I prefer eating apples to looking at sick people for immune system boosts. They don't make me feel crummy through empathy and they have the added benefit of being delicious.
...
Oranges can be substituted for apples if absolutely necessary.
Well yeah, I will give that my last post stumbled into the realm of offtopic, but you made an assertion regarding the effects of raising the bar for licensed drivers and, as such, I responded with my thoughts and opinions on the matter. That tends to be what internet forums are for.
I also agree that the proposal is not a realistic, overnight kind of proposal. Such standards would have to come over a long period of time while coming hand in hand with other changes, like a properly developed public transportation system. Nonetheless, I still stand by my idea that it would solve various issues.
However, to get back on topic, as for the MT vs. AT issue, I do feel that learning MT should be a requirement for vehicle operators in the US. Frankly, it is not that unreasonable of a thing to learn. IT only takes a few hours of driving to get the feel for it, and a week of steady driving to get completely comfortable with it. The benefit of more drivers having more fine-tuned control over their vehicles would be significant. As many folk have pointed out in this thread, having an MT helps you to properly accelerate in a tight highway situation, gives you more power for climbing hills, gives you more control for driving downhill without burning the brake pads, plus a whole host of other things.
If an MT were a required standard in the US, it would help with legitimate issues. For instance, when traffic on a freeway is tight, how often is that due to one car in the fast lane only going slightly faster than the slow lane? While an AT is not always the cause, I could see a legitimate argument being made that, often, that phenomenon may be caused by the driver in the fast lane having an AT and not really being able to, 'punch it,' the way an MT driver can.
Similarly, when navigating small, mountain roads, having a driver in front of you that goes through the cycle of speed up, brake hard, speed up, brake hard, ad infinitum is not only annoying to watch, but quite a concern as they do not appear to have control of their car. Having a manual transmission allows you to limit your speed in a more fluid manner, thus making you appear to be less of a potential hazard to other drivers.
I don't make these claims ignorantly. I have lived in both high-traffic cities and in the mountains. I have driven both MT's and AT's. While I don't claim to be a professional driver, I do put enough miles behind the wheel to know how to handle a vehicle. Driving an MT vehicle really does give you better, fine-grained control in extraordinary driving circumstances (which do arise, whether you plan for it on your daily commute or not). Requiring drivers, in the US and elsewhere, to be familiar with, and capable of, this kind of control is far from unreasonable. Frankly, I think it really would make the roads safer and it would force drivers to be more attentive.
A well-trained driver would handle either one well in an emergency situation.
I don't disagree, however, as I mentioned, we do not have well trained drivers homogeneously across the population. I figure that requiring knowledge and operation of an MT would be one step in getting our general driving population towards that goal. Also, even if a well trained driver could manage an emergency situation with an AT, they will still have more options, and, potentially, better options with an MT than an AT. Having a car make decisions for you regarding the power of your vehicle is, in my opinion, inherently dangerous.
Slashdot, let this be a lesson to you. If your April Fool's day jokes earn you an intervention by authorities, get children out of school for a day, and result in a possible lawsuit against your organization by an official political body, then you are doing it right.
You'd probably need to take over half of all drivers off the roads - stick or AT, doesn't matter - with a bar thus set.
That was my exact point. There is a reason your driver's license is called a license. Driving is a task which requires skill and continued honing of reflexes to be good at. Licensing requirements for operating a vehicle, in my opinion, should be significantly higher to the point where they are restrictive (and no, I am not talking about doing so financially, I mean making it difficult to qualify for a license). Driving a personal vehicle is not a right no matter how much we want it to be. This is true in the case of all other vehicles (there is a reason it is so difficult to get your trucker's license or your motorcycle license). I openly advocate a system which is significantly more difficult to get licensed to drive in. Frankly, I think it would have the benefit of reducing annual casualties as well as encouraging public transportation. So yes, I am all for removing more than half the current drivers on the road.
And before anyone sets in with an ad hominem, no, I cannot be certain that I would qualify for such licensing standards myself. However, I certainly would be willing to invest the time, money, and materials into training myself to meet such standards because I highly value the freedom of personal transportation. It's the same reason I spent extra time, money, and materials to get licensed to operate a motorcycle in the first place. Driving any type of motor vehicle is a responsibility that needs to be earned. Driving a personal vehicle should not be viewed as a matter of convenience or simplicity.
Somehow I think launching more ore less straight up is just too difficult. How about sending things up more like planes?
Orbital vehicles don't just launch more or less straight up. They start launching straight up to get ground clearance, then they pitch over and thrust 'forward.' The main challenge in a launch is not to achieve altitude, it's to achieve orbital velocity. This velocity is extraordinarily difficult to achieve with any kind of thrust other than what amounts to, essentially, a big ass bomb with a nozzle on the end. Planes would have a very difficult time lifting something the size of most orbital launch vehicles. It's not that it can't be done, it just tends to be unnecessarily complex. If you already have to produce enough thrust to attain an orbital velocity, why not spend five second of that thrust achieving a reasonable altitude?
Sure, you're in control, but do you really need to waste so much time and effort for so little benefit? Maybe, but for most people the answer is definitely "no".
When you're in control of half a ton of tempered steel traveling at roughly 60mph or more, then the answer is a definitive "yes." When we are talking about operating systems on home computers where a crash causes some headaches and a few days worth of inconvenience, you're right, you don't need that extra control. When we are talking about what is, essentially, a very powerful weapon that is supposed to be used for peaceful transport purposes (yes, that much directed energy is a weapon, like it or not) then that control is absolutely essential. Those folk who are too damned incompetent to deal with that level of control should stay the hell off the roads, just like those folk who are so old they can no longer tell the brake from the gas pedal.
Bills from companies that you don't trust to handle online billing.
FTFY.
Bills in the mail aren't exclusively from companies that don't handle online billing. Some of us choose to continue with paper versions of bills because we do not trust putting our credit card and/or bank account information into commonly used, high profile websites on a monthly basis.
So let me get this straight. A research institution came to the conclusion that popular things tended to earn a lot of money, while unpopular things tended to tank?
Holy Crap stop the presses! We just invented the Oracle of Delphi! It's all so clear now. The Greeks weren't talking to the gods, but they were talking to a complicated trend analysis computer that tapped into their far reaching social networks!
=P
Nah, in all seriousness though, it's a pretty interesting read.
People fought and died for freedoms - not development.
Really? I am pretty sure that almost every case of imperialism since the dawn of history could be classified as people fighting and dying for development. They just weren't fighting for the development of those who were fighting them. =P
Not that I am disagreeing with your post in general. I agree that privacy is something to be valued and protected. However, I am not sure point 3 holds water in your list.
Then again, you may be referring to India, specifically, when talking about point 3. If that's the case, I don't know if you guys have ever fought or died for development in your own history. If that's the case, just file this post under, "snarky misunderstanding."
A) your reputation ruined or B) go to a secret prison and are never seen again.
Or, C) Your name gets put on a list of, 'people to watch out for,' and, unless you do something tremendously shifty, like, say, purchase lots of ammunition or explosives, you simply get tracked a little more meticulously than most.
The type of profiling you are talking about already happens to some degree today. Based on web searches, utility bills, credit card purchases, and so on and so on. The thing that saves us all is the fact that there are a lot of people to track. Thus, if you do something that flags you as suspicious, its just that, a flag. You get flagged, possibly put on some list somewhere, and you get monitored to see if your habits repeat themselves. In your example, you would be checked on from time to time (without you knowing it) to see if you continue eating sushi and purchasing Japanese books. If that's they case, you mostly just get shrugged off as a wannabe Japanese guy that's probably not a threat.
If, however, you start vacationing regularly to high-profile political targets like the White House, and the Congressional building, and the Pentagon, and so on, and you start Google searching, "How to make homemade explosives," every night, AND you start sending encrypted data packets to a very particular IP address that is known to be linked, through a proxy network, to government servers in Japan, well, then you are probably going to get an unpleasant knock on the door.
Mind you, I am not defending profiling. I am just pointing out a bit of hyperbole in your original assertion. You see, it takes a lot of resources, personnel, and money to round people up, arrest them, detain them, and so forth. Even the NSA, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and the Illuminati (TM) are not going to go through the effort unless you do something VERY suspect.
Now, you did mention that in times of war, these things change. That's probably a valid enough concern and, you are probably right, the number of flags you would have to raise to be detained would probably be lowered significantly. However, I still do not think any government agency would go through the effort of ruining your life or detaining you indefinitely unless you did something very rash, or you really pissed off some powerful people.
Also, whoever said that Google does want to be a threat to Apple? Granted, Google is a corporation and corporations like to make money, but that doesn't mean they have to present a direct threat to any other company. It always seemed to me like Google just did what Google did because:
A) It would be good for Google.
B) They thought it would be really helpful and/or cool.
I mean, sure, Google made a competitive product with the iPhone in releasing the Android architecture. They also made a competitive product with Mozilla in releasing Chrome. They also made a competitive product to Hotmail, Yahoo mail, Lycos mail, etc. by releasing G-mail. Hell, now they are even getting into a market where they seem to want to compete with companies they've never even had contact with. Look into the types of business decisions they are making with regards to alternative energy technology and power management technology. Then of course there are their products that weren't really designed to compete with anything, but were meant to bring an entirely new product to the market. That is, they developed Google, their search engine, and Google maps/Earth to bring about products that really were so polished and impressive that they completely revolutionized the way we work.
So, yeah, Google has some products on the market that compete with Apple. That doesn't mean they want to threaten Apple. Hell, I'd wager that doesn't even mean they want Apple to fail So far as I have seen, Google seems to foster the notion of fair competition through product development, rather than other, shadier, business practices like embrace, extend, extinguish. That is, Google may not want to the threaten Apple or anything else. It seems to me that they just want to innovate and be creative. That's why I've always respected them. They don't intend to shutdown competitors. They just intend to be on par and/or better then them. So why make assertions that Google needs to threaten Apple? It doesn't need to do that at all. So far as I can tell, Google just needs to keep on doing what they are doing and people will continue to use their products if they find them to be superior. It's that simple.
Moral of the story? It seems this guy's discussion is founded on the baseless assumption that all corporations/businesses prefer a monopoly/severe-market-dominance over a healthy competing economy. I don't see where that assumption is ever verified or validated in any way. That makes the whole damn thing dribble in my opinion.
Iran is working on a space program, it just sucks right now. Nah, the real competition will come from China, if they don't start to horribly botch things over the next few years.
Microsoft announced that it would be partnering with OnlineBootyCall to work on its new service, OnliveBootyCall for the popular 360 network. When approached about this decision, Microsoft executives insisted that OnliveBootyCall was significantly different from battle.net Matchmaking as OnliveBootyCall was strictly to be used for random, casual meetings that may or may not involve the teabagging and desecration of pixelated corpses. Whereas battle.net matchmaking promised gamers the opportunity to find a committed quest partner that would compliment each gamer based on 9 levels of character stats, OnliveBootyCall would offer gamers a chance to meet up in the intratubes for some down and dirty achievements grinding while never having to return a later party request.
When approached about Microsoft's new decision, Bill Gates announced that he had no stance on the issue. However photographers did note that most of his belongings were seen on the front lawn of his estate while the paparazzi snapped a few photos of Miranda Gates driving down the pacific coast highway with Eric Schmidt in a candy apple red, convertible Smart Car.
And several times in your post you emphasized that "you were taught" this. Did you independently verify it or did you just accept it as true because that's what you needed to do for your project? Do you know if the climate models in question were up to date with the latest climate science?
Good observation. However, I had a particular reason for using that phrase. You see, I realize that I do not know everything. In fact, I realize that there is a metric crapton of information in this world that I do not know. That being said, I tend to preposition my claims with such phrases as: "I was taught, to my knowledge, so far as I understand..." etc in hopes that it will generate rational discussion form which I can further learn. I find this approach to be much more level headed and less arrogant than blatant, "This is how it is..." type of statements. Think of such prepositions as a meatspace compatible YMMV tag.
Regarding my independent verification of said teachings, yes, I did work very hard to verify this independently. In fact, I have two solid years of sleepless nights in the library spent digging through peer reviewed journal publications trying to determine if there were more accurate climate models out there. If you don't believe me, my general lack of sanity due to prolonged sleep deprivation can serve as evidence to my point. What I did NOT do, however, was go out and google the subject for 10 minutes and then pretend I had found anything useful.
You see, if I walked into an industry design review meeting with data backed up by skepticalscience.com, I would have been laughed out of the conference room, received a failing grade on my design project, and forfeited any chance I had at being taken seriously as a professional engineer. Nah, you see, in the real world, google search results don't cut it. Industry demands accurate, accepted, peer-reviewed sources for any claims made. It especially demands this for projects that cost upwards of $10B relying upon new/recent models or data. So, if I want to use a climate model developed in, say, the early 2000's I had damn well better have at least three peer-reviewed journal articles that I can point towards to back up my design claims. I cannot, point to one website and pretend that's in anyway acceptable in industry design applications.
While that may seem pedantic, it is, in fact, the reason we are capable of designing such complex beasts as spacecraft and cars and so on. Google, unfortunately, doesn't always cut it.
I was surprised that you didn't mention another potential effect on satellites due to warming - the expansion of the upper atmosphere (which can cause more degradation of LEO orbits). Did they not cover that in your classes?
Yes, actually it was. My point throughout my original post was not to detail the entire process that goes into designing the thermal subsystem for a spacecraft (there are entire books dedicated to that, in fact) but was to illustrate the face that climate models, accurate climate models, are not used purely for climate science purposes. There are numerous fields that require accurate climate data to do very important, very risky things. Spacecraft design is one of them. Thus, having superbly accurate climate models would be big news for a lot of engineers.
The poster I was responding to said that there were accurate models out there that could predict, accurately, climate data based on the fact that they verify recorded historical data sets. I had yet to see any and I have been keeping my eyes out for them. That was the point of my post. I feel I conveyed that point correctly. Luckily, I got the response I was looking for which was a link to an existing model. Over the next few months I will be playing with this to see if it does what I need it to do.
Isn't it more likely that your textbooks, curriculum and teacher simply weren't up to date with current theory or data? When I was in college that was a constant problem.
Granted, that is a possibility. However, the book I was specifically referencing was published in 2005 (two years before the time period I spoke of). It's titled Fundamentals of Space Systems, 2nd ed. by Vincent L. Piscane (he was chief editor, there are many authors). Specifically, the data I was referring to is listed in Chapter 2, titled The Space Environment. So, yeah, I suppose it is 5 years out of date now, but that's not terribly old. As for my professor, to my knowledge, he read as many recent, peer reviewed, journals that he could on three subjects that were of particular interest to him: climate science, controls system engineering, chaos theory mathematics. Considering that part of his paycheck relied upon being up to date in those fields, I figured he probably had more time and resources to devote towards such studies. Thus, I did take him (and our department head) at his word when he talked about current mathematical applications in climate modeling. The fact that he wasn't a 50 year old stubborn bastard also helped shape my outlook that he probably had a decent, evolving view of such things.
NO MODEL CAN PREDICT ANYTHING THAT ISN'T ACCOUNTED FOR IN THE MODEL. The scientists who do this for a living do understand this, and are constantly refining their models in order to try to include such effects as more data becomes available.
I am entirely aware of that and that and that was kind of my point. The models, that I know of, do not account for enough factors to make sweeping claims about the entire state of the present climate. Nor do they model, in any way that I am currently aware of, future conditions in such a manner that they could justify the sweeping claims made by various climate change (anthropogenic) advocates. That is to say, I see a lot of people walking around saying that man is causing the heat trapped within the Earth's atmosphere to increase. This trend will continue over the next few decades. In some cases, they say this will have dire consequences so we need to act now. Making such claims, in my opinion, requires very accurate, comprehensive, complex data and models to back it up. While we are gathering more data. I am not yet aware that are models are accurate enough to back up such claims. I am actively seeking new information on said models regularly as it affects my everyday job. That was my point.
As for the scientists that are refining models and gathering more data, I say good by them. Keep it up.
? Several percent of difference is not going to fry your electronics, probably.
It's a thermal balancing issue. It's not that the albedo itself bakes the electronics, but it has to be modeled as a heat source for the entire spacecraft system. Depending on the attitude configuration of the spacecraft, different view profiles exist between the Earth and any given spacecraft surface. Since the Earth exists as a heat source, rather than a heat sink like deep space (i.e. no input radiation), it is very helpful to have very detailed models of the thermal input for each source. Albdedo is one of many sources impacting the spacecraft from many different view angles for a given orientation. These sources must be accurately understood so that radiator design and placement can be conducted in a safe manner. For a given attitude, a spacecraft can only radiate so much heat at a particular rate. This has to be done by piping and controlling all incoming heat sources. The thermal system design, therefore, is extremely complex as it tries to account for the worst case scenarios. To develop a proper worse case scenario, you need to know that you are accounting for the worst case heat inputs from every source. This includes Earth albedo. Thus, being a few fractions of a percent off in these numbers may cause an inadequate cooling scheme to be designed. This won't bake your electronics immediately, but after a few days or weeks in orbit, the extra, unaccounted thermal input will accumulate. This can, and has, caused electronics failures which eventually destroy entire spacecraft.
That is why an accurate model is desired. If it can predict future thermal conditions in Earth orbit anywhere from LEO altitudes to GEO altitudes, then it can provide more accurate data for more situations to be successfully accounted for. This helps to reduce the risk and cost of the entire program.
So, I'll check out the climate model you posted and see if it can do what I need it to do. Thank you.
Buzz! Wrong. We calibrate models on historic data and check if their predictions match the reality.
When I was in school about three years ago I was taught that current climate models, given any set of historic data as initial conditions, are unable to accurately match more than the next ten years of climate data. To clarify, if all of the data up to, say, 1980 was fed to any given climate model, then the data produced by the model beyond about 1990 no longer match what data was recorded for the '90's. This was hammered into myself and my peers because we were getting prepped and ready to work in the spacecraft design industry. Our job was going to be to ensure the survivability of satellites orbiting the Earth (in part). That meant we had to account for things like planet-shine and Earth albedo in our thermal control designs so that we didn't bake our electronics. That also meant that we had to have accurate models of the solar activity as well as accurate models for variances in the Earth's magnetosphere. The models that we could use, with any validity, to base our designs upon were purely historic in nature. That is, we had decades worth of recorded data and we made the assumption that any patterns and cycles that were observable were likely to repeat themselves in the short term because we had no viable means of proving otherwise (we could not predict a deviation from common cycles). The reason climate models got brought up was because Earth albedo was not accurately predicted by any existing climate models. In other words, no climate models, as of 2007, were accurate enough in their modeling of Earth's atmosphere to reflect, appropriately, how much solar radiation was reflected back into space and how much was trapped/absorbed.
Do you see where I am going with this? In 2008, for our spacecraft design classes, where we had to present all of our design criteria and assumptions to spacecraft design industry members. We were restricted to using historic models of Earth's thermal data because no accurate model could do what you claim they can do now. That is, no model could reliably predict, past about a decade, what the hell was going to happen with Earth's thermal systems. The same, so far as we were taught, held true for all comprehensive Earth-climate computer models.
Now, it's 2010. Please tell me, if you know, what climate models are acutely accurate beyond about a decade. Please explain to me what mathematical constructs they used to create such a model. Please explain to me where I can read a comprehensive analysis of the accuracy of said climate model beyond a decade. That is, show me a model where I can input a historical data set that terminates in 1900 and have it accurately predict, to a statistically significant degree, most of the climate happenings up through 2000. If you can point me to this data, and these models, I and many other spacecraft designers will be eternally thankful to you. You see, such models would be one significant step in designing spacecraft to survive for more than about 10 -15 years without it being a wild crap-shoot.
If you cannot point me to said model, then please check the input signal on your buzzer, because it seems to be going off for not apparent reason.
While I don't know the orbital configuration of Mimas with respect to nearby entities (and yes, I am too lazy to look it up right now) I wonder if it could be caused by overlapping radiation profiles from various sources. For instance, Saturn itself must have enough albedo and planet-shine to present some sort heating effect on its moons. Similarly, its rings probably reflect enough sunlight to present a radiation profile to nearby objects. Furthermore, some of the larger moons, while very cool, must also reflect enough light to present some sort of temperature gradient to their neighbors. Combine all that with the fact that Saturn, and its moons, are very far from the sun and, perhaps, those view angles could at least partially account for the odd surface temperature. Of course, looking at the article, I don't see any temperature scale to tell me how, 'hot' or, 'cold' any of those colors map to. That said, I don't know if radiation presented by nearby bodies could even inflict the recorded temperatures onto the surface of Mimas. Also frustrating is that there is no discussion as to what viewing angle Mimas has with nearby bodies. For instance, is the warm side facing Saturn, or Jupiter, or the Sun? Is the cold side facing anything of note?
All in all, the summary and article both are frustratingly lacking in details. I'll have to start looking around for more details now. There goes any productivity I hoped to achieve at work today....
Slashdot Mirror
I prefer eating apples to looking at sick people for immune system boosts. They don't make me feel crummy through empathy and they have the added benefit of being delicious.
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Oranges can be substituted for apples if absolutely necessary.
I also agree that the proposal is not a realistic, overnight kind of proposal. Such standards would have to come over a long period of time while coming hand in hand with other changes, like a properly developed public transportation system. Nonetheless, I still stand by my idea that it would solve various issues.
However, to get back on topic, as for the MT vs. AT issue, I do feel that learning MT should be a requirement for vehicle operators in the US. Frankly, it is not that unreasonable of a thing to learn. IT only takes a few hours of driving to get the feel for it, and a week of steady driving to get completely comfortable with it. The benefit of more drivers having more fine-tuned control over their vehicles would be significant. As many folk have pointed out in this thread, having an MT helps you to properly accelerate in a tight highway situation, gives you more power for climbing hills, gives you more control for driving downhill without burning the brake pads, plus a whole host of other things.
If an MT were a required standard in the US, it would help with legitimate issues. For instance, when traffic on a freeway is tight, how often is that due to one car in the fast lane only going slightly faster than the slow lane? While an AT is not always the cause, I could see a legitimate argument being made that, often, that phenomenon may be caused by the driver in the fast lane having an AT and not really being able to, 'punch it,' the way an MT driver can.
Similarly, when navigating small, mountain roads, having a driver in front of you that goes through the cycle of speed up, brake hard, speed up, brake hard, ad infinitum is not only annoying to watch, but quite a concern as they do not appear to have control of their car. Having a manual transmission allows you to limit your speed in a more fluid manner, thus making you appear to be less of a potential hazard to other drivers.
I don't make these claims ignorantly. I have lived in both high-traffic cities and in the mountains. I have driven both MT's and AT's. While I don't claim to be a professional driver, I do put enough miles behind the wheel to know how to handle a vehicle. Driving an MT vehicle really does give you better, fine-grained control in extraordinary driving circumstances (which do arise, whether you plan for it on your daily commute or not). Requiring drivers, in the US and elsewhere, to be familiar with, and capable of, this kind of control is far from unreasonable. Frankly, I think it really would make the roads safer and it would force drivers to be more attentive.
A well-trained driver would handle either one well in an emergency situation.
I don't disagree, however, as I mentioned, we do not have well trained drivers homogeneously across the population. I figure that requiring knowledge and operation of an MT would be one step in getting our general driving population towards that goal. Also, even if a well trained driver could manage an emergency situation with an AT, they will still have more options, and, potentially, better options with an MT than an AT. Having a car make decisions for you regarding the power of your vehicle is, in my opinion, inherently dangerous.
Those are just my thoughts though.
Slashdot, let this be a lesson to you. If your April Fool's day jokes earn you an intervention by authorities, get children out of school for a day, and result in a possible lawsuit against your organization by an official political body, then you are doing it right.
Anything less just falls short.
I wonder what it would take now, to do what he did.
A proper education for our young engineers and scientists.
You'd probably need to take over half of all drivers off the roads - stick or AT, doesn't matter - with a bar thus set.
That was my exact point. There is a reason your driver's license is called a license. Driving is a task which requires skill and continued honing of reflexes to be good at. Licensing requirements for operating a vehicle, in my opinion, should be significantly higher to the point where they are restrictive (and no, I am not talking about doing so financially, I mean making it difficult to qualify for a license). Driving a personal vehicle is not a right no matter how much we want it to be. This is true in the case of all other vehicles (there is a reason it is so difficult to get your trucker's license or your motorcycle license). I openly advocate a system which is significantly more difficult to get licensed to drive in. Frankly, I think it would have the benefit of reducing annual casualties as well as encouraging public transportation. So yes, I am all for removing more than half the current drivers on the road.
And before anyone sets in with an ad hominem, no, I cannot be certain that I would qualify for such licensing standards myself. However, I certainly would be willing to invest the time, money, and materials into training myself to meet such standards because I highly value the freedom of personal transportation. It's the same reason I spent extra time, money, and materials to get licensed to operate a motorcycle in the first place. Driving any type of motor vehicle is a responsibility that needs to be earned. Driving a personal vehicle should not be viewed as a matter of convenience or simplicity.
Somehow I think launching more ore less straight up is just too difficult. How about sending things up more like planes?
Orbital vehicles don't just launch more or less straight up. They start launching straight up to get ground clearance, then they pitch over and thrust 'forward.' The main challenge in a launch is not to achieve altitude, it's to achieve orbital velocity. This velocity is extraordinarily difficult to achieve with any kind of thrust other than what amounts to, essentially, a big ass bomb with a nozzle on the end. Planes would have a very difficult time lifting something the size of most orbital launch vehicles. It's not that it can't be done, it just tends to be unnecessarily complex. If you already have to produce enough thrust to attain an orbital velocity, why not spend five second of that thrust achieving a reasonable altitude?
Sure, you're in control, but do you really need to waste so much time and effort for so little benefit? Maybe, but for most people the answer is definitely "no".
When you're in control of half a ton of tempered steel traveling at roughly 60mph or more, then the answer is a definitive "yes." When we are talking about operating systems on home computers where a crash causes some headaches and a few days worth of inconvenience, you're right, you don't need that extra control. When we are talking about what is, essentially, a very powerful weapon that is supposed to be used for peaceful transport purposes (yes, that much directed energy is a weapon, like it or not) then that control is absolutely essential. Those folk who are too damned incompetent to deal with that level of control should stay the hell off the roads, just like those folk who are so old they can no longer tell the brake from the gas pedal.
I don't, yet, know all that is Google. /shame
Bills from companies that you don't trust to handle online billing.
FTFY.
Bills in the mail aren't exclusively from companies that don't handle online billing. Some of us choose to continue with paper versions of bills because we do not trust putting our credit card and/or bank account information into commonly used, high profile websites on a monthly basis.
So let me get this straight. A research institution came to the conclusion that popular things tended to earn a lot of money, while unpopular things tended to tank?
Holy Crap stop the presses! We just invented the Oracle of Delphi! It's all so clear now. The Greeks weren't talking to the gods, but they were talking to a complicated trend analysis computer that tapped into their far reaching social networks!
=P
Nah, in all seriousness though, it's a pretty interesting read.
People fought and died for freedoms - not development.
Really? I am pretty sure that almost every case of imperialism since the dawn of history could be classified as people fighting and dying for development. They just weren't fighting for the development of those who were fighting them. =P
Not that I am disagreeing with your post in general. I agree that privacy is something to be valued and protected. However, I am not sure point 3 holds water in your list.
Then again, you may be referring to India, specifically, when talking about point 3. If that's the case, I don't know if you guys have ever fought or died for development in your own history. If that's the case, just file this post under, "snarky misunderstanding."
A) your reputation ruined or B) go to a secret prison and are never seen again.
Or, C) Your name gets put on a list of, 'people to watch out for,' and, unless you do something tremendously shifty, like, say, purchase lots of ammunition or explosives, you simply get tracked a little more meticulously than most.
The type of profiling you are talking about already happens to some degree today. Based on web searches, utility bills, credit card purchases, and so on and so on. The thing that saves us all is the fact that there are a lot of people to track. Thus, if you do something that flags you as suspicious, its just that, a flag. You get flagged, possibly put on some list somewhere, and you get monitored to see if your habits repeat themselves. In your example, you would be checked on from time to time (without you knowing it) to see if you continue eating sushi and purchasing Japanese books. If that's they case, you mostly just get shrugged off as a wannabe Japanese guy that's probably not a threat.
If, however, you start vacationing regularly to high-profile political targets like the White House, and the Congressional building, and the Pentagon, and so on, and you start Google searching, "How to make homemade explosives," every night, AND you start sending encrypted data packets to a very particular IP address that is known to be linked, through a proxy network, to government servers in Japan, well, then you are probably going to get an unpleasant knock on the door.
Mind you, I am not defending profiling. I am just pointing out a bit of hyperbole in your original assertion. You see, it takes a lot of resources, personnel, and money to round people up, arrest them, detain them, and so forth. Even the NSA, FBI, CIA, Secret Service, and the Illuminati (TM) are not going to go through the effort unless you do something VERY suspect.
Now, you did mention that in times of war, these things change. That's probably a valid enough concern and, you are probably right, the number of flags you would have to raise to be detained would probably be lowered significantly. However, I still do not think any government agency would go through the effort of ruining your life or detaining you indefinitely unless you did something very rash, or you really pissed off some powerful people.
Your thoughts, of course, may vary.
Also, whoever said that Google does want to be a threat to Apple? Granted, Google is a corporation and corporations like to make money, but that doesn't mean they have to present a direct threat to any other company. It always seemed to me like Google just did what Google did because:
A) It would be good for Google.
B) They thought it would be really helpful and/or cool.
I mean, sure, Google made a competitive product with the iPhone in releasing the Android architecture. They also made a competitive product with Mozilla in releasing Chrome. They also made a competitive product to Hotmail, Yahoo mail, Lycos mail, etc. by releasing G-mail. Hell, now they are even getting into a market where they seem to want to compete with companies they've never even had contact with. Look into the types of business decisions they are making with regards to alternative energy technology and power management technology. Then of course there are their products that weren't really designed to compete with anything, but were meant to bring an entirely new product to the market. That is, they developed Google, their search engine, and Google maps/Earth to bring about products that really were so polished and impressive that they completely revolutionized the way we work.
So, yeah, Google has some products on the market that compete with Apple. That doesn't mean they want to threaten Apple. Hell, I'd wager that doesn't even mean they want Apple to fail So far as I have seen, Google seems to foster the notion of fair competition through product development, rather than other, shadier, business practices like embrace, extend, extinguish. That is, Google may not want to the threaten Apple or anything else. It seems to me that they just want to innovate and be creative. That's why I've always respected them. They don't intend to shutdown competitors. They just intend to be on par and/or better then them. So why make assertions that Google needs to threaten Apple? It doesn't need to do that at all. So far as I can tell, Google just needs to keep on doing what they are doing and people will continue to use their products if they find them to be superior. It's that simple.
Moral of the story? It seems this guy's discussion is founded on the baseless assumption that all corporations/businesses prefer a monopoly/severe-market-dominance over a healthy competing economy. I don't see where that assumption is ever verified or validated in any way. That makes the whole damn thing dribble in my opinion.
Iran is working on a space program, it just sucks right now. Nah, the real competition will come from China, if they don't start to horribly botch things over the next few years.
It's a work in progress.
;)
guest@xkcd:/$ finger Mmmmmm...
Also: wget http://slasdot.org/
Let's me browse slashdot from a CLI inside of xkcd. I just had a netgasm.
To which Charles Bolden responded, "They are ants boys, the ARE ants!"
And he proceeded to laugh maniacally.
Awesome,well thank you for the correspondence.
Microsoft announced that it would be partnering with OnlineBootyCall to work on its new service, OnliveBootyCall for the popular 360 network. When approached about this decision, Microsoft executives insisted that OnliveBootyCall was significantly different from battle.net Matchmaking as OnliveBootyCall was strictly to be used for random, casual meetings that may or may not involve the teabagging and desecration of pixelated corpses. Whereas battle.net matchmaking promised gamers the opportunity to find a committed quest partner that would compliment each gamer based on 9 levels of character stats, OnliveBootyCall would offer gamers a chance to meet up in the intratubes for some down and dirty achievements grinding while never having to return a later party request.
When approached about Microsoft's new decision, Bill Gates announced that he had no stance on the issue. However photographers did note that most of his belongings were seen on the front lawn of his estate while the paparazzi snapped a few photos of Miranda Gates driving down the pacific coast highway with Eric Schmidt in a candy apple red, convertible Smart Car.
And several times in your post you emphasized that "you were taught" this. Did you independently verify it or did you just accept it as true because that's what you needed to do for your project? Do you know if the climate models in question were up to date with the latest climate science?
Here's a page that shows modeled surface temperature since the 1800s matching pretty well with observed data: http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-models.htm [skepticalscience.com]
Good observation. However, I had a particular reason for using that phrase. You see, I realize that I do not know everything. In fact, I realize that there is a metric crapton of information in this world that I do not know. That being said, I tend to preposition my claims with such phrases as: "I was taught, to my knowledge, so far as I understand..." etc in hopes that it will generate rational discussion form which I can further learn. I find this approach to be much more level headed and less arrogant than blatant, "This is how it is..." type of statements. Think of such prepositions as a meatspace compatible YMMV tag.
Regarding my independent verification of said teachings, yes, I did work very hard to verify this independently. In fact, I have two solid years of sleepless nights in the library spent digging through peer reviewed journal publications trying to determine if there were more accurate climate models out there. If you don't believe me, my general lack of sanity due to prolonged sleep deprivation can serve as evidence to my point. What I did NOT do, however, was go out and google the subject for 10 minutes and then pretend I had found anything useful.
You see, if I walked into an industry design review meeting with data backed up by skepticalscience.com, I would have been laughed out of the conference room, received a failing grade on my design project, and forfeited any chance I had at being taken seriously as a professional engineer. Nah, you see, in the real world, google search results don't cut it. Industry demands accurate, accepted, peer-reviewed sources for any claims made. It especially demands this for projects that cost upwards of $10B relying upon new/recent models or data. So, if I want to use a climate model developed in, say, the early 2000's I had damn well better have at least three peer-reviewed journal articles that I can point towards to back up my design claims. I cannot, point to one website and pretend that's in anyway acceptable in industry design applications.
While that may seem pedantic, it is, in fact, the reason we are capable of designing such complex beasts as spacecraft and cars and so on. Google, unfortunately, doesn't always cut it.
I was surprised that you didn't mention another potential effect on satellites due to warming - the expansion of the upper atmosphere (which can cause more degradation of LEO orbits). Did they not cover that in your classes?
Yes, actually it was. My point throughout my original post was not to detail the entire process that goes into designing the thermal subsystem for a spacecraft (there are entire books dedicated to that, in fact) but was to illustrate the face that climate models, accurate climate models, are not used purely for climate science purposes. There are numerous fields that require accurate climate data to do very important, very risky things. Spacecraft design is one of them. Thus, having superbly accurate climate models would be big news for a lot of engineers.
The poster I was responding to said that there were accurate models out there that could predict, accurately, climate data based on the fact that they verify recorded historical data sets. I had yet to see any and I have been keeping my eyes out for them. That was the point of my post. I feel I conveyed that point correctly. Luckily, I got the response I was looking for which was a link to an existing model. Over the next few months I will be playing with this to see if it does what I need it to do.
Isn't it more likely that your textbooks, curriculum and teacher simply weren't up to date with current theory or data? When I was in college that was a constant problem.
Granted, that is a possibility. However, the book I was specifically referencing was published in 2005 (two years before the time period I spoke of). It's titled Fundamentals of Space Systems, 2nd ed. by Vincent L. Piscane (he was chief editor, there are many authors). Specifically, the data I was referring to is listed in Chapter 2, titled The Space Environment. So, yeah, I suppose it is 5 years out of date now, but that's not terribly old. As for my professor, to my knowledge, he read as many recent, peer reviewed, journals that he could on three subjects that were of particular interest to him: climate science, controls system engineering, chaos theory mathematics. Considering that part of his paycheck relied upon being up to date in those fields, I figured he probably had more time and resources to devote towards such studies. Thus, I did take him (and our department head) at his word when he talked about current mathematical applications in climate modeling. The fact that he wasn't a 50 year old stubborn bastard also helped shape my outlook that he probably had a decent, evolving view of such things.
NO MODEL CAN PREDICT ANYTHING THAT ISN'T ACCOUNTED FOR IN THE MODEL. The scientists who do this for a living do understand this, and are constantly refining their models in order to try to include such effects as more data becomes available.
I am entirely aware of that and that and that was kind of my point. The models, that I know of, do not account for enough factors to make sweeping claims about the entire state of the present climate. Nor do they model, in any way that I am currently aware of, future conditions in such a manner that they could justify the sweeping claims made by various climate change (anthropogenic) advocates. That is to say, I see a lot of people walking around saying that man is causing the heat trapped within the Earth's atmosphere to increase. This trend will continue over the next few decades. In some cases, they say this will have dire consequences so we need to act now. Making such claims, in my opinion, requires very accurate, comprehensive, complex data and models to back it up. While we are gathering more data. I am not yet aware that are models are accurate enough to back up such claims. I am actively seeking new information on said models regularly as it affects my everyday job. That was my point.
As for the scientists that are refining models and gathering more data, I say good by them. Keep it up.
? Several percent of difference is not going to fry your electronics, probably.
It's a thermal balancing issue. It's not that the albedo itself bakes the electronics, but it has to be modeled as a heat source for the entire spacecraft system. Depending on the attitude configuration of the spacecraft, different view profiles exist between the Earth and any given spacecraft surface. Since the Earth exists as a heat source, rather than a heat sink like deep space (i.e. no input radiation), it is very helpful to have very detailed models of the thermal input for each source. Albdedo is one of many sources impacting the spacecraft from many different view angles for a given orientation. These sources must be accurately understood so that radiator design and placement can be conducted in a safe manner. For a given attitude, a spacecraft can only radiate so much heat at a particular rate. This has to be done by piping and controlling all incoming heat sources. The thermal system design, therefore, is extremely complex as it tries to account for the worst case scenarios. To develop a proper worse case scenario, you need to know that you are accounting for the worst case heat inputs from every source. This includes Earth albedo. Thus, being a few fractions of a percent off in these numbers may cause an inadequate cooling scheme to be designed. This won't bake your electronics immediately, but after a few days or weeks in orbit, the extra, unaccounted thermal input will accumulate. This can, and has, caused electronics failures which eventually destroy entire spacecraft.
That is why an accurate model is desired. If it can predict future thermal conditions in Earth orbit anywhere from LEO altitudes to GEO altitudes, then it can provide more accurate data for more situations to be successfully accounted for. This helps to reduce the risk and cost of the entire program.
So, I'll check out the climate model you posted and see if it can do what I need it to do. Thank you.
Buzz! Wrong. We calibrate models on historic data and check if their predictions match the reality.
When I was in school about three years ago I was taught that current climate models, given any set of historic data as initial conditions, are unable to accurately match more than the next ten years of climate data. To clarify, if all of the data up to, say, 1980 was fed to any given climate model, then the data produced by the model beyond about 1990 no longer match what data was recorded for the '90's. This was hammered into myself and my peers because we were getting prepped and ready to work in the spacecraft design industry. Our job was going to be to ensure the survivability of satellites orbiting the Earth (in part). That meant we had to account for things like planet-shine and Earth albedo in our thermal control designs so that we didn't bake our electronics. That also meant that we had to have accurate models of the solar activity as well as accurate models for variances in the Earth's magnetosphere. The models that we could use, with any validity, to base our designs upon were purely historic in nature. That is, we had decades worth of recorded data and we made the assumption that any patterns and cycles that were observable were likely to repeat themselves in the short term because we had no viable means of proving otherwise (we could not predict a deviation from common cycles). The reason climate models got brought up was because Earth albedo was not accurately predicted by any existing climate models. In other words, no climate models, as of 2007, were accurate enough in their modeling of Earth's atmosphere to reflect, appropriately, how much solar radiation was reflected back into space and how much was trapped/absorbed.
Do you see where I am going with this? In 2008, for our spacecraft design classes, where we had to present all of our design criteria and assumptions to spacecraft design industry members. We were restricted to using historic models of Earth's thermal data because no accurate model could do what you claim they can do now. That is, no model could reliably predict, past about a decade, what the hell was going to happen with Earth's thermal systems. The same, so far as we were taught, held true for all comprehensive Earth-climate computer models.
Now, it's 2010. Please tell me, if you know, what climate models are acutely accurate beyond about a decade. Please explain to me what mathematical constructs they used to create such a model. Please explain to me where I can read a comprehensive analysis of the accuracy of said climate model beyond a decade. That is, show me a model where I can input a historical data set that terminates in 1900 and have it accurately predict, to a statistically significant degree, most of the climate happenings up through 2000. If you can point me to this data, and these models, I and many other spacecraft designers will be eternally thankful to you. You see, such models would be one significant step in designing spacecraft to survive for more than about 10 -15 years without it being a wild crap-shoot.
If you cannot point me to said model, then please check the input signal on your buzzer, because it seems to be going off for not apparent reason.
I am the maverick of Slashdot
You can't take the sky from me...
I'll go back to lurking now.
While I don't know the orbital configuration of Mimas with respect to nearby entities (and yes, I am too lazy to look it up right now) I wonder if it could be caused by overlapping radiation profiles from various sources. For instance, Saturn itself must have enough albedo and planet-shine to present some sort heating effect on its moons. Similarly, its rings probably reflect enough sunlight to present a radiation profile to nearby objects. Furthermore, some of the larger moons, while very cool, must also reflect enough light to present some sort of temperature gradient to their neighbors. Combine all that with the fact that Saturn, and its moons, are very far from the sun and, perhaps, those view angles could at least partially account for the odd surface temperature. Of course, looking at the article, I don't see any temperature scale to tell me how, 'hot' or, 'cold' any of those colors map to. That said, I don't know if radiation presented by nearby bodies could even inflict the recorded temperatures onto the surface of Mimas. Also frustrating is that there is no discussion as to what viewing angle Mimas has with nearby bodies. For instance, is the warm side facing Saturn, or Jupiter, or the Sun? Is the cold side facing anything of note?
All in all, the summary and article both are frustratingly lacking in details. I'll have to start looking around for more details now. There goes any productivity I hoped to achieve at work today....