Well I RTFA and there are some parts of the process that seem lacking. Essentially, a few rocket engineers said they could take the output gas from waste water plants (NO2) and use it to fire and burn a rocket engine. The emissions from the rocket engine would be oxygen enriched air. The power from the rocket engine is supposed to be used to generate electricity for the plant to allow it to continue processing waste water and producing rocket fuel, thus completing a fully self-contained power cycle and allowing the waste water plant to be self-sufficient.
What's left out, however, is how the rocket engines are supposed to be used to generate electricity. Rocket engines are optimized to produce thrust. While liquid engines have turbine machinery in them, this engine would be burning gas with it's own oxidizer in the fuel (NO2). Without the separate fuel and oxidizer plumbing, I am not sure how much pump/turbine machinery would be in the design of the rocket engine. That said, I don't know what kind of spinning motion would be used to generate the electricity for the waste water plant. It would be nice to see some details on how the engine design will be used to actually produce electricity. Don't get me wrong, rocket motors are great sources of energy, but they very rarely, if ever, are used to drive electricity into a circuit. So I am curious if they are simply planning to use the nozzle flame to heat water for a steam turbine, or if they have an internal turbine that is driven by the NO2 (preburn) to drive a magnet surrounded by copper, or if they intend to stick a turbine in the thrust column of the engine (expensive materials).
It's an interesting idea, but some technical details would be nice. Typically rockets attempt to minimize spinning components and, thus, are not nearly as good electricity produces as other types of engines that have spinning components as a fundamental part of their design (ICEs, Diesels, etc.).
We don't build airplanes with flapping wings either, machines can emulate the functionality of a living being without need to simulate the exact details.
Well, that's true, but we do understand how flapping wings produce lift. We also understand the basic physics that govern flying motion (lift vs. weight, thrust vs. drag, etc.). Meyers seems to be saying that Kurzweil's problem is not that he is trying to develop a different type of "wing" (to stick with your analogy) but, instead, Kurzweil doesn't understand the basic dynamics that govern a flying system.
Neural network software is pretty much routine stuff, the tricky part is learning what are the interconnections between the neurons.
See, Meyers is stating that last bit is actually a pretty big tricky part. The interconnections in the brain, as I understand it, are constantly changing and growing as new information is processed with time. The dynamic laws that govern this change over time are not fully understood according to Meyers. He goes on to assert that there is a lot about the brain that is not currently understood and uses the biochemical interactions of proteins to illustrate this point. Of course, I think he would have had a better argument if he addressed the misunderstanding of dynamic neuron growth directly but that's besides the point. The point is, Kurzweil seems to assume that after the brain is grown from the human genome (after that upper limit of information coded into the genome is developed into a physical prototype) then the rest is simply a matter of deciphering a static system. The brain, however, is not a static system (and that's the fallacy Meyers points out when first addressing Kurzweil's idea). The brain consistently grows and changes over a lifetime, and Meyers considers our present knowledge about how that brain grows and changes to be inadequate to make the claims Kurzweil makes.
Now, whether or not Meyers or Kurzweil is correct will be something that time tells. If we have a fully engineered brain simulator in 2020, then Kurzweil will have been correct. However, I can see why Meyers is making the claims he is making against Kurzweil. Similarly, I can see the flaws in Kurzweil's logic.
you don't need to simulate electrons in a semi-conductive material at specific temperatures in order to build a complete working emulator for an old computer.
Maybe not, but you do need to understand the fundamental laws and rules that govern the systems of a computer. The fellow who wrote this article seems to be asserting that we actually don't know the fundamental laws and rules that govern the systems of the human brain, or, at least, Kurzweil doesn't. In other words, Kurzweil seems to oversimplify the problem by stating that, since the brain is organically grown from a base set of information, it should be trivial to emulate a brain once we can emulate that base set of information. Meyers seems to be asserting that the fundamental laws that govern the functions of the human brain appear to be far more complex and tend to derive from things other than that base set of information. The human brain appears to function under a set of laws and rules different than the set that Kurzweil assumes it does. That is the fallacy that Meyers is pointing out in Kurzweil's logic. Meyers may not understand computers very well, but he certainly does seem to have some insight on what rules and laws (biochem, protein folding, etc.) at least partially govern the human brain. Similarly, anyone writing a computer emulator needs to have the understanding of the fundamental laws and rules that govern the computer (binary logic, architectural pathways, memory addresses, etc.). Meyers goes on to say that our understanding of the fundamental laws of the human brain are incomplete at best and downright ignorant at worst. That's how he derives his argument.
I want to clarify that I didn't use the term "scapegoat" to imply that Childs was a completely innocent victim being raped and pillaged by the big evil city. What I was trying to say is that it would be a pity of the city's IT department used Childs as a scapegoat for fixing their own incompetence. As in, "Well, now that he is gone, things will be working out fine and dandy around here from now on."
In other words, my point was that the problems with the SF city procedures are not fixed yet and I hope the Childs ruling does not keep them from getting fixed (in other words, being used as a scapegoat to avoid an overhaul of the city procedures). Perhaps that explanation will quell some of you respondents that are insisting that I neither know the facts or that I am making an uninformed assertion.;)
While the city may have a shitty IT setup, is that illegal? Probably not. However what Childs did WAS illegal.
I'd like to make it clear that I am not advocating that Childs is somehow innocent. I know I used the term scapegoat, but that word has more connotation with it then I intended. Frankly, whether or not Childs got convicted doesn't really apply to me at all. I don't work in systems administration. My point in posting was to point out that our legal system consistently fumbles when presented with technical and/or scientific matters. What Childs does was illegal, I agree. However, as citizens of a free democracy we have to ask ourselves if what Childs did was wrong and, furthermore if what is determined to be illegal corresponds to what is determined to be wrong. Regarding this particular case, again, I don't have many feelings one way or another. I did follow the entire case out of interest, however, because I have had an increasingly curious streak for legal matters regarding technical industries. Recalling what I read in the various press releases regarding this case, it seemed, to me at least, that this case demonstrated very tritely how technological controversies fall on deaf ears in many courts today resulting in rulings that often pass judgments based, at least partially, on misunderstanding technology.
So, is the city's incompetence illegal?
Probably not.
Is the city's incompetence bad?
I'd say so.
Were Childs' actions inappropriate?
I'd say so.
Do we, as citizens, have as much power to correct the bad processes of the city as the city has to prosecute the inappropriate actions of Childs?
It doesn't seem so to me.
That's the point I was trying to make. I was not trying to sell Childs as some martyr.
With regards to this:
How are you any better than the people you like to look down upon if you cannot be bothered to get your facts straight for something you have strong emotions about?
I am not exactly sure what you are referring to, but I don't look down upon very many people that I know of. In fact, thinking about it I can't think of anyone that I know well that I look down upon. Furthermore, I don't have strong emotions about this case. I simply have observations about my society that I have been collecting as I grow older. Perhaps this jab was not intended for me personally and that's fine. However, I'd like to clarify that my post was neither without introspection nor forethought so please don't label it as uninformed kneejerk.
The city of San Fransisco, according to this guy at least, has poor IT procedures. Something should be done about that. I hope that Childs sentence is not sold as, "Look we fixed the problem."
Sure, the SF IT department may be getting managed into the ground. Sure, maybe the city is as much to blame for everything as Childs is. But none of that matters now, does it? Nobody is going to file a case against SF city. Nobody is going to punish the SF IT department. Nah, the city will get to walk away scott free, continuing to practice poor procedures. All the wild, Childs has to live with his sentence as a convenient scapegoat. This case just serves a little more proof the the justice system, on all levels in this country (at least if you live in California) is completely FUBAR.
Well, it's kind of hard to do experiments on the Sun.
NASA and The ESA wish to disagree with you. Well, okay, in your defense those weren't particularly 'easy' by any definition of the word. The point, however, is that we've been experimenting on the sun (or, at least using observed data to experiment with our models) for awhile now.
Give me a break. The solar activity cycle has been documented and studied since the early '60's (if not prior). We use it to design appropriately rad-hardened components in the spacecraft industry. We analyze required mission lifetimes and chart solar activity for the projected lifespan of the spacecraft as variations in solar activity affect everything from solar cell degradation to magnetic drag induced on your spacecraft. Hell, I can eve give you a citation. Go find yourself a copy of Fundamentals of Space Systems ed. II by Vincent L. Pisacane. Crack it open to Chapter II: The Space Environment. Read pages 50 through 60. It's all laid out in the basics there. If you want more detailed info. go crack into a journal of astrophysics sometime....
So put away the hatred of science and go back to doing whatever it is you do.
Of course, if you were being sarcastic and/or satirical, I completely failed to pick up on it due to a lack of sarcasm tags around your post.
Is anyone else bored by this franchise now? And when will it finally, mercifully, be put down?
I got bored by the movies a long ass time ago. I enjoy the post-trilogy books released by Del-Rey for the most part though. Hell, a few of the Bantam books weren't so bad either. Personally, I find Zahn's, Stackpoles's, and Allston's writings to be the best.
I'd use the same password for everything if they all "secured" shit that I didn't care about people knowing (read relationship status, hobbies/interests, favorite bands, and the latest gossip on my next door neighbor). Now, if this were a story about how 75% of the passwords used for social networking and e-mail accounts are the same ones used for bank accounts and logins associated with classified/proprietary information, then I think there would be something worth worrying about.
So I guess Chrome, Opera, Iron, Seamonkey, and dozens of other web browsers are completely insecure?
I know IE6 is a nightmare. I don't really pay attention to IE7 or IE8 because I don't use them. I know Chrome involves some privacy issues, and I suppose there is something that has to do with selective script management. From what I hear, however, Opera and Iron are supposed to be pretty damn secure. Also, SeaMonkey is supposed to be pretty decent. I can't talk about Safari because, like IE, I really don't care about it at all.
Of course, you prefixed your post with "In Tinfoil Hat Land..." so I suppose you were being somewhat sarcastic. But I am curious, do you really think FF is the only secure browser out there?
Employee: "Sir, I don't think I am going to come in today, I am feeling a bit crappy"
Boss: "Okay see you tomorrow. Get well soon." Next day
Employee: "Sir, I still feel like crap, coming in later."
Boss: "Okay, get well soon." A few more days pass
Employee: "Sir, still feeling ill on this end, I think it's the WiFi signals at the office that make me feel like this."
Boss: "Okay, thanks for the info. Go ahead and go home. In fact, don't bother coming back either. We'll mail your final paycheck to you. We wouldn't want you to have to come in and get affected by any of those damn WiFi signals."
Seriously, the biggest danger to these kids is instilling the habit that lame excuses can force their surrounding environment to adapt to them. If you raise a bunch of kids with the idea that complaining about WiFi can get them out of school, their first manager post graduation is going to pull his hair out trying to deal with 'em.
You will never find a news organisation which isn't biased.
Nonsense! I found the purest source of unbiased news anywhere in the world. I visit the site regularly and read comments by informed and intelligent individuals that are full of nothing but evidenced facts and logically sound arguments. What is this mecca of truth you ask? Why it is none other than Slashdot!
After finding Slashdot, I finally grew out of my infantile ignorance of the world and am now a mature intellectual that can spar with any man on any topic of debate. Computer News? You bet! What's more, I know that every year from here until the end of time will be the year of the Linux desktop. Programming News? Of course! I am now fully cognizant of the fact that perl is, and always will be, the one true programming language that should be worshipped and revered. Science News? Damn Straight! The best part about Slashdot is the brutal peer review process that allows individuals with little or no background in a respective field to rip into studies and research that have taken some of the greatest minds of the 21st century to conduct proving them to be little more than artificial intellectual constructs. Politics? Yes sir! I look forward to the day that the world wakes up and realizes that a pseduo-anarchistic political model in which laws are written in a manner based on the open-source software model will result in a true utopia for all of mankind.
Yes sir! There truly is one strong, beautiful, respectable news source in this world, and that source is/.
Now, excuse me while I go sniff some sharpies and gargle turpentine!
Napster, really? You're going to compare a peer-to-peer filesharing system that allowed its users to illegally share copyrighted material to a centralized and legal music store.
What's wrong with that? I know that myself and a lot of my friends pretty much get all of our music from modern Napster derivatives and other peer-to-peer driven sources. I would wager that quite a large population, if not the majority of folk downloading music get their music from various P2P models. (I don't know if that is true in the U.S. anymore, but it seems that it may very well be in a lot of higher population countries elsewhere in the world). Frankly, I think Napster is a perfectly valid and apt comparison to something like iTunes. I specifically avoided iTunes when I started collecting digital music because I found the interface too confusing and because, frankly, it tried to manipulate my own collection too much without asking me for input (I like to control my computer, I don't like my computer doing shit I didn't ask it to do). As such, I looked and looked and looked for other means of gaining access to digital music and organizing it. I found WinMX and long time ago, Kazaa after that, then LImewire, now Bittorrent, and I will find other distribution tools as I move on. The point is P2P filesharing offers a wonderful form of competition to centralized music stores. It provides access to similar, and sometimes the exact same, products in a completely different manner with a completely different user experience.
Now, questioning the morality or legality of filesharing is certainly something to be discussed about P2P sharing in general, but I would assert that is an irrelevant argument and a completely different subject when addressing the topic of this post. Was Napster innovative? Yes. Did it, and/or it's derivatives compete with iTunes as iTunes got large? Yes. Do some people prefer to use P2P models? Yes. Thus, is it valid to compare Napster/P2P to iTunes? I sure as hell think it is.
You're living proof of why willfully ignorant Linux fanboys are worse than the most ardent Apple yuppie fanboy.
/facepalm
So, one user posts a decent, if opinionated, post about prior art to all of Apple's listed innovations. As a response, another user posts an insulting critique of the opinion, relying on ad hominems and memes to defend his point, which is...well, come to think of it, I'm not sure what his point is besides insulting another user, and he gets modded informative. Then to top it all off, he talks about why one type of fanboy is better than another type of fanboy. The irony in this last sentence getting modded up is beyond astounding.
Who's got time for a victim in Afghanistan or end-of-life issues with all these Tweets coming in?' It's a valid point. If it's not Tweets or Facebook posts, it's lengthy forum arguments or reading news articles from the time you walk in the door at work until you're ready for bed at night
Now some jackhole Senator is going to start campaigning about how Slashdot is responsible for civilian deaths in Afghanistan, the current economic crisis, and the elderly having inadequate welfare just to cover up his latest sex scandal. Way to kill off the competition NPR. =P
whereas now the hiding and protecting of research seems codified into our society.
Maybe that's because various scientists and researchers don't want to deal with the headache and pain that comes along with some misinformed boob misinterpreting valid data and ranting about how it's proof the the researcher/scientist is a fraud and criminal. The whole climate change debate thing comes to mind. When climate researchers' data did get out in the open, various news sources jumped all over the researchers like a pack of ravenous wolves. Hell, there was literally an army of bloggers who were actively seeking any nit they could find to discredit the research.
I don't mean to imply that particular example showed "good" science being questioned by "wrong" people. I don't have enough knowledge about the subject to say one way or another. However, my point is that, given the rampant belligerence towards science displayed in modern society, researchers may want to hide and protect their data just because they don't want their picture stamped on the front of the New York Times with the headline "Friend or Fraud?!" across it.
I'm not saying that's the way it should be, but that could be one of the reasons for the general attitude of protectionism displayed so often today.
If you don’t like your internet service provider’s policies, you can simply switch to another one.
Hahahahaha! That's a good one. And here I thought I was already tolerating ISP abuse, crappy upload speeds, poorly maintained infrastructure, and false service tech. arrival times because I just felt it was the right thing to do. Now that I know I have a choice to work with an ISP that will treat me with respect and dignity well, gosh darn, I'll just hop on over this month.
Oh wait.
I don't know if this article was written by someone in another country or what, but like most of our shitty national industries (cell phones, auto insurance, medical services, political parties, etc.) we in the U.S. don't have any choice in what services are provided to us by our ISP. We might have the illusion of choice in one area or another, depending on how badly your local branch wants to maintain reputation, but real choice? Nah, this is the freedom lovin' US of A. We don't do that sort of thing here.
Um, I know quite a few soldiers. Some of them are incredibly intelligent, others are painfully stupid. I don't know a single one of them that wants, "more war." You have to remember, soldiers aren't the one's kicking back and sipping scotch while talking about the political, philosophical, economical and moral ramifications of war. They are the ones that are face down in the sand, ears ringing, while they watch one of their buddies scream in terror at the new stump hanging where his arm used to be. They are the fellas that get to land in a hot zone, set up some tech/gadget/base/whatever under enemy fire in some of the most extreme environments only to get on a chopper and watch it all get blown to shit a few hours later. Most of these guys even have wives, daughters, sons, and project cars to come home too after spending time halfway across the world watching people die all for reasons that they don't even understand themselves anymore.
If you really think soldiers want more war, you have a seriously perverse view on things. Soldiers don't want more war. Politicians and various businesses do. Soldiers don't.
Slashdot Mirror
That whoosh over your head is not the sound of your Wraith start fighters engaging the enemy.....
\ facepalm
Self-edit after rereading, s/NO2/N20/g in my post above.
Well I RTFA and there are some parts of the process that seem lacking. Essentially, a few rocket engineers said they could take the output gas from waste water plants (NO2) and use it to fire and burn a rocket engine. The emissions from the rocket engine would be oxygen enriched air. The power from the rocket engine is supposed to be used to generate electricity for the plant to allow it to continue processing waste water and producing rocket fuel, thus completing a fully self-contained power cycle and allowing the waste water plant to be self-sufficient.
What's left out, however, is how the rocket engines are supposed to be used to generate electricity. Rocket engines are optimized to produce thrust. While liquid engines have turbine machinery in them, this engine would be burning gas with it's own oxidizer in the fuel (NO2). Without the separate fuel and oxidizer plumbing, I am not sure how much pump/turbine machinery would be in the design of the rocket engine. That said, I don't know what kind of spinning motion would be used to generate the electricity for the waste water plant. It would be nice to see some details on how the engine design will be used to actually produce electricity. Don't get me wrong, rocket motors are great sources of energy, but they very rarely, if ever, are used to drive electricity into a circuit. So I am curious if they are simply planning to use the nozzle flame to heat water for a steam turbine, or if they have an internal turbine that is driven by the NO2 (preburn) to drive a magnet surrounded by copper, or if they intend to stick a turbine in the thrust column of the engine (expensive materials).
It's an interesting idea, but some technical details would be nice. Typically rockets attempt to minimize spinning components and, thus, are not nearly as good electricity produces as other types of engines that have spinning components as a fundamental part of their design (ICEs, Diesels, etc.).
We don't build airplanes with flapping wings either, machines can emulate the functionality of a living being without need to simulate the exact details.
Well, that's true, but we do understand how flapping wings produce lift. We also understand the basic physics that govern flying motion (lift vs. weight, thrust vs. drag, etc.). Meyers seems to be saying that Kurzweil's problem is not that he is trying to develop a different type of "wing" (to stick with your analogy) but, instead, Kurzweil doesn't understand the basic dynamics that govern a flying system.
Neural network software is pretty much routine stuff, the tricky part is learning what are the interconnections between the neurons.
See, Meyers is stating that last bit is actually a pretty big tricky part. The interconnections in the brain, as I understand it, are constantly changing and growing as new information is processed with time. The dynamic laws that govern this change over time are not fully understood according to Meyers. He goes on to assert that there is a lot about the brain that is not currently understood and uses the biochemical interactions of proteins to illustrate this point. Of course, I think he would have had a better argument if he addressed the misunderstanding of dynamic neuron growth directly but that's besides the point. The point is, Kurzweil seems to assume that after the brain is grown from the human genome (after that upper limit of information coded into the genome is developed into a physical prototype) then the rest is simply a matter of deciphering a static system. The brain, however, is not a static system (and that's the fallacy Meyers points out when first addressing Kurzweil's idea). The brain consistently grows and changes over a lifetime, and Meyers considers our present knowledge about how that brain grows and changes to be inadequate to make the claims Kurzweil makes.
Now, whether or not Meyers or Kurzweil is correct will be something that time tells. If we have a fully engineered brain simulator in 2020, then Kurzweil will have been correct. However, I can see why Meyers is making the claims he is making against Kurzweil. Similarly, I can see the flaws in Kurzweil's logic.
you don't need to simulate electrons in a semi-conductive material at specific temperatures in order to build a complete working emulator for an old computer.
Maybe not, but you do need to understand the fundamental laws and rules that govern the systems of a computer. The fellow who wrote this article seems to be asserting that we actually don't know the fundamental laws and rules that govern the systems of the human brain, or, at least, Kurzweil doesn't. In other words, Kurzweil seems to oversimplify the problem by stating that, since the brain is organically grown from a base set of information, it should be trivial to emulate a brain once we can emulate that base set of information. Meyers seems to be asserting that the fundamental laws that govern the functions of the human brain appear to be far more complex and tend to derive from things other than that base set of information. The human brain appears to function under a set of laws and rules different than the set that Kurzweil assumes it does. That is the fallacy that Meyers is pointing out in Kurzweil's logic. Meyers may not understand computers very well, but he certainly does seem to have some insight on what rules and laws (biochem, protein folding, etc.) at least partially govern the human brain. Similarly, anyone writing a computer emulator needs to have the understanding of the fundamental laws and rules that govern the computer (binary logic, architectural pathways, memory addresses, etc.). Meyers goes on to say that our understanding of the fundamental laws of the human brain are incomplete at best and downright ignorant at worst. That's how he derives his argument.
I want to clarify that I didn't use the term "scapegoat" to imply that Childs was a completely innocent victim being raped and pillaged by the big evil city. What I was trying to say is that it would be a pity of the city's IT department used Childs as a scapegoat for fixing their own incompetence. As in, "Well, now that he is gone, things will be working out fine and dandy around here from now on."
In other words, my point was that the problems with the SF city procedures are not fixed yet and I hope the Childs ruling does not keep them from getting fixed (in other words, being used as a scapegoat to avoid an overhaul of the city procedures). Perhaps that explanation will quell some of you respondents that are insisting that I neither know the facts or that I am making an uninformed assertion.;)
While the city may have a shitty IT setup, is that illegal? Probably not. However what Childs did WAS illegal.
I'd like to make it clear that I am not advocating that Childs is somehow innocent. I know I used the term scapegoat, but that word has more connotation with it then I intended. Frankly, whether or not Childs got convicted doesn't really apply to me at all. I don't work in systems administration. My point in posting was to point out that our legal system consistently fumbles when presented with technical and/or scientific matters. What Childs does was illegal, I agree. However, as citizens of a free democracy we have to ask ourselves if what Childs did was wrong and, furthermore if what is determined to be illegal corresponds to what is determined to be wrong. Regarding this particular case, again, I don't have many feelings one way or another. I did follow the entire case out of interest, however, because I have had an increasingly curious streak for legal matters regarding technical industries. Recalling what I read in the various press releases regarding this case, it seemed, to me at least, that this case demonstrated very tritely how technological controversies fall on deaf ears in many courts today resulting in rulings that often pass judgments based, at least partially, on misunderstanding technology.
So, is the city's incompetence illegal?
Probably not.
Is the city's incompetence bad?
I'd say so.
Were Childs' actions inappropriate?
I'd say so.
Do we, as citizens, have as much power to correct the bad processes of the city as the city has to prosecute the inappropriate actions of Childs?
It doesn't seem so to me.
That's the point I was trying to make. I was not trying to sell Childs as some martyr.
With regards to this:
How are you any better than the people you like to look down upon if you cannot be bothered to get your facts straight for something you have strong emotions about?
I am not exactly sure what you are referring to, but I don't look down upon very many people that I know of. In fact, thinking about it I can't think of anyone that I know well that I look down upon. Furthermore, I don't have strong emotions about this case. I simply have observations about my society that I have been collecting as I grow older. Perhaps this jab was not intended for me personally and that's fine. However, I'd like to clarify that my post was neither without introspection nor forethought so please don't label it as uninformed kneejerk.
The city of San Fransisco, according to this guy at least, has poor IT procedures. Something should be done about that. I hope that Childs sentence is not sold as, "Look we fixed the problem."
Sure, the SF IT department may be getting managed into the ground. Sure, maybe the city is as much to blame for everything as Childs is. But none of that matters now, does it? Nobody is going to file a case against SF city. Nobody is going to punish the SF IT department. Nah, the city will get to walk away scott free, continuing to practice poor procedures. All the wild, Childs has to live with his sentence as a convenient scapegoat. This case just serves a little more proof the the justice system, on all levels in this country (at least if you live in California) is completely FUBAR.
Well, it's kind of hard to do experiments on the Sun.
NASA and The ESA wish to disagree with you. Well, okay, in your defense those weren't particularly 'easy' by any definition of the word. The point, however, is that we've been experimenting on the sun (or, at least using observed data to experiment with our models) for awhile now.
/facepalm
Give me a break. The solar activity cycle has been documented and studied since the early '60's (if not prior). We use it to design appropriately rad-hardened components in the spacecraft industry. We analyze required mission lifetimes and chart solar activity for the projected lifespan of the spacecraft as variations in solar activity affect everything from solar cell degradation to magnetic drag induced on your spacecraft. Hell, I can eve give you a citation. Go find yourself a copy of Fundamentals of Space Systems ed. II by Vincent L. Pisacane. Crack it open to Chapter II: The Space Environment. Read pages 50 through 60. It's all laid out in the basics there. If you want more detailed info. go crack into a journal of astrophysics sometime....
So put away the hatred of science and go back to doing whatever it is you do.
Of course, if you were being sarcastic and/or satirical, I completely failed to pick up on it due to a lack of sarcasm tags around your post.
Ah I get it. I didn't think I understood what was being said, but that's why I asked.
Is anyone else bored by this franchise now? And when will it finally, mercifully, be put down?
I got bored by the movies a long ass time ago. I enjoy the post-trilogy books released by Del-Rey for the most part though. Hell, a few of the Bantam books weren't so bad either. Personally, I find Zahn's, Stackpoles's, and Allston's writings to be the best.
I'd use the same password for everything if they all "secured" shit that I didn't care about people knowing (read relationship status, hobbies/interests, favorite bands, and the latest gossip on my next door neighbor). Now, if this were a story about how 75% of the passwords used for social networking and e-mail accounts are the same ones used for bank accounts and logins associated with classified/proprietary information, then I think there would be something worth worrying about.
So I guess Chrome, Opera, Iron, Seamonkey, and dozens of other web browsers are completely insecure?
I know IE6 is a nightmare. I don't really pay attention to IE7 or IE8 because I don't use them. I know Chrome involves some privacy issues, and I suppose there is something that has to do with selective script management. From what I hear, however, Opera and Iron are supposed to be pretty damn secure. Also, SeaMonkey is supposed to be pretty decent. I can't talk about Safari because, like IE, I really don't care about it at all.
Of course, you prefixed your post with "In Tinfoil Hat Land..." so I suppose you were being somewhat sarcastic. But I am curious, do you really think FF is the only secure browser out there?
We could dub this tactic Blitzkrieging a thread. =)
The world already has one of those. It's called the U.S. Military.
Someone should try this at their job:
Employee: "Sir, I don't think I am going to come in today, I am feeling a bit crappy"
Boss: "Okay see you tomorrow. Get well soon."
Next day
Employee: "Sir, I still feel like crap, coming in later."
Boss: "Okay, get well soon."
A few more days pass
Employee: "Sir, still feeling ill on this end, I think it's the WiFi signals at the office that make me feel like this."
Boss: "Okay, thanks for the info. Go ahead and go home. In fact, don't bother coming back either. We'll mail your final paycheck to you. We wouldn't want you to have to come in and get affected by any of those damn WiFi signals."
Seriously, the biggest danger to these kids is instilling the habit that lame excuses can force their surrounding environment to adapt to them. If you raise a bunch of kids with the idea that complaining about WiFi can get them out of school, their first manager post graduation is going to pull his hair out trying to deal with 'em.
You will never find a news organisation which isn't biased.
Nonsense! I found the purest source of unbiased news anywhere in the world. I visit the site regularly and read comments by informed and intelligent individuals that are full of nothing but evidenced facts and logically sound arguments. What is this mecca of truth you ask? Why it is none other than Slashdot!
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After finding Slashdot, I finally grew out of my infantile ignorance of the world and am now a mature intellectual that can spar with any man on any topic of debate. Computer News? You bet! What's more, I know that every year from here until the end of time will be the year of the Linux desktop. Programming News? Of course! I am now fully cognizant of the fact that perl is, and always will be, the one true programming language that should be worshipped and revered. Science News? Damn Straight! The best part about Slashdot is the brutal peer review process that allows individuals with little or no background in a respective field to rip into studies and research that have taken some of the greatest minds of the 21st century to conduct proving them to be little more than artificial intellectual constructs. Politics? Yes sir! I look forward to the day that the world wakes up and realizes that a pseduo-anarchistic political model in which laws are written in a manner based on the open-source software model will result in a true utopia for all of mankind.
Yes sir! There truly is one strong, beautiful, respectable news source in this world, and that source is
Now, excuse me while I go sniff some sharpies and gargle turpentine!
Napster, really? You're going to compare a peer-to-peer filesharing system that allowed its users to illegally share copyrighted material to a centralized and legal music store.
What's wrong with that? I know that myself and a lot of my friends pretty much get all of our music from modern Napster derivatives and other peer-to-peer driven sources. I would wager that quite a large population, if not the majority of folk downloading music get their music from various P2P models. (I don't know if that is true in the U.S. anymore, but it seems that it may very well be in a lot of higher population countries elsewhere in the world). Frankly, I think Napster is a perfectly valid and apt comparison to something like iTunes. I specifically avoided iTunes when I started collecting digital music because I found the interface too confusing and because, frankly, it tried to manipulate my own collection too much without asking me for input (I like to control my computer, I don't like my computer doing shit I didn't ask it to do). As such, I looked and looked and looked for other means of gaining access to digital music and organizing it. I found WinMX and long time ago, Kazaa after that, then LImewire, now Bittorrent, and I will find other distribution tools as I move on. The point is P2P filesharing offers a wonderful form of competition to centralized music stores. It provides access to similar, and sometimes the exact same, products in a completely different manner with a completely different user experience.
Now, questioning the morality or legality of filesharing is certainly something to be discussed about P2P sharing in general, but I would assert that is an irrelevant argument and a completely different subject when addressing the topic of this post. Was Napster innovative? Yes. Did it, and/or it's derivatives compete with iTunes as iTunes got large? Yes. Do some people prefer to use P2P models? Yes. Thus, is it valid to compare Napster/P2P to iTunes? I sure as hell think it is.
You're living proof of why willfully ignorant Linux fanboys are worse than the most ardent Apple yuppie fanboy.
So, one user posts a decent, if opinionated, post about prior art to all of Apple's listed innovations. As a response, another user posts an insulting critique of the opinion, relying on ad hominems and memes to defend his point, which is...well, come to think of it, I'm not sure what his point is besides insulting another user, and he gets modded informative. Then to top it all off, he talks about why one type of fanboy is better than another type of fanboy. The irony in this last sentence getting modded up is beyond astounding.
Who's got time for a victim in Afghanistan or end-of-life issues with all these Tweets coming in?' It's a valid point. If it's not Tweets or Facebook posts, it's lengthy forum arguments or reading news articles from the time you walk in the door at work until you're ready for bed at night
Now some jackhole Senator is going to start campaigning about how Slashdot is responsible for civilian deaths in Afghanistan, the current economic crisis, and the elderly having inadequate welfare just to cover up his latest sex scandal. Way to kill off the competition NPR. =P
whereas now the hiding and protecting of research seems codified into our society.
Maybe that's because various scientists and researchers don't want to deal with the headache and pain that comes along with some misinformed boob misinterpreting valid data and ranting about how it's proof the the researcher/scientist is a fraud and criminal. The whole climate change debate thing comes to mind. When climate researchers' data did get out in the open, various news sources jumped all over the researchers like a pack of ravenous wolves. Hell, there was literally an army of bloggers who were actively seeking any nit they could find to discredit the research.
I don't mean to imply that particular example showed "good" science being questioned by "wrong" people. I don't have enough knowledge about the subject to say one way or another. However, my point is that, given the rampant belligerence towards science displayed in modern society, researchers may want to hide and protect their data just because they don't want their picture stamped on the front of the New York Times with the headline "Friend or Fraud?!" across it.
I'm not saying that's the way it should be, but that could be one of the reasons for the general attitude of protectionism displayed so often today.
Yeah? Jim Henson had a wait-and-see attitude and now we have wrong sounding muppets.
(This paraphrased joke courtesy of Stewie Griffin).
If you don’t like your internet service provider’s policies, you can simply switch to another one.
Hahahahaha! That's a good one. And here I thought I was already tolerating ISP abuse, crappy upload speeds, poorly maintained infrastructure, and false service tech. arrival times because I just felt it was the right thing to do. Now that I know I have a choice to work with an ISP that will treat me with respect and dignity well, gosh darn, I'll just hop on over this month.
Oh wait.
I don't know if this article was written by someone in another country or what, but like most of our shitty national industries (cell phones, auto insurance, medical services, political parties, etc.) we in the U.S. don't have any choice in what services are provided to us by our ISP. We might have the illusion of choice in one area or another, depending on how badly your local branch wants to maintain reputation, but real choice? Nah, this is the freedom lovin' US of A. We don't do that sort of thing here.
Soldiers always want more war
Um, I know quite a few soldiers. Some of them are incredibly intelligent, others are painfully stupid. I don't know a single one of them that wants, "more war." You have to remember, soldiers aren't the one's kicking back and sipping scotch while talking about the political, philosophical, economical and moral ramifications of war. They are the ones that are face down in the sand, ears ringing, while they watch one of their buddies scream in terror at the new stump hanging where his arm used to be. They are the fellas that get to land in a hot zone, set up some tech/gadget/base/whatever under enemy fire in some of the most extreme environments only to get on a chopper and watch it all get blown to shit a few hours later. Most of these guys even have wives, daughters, sons, and project cars to come home too after spending time halfway across the world watching people die all for reasons that they don't even understand themselves anymore.
If you really think soldiers want more war, you have a seriously perverse view on things. Soldiers don't want more war. Politicians and various businesses do. Soldiers don't.