Chances of life are most definitely decreased due to Europa getting more more radiation than previously thought.
I don't see why "cryogenic temperatures and infinitesimal pressure with a rain of ionizing radiation" is any less hospitable than simply "cryogenic temperatures and infinitesimal pressure". Indeed, without an atmosphere and (I believe) a noticeable magnetic field, wouldn't we expect the surface to have been bathed in cosmic radiation anyway? Life on Europa, if it exists, is going to exist near oceanic thermal vents, safe behind a nice thick shield of ice. Surface radiation is irrelevant.
I bet the real story is just like the wiretaps - Dutch citizens are brainwashed that their country is free when in fact the rate of government intrusion into their lives is much higher than they realize.
Hmmm... it seems they have more in common with us Americans than we thought...
We expect to return to the U.S. in a couple of years. There are things good and bad everywhere, and there is much that I will miss about Asia, but I will say that I prefer the U.S. legal system to any other under which I have lived.
I hate to break it to you, but with another 2-6 years of Bush/Ashcroft, the US will no longer have the legal system you admire...
Quite honestly, you probably would've turned out much better if you did go to a public school and had to learn how to interact with people different than yourself.
As someone teaching at a private high school, let me assure you: The kids are not a homogenous mass, any more than at a public school. We have kids admitted for their brains, kids admitted for their passing ability, kids admitted for acting... and of course, kids admitted for having inherited the right set of genes. (That's what stinks about private school.)
It could in fact be argued that the generally smaller size of a private school -- and truth be told, that's mostly what we're selling -- allows greater interaction, because the cliques that form are necessarily smaller. In a big school, you can find "your group" and disappear. In a smaller school, you cannot do so as easily. Higher surface area to volume ratio, and we know that the interactions happen at the boundaries.
Is it easier to understand a computing language , or people? A language has a logical structure, whereas people have myriad backgrounds and motivations.
On the other hand, you have a million years of evolution encoding social interactions into your genes... you have built-in low-level autonomous subroutines for interpreting people. Code is new and has no portion of the brain specialized toward understanding it.
Hint: acting like you're smarter than everyone else is socially inept.
Sadly, this is true even if you are smarter than everyone else. And you don't dodge the issue this way. Acting like you're more atheletic than everyone else is not socially inept, especially if it happens to be true. There's still a distinction between intelligence and other factors.
In total fairness, the author makes exactly the same point: smart != nerdy but many nerds are smart.
People are talking about the economy-of-scale, and that's valid. I think you also have to consider the cost of holding an inventory. If MegaLabel presses 100,000 CDs but only 100 sell, then (a) they've overpaid on the pressing and (b) they have to pay to store the extras, on the chance someone will want them later. Of course they don't store all 99,900 of them. They only keep a "reasonable" supply -- which is earning them negative money, until someone buys it.
This article makes clear what has been true for a while now: With digital copying, there is no need for any such beast as "out of print".
In the olden days, you'd have to pay to store copies, and you'd have to guess at future demand. Then, if you were way under, you would have to reassemble the master (or original galleys or what have you) and start up a new printing -- with all the associated costs of initial runs. Now, though, you can print/press on demand and there's no reason to keep a large inventory. Heck, for that matter, the company could offer MP3 downloads and not have to burn the CD-R, either.
What's keeping us from this utopia? Greed -- on the part of download-hounds who gleefully trade songs they haven't bought and on the part of the Content Cartel, who feel threatened by the new technology and don't want to get their heads around new possibilities.
putting people into orbit has become the be-all and end-all. Our focus should be beyond orbit; we should head back to the moon, and then on to Mars.
Don't take this as flamebait, but this sort of thinking is exactly why things have stalled: A penchant for the flashy combined with essentially no understanding of what's actually involved in space exploration, nor of what's needed.
If you want to settle the Moon or explore Mars or any other grandiose thing, you're going to absolutely need cheap Earth-to-orbit capability. Right now it's about $10,000 per pound that we lift -- that means almost nothing can be profitably put into orbit. Bring that down, and the rest follows.
To stretch a historical analogy, while exploration of North America occured since 1500, massive settlement of it awaited the railroads and cheap transport. (And put down those flamethrowers... I am not trying to discount the Native American presence in North America. Of course, without railroads, that took literally thousands of years. With railroads, that population was exceeded in about 100 years.)
What is bearing the load against the earth's gravity?
Rotational velocity. The rotation of the earth imposes an outward force on the elevator, keeping it in place.
What's that sound? Why, it's just Isaac Newton, spinning in his grave fast enough to power a city...
Velocity exerts no force. The orbital anchor will "want" to fly off straight at high speed. The (currently wundertech) carbon nanotube cable, attached to it, suffers a tension. The Newton III complement to this tension pulls the anchor toward the Earth. This imparts an acceleration exactly balanced so as to cause the anchor to execute a circle about the center of the Earth.
It's only been 320 years since the Principia. Maybe someday soon we'll catch up to Newton.
This is just going to confuse and frustrate people.
Well, if you leave the configuration alone long enough, people might start to be efficient. Then they might realize that computers are scary only because they're unfamiliar. Worst case scenario: Your users get comfortable and don't want to upgrade (can we say Kiss of Death for a business model?) and maybe, when things go wrong, they'll stop blaming themselves and start blaming, say, the software company that sold them the crappy program...
We sure as heck wouldn't want that happening, now would we?
If you look in the video editing and medical imaging field, the input devices reflect the nature of how the work is done (dials, sliders, toggle buttons)
How much of that is because "it's the way work is done" and how much is because "When we invented these things, you actually had to throw switches, bring capacitors on-line, etc"?
Much like freedom though, there are always the jackass minority that abuse it and wreck it for the rest of us.
Ah, the Tyranny of the First Defector: Whoever first decides to abuse a system reaps maximum reward, which (a) encourages more defectors and (b) reduces the willingness of collaborators to remain in the game. It happens because defection lowers the average benefit, but the defector doesn't care about average benefit. He cares only about his specific benefit, which can easily exceed the average.
The end result, though, is that the average benefit declines and the specific benefit decreases even faster until we're all stuck mucking around at a single, much lower benefit. Phoo!
(Say, don't you thing that Green Camoflague is a bit inneffecting in an urban combat environment, like an Airport?)
Yes, if you wanted the soldiers to be undetected. But of course the point of putting the National Guard in the airports was never really about security. It was about the appearance of security, for all those sheep whose votes you need in the midterm elections. See, see! We're doing something to protect you!
Of course in politics, it's not reality but the perception of reality that counts... which was proved last November, in fact.
"You do not have to say anything but it may harm your defence if you do not mention now, anything you later rely on in court. Anything you do say will be given in evidence."
We lost the "Right to Silence" in the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994. Under the new laws, although we are under no obligation to self-incriminate, the court can now make inferences as regards to silence under the following circumstances:
Every once in a while I read something that reignites my admiration for those dead white guys who crafted the United States Constitution (and its Bill of Rights). There's no way this sort of right should be removable by a simple law. Now if only the modern successors to Jefferson, Hamilton, et al, had one-tenth the political vision and backbone...
Re:5th Amendment
on
Going Cyberpunk
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Blockquoth the poster:
If (and I'm stressing that if) this becomes "widely accepted", couldn't one simply refuse to allow oneself to be tested, as it would really just be another form of self incrimination, which we are protected from by the 5th Amendment?
Sure. Just like your right to refuse a breathalyzer test if pulled over by the cops. Except, of course, that if you exercise this right, the state is allowed to revoke your driving privileges effectively immediately. It won't take long before refusing to take the test will itself be taken as a confession.
Or a thousand other challenges that we can do, with enough money and labor and, yes, science/technology, and which we really should tidy up before we reach for the stars
The problem with saying "Let's get everything fixed up here, first" is this: It can't be done. Solving the problems mentioned, and the untold many in tow behind them, would require lifting most of the species to a standard of living comparable to or equal to that of the United States. We do not have the resources to do that, especially if that standard of living includes environmental integrity as well. Where are those resources? In space: Cheap energy, vast mineral resources, no ecosphere to assault.
The evidence is extremely poor that humanity would indeed focus on solving its ills. Most likely, without some driving idea, without a frontier, we will see an increasing self-absorption and a general numbing of our best impulses. As they say, change is inevitable but growth is not... and the only hope lies in growth, in reaching beyond, not back.
Instead, if we invest everything now in our close-to-home problems, we might solve those problems.
Almost certainly not. We've been trying to solve these problems for literally thousands of years and seem only infinitesimally closer. A major benefit of space exploration and development is the possibility it offers for real paradigm-shattering. It's clear we must do things differently, if the species is to survive the next hundred years; and there's absolutely no reason to think that, confined to the same place, we will do that.
I agree that the shuttle could not have reached the station, as things currently stand. But I also think that the way things currently stand is intolerable and, really, just dumb. If we had a functioning orbital infrastructure and an actual economy in orbit -- things that, for the past 30 years, have certainly been within our grasp -- then there would be things with enough delta-v to get the Columbia astronauts to safety somewhere (except, as I said, this particular disaster would actually not have occurred).
First of all they didn't die in space, they died in low orbit
No, first of all, the parent thread asked, "Why didn't NASA have the astronauts inspect the shuttle before reentry?" to which you replied, because it was going Mach whatever. Of course the inspection would have been done while the Shuttle was in orbit and then it would not have been de-orbited. Instead, hypothetically, the Atlantis would have been rush-prepped and launched, manuvering to the Columbia and attempting a rescue while in orbit, where on these timescales friction is negligible.
I agree that the age of the shuttle fleet is a significant concern, but the design work[s]
Two-month turnaround, one-month minimum prep time, 17,000-person prep crews, escalating cost, stagnant payload, minimal low-orbit capability, flaking insulation, cracking fuel lines... oh, and periodically catastrophic or near-catastrophic failure.
I guess I have a different idea of what it would mean for the Shuttle to "work".
I understand that it is a marvelous machine and was, at one time, an appropriate benchmark for high-tech. But the design is old and not particularly efficient; the hardware is old and not particularly reliable. NASA is missing the boat on both counts. It's not exactly their fault, as the Congress neither appropriates enough money to replace the Shuttle nor passes laws to create a viable environment for private launch companies.
But to argue that the Columbia disaster is merely a statistical blip in an otherwise-functioning system, is simply not true.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't see why "cryogenic temperatures and infinitesimal pressure with a rain of ionizing radiation" is any less hospitable than simply "cryogenic temperatures and infinitesimal pressure". Indeed, without an atmosphere and (I believe) a noticeable magnetic field, wouldn't we expect the surface to have been bathed in cosmic radiation anyway? Life on Europa, if it exists, is going to exist near oceanic thermal vents, safe behind a nice thick shield of ice. Surface radiation is irrelevant.
Hmmm... it seems they have more in common with us Americans than we thought...
I hate to break it to you, but with another 2-6 years of Bush/Ashcroft, the US will no longer have the legal system you admire...
As someone teaching at a private high school, let me assure you: The kids are not a homogenous mass, any more than at a public school. We have kids admitted for their brains, kids admitted for their passing ability, kids admitted for acting
It could in fact be argued that the generally smaller size of a private school -- and truth be told, that's mostly what we're selling -- allows greater interaction, because the cliques that form are necessarily smaller. In a big school, you can find "your group" and disappear. In a smaller school, you cannot do so as easily. Higher surface area to volume ratio, and we know that the interactions happen at the boundaries.
On the other hand, you have a million years of evolution encoding social interactions into your genes
Sadly, this is true even if you are smarter than everyone else. And you don't dodge the issue this way. Acting like you're more atheletic than everyone else is not socially inept, especially if it happens to be true. There's still a distinction between intelligence and other factors.
In total fairness, the author makes exactly the same point: smart != nerdy but many nerds are smart.
This article makes clear what has been true for a while now: With digital copying, there is no need for any such beast as "out of print".
In the olden days, you'd have to pay to store copies, and you'd have to guess at future demand. Then, if you were way under, you would have to reassemble the master (or original galleys or what have you) and start up a new printing -- with all the associated costs of initial runs. Now, though, you can print/press on demand and there's no reason to keep a large inventory. Heck, for that matter, the company could offer MP3 downloads and not have to burn the CD-R, either.
What's keeping us from this utopia? Greed -- on the part of download-hounds who gleefully trade songs they haven't bought and on the part of the Content Cartel, who feel threatened by the new technology and don't want to get their heads around new possibilities.
Don't take this as flamebait, but this sort of thinking is exactly why things have stalled: A penchant for the flashy combined with essentially no understanding of what's actually involved in space exploration, nor of what's needed.
If you want to settle the Moon or explore Mars or any other grandiose thing, you're going to absolutely need cheap Earth-to-orbit capability. Right now it's about $10,000 per pound that we lift -- that means almost nothing can be profitably put into orbit. Bring that down, and the rest follows.
To stretch a historical analogy, while exploration of North America occured since 1500, massive settlement of it awaited the railroads and cheap transport. (And put down those flamethrowers
What's that sound? Why, it's just Isaac Newton, spinning in his grave fast enough to power a city...
Velocity exerts no force. The orbital anchor will "want" to fly off straight at high speed. The (currently wundertech) carbon nanotube cable, attached to it, suffers a tension. The Newton III complement to this tension pulls the anchor toward the Earth. This imparts an acceleration exactly balanced so as to cause the anchor to execute a circle about the center of the Earth.
It's only been 320 years since the Principia. Maybe someday soon we'll catch up to Newton.
Wait. Whatever gave you the idea that ending our dependence on oil (foreign or otherwise) was at all a priority of this administration?
Ah, here in the Incorporated States, such sentiments clearly mark you as a thief.
Well, if you leave the configuration alone long enough, people might start to be efficient. Then they might realize that computers are scary only because they're unfamiliar. Worst case scenario: Your users get comfortable and don't want to upgrade (can we say Kiss of Death for a business model?) and maybe, when things go wrong, they'll stop blaming themselves and start blaming, say, the software company that sold them the crappy program...
We sure as heck wouldn't want that happening, now would we?
How much of that is because "it's the way work is done" and how much is because "When we invented these things, you actually had to throw switches, bring capacitors on-line, etc"?
Ah, the Tyranny of the First Defector: Whoever first decides to abuse a system reaps maximum reward, which (a) encourages more defectors and (b) reduces the willingness of collaborators to remain in the game. It happens because defection lowers the average benefit, but the defector doesn't care about average benefit. He cares only about his specific benefit, which can easily exceed the average.
The end result, though, is that the average benefit declines and the specific benefit decreases even faster until we're all stuck mucking around at a single, much lower benefit. Phoo!
Yes, if you wanted the soldiers to be undetected. But of course the point of putting the National Guard in the airports was never really about security. It was about the appearance of security, for all those sheep whose votes you need in the midterm elections. See, see! We're doing something to protect you!
Of course in politics, it's not reality but the perception of reality that counts... which was proved last November, in fact.
Every once in a while I read something that reignites my admiration for those dead white guys who crafted the United States Constitution (and its Bill of Rights). There's no way this sort of right should be removable by a simple law. Now if only the modern successors to Jefferson, Hamilton, et al, had one-tenth the political vision and backbone...
Sure. Just like your right to refuse a breathalyzer test if pulled over by the cops. Except, of course, that if you exercise this right, the state is allowed to revoke your driving privileges effectively immediately. It won't take long before refusing to take the test will itself be taken as a confession.
Nah...Leto II.b
This by itself is the best evidence that there is a conspiracy and they "got" to CmdrTaco...
The problem with saying "Let's get everything fixed up here, first" is this: It can't be done. Solving the problems mentioned, and the untold many in tow behind them, would require lifting most of the species to a standard of living comparable to or equal to that of the United States. We do not have the resources to do that, especially if that standard of living includes environmental integrity as well. Where are those resources? In space: Cheap energy, vast mineral resources, no ecosphere to assault.
The evidence is extremely poor that humanity would indeed focus on solving its ills. Most likely, without some driving idea, without a frontier, we will see an increasing self-absorption and a general numbing of our best impulses. As they say, change is inevitable but growth is not... and the only hope lies in growth, in reaching beyond, not back.
Almost certainly not. We've been trying to solve these problems for literally thousands of years and seem only infinitesimally closer. A major benefit of space exploration and development is the possibility it offers for real paradigm-shattering. It's clear we must do things differently, if the species is to survive the next hundred years; and there's absolutely no reason to think that, confined to the same place, we will do that.
Synopsis: It's probably not illegal. It probably should be. Oh, joy, yet another mess in the area of intellectual "property".
I agree that the shuttle could not have reached the station, as things currently stand. But I also think that the way things currently stand is intolerable and, really, just dumb. If we had a functioning orbital infrastructure and an actual economy in orbit -- things that, for the past 30 years, have certainly been within our grasp -- then there would be things with enough delta-v to get the Columbia astronauts to safety somewhere (except, as I said, this particular disaster would actually not have occurred).
No, first of all, the parent thread asked, "Why didn't NASA have the astronauts inspect the shuttle before reentry?" to which you replied, because it was going Mach whatever. Of course the inspection would have been done while the Shuttle was in orbit and then it would not have been de-orbited. Instead, hypothetically, the Atlantis would have been rush-prepped and launched, manuvering to the Columbia and attempting a rescue while in orbit, where on these timescales friction is negligible.
Two-month turnaround, one-month minimum prep time, 17,000-person prep crews, escalating cost, stagnant payload, minimal low-orbit capability, flaking insulation, cracking fuel lines
I guess I have a different idea of what it would mean for the Shuttle to "work".
I understand that it is a marvelous machine and was, at one time, an appropriate benchmark for high-tech. But the design is old and not particularly efficient; the hardware is old and not particularly reliable. NASA is missing the boat on both counts. It's not exactly their fault, as the Congress neither appropriates enough money to replace the Shuttle nor passes laws to create a viable environment for private launch companies.
But to argue that the Columbia disaster is merely a statistical blip in an otherwise-functioning system, is simply not true.