWIW, the World Health Orgainzation still supports using DDT to fight malaria, but it also strongly recommends using newer (and likely less environmentally harmful) pesticides.
The pro-DDT critics of envromentalists often miss one big thing, which gets hammered on in the first liked I posted: a lot of mosquito have gained resistance to DDT (and other pesticides). Just like overuse of antibiotics leads to antibiotic-resistant bacteria, so does the overuse of pesticides lead to pesticide-resistant mosquito. The link makes that pretty clear:
By 1999/2000, resistance to 12 insecticides (DDT, dieldrin, malathion, fenitrothion, pirimiphosmethyl, bendiocarb, deltamethrin, permethrin, lambdacyhalothrin, eofenprox, cyfluthrin and propoxur) was reported for specimens of An. sacharovi, in both laboratory cultures and wild-caught mosquitoes collected in the malarious areas of Adana, Adiyaman, Antalya, Aydn, and Mugla in southern Turkey. In Adana, Adiyaman and Antalya, An. sacharovi was susceptible only to malathion and pirimiphos-methyl.
That's kind of scary. It makes it clear that we need a plan B for killing mosquitoes other than wide-spread use of pesticides, because existing pesticides are already loosing their effectiveness. New pesticides will eventually suffer the same fate too.
All monopolies require state protection.
[citation needed]
That won't work because this is a textbook example of a natural monopoly: almost all their costs are fixed (maintaining infrastructure) and the marginal cost per customer is basically zilch. (You turning on the TV costs them almost nothing.) Even without a government-granted monopoly, their monopoly status would happen naturally.
Why is it a natural monopoly? Suppose you had two different companies, each with their own cables running down your street. The two CEOs would look at eachother and say: why are we wasting all this money maintaining two sets of cables. We should just merge, maintain just one set of cables (saving money in the process), and become a monopoly to boot! (Exercise for the reader: understand why not all situations lead to natural monopolies. E.g. why do we not have natural monopolies in grocery stores?)
That might sound silly, but that's basically what we have now. Many houses have access to only two internet providers: the phone company and the cable company. Since TV signals are digital nowadays, they often offer the same services. The only thing keeping cable and phone companies from merging is government regulation.
What's the best solution? I'm not sure, but taking away their monopoly status will not foster competition on it's own. In my area, it would just lead to an ATT-Charter merger, which sounds horrible...
Scroll down for the release notes on
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Xenial...
I've skimmed over it, and truthfully, I don't see major changes for my use case (normal desktop user of Kubuntu).
From TFA:
Sources told KING the disturbance caused by the pumping must have exacerbated the leak: essentially blowing a hole in the aging tank allowing the material to leak more quickly into the outer shell... Tank AY-102 is one of 28 double-shell tanks at Hanford
If I'm reading this right, they have a double-shell tank and then inner shell is leaking material into the outer shell. That's not good, but it doesn't sound like the material has escaped from the tank. The outer shell is there as a failsafe, and it seems to be doing its job. Am I missing something?
PS. An RT.com article, really? A news source controlled by the Russian government has reason to exaggerate US failures.
That's not reinventing! That's iterating! Iterating is approaching a problem with knowledge of previous results and come out with even more knowledge. That is useful. The GP is instead suggesting that the reinvention should be done _independently_; i.e. without knowledge of previous results.
Feynman did not do that. Feynman read a work by Dirac, who had an important insight but didn't do much with it. Feynman realized he could do more with it, and that was the birth of the he path integral formulation of quantum mechanics.
That's the power of iterating vs reinventing. If Feynman hadn't come across Dirac's insight, we wouldn't have his path integrals today.
Heisenberg and Schrodinger were basically inventing the wheel at the same time. Both methods reproduced the hydrogen atom spectrum in 1926 but were developed starting in 1925. So they were not *re*inventing anything; they were inventing the same thing independently (although in slightly different forms).
In another post, I gave the example of a numerical technique that has been independently rediscovered no less than four times (roughly once a decade). In at least one case, the reinvention had errors. That is "reinventing", and it's unequivocally a waste of time. The time would have been much better spent refining the technique instead of rediscovering it and introducing errors in the process.
These defenses of "reinventing" are baffling. Are you two scientists? Do you spend your time rederiving pre-existing results from scratch? How's that working for you?
Independent (re)discovery is a good thing - it means that several sets of brains have come to the same conclusion.
No. Science should be iterative, not repetitive.
Why should multiple people invent the wheel? One person should invent it. Another should say, "Gee, that's cool, but stone is heavy, so I'll make it out of wood!" A third person should say, "It would be better if I greased the axle to make it roll with less friction!" And so on... That is an iterative process. At each step, you improve things while verifying the original result (that the wheel make transportation easier). Simply reinventing the wheel is a waste of time compared to iterating the wheel.
The same thing often happens in science. In the process, if prior results turn out to be bunk, they'll get called out for it. That way there's both progress and verification. That said, there is a place for straight-up verification of past results, but there is no reason for that to be the norm.
I don't know about your field, but in mine -- unless you're doing something absolutely new (unlikely) -- there's always plenty of relevant works (many more than I cite). That's kind of the point. Maybe 20-25 years ago you only _thought_ there were 20-25 relevant papers. That doesn't mean you were right.
I'd go further and say that all the easily available information allows you to make connections you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. That's what I'm doing right now. I'm using a technique used to model earthquakes and applying it to heat flow in nanostructures. It turns out that research done by seismologists is also relevant to solid state physicists! Who knew? Probably not you.
I can't claim that I've read every single paper. When the reviewer told me to cite certain papers, I did and didn't bother reading them. However, I've read more papers on the topic than I cite. I've been working on this project for a year and a half. If I read one paper every four days (not hard), that gets me to ~135 papers.
For people born before 1990, there was this thing called "research" which took more than 5 seconds to do, thus its need to be described as an actual activity.
The high time cost of "research" before everything was electronic meant that research was often lower quality. (By research, I mean "looking up sources" -- not "doing science" in general.) I'm a physicist, and it's very interesting to look back at old papers (which I do often because it's easy thanks to the internet). Old papers tended to cite few other papers, probably because looking up references was time consuming, and there are only so many hours in a day. E.g. the paper I'm working on cites over 100 other works. Many older papers don't even cite 20 other works.
For example, I was interested in a specific topic (a finite-difference time-domain solution to the Schroedinger equation), so I started digging. It turns out that the technique was "introduced" no less than four times -- basically once a decade since the 1950s. Each paper which "introduced" the technique did not cite previous work on the technique. That's both a dick move and a waste of time and effort. People should have been refining the technique instead of wasting time by rediscovering it. You also see this in even older work. E.g. the "Fokker–Planck equation" is also known as the "Kolmogorov forward equation" because Kolmogorov didn't know that the equation had already been developed.
I wouldn't have been able to learn about the history of the technique if not for electronic records. This research still doesn't take 5 seconds to do. I spend days doing it and discover much more than anyone in 1990 could.
The biggest danger isn't from birds of prey (at least in the USA); the danger is geese. There are serious geese mitigation efforts near major airports (example), and geese have seriously damaged and even brought down planes before (example).
Did you do any research before posting? I've heard about these mitigation efforts, and I don't know anything about flying. Then again, the word "lazy" is in your handle...
Right, I guess you remember the days when people communicated by stone tablets and people had thick enough skin to simply shrug off threats of death/rape/etc.
Are many people being offended by things they should just deal with? Sure.
Are you right to dismiss all forms of online harassment as people being thin-skinned whiners who are perpetually offended? Absolutely not.
There are some real issues here that should not be willfully ignored.
Did I say that he was any better?
I have seen many things posted on Slashdot, but I never expected to see an Agenda 21 conspiracy theory. Slashdot truly is a diverse community!
It's true that some people think that way, but I don't see the connection to my previous post. Are you agreeing or disagreeing with my "fertile ground" thesis?
See revised subject. I need to do a better job proofreading...