If enough people are genuinely hassled by the offensive policies, [not only in later additional cost if they are caught 'stealing', but more importantly, even those companies/individuals which are honest will still have to go through the supreme hassle [and wasted productivity, etc] of being audited.
In the past, there really weren't any usable alternatives to commercial software. Now there are, in spades!
So heres to the BSA harassing ever unfortunate lout ignorant enough to enter needlessly into oppressive and overpriced contracts to get the same [or worse] functionality he could get freely.
Still, gotta feel sorry for those professional software niches not available for free yet, that many people need. [High quaility rendering/animation, for example]
As to the two freedoms, speech, and the war on drugs... as to the first (speech) Lieberman and Tipper are the two biggest censors in washington... I see gore as worse on this issue.
As to the drug war, both big ticket candidates are equally in favor of it.
Yes, I remember those old bumper stickers during the beggining of the clinton presidency that said "Don't blame me, I voted for Bush" [the father of the current one]
...I would almost get a kick out of a bumpersticker that said "Don't blame me, I didn't vote". Realisticly, not voting is worse, of course. But as far as the sense of disenfranchisement, it would be funny...
As much as it dreads me to reveal this, I have just irrevocably commited my vote to the shrub. I didn't think I would feel this dirty afterwards, but I can't help feeling that via this endorsement of him I am going to be somewhat complicit in every horrific policy decision he supports [i.e. internet censorship, the war on drugs]
I came very close to voting for Brown [the libertarian], but I was too frightened of the possibility of Gore possibly winning my state my a slim margin. despise both of the candidates. It is very much a lesser of two evils kind of thing, and they both are extremely evil. However, Bush is far less of a statist then Gore, and as I value freedom more then anything else, I had to go for him.
It's a shame really. It almost seems like every election it all comes down to a question of which freedom you are going to vote away. Why can't we ever have an election where it's a choice between the freedoms two candidates can work to give us?
Bush will endanger abortion rights [although, really, the executive branch isn't a major determinant of them, but still it can be quite the bully pulpit, as Clinton has demonstrated], and Gore will seriously enganger property rights [i.e. working to nationalize the health care system, endoreses the Kyoto treaty wherin more productive countries will pay fees to less productive ones to have the right to use energy in industrial production, even if those other countries are less efficient, etc... [not to get off topic]]
I really should have voted for Brown. I wouldn't feel so unclean. Still, property rights are the most fundemental human rights, after all.
A buzzword used to describe 3D models with sufficient detail to look closely akin to real life; not chunky like doom, or often visibly broken down into simple geometric forms to reduce polygon count to something manageble [like the original quake, where much of the architecture was texture mapped rectangular prisms, peoples arms were not much more then extended pyrimids, etc]
There is an excellent computer program called
Monkey God,
which creates random universes with different fundamental physical
constants. (Most of them -do- have long lived stars.) The math and physics
are also described in detail on links from the page above.
This recently notable movement towards a popularization in the media
of some bad science turned towards apologia for theology is very troubling
to me. Religion and physics don't mix. I would rather (shudder have
religion insinuating itself into politics then into science. Any faith
based and socially constructed mythological delusion can only significantly
harm true and objective inquiry into the true fundamental structure of
reality itself.
Still, I must give this man for credit for ultimately being an
empiricist. After finishing the article my initial discomfort was defused
when he talked of it as sheer speculation, and of being hopefully proved or
disproved by the techniques of scientific rigor.
The monkey god program [and some of the writings on the site above]
was aimed more at deconstructing the arguments of some
cosmomythologists who argue that the tenability of life in our
universe is tantamount to proof of divine creation.
-- A truly functioning police state needs no police.
The question of global ozone depletion has been bedeviled by doubts about
the quality of the data. Readings from Dobson ground observatories can be
contaminated by long-term trends in SO2 pollution of the lower
atmosphere. DeMuer and DeBacker have demonstrated that the Dobson ozone
meter can misinterpret the downward trend of SO2 pollution, giving rise to
a "fictitious" ozone trend (1). (Their finding was confirmed by a
task group, chaired by Robert T. Watson, in a Joint Workshop of the IPCC
and the International Ozone Assessment Panel in May 1993).
Another, quite separate problem is produced by the extreme
noisiness of the ozone record. To establish the existence of a small,
long-term trend it is necessary to eliminate the large natural variations,
especially also those correlated with the 11-y sunspot cycle. This is an
impossible task given the shortness of the record and the virtual absence
of data on long-term variations of the solar far-UV radiation that produces
ozone in the upper atmosphere. The analysis fails a simple test: The
"trend" is found to depend strongly on the choice of time interval
(2). An additional problem in identifying a man-made trend arises
from long-term trends in sunspot number, and therefore long-term ozone
trends of natural origin (3).
1. DeMuer, D.; DeBacker, H. Revision of 20 years Dobson total ozone
data at Uccle (Belgium): fictitious Dobson total ozone trends induced by
sulfur dioxide trends. J. Geophys. Res. 97:5921-5937;
2. Singer, S. F. What could be causing global ozone depletion?
Schatten, K. H.; Arking, A. eds., Climate impact of solar
variability. Washington, DC: NASA Publication 3086;
3. Angell, J. K. On the relation between atmospheric ozone and sunspot
number. J. Clim. 2:1404-1416; 1989.
Personally, I find it more dangerous that our society looks at the
empirical evidence of science and calls it political when it threatens the
cushy life that we've built for ourselves
You have it completely backwards. It is the nonscientific and politically
motivated elements of society that have called their statist motivated
hysteria empirical. In this case, the scientific evidence clashes with the
orthodox forces of the environmental left. This is not dissimilar from
recent occurance with Corning silicone breast implants, in which an entire
industry was driven virtually bankrupt by massive class action settlements
brought about by a jingoisticly leftist media drum-beat of the horrid
risks, representing itself as empirically justified... (when most scientists
said their was insufficient evidence either way). And it turned out, after
the fact, that there was no risk whatsoever for the diseases
claimed. [Sure, it could be ugly if one ruptured, but that was all]. This
came out after a successfull 3,000,000,000 settlement against Dow
Corning. Now that significant studys have been done, it has been determined
that there is no real disease risk whatsoever from silicon breast
implants.
Facts:
1. The major public concern about a possible depletion of ozone comes
from the fear that solar UV-B (280-320 nm) radiation reaching the surface
will increase, typically by 10%. Yet UV-B intensity increases naturally by
about 5000% between pole and equator; there is less ozone traversed when
the sun is closer to the zenith. Hence a 10% increase at mid-latitudes
translates into moving 60 miles (100 km) to the south, hardly a source for
health concerns.
2. The driving force behind the policy to phase out CFCs has
always been the fear of skin cancer, particularly malignant melanoma. The
EPA has predicted 3 million additional skin cancer deaths by the year 2075
as a result of ozone depletion. But unlike basal and squamous cell skin
cancers, which are easily cured growths caused by long-term exposure to
UV-B, melanoma does not show the same characteristic increase towards lower
latitudes (38) (Surprisingly, European data on melanoma incidence show a
reverse latitude effect).
3. A breakthrough in our understanding of the mechanism of melanoma
induction came with the experiments of Dr. Richard Setlow and colleagues at
the Brookhaven National Laboratory. they conclude that 90%-95% of
melanomas are caused by UV-A.
4. But UV-A is not absorbed by ozone at all, and therefore melanoma
rates would not be affected by changes in stratospheric ozone. This
important finding undercuts one of the main reasons for the Montreal
Protocol and all subsequent regulations.
1. The question of global ozone depletion has been bedeviled by doubts
about the quality of the data. Readings from Dobson ground observatories
can be contaminated by long-term trends in SO2 pollution of the lower
atmosphere.
2. Another, quite separate problem is produced by the extreme
noisiness of the ozone record. To establish the existence of a small,
long-term trend it is necessary to eliminate the large natural variations,
especially also those correlated with the 11-y sunspot cycle. This is an
impossible task given the shortness of the record and the virtual absence
of data on long-term variations of the solar far-UV radiation that produces
ozone in the upper atmosphere.
And then there is the huge cost, estimated at over $200 billion
worldwide, of replacing capital equipment that cannot accept the
substitutes, just for freon refregerant
I myself have spent over $2500 on upgrading automotive airconditioners, for
a system that is significantly less energy efficient , and therefore
burns more gas to achive the same effect.
I used to think the religious right was scary... now I've found the
religious left to be far more pernicious. [Vote libertarian]
-- a truly functioning police state needs no police
What strikes me as most pernicious about this is the existance of subjective criteria in the determination of a crime. Heck, just make -all- network transmissions of any sort illegal, and then the powers that be can choose to selectively prosecute whoever they dislike.
This looks to be pretty close to such a thing.
--
A truly functioning police state needs no police.
"do you think they're going to prosecute you for running an FTP client anyway?"...
But the real danger is that, as it is worded right now, they could . Such open and subjective laws leave the field open for selective prosecution of anyone those in power decide that they don't like for some reason.
I know it sounds at the front of it like a horrific and contradictory idea,
and in a way it would be... But if the instance should occur
wherein the government mandates the use of filtering software. (The
validity of which is not a question this post concerns itself with... I am
against it, of course), then what is the best pragmatic road to minimize
censorship and maximize good? Open source blocking software.
Think about it... otherwise, countless public libraries would be spending
large quantities of tax dollars on per-machine installations, with
periodic, costly, upgrades of fresh new evil to protect the kiddies
from. Also, the 'kill-files' of commercial censor-wear are considered
confidential and protected corporate information, so there is no real
oversite as to what of value might be being unjustly blocked.
An open censor-wear package would be free, save lots of money, and have a
transparently open and democratically maintained (which should be quite
amusing, in the debates it would bring up) list of objectionable
content. Currently, [at least where I live] when a local school library
refuses to carry some desired book, the choice, being locally made, can be
reacted to locally... and these bans have usually been overturned due to
the minor controversy. If the decision is made by a remote and central
authority, there is less opportunity for grass roots debate and pressure to
resolve the issue.
I would feel much more comfortable with all that money not going to
CyberPatrol and the like. Wouldn't you?
As to the nuclear blast:
Yes, it shouldn't be set off right next to the thing, where the force vectors would apply too much instantanious force and radial stress... But you must realize, that a nuclear explosion in space, is a diffrent animal then one on the ground. The awesome blast force you see from an atmostpheric thermonuclear detonation is because all of the matter surrounding the thing for a good ways has a huge ammount of energy poured into it, and [being matter] expands a great deal.
In vacuum, all you are giving off is a lot of radiation preasure; which, if placed close enough [but not -too- close] would cause the exposed surface [the part not in the asteriods own shadow of the blast], to heat enormously, causing an effect like you see on the ground. The primary propulsive effect isn't so much from kinetic motion imparted by the nuke, but instead from the ejecta from the asteriod.
You're also neglecting that, even assuming you did want to park it -on- the asteriod (so to speak), and therefore tend to fragment it... Even so, lots of small rocks are preferrable to one huge rock, due to the hugely increased surface area of the same total mass... which allows more of it to burn up in the atmosphere. If you could repeat this, and fragment it into small enough pieces, virtually none of them would ever even hit the ground.
-- man sig
There's always delayed forwarding by freenet posts
on
Anonymity
·
· Score: 1
People could always post their message's, with addressees, to some distributed cryptographic storage medium like freenet or whatever may come along to outcompete it on merit. Then, some noble altruist offering the service could post them all in batches. Sort of a slow anonymous remailer, with the remailer having no way of even knowing the IP address of the originator.
I think that one of the key things we have to come to realize at this dawn of a new century is the extreme danger of a growing and increasingly politicized use of science.
Only dedicated and intelligent scientists, devoted to their field of inquiry [while in competition with each other] are qualified to make any determinations of provable risk, and if there is any at all.
Increasingly science has become a pawn in the ideological culture wars of the modern real-politik, and claims are made when evidence is not yet forthcoming. If there was a 1/10 chance, then yes. But when the chance is unknown, that claim can not be made.
An excellent, nay outstanding
essay on precisely this can be found
- at this location - .
This article is slightly dated, but rings as true now as when it was first published.
In the beginning, this article verges nicely on the scientifically
competent... but later delves increasingly into pseduoscience and your
classical luddite-esque scare mongering and silliness.
1. Asteroid impact. Wholly plausible, although it must be said that it
should be possible to divert it with a chain of precisely launched nuclear
warheads detonated as closely as possible to it [the heat from the
radiation pressure would cause massive ejecta from the surface, and
newtons second law would tend to do the rest, (unless it is mushy or
claylike and easily broken into pieces, in which case further blasts could
be placed in it's wake to fragment it as much as possible to maximize
surface area resistance and encourage burning up in the atmosphere. Block
out the sun for a while, but advanced civilization would manage to survive]
2. Once again, plausible, but also notably more speculative. There have
been no observed gamma-ray bursts you could call in any way close, they
-may- only have tended to happen in a far younger universe. Then again,
we've had a devil of a time really triangulating them with all that much
accuracy... it's an unknown, put possible. The complete damage of all
unshielded electrons equipment would be devastating, [as well as lot's of
cancer, etc]
3. Well, I guess the spectrum is not a perfect reasoned to silly, as this
is far more implausible [and based wholly on unconfirmed speculation and
hypothesis of a fundamental cosmological nature... This one should have come
just before divine intervention, to make the ideology spectrum smooth;) ]
4. Rogue black holes. Yep, could happen. We'd know about it for a few
decades a head of time, hopefully would provide a sufficient rallying cry
to learn to live comfortably and self sustainably in space.
5. A conceivable threat, but the likeliness is indeterminate. Most amusing
is that the science quoted in the end referring to the existence of strong
evidence that the major element in previous world climate change is caused
by variations in the sun's output tends to strongly run head-on into the
presumptions assumed in #9:"Global warming", but hey.. Who said an article
about science in the mainstream media should concern itself with
self-consistency;)
6. I'd never heard of this one before! Interesting. Certainly, geomagnitism
provides most of our shielding from energetic particles from the
sun... It's happened before without causing huge problems in the fossil
record, though. It would probably just cause, at worst, a sharp upswing in
mutations and cancer. [Which is -good- for animals, where it is a question
of evolution and adaptation. It's only bad where the death of an individual
counts, which only applies to people, anyway]
7. A risk. It would devastate world agricultural production! As to whether
or not we are "due for one", I couldn't say... but I can't deny that
current man has a lot of hubris in fearing himself more them the vagaries
of nature. Worst case, much of human population dies, high tech nations
sustain a limited population via technologically produced foods. Certainly
would be a field day for Darwin. Most amusing is the fact pointed out that
95% of all species were wiped out, [nothing like the most liberal figures
of mankinds current impact], and guess what, the ecology rebounded just
fine.
8. That would suck for many people. Random deaths. Still, probably wouldn't
kill more then 90%, leaving more then enough gene pool to repopulate and
rebuild. Plus, advanced quarantining, national emergency... Many may
survive in private enclaves, quarantining against all outsiders until the
problem is dealt with [say, effective testing, triage, "tuberculosis
colonies", etc.]
9. First of she states the earth is getting warmer as a given [before even
bringing in the necessary authority of science to bolster her
argument]. Many climatologists and geophysicists don't believe there is
sufficient evidence to claim that. [Recent ocean readings via satellite
actually showed the earth cooling slightly]. Others conclude that the earth
does seem to be warming slightly, but that it is correlated most directly to
the output of the sun [see #5]. The venus argument is just silly, the
earths liquid oceans provide an excellent heat pump, via convection of
water vapor in the atmosphere, to radiate a lot of energy into space. Of
course, it's still possible, in the sense that anything is possible.
10. Now this isn't even real science anymore, but is beginning to descend
into classic left-wing polemic. People forget that evolution has always
been all about the most successful [and, it has often turned out, the most
complicated and therefore adaptable] of species winning out, creating new
playing fields of competition. Mankind is a part of nature! We are the
[thus far] height of natures expression on earth. Yes, we are outcompeting
other less adaptive DNA in the struggle for resources. It's still -nothing-
like the 95% extinction mentioned above.
[[Or the almost -complete- extinction of all life that happened with
cyanobateria evolved the nasty and horrible ecologically evil habit of
pumping out vast amounts of poisonous pollution as a result of a new trick
they learned for obtaining energy, causing the greatest percentage wise
extinction in of life's history... In case you don't get it, they produced
-oxygen-! [Which outcompeted earlier, less successful DNA that was
chemotropic, and allowed a whole new plane of competition [free oxygen
allowed more complex, more active animals, as oxydation is a significant
part of our power source]]]
11. Oh god, the descent into leftist fear-mongering and neo-ludditism
reaches new heights/depths. Genetic engineering could never hurt the
environment; ultimately it could only help it by introducing more
expressive traits to me commingled in the great evolutionary dance. Humanity
has been practicing genetic engineering to a limited extant for
millinea. [Animal husbandry, agricultural breeding]. Now we can be more
precise about it. Argh. Modern ludditism so annoys me.
12. This one is actually perhaps possible as to the mini black hole,
although a strong argument can be made that it would spontaneously
evaporate into hawking radiation as it would have so little mass that just
a few virtual particle interactions would decimate it. [Not enough
statistical likelihood to stand on it's own, quantum wise, if you want a
loose and innacurate metaphor]. The notion of strangelets and a phase
change in the ether is as well an unknown, but a complete and wholly
speculative one, based on [albeit interesting] theories with no
demonstrative evidence to back them up whatsoever. Argumentum ad
ignorantiam is logically worthless.
13. Nanotech disaster. F*ck fire or ice, that's the way I would want to
go!... to have gotten so close to true near-total dominance over nature,
with a promise of easy off-planet and even interstellar expansion of human
life and thought... Surely worth the risk, which could be wholly eliminate
by intelligent initial deployment in the beginning, and by design of
countermeasures [nano-tech immune systems] after it becomes widely
disseminated.
14. Oh yikes. I'm not even going to bother with this one. The output from
a good volcano is far less then the toxins of most industrial output. And
there is a straw man in arguing that cancer rates are bad for the
environment. Mutation and a bit of extra death of animals is no big deal,
part of natures old plan. Only in humans does cancer really matter in the
slightest, which sort of defeats the loosely implicit notion of ecological
catastrophe... Ah well, even the reporter admits that this is not an accepted
or plausible theory of in real deemed risk in scientific circles.
15. Yeah, a real worry, but it certainly wouldn't wipe out humanity. Lots
of people would survive. Wouldn't be nearly as bad as a small-to-medium
sized asteroid strike, and advanced non-sentient life has survived that in
the past, I'm sure we'd make it through. [It might take a century or two to
be building scanning-tunneling-microscopes, though]
16. Heh, if we're outcompeted, I don't see that as disaster. Besides, those
robots are likely to be a synthesis of downloaded human minds, with
extensions. And besides, I really don't think such intelligent beings would
see any need to wipe us all out. At worst, they might forcibly download all
of our pertinent structure [mind and DNA] into nanocomputers, and put us in
something like the Matrix [with the full option of exiting at any time, of
course, and join the real world of human progress.]
17. This reporter, and much of what she implicitly dumps in from
traditional media bias makes me wonder...
18. All I can say is, if our culture was outcompeted and replaced by a more
advanced one, -why would that be a bad thing-? That's Darwin, people! I'd
be happy to learn.
19. I'm not gonna touch this one with a ten-foot inverted religious
implement.
20. I'm not gonna even bother to touch this one either, with a ten volume
set of postmodern philosophy. [Actually, it does interest me a little. It
has sometimes amused me to realize that it is possible that we are all
genetic life that has evolved in a complex alien uber-computer, created by
beings far more advanced then us... Our lives are only so painfull because
invisible cameras follow us around, and the multitasking awareness of our
pathetic tragedy gets good ratings on transcendental cable tv, and helps
sell alien soap...]
;)
One thing that gets me is the near universal assumption that the 'ozone hole' is a necessarily new phenomonon that represents a fundlemental danger to humans and other life on earth.
There is an interesting essay [with an excellent bibliography] here
Which endeavors to critically debunk the rationale behind the scaremongering widely perpetuated by the mainstream media. Many respected scientists have had critical disagreements over the validity of the 'ozone problem', yet this has suprisingly been absent throughout the long history of mainstream media coverage of the topic.
Think what you will, I won't say I am wholly convinced one way or another, but this is well worth reading. Even if you are an adamently radical environmentalist, if nothing else it is good to know thine enemy.;)
The preliminary introduction is a bit slow, if you're in a hurry, skip down to the subsection titled
SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTIES AND CONTROVERSIES
and as well to CONCERNS ABOUT SKIN CANCER , which I found particularly interesting.
It wouldn't be the first time that national hysteria (in this case, international) got out of hand, fed by a singular drum-beat of media hype, leading to bad policy. [Remeber columbine, the drug way, countless others?]
It's valuable to challege orthodoxy, and I found this article a fascinating read. You should check it out.
The number of effective charge/discharge cycles of a battery are often less then you think... But then again, if you start to worry about it too much, and only use the battery when 'absolutely neccessary', your probably wasting more resources then just buying a new bat when the one you have dies.
Li ion : mean avg og 500-700 cycles
NiMH: mean avg of 400-500 cycles
NiCD: mean avg og 300-500 cycles
And you are only allowed to use that knowledge [which is only liscenced to you and belongs soley to the university] for the puposes of working as a knowledge and skill implementor in relationships with professional services firms in contract with the university?
I wish I had more data. By no means am I one of those "the ancients of atlantis" or "alien mystery" sort of fools, [clearly, modern society is humanities highest point of technological achievment ever]...
But, I saw something about two months ago on the history channel, and it has been a curiosity of mine ever since to try to find additional data on it.
According to the show [whose accuracy I could not wholly vouchsafe], some acheologist had expressed interest in a find from an ancient greek shipwreck that had been langouring on some dusty shelf in a wharehouse... Anyway, to make a long story short, he x-rayed it and 'found' it to contain gears and a complicated internal mechanism for performing certain astronimical calculations.
I posess no expertise in ancient history, but I was doubtfull, as I didn't think the greeks had even had gears. But, as it was on an ostensibly educational program, it made me wonder. Was this the first computer?
Anyone with any additional info on this, as I must admit to a strong curiosity...
Just on the subject of the Tamigotchi, there is an amusing [I laughed aloud, which is somewhat rare, although I was admitedly very sleep deprived] parody, [nice and brief] of it, called the
TamiGothi, the gothic tamigotchi
Hey, I used to wear a lot of black in high school, so it picqued my sensibilities.
Wholly trivial, though... sorry to have wasted your time if you read this far. [At least it's not hollw-horned ruminannt carnality...]
No, this is not a joke;)
Sony is giving away, at cost sony legged robot research prototypes for, of all things, a international robot soccer competition to spur research into artificial intelligence and robotics.
Have some under-utilized grad students in a computer science department? Get them to work on preparing research software, [and get some local sponsership in the neighborhood of (I'm guessing roughly) [15,000 - 25,000] dollars, and you may get to have some real fun to justify all those boring years spent in stuffy classrooms studying how to convert certain classes of NDA's into DFA's !!!
This actually might be a big step towards the eventual construction of a nano-assembler. [Making anything else with it would be a huge waste of time, as even a 'simple' nano-device would probably take weeks to construct.] Which would change the world so very much.
I can't wait. Just think, practical imortality [or at least un-mortality], living as sentient software modelled in a nano-computer that is programmed from an accurate map of your neural activity derived by nanites building scaffolding aroung all of the cells in your brain. [Your soon to be discarded brain]]...
What a beutifull vision.
By the way, you might want to read "Diaspora", by Greg Egan, a wonderfull book about future socieities of sentient software. Some of the best contemporary hard sci-fi I've ever come across. [Except for the ending, which is annoyingly fancifull, but still somewhat interesting].
Slashdot Mirror
If enough people are genuinely hassled by the offensive policies, [not only in later additional cost if they are caught 'stealing', but more importantly, even those companies/individuals which are honest will still have to go through the supreme hassle [and wasted productivity, etc] of being audited.
In the past, there really weren't any usable alternatives to commercial software. Now there are, in spades!
So heres to the BSA harassing ever unfortunate lout ignorant enough to enter needlessly into oppressive and overpriced contracts to get the same [or worse] functionality he could get freely.
Still, gotta feel sorry for those professional software niches not available for free yet, that many people need. [High quaility rendering/animation, for example]
--
man sig
As to the two freedoms, speech, and the war on drugs... as to the first (speech) Lieberman and Tipper are the two biggest censors in washington... I see gore as worse on this issue.
As to the drug war, both big ticket candidates are equally in favor of it.
He only nominates them. Congress must select them.
Yes, I remember those old bumper stickers during the beggining of the clinton presidency that said "Don't blame me, I voted for Bush" [the father of the current one]
...I would almost get a kick out of a bumpersticker that said "Don't blame me, I didn't vote". Realisticly, not voting is worse, of course. But as far as the sense of disenfranchisement, it would be funny...
--
man sig
As much as it dreads me to reveal this, I have just irrevocably commited my vote to the shrub. I didn't think I would feel this dirty afterwards, but I can't help feeling that via this endorsement of him I am going to be somewhat complicit in every horrific policy decision he supports [i.e. internet censorship, the war on drugs]
I came very close to voting for Brown [the libertarian], but I was too frightened of the possibility of Gore possibly winning my state my a slim margin.
despise both of the candidates. It is very much a lesser of two evils kind of thing, and they both are extremely evil. However, Bush is far less of a statist then Gore, and as I value freedom more then anything else, I had to go for him.
It's a shame really. It almost seems like every election it all comes down to a question of which freedom you are going to vote away. Why can't we ever have an election where it's a choice between the freedoms two candidates can work to give us?
Bush will endanger abortion rights [although, really, the executive branch isn't a major determinant of them, but still it can be quite the bully pulpit, as Clinton has demonstrated], and Gore will seriously enganger property rights [i.e. working to nationalize the health care system, endoreses the Kyoto treaty wherin more productive countries will pay fees to less productive ones to have the right to use energy in industrial production, even if those other countries are less efficient, etc... [not to get off topic]]
I really should have voted for Brown. I wouldn't feel so unclean. Still, property rights are the most fundemental human rights, after all.
--
man sig
A buzzword used to describe 3D models with sufficient detail to look closely akin to real life; not chunky like doom, or often visibly broken down into simple geometric forms to reduce polygon count to something manageble [like the original quake, where much of the architecture was texture mapped rectangular prisms, peoples arms were not much more then extended pyrimids, etc]
There is an excellent computer program called Monkey God, which creates random universes with different fundamental physical constants. (Most of them -do- have long lived stars.) The math and physics are also described in detail on links from the page above.
This recently notable movement towards a popularization in the media of some bad science turned towards apologia for theology is very troubling to me. Religion and physics don't mix. I would rather (shudder have religion insinuating itself into politics then into science. Any faith based and socially constructed mythological delusion can only significantly harm true and objective inquiry into the true fundamental structure of reality itself.
Still, I must give this man for credit for ultimately being an empiricist. After finishing the article my initial discomfort was defused when he talked of it as sheer speculation, and of being hopefully proved or disproved by the techniques of scientific rigor.
The monkey god program [and some of the writings on the site above] was aimed more at deconstructing the arguments of some cosmomythologists who argue that the tenability of life in our universe is tantamount to proof of divine creation.
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A truly functioning police state needs no police.
The question of global ozone depletion has been bedeviled by doubts about the quality of the data. Readings from Dobson ground observatories can be contaminated by long-term trends in SO2 pollution of the lower atmosphere. DeMuer and DeBacker have demonstrated that the Dobson ozone meter can misinterpret the downward trend of SO2 pollution, giving rise to a "fictitious" ozone trend (1). (Their finding was confirmed by a task group, chaired by Robert T. Watson, in a Joint Workshop of the IPCC and the International Ozone Assessment Panel in May 1993).
Another, quite separate problem is produced by the extreme noisiness of the ozone record. To establish the existence of a small, long-term trend it is necessary to eliminate the large natural variations, especially also those correlated with the 11-y sunspot cycle. This is an impossible task given the shortness of the record and the virtual absence of data on long-term variations of the solar far-UV radiation that produces ozone in the upper atmosphere. The analysis fails a simple test: The "trend" is found to depend strongly on the choice of time interval (2). An additional problem in identifying a man-made trend arises from long-term trends in sunspot number, and therefore long-term ozone trends of natural origin (3).
1. DeMuer, D.; DeBacker, H. Revision of 20 years Dobson total ozone data at Uccle (Belgium): fictitious Dobson total ozone trends induced by sulfur dioxide trends. J. Geophys. Res. 97:5921-5937;
2. Singer, S. F. What could be causing global ozone depletion? Schatten, K. H.; Arking, A. eds., Climate impact of solar variability. Washington, DC: NASA Publication 3086;
3. Angell, J. K. On the relation between atmospheric ozone and sunspot number. J. Clim. 2:1404-1416; 1989.
You have it completely backwards. It is the nonscientific and politically motivated elements of society that have called their statist motivated hysteria empirical. In this case, the scientific evidence clashes with the orthodox forces of the environmental left. This is not dissimilar from recent occurance with Corning silicone breast implants, in which an entire industry was driven virtually bankrupt by massive class action settlements brought about by a jingoisticly leftist media drum-beat of the horrid risks, representing itself as empirically justified... (when most scientists said their was insufficient evidence either way). And it turned out, after the fact, that there was no risk whatsoever for the diseases claimed. [Sure, it could be ugly if one ruptured, but that was all]. This came out after a successfull 3,000,000,000 settlement against Dow Corning. Now that significant studys have been done, it has been determined that there is no real disease risk whatsoever from silicon breast implants.
Facts:
1. The major public concern about a possible depletion of ozone comes from the fear that solar UV-B (280-320 nm) radiation reaching the surface will increase, typically by 10%. Yet UV-B intensity increases naturally by about 5000% between pole and equator; there is less ozone traversed when the sun is closer to the zenith. Hence a 10% increase at mid-latitudes translates into moving 60 miles (100 km) to the south, hardly a source for health concerns.
2. The driving force behind the policy to phase out CFCs has always been the fear of skin cancer, particularly malignant melanoma. The EPA has predicted 3 million additional skin cancer deaths by the year 2075 as a result of ozone depletion. But unlike basal and squamous cell skin cancers, which are easily cured growths caused by long-term exposure to UV-B, melanoma does not show the same characteristic increase towards lower latitudes (38) (Surprisingly, European data on melanoma incidence show a reverse latitude effect).
3. A breakthrough in our understanding of the mechanism of melanoma induction came with the experiments of Dr. Richard Setlow and colleagues at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. they conclude that 90%-95% of melanomas are caused by UV-A.
4. But UV-A is not absorbed by ozone at all, and therefore melanoma rates would not be affected by changes in stratospheric ozone. This important finding undercuts one of the main reasons for the Montreal Protocol and all subsequent regulations.
1. The question of global ozone depletion has been bedeviled by doubts about the quality of the data. Readings from Dobson ground observatories can be contaminated by long-term trends in SO2 pollution of the lower atmosphere.
2. Another, quite separate problem is produced by the extreme noisiness of the ozone record. To establish the existence of a small, long-term trend it is necessary to eliminate the large natural variations, especially also those correlated with the 11-y sunspot cycle. This is an impossible task given the shortness of the record and the virtual absence of data on long-term variations of the solar far-UV radiation that produces ozone in the upper atmosphere. And then there is the huge cost, estimated at over $200 billion worldwide, of replacing capital equipment that cannot accept the substitutes, just for freon refregerant
I myself have spent over $2500 on upgrading automotive airconditioners, for a system that is significantly less energy efficient , and therefore burns more gas to achive the same effect.
I used to think the religious right was scary... now I've found the religious left to be far more pernicious. [Vote libertarian]
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a truly functioning police state needs no police
What strikes me as most pernicious about this is the existance of subjective criteria in the determination of a crime. Heck, just make -all- network transmissions of any sort illegal, and then the powers that be can choose to selectively prosecute whoever they dislike.
This looks to be pretty close to such a thing.
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A truly functioning police state needs no police.
"do you think they're going to prosecute you for running an FTP client anyway?"...
But the real danger is that, as it is worded right now, they could . Such open and subjective laws leave the field open for selective prosecution of anyone those in power decide that they don't like for some reason.
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I know it sounds at the front of it like a horrific and contradictory idea, and in a way it would be... But if the instance should occur wherein the government mandates the use of filtering software. (The validity of which is not a question this post concerns itself with... I am against it, of course), then what is the best pragmatic road to minimize censorship and maximize good? Open source blocking software.
Think about it... otherwise, countless public libraries would be spending large quantities of tax dollars on per-machine installations, with periodic, costly, upgrades of fresh new evil to protect the kiddies from. Also, the 'kill-files' of commercial censor-wear are considered confidential and protected corporate information, so there is no real oversite as to what of value might be being unjustly blocked.
An open censor-wear package would be free, save lots of money, and have a transparently open and democratically maintained (which should be quite amusing, in the debates it would bring up) list of objectionable content. Currently, [at least where I live] when a local school library refuses to carry some desired book, the choice, being locally made, can be reacted to locally... and these bans have usually been overturned due to the minor controversy. If the decision is made by a remote and central authority, there is less opportunity for grass roots debate and pressure to resolve the issue.
I would feel much more comfortable with all that money not going to CyberPatrol and the like. Wouldn't you?
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As to the nuclear blast: Yes, it shouldn't be set off right next to the thing, where the force vectors would apply too much instantanious force and radial stress... But you must realize, that a nuclear explosion in space, is a diffrent animal then one on the ground. The awesome blast force you see from an atmostpheric thermonuclear detonation is because all of the matter surrounding the thing for a good ways has a huge ammount of energy poured into it, and [being matter] expands a great deal. In vacuum, all you are giving off is a lot of radiation preasure; which, if placed close enough [but not -too- close] would cause the exposed surface [the part not in the asteriods own shadow of the blast], to heat enormously, causing an effect like you see on the ground. The primary propulsive effect isn't so much from kinetic motion imparted by the nuke, but instead from the ejecta from the asteriod.
You're also neglecting that, even assuming you did want to park it -on- the asteriod (so to speak), and therefore tend to fragment it... Even so, lots of small rocks are preferrable to one huge rock, due to the hugely increased surface area of the same total mass... which allows more of it to burn up in the atmosphere. If you could repeat this, and fragment it into small enough pieces, virtually none of them would ever even hit the ground.
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People could always post their message's, with addressees, to some distributed cryptographic storage medium like freenet or whatever may come along to outcompete it on merit. Then, some noble altruist offering the service could post them all in batches. Sort of a slow anonymous remailer, with the remailer having no way of even knowing the IP address of the originator.
I think that one of the key things we have to come to realize at this dawn of a new century is the extreme danger of a growing and increasingly politicized use of science.
Only dedicated and intelligent scientists, devoted to their field of inquiry [while in competition with each other] are qualified to make any determinations of provable risk, and if there is any at all.
Increasingly science has become a pawn in the ideological culture wars of the modern real-politik, and claims are made when evidence is not yet forthcoming. If there was a 1/10 chance, then yes. But when the chance is unknown, that claim can not be made.
An excellent, nay outstanding essay on precisely this can be found - at this location - .
This article is slightly dated, but rings as true now as when it was first published.
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In the beginning, this article verges nicely on the scientifically competent... but later delves increasingly into pseduoscience and your classical luddite-esque scare mongering and silliness.
;) ]
;)
;)
1. Asteroid impact. Wholly plausible, although it must be said that it should be possible to divert it with a chain of precisely launched nuclear warheads detonated as closely as possible to it [the heat from the radiation pressure would cause massive ejecta from the surface, and newtons second law would tend to do the rest, (unless it is mushy or claylike and easily broken into pieces, in which case further blasts could be placed in it's wake to fragment it as much as possible to maximize surface area resistance and encourage burning up in the atmosphere. Block out the sun for a while, but advanced civilization would manage to survive]
2. Once again, plausible, but also notably more speculative. There have been no observed gamma-ray bursts you could call in any way close, they -may- only have tended to happen in a far younger universe. Then again, we've had a devil of a time really triangulating them with all that much accuracy... it's an unknown, put possible. The complete damage of all unshielded electrons equipment would be devastating, [as well as lot's of cancer, etc]
3. Well, I guess the spectrum is not a perfect reasoned to silly, as this is far more implausible [and based wholly on unconfirmed speculation and hypothesis of a fundamental cosmological nature... This one should have come just before divine intervention, to make the ideology spectrum smooth
4. Rogue black holes. Yep, could happen. We'd know about it for a few decades a head of time, hopefully would provide a sufficient rallying cry to learn to live comfortably and self sustainably in space.
5. A conceivable threat, but the likeliness is indeterminate. Most amusing is that the science quoted in the end referring to the existence of strong evidence that the major element in previous world climate change is caused by variations in the sun's output tends to strongly run head-on into the presumptions assumed in #9:"Global warming", but hey.. Who said an article about science in the mainstream media should concern itself with self-consistency
6. I'd never heard of this one before! Interesting. Certainly, geomagnitism provides most of our shielding from energetic particles from the sun... It's happened before without causing huge problems in the fossil record, though. It would probably just cause, at worst, a sharp upswing in mutations and cancer. [Which is -good- for animals, where it is a question of evolution and adaptation. It's only bad where the death of an individual counts, which only applies to people, anyway]
7. A risk. It would devastate world agricultural production! As to whether or not we are "due for one", I couldn't say... but I can't deny that current man has a lot of hubris in fearing himself more them the vagaries of nature. Worst case, much of human population dies, high tech nations sustain a limited population via technologically produced foods. Certainly would be a field day for Darwin. Most amusing is the fact pointed out that 95% of all species were wiped out, [nothing like the most liberal figures of mankinds current impact], and guess what, the ecology rebounded just fine.
8. That would suck for many people. Random deaths. Still, probably wouldn't kill more then 90%, leaving more then enough gene pool to repopulate and rebuild. Plus, advanced quarantining, national emergency... Many may survive in private enclaves, quarantining against all outsiders until the problem is dealt with [say, effective testing, triage, "tuberculosis colonies", etc.]
9. First of she states the earth is getting warmer as a given [before even bringing in the necessary authority of science to bolster her argument]. Many climatologists and geophysicists don't believe there is sufficient evidence to claim that. [Recent ocean readings via satellite actually showed the earth cooling slightly]. Others conclude that the earth does seem to be warming slightly, but that it is correlated most directly to the output of the sun [see #5]. The venus argument is just silly, the earths liquid oceans provide an excellent heat pump, via convection of water vapor in the atmosphere, to radiate a lot of energy into space. Of course, it's still possible, in the sense that anything is possible.
10. Now this isn't even real science anymore, but is beginning to descend into classic left-wing polemic. People forget that evolution has always been all about the most successful [and, it has often turned out, the most complicated and therefore adaptable] of species winning out, creating new playing fields of competition. Mankind is a part of nature! We are the [thus far] height of natures expression on earth. Yes, we are outcompeting other less adaptive DNA in the struggle for resources. It's still -nothing- like the 95% extinction mentioned above. [[Or the almost -complete- extinction of all life that happened with cyanobateria evolved the nasty and horrible ecologically evil habit of pumping out vast amounts of poisonous pollution as a result of a new trick they learned for obtaining energy, causing the greatest percentage wise extinction in of life's history... In case you don't get it, they produced -oxygen-! [Which outcompeted earlier, less successful DNA that was chemotropic, and allowed a whole new plane of competition [free oxygen allowed more complex, more active animals, as oxydation is a significant part of our power source]]]
11. Oh god, the descent into leftist fear-mongering and neo-ludditism reaches new heights/depths. Genetic engineering could never hurt the environment; ultimately it could only help it by introducing more expressive traits to me commingled in the great evolutionary dance. Humanity has been practicing genetic engineering to a limited extant for millinea. [Animal husbandry, agricultural breeding]. Now we can be more precise about it. Argh. Modern ludditism so annoys me.
12. This one is actually perhaps possible as to the mini black hole, although a strong argument can be made that it would spontaneously evaporate into hawking radiation as it would have so little mass that just a few virtual particle interactions would decimate it. [Not enough statistical likelihood to stand on it's own, quantum wise, if you want a loose and innacurate metaphor]. The notion of strangelets and a phase change in the ether is as well an unknown, but a complete and wholly speculative one, based on [albeit interesting] theories with no demonstrative evidence to back them up whatsoever. Argumentum ad ignorantiam is logically worthless.
13. Nanotech disaster. F*ck fire or ice, that's the way I would want to go!... to have gotten so close to true near-total dominance over nature, with a promise of easy off-planet and even interstellar expansion of human life and thought... Surely worth the risk, which could be wholly eliminate by intelligent initial deployment in the beginning, and by design of countermeasures [nano-tech immune systems] after it becomes widely disseminated.
14. Oh yikes. I'm not even going to bother with this one. The output from a good volcano is far less then the toxins of most industrial output. And there is a straw man in arguing that cancer rates are bad for the environment. Mutation and a bit of extra death of animals is no big deal, part of natures old plan. Only in humans does cancer really matter in the slightest, which sort of defeats the loosely implicit notion of ecological catastrophe... Ah well, even the reporter admits that this is not an accepted or plausible theory of in real deemed risk in scientific circles.
15. Yeah, a real worry, but it certainly wouldn't wipe out humanity. Lots of people would survive. Wouldn't be nearly as bad as a small-to-medium sized asteroid strike, and advanced non-sentient life has survived that in the past, I'm sure we'd make it through. [It might take a century or two to be building scanning-tunneling-microscopes, though]
16. Heh, if we're outcompeted, I don't see that as disaster. Besides, those robots are likely to be a synthesis of downloaded human minds, with extensions. And besides, I really don't think such intelligent beings would see any need to wipe us all out. At worst, they might forcibly download all of our pertinent structure [mind and DNA] into nanocomputers, and put us in something like the Matrix [with the full option of exiting at any time, of course, and join the real world of human progress.]
17. This reporter, and much of what she implicitly dumps in from traditional media bias makes me wonder...
18. All I can say is, if our culture was outcompeted and replaced by a more advanced one, -why would that be a bad thing-? That's Darwin, people! I'd be happy to learn.
19. I'm not gonna touch this one with a ten-foot inverted religious implement.
20. I'm not gonna even bother to touch this one either, with a ten volume set of postmodern philosophy. [Actually, it does interest me a little. It has sometimes amused me to realize that it is possible that we are all genetic life that has evolved in a complex alien uber-computer, created by beings far more advanced then us... Our lives are only so painfull because invisible cameras follow us around, and the multitasking awareness of our pathetic tragedy gets good ratings on transcendental cable tv, and helps sell alien soap...]
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One thing that gets me is the near universal assumption that the 'ozone hole' is a necessarily new phenomonon that represents a fundlemental danger to humans and other life on earth.
;)
There is an interesting essay [with an excellent bibliography] here Which endeavors to critically debunk the rationale behind the scaremongering widely perpetuated by the mainstream media. Many respected scientists have had critical disagreements over the validity of the 'ozone problem', yet this has suprisingly been absent throughout the long history of mainstream media coverage of the topic.
Think what you will, I won't say I am wholly convinced one way or another, but this is well worth reading. Even if you are an adamently radical environmentalist, if nothing else it is good to know thine enemy.
The preliminary introduction is a bit slow, if you're in a hurry, skip down to the subsection titled SCIENTIFIC UNCERTAINTIES AND CONTROVERSIES and as well to CONCERNS ABOUT SKIN CANCER , which I found particularly interesting.
It wouldn't be the first time that national hysteria (in this case, international) got out of hand, fed by a singular drum-beat of media hype, leading to bad policy. [Remeber columbine, the drug way, countless others?]
It's valuable to challege orthodoxy, and I found this article a fascinating read. You should check it out.
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The URL in the main story was incorrect.
Click here for the corrected URL: http://www.richmond.edu/jolt/v7i1/note2.html I have noted this problem before. Possible slashcode bug?
The number of effective charge/discharge cycles of a battery are often less then you think... But then again, if you start to worry about it too much, and only use the battery when 'absolutely neccessary', your probably wasting more resources then just buying a new bat when the one you have dies.
Li ion : mean avg og 500-700 cycles NiMH: mean avg of 400-500 cycles NiCD: mean avg og 300-500 cycles
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And you are only allowed to use that knowledge [which is only liscenced to you and belongs soley to the university] for the puposes of working as a knowledge and skill implementor in relationships with professional services firms in contract with the university?
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I wish I had more data. By no means am I one of those "the ancients of atlantis" or "alien mystery" sort of fools, [clearly, modern society is humanities highest point of technological achievment ever]...
But, I saw something about two months ago on the history channel, and it has been a curiosity of mine ever since to try to find additional data on it.
According to the show [whose accuracy I could not wholly vouchsafe], some acheologist had expressed interest in a find from an ancient greek shipwreck that had been langouring on some dusty shelf in a wharehouse... Anyway, to make a long story short, he x-rayed it and 'found' it to contain gears and a complicated internal mechanism for performing certain astronimical calculations.
I posess no expertise in ancient history, but I was doubtfull, as I didn't think the greeks had even had gears. But, as it was on an ostensibly educational program, it made me wonder. Was this the first computer?
Anyone with any additional info on this, as I must admit to a strong curiosity...
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Just on the subject of the Tamigotchi, there is an amusing [I laughed aloud, which is somewhat rare, although I was admitedly very sleep deprived] parody, [nice and brief] of it, called the
TamiGothi, the gothic tamigotchi Hey, I used to wear a lot of black in high school, so it picqued my sensibilities. Wholly trivial, though... sorry to have wasted your time if you read this far. [At least it's not hollw-horned ruminannt carnality...]
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No, this is not a joke ;)
Sony is giving away, at cost sony legged robot research prototypes for, of all things, a international robot soccer competition to spur research into artificial intelligence and robotics.
Have some under-utilized grad students in a computer science department? Get them to work on preparing research software, [and get some local sponsership in the neighborhood of (I'm guessing roughly) [15,000 - 25,000] dollars, and you may get to have some real fun to justify all those boring years spent in stuffy classrooms studying how to convert certain classes of NDA's into DFA's !!!
read about it here
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This actually might be a big step towards the eventual construction of a nano-assembler. [Making anything else with it would be a huge waste of time, as even a 'simple' nano-device would probably take weeks to construct.] Which would change the world so very much.
I can't wait. Just think, practical imortality [or at least un-mortality], living as sentient software modelled in a nano-computer that is programmed from an accurate map of your neural activity derived by nanites building scaffolding aroung all of the cells in your brain. [Your soon to be discarded brain]]...
What a beutifull vision.
By the way, you might want to read "Diaspora", by Greg Egan, a wonderfull book about future socieities of sentient software. Some of the best contemporary hard sci-fi I've ever come across. [Except for the ending, which is annoyingly fancifull, but still somewhat interesting].
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Are deuterium futures traded on any of the commodity exchanges? heh.
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