On the other hand, you don't always have to send the whole person. Some genetic material can be enough. So, a few dozen women and a few thousand virtual men could also suffice, but don't quote me on that.
Your colony would be lacking in mitochondrial DNA diversity, but since animal life only inherits that from one parent, there's no risk of recessive disease through inbreeding. It also apparently mutates quite rapidly.
gamma rays travel in the speed of light right? If the event happened X light years from us, X years in the past, aren't we cooked before we know it happened? Only when the burst energy reaches earth - that's the moment we know it happens.
Yep.
However, we might be able to spot changes in a star leading up to the actual burst. If we knew what to look for.
Your right. In the USA, Judges can not over rule an Innocent verdict by a jury in a criminal case and the State can't appeal. The case is over.
A not guilty verdict can be successfully appealed by the prosecution if they can show the trial was a fraud. However, this would result in a new trial, not a conviction.
From what I can tell, the prosecution has absolutely not proven Hans' guilt beyond the shadow of a doubt. They have not met the standard of proof required for a criminal conviction.
The standard of proof in a criminal case is 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. This is far less than 'beyond a shadow of a doubt'.
So a 3d accelerated desktop, with DVD in a window, and a 3D accelerated program in another
BeOS (1991) - Yes
You should have just said "a movie in a window" instead of DVD. The DVD spec was finalized in December 1995. BeOS had its awesome points, but playing data storage media from the future wasn't one.
I'd feel better with "SCO", rather than people watching trying to be extra clever by naming them by their ticker symbol.
Calling The SCO Group "SCO" confuses them with the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), which previously owned the UnixWare and OpenServer rights and SCO trademark. The SCO causing all the trouble had the NASDAQ symbol SCOX, the earlier company had SCOC.
Unlike calling Microsoft 'MSFT', calling The SCO Group SCOX actually helps avoid confusion between two similar entities. I've seen a few people try to promote the use of 'TSG', but it did not catch on.
I'm not questioning his specific numbers; I'm questioning the logic of his argument. That is to say, his logic was:
A% likes X, hates Y.
B% likes Z, hates Y.
C% loves Y.
C > A,B
A+B > C
Therefore C should lose.
It depends on your goal (maximize satisfaction or minimize dissatisfaction). If you want to maximize satisfaction, C should win. If you want to minimize dissatisfaction, A or B should win (and if A!=B in his example, we'd know who should win under that electoral goal).
You have again assumed that group A would be completely dissatisfied with Z and B would be completely dissatisfied with X.
Satisfaction is analog, not binary. All we know is that group A gives X a high value and Y a low value. These satisfaction values probably won't even be 1.000 and 0.000. We don't know if group A would give Z 0.95, 0.05, or something anywhere in between. Plurality voting does not even ask the question. It assumes 1.0 for the choice you select, and 0.0 for everything else.
Let's assume groups A and B both pretty much like candidates X and Y (and assume group satisfaction can be calculated by a simple weighting):
A - 30% - X:1.00 - Y:0.95 - Z: 0.00
B - 30% - X:0.95 - Y:1.00 - Z: 0.00
C - 50% - X:0.00 - Y:0.00 - Z: 1.00
Resulting satisfaction:
If X is the winner: 30% * 1.00 + 30% * 0.95 + 40% * 0.00 = 0.585
If Y is the winner: 30% * 0.95 + 30% * 1.00 + 40% * 0.00 = 0.585
If Z is the winner: 30% * 0.00 + 30% * 0.00 + 40% * 1.00 = 0.40
To maximize satisfaction, either X or Y should be the winner.
Part of the point of explanatory examples is to not confuse the example with reality. What's next, you're going to question the example's 30% national support for Ron Paul?
An anchor drag accross two cables in the Mediterranean is quite plausible, but what about the third one off the coast of Dubai in less than a week? That's not even the same sea.
Gambler's fallacy. A random event happening does not affect the future probability of the random event happening. And why would it be in the same sea? We're talking about separate ships here.
It might just be a cover up for incompetency. but I don't buy the three accidental anchor drags story.
Two. Two anchor drags.
There were similar outages due to supposedly broken cables a year (or two?) ago in the Indian ocean, which affected UAE Internet services. Those cables were dozens of kilometers apart too.
The cables in the Mediterranean were only a few hundred meters apart near the shore where they were cut. They're only sending one ship to fix both.
Let's hold a vote on a national method of transportation. 30% want a red car. 30% want a blue car. 40% want a motorcycle. By your logic, the correct choice is for everyone to ride motorcycles, when 60% want a car.
Because presumably, from your statements, 70% don't want Paul and 70% don't want Obama, while only 30-60% don't want Romney.
The statement "30% of the people wanted Ron Paul to win and hated Romney" implies that that 30% would prefer Obama to Romney. Likewise, the 30% who want a blue car would probably prefer a red car to the motorcycle. This is why alternative voting systems tend to actually ask for preferences, rather than saying "choose one".
You might be tempted to say that we should separate the question of car vs motorcycle and the question of color, and you would be right. But with political candidates, we can't. I can't go out and vote for a candidate to be in charge of war, another to be in charge of economic policy, another to handle diplomacy, and so forth. All these positions are rolled into inseparable bundles.
With the current system we can all end up riding motorcycles when most people would prefer a car of any color.
yet more money which the US could afford if they stopped wasting it on playing war games.
You assume the US can afford to be in Iraq. It can't. The war has been charged on the national credit card, and the country is only able to make the minimum payment.
"Y'all" merrily fills one of those voids, yet is generally despised by those who fail to see its utility.
I think part of it is that people don't know how it's supposed to be used. Fake southerners/Texans in the media often use it incorrectly in place of the singular 'you'. This turns it into just an excuse to laugh at a group for being different.
Initiate a 15 year plan to move the U.S. from a gasoline based transportation infrastructure to a hydrogen fuel cell based infrastructure. This would require building a number of nuclear plants to generate the hydrogen as well as supply the power for new factories to support the new infrastructure.
Hydrogen is too hard to make, too hard to move, and too hard to store. Battery technology is already approaching practicality for automotive use. It's far more efficient to just use electricity than try to build a hydrogen distribution system. There'd be less up-front investment, and less wasted energy once it was in place. A hydrogen fuel cell has about 25% grid-to-motor efficiency. Batteries are around 86%. There's a bit of rebalancing from the extra battery weight, but I doubt it's enough to consume 3x the energy.
Oil companies would be mandated to assist with the conversion as well as automobile manufacturers to create vehicles in all classes trucks, buses, SUV, sedans, etc that run on fuel cells.
Or we could just let them all work on the electrics they're already working on. Hell, even ExxonMobil is already working on battery technology (they know peak oil is coming/here, and want to sell the plastics that go into the things).
The major difference being that hurricanes behave chaotically and can make a sudden 90 degree turn at the last moment. Even if you're outside the 24-hour cone, you should keep your shutters up until the thing hits.
Asteroids don't generally change course unpredictably.
Well, "The labeling system is not fundamentally important." in some respects contradicts "When you say humans are specialized fish, you're stretching the commonly-used word 'fish' so far from its ordinary meaning that it is completely unrecognizable." as you are aware.
Yes, I knew I was providing the rope with that one. Perhaps I should have said, the choice of labels is not important so long as they can be used to communicate. The problem is the communication breakdown, not the change in meaning itself.
For example, "trees" or "bushes" has no connotation of ancestry beyond they are all plants.
Indeed, some "trees" and "bushes" are cultivars of the same species.
And, on top of that, "redefining the meanings of existing labels" is the daily work of the World's scientists I guess. I think today (in organismal classification at least), the meaning gives the label, whereas two hundred years ago (before Darwin) the label gave the meaning.
I think the evolutionary biologists can muddle through if they keep in mind that laymen are speaking a language that has a lot of familiar words that have somewhat different meanings. Homo sapiens are Osteichthyes, but you don't call your neighbor a bony fish. Not to his face, anyway.
Riiight. What kind of insane physics did your high school teach? Protons are accelerated by gravity and electric fields just like anything else with mass and a charge.
Hydrogen ions can move through liquids or gases, but this guy's device looks like a solid.
What do you think a hydrogen ion is? It's a proton. You have just said protons don't move and protons do move.
And again, this is the same sort of proton-permeable membrane used in hydrogen fuel cells.
I like the idea of a sealed unit without any moving (mechanical, anyway; I'm fairly sure the hydrogen gas moves about inside) parts powered by heat, but I'll be waiting until I see a working unit before I'd consider investing or whatnot. 2nd Thermodynamics seems to be something that'd need to be carefully considered, as this almost seems like a corollary of the Steorn business from a few months back.
Wait and see how a proof of concept works? Yes. Yes. A hundred times yes.
Like a completely vague and unexplained perpetual motion machine? No.
Johnson is not claiming to do the impossible, merely the unlikely. And he's provided enough of the idea for others to do some analysis of the concept. Steorn provided no information that would enable outsiders to even discover their basic principles of operation.
A person is making outrageous claims. Efficiencies far beyond anything ever achieved.
Unlikely and probably exaggerated, but not on their face impossible.
Not a smidgen of actual technical data. I mean stuff like "prototype X199 put out 3.4 gigawatts for 1200 hours with an input temp of 821C, output temp of 183.5C." You know, measureable facts.
If he was up to running his 199th prototype for 50 days straight at gigawatt power levels, they'd already be on sale. Right now he's at the proof of concept stage, and this is just an interesting idea.
Instead we get animated GIFs of protons moving (diffusing?). In case you never took high-school science, this is impossible.
The hydrogen fuel cell people would be very interested to know that protons can't move or diffuse, what with it being the entire operating principle of their devices. Anyone who works with ionized hydrogen would also want to hear about this amazing discovery.
Or maybe you were declaring the animated GIF impossible?
And we get a lot of personal aggrandization.
Saying the guy did all the things he did is basic reporting. That he invented the super soaker is just a journalistic hook. I don't see Johnson engaging in much waving of his own flag here.
Just in case yo haven't figured it out, working at a govt lab is not necessarily a mark of distinction. Having worked at several, many of us have first hand knowledge that the govt often hires and promotes total idiots. Not saying anything about this guy, just sayin.....
You are calling him an idiot. You're just using weasel words to pretend you aren't. I'm going to trust the guy with an impressive resume over a slashdotter who can't spell and can't get get basic physics correct.
And as for location, there's no place on earth where the rainfall would possibly exceed the needs of a densely packed urban population, without conservation.
I present to you Seattle, WA.
Seattle doesn't get that much rain. Average annual rainfall there is only 37 inches. That's less than New York (45"), Houston (54"), or (before the drought) Atlanta (50").
It just seems like a lot because it's delivered as a constant drizzle.
Slashdot Mirror
Pete the Pup was not a little dog. Maybe if AIBOs could rip a man's throat out.
Your colony would be lacking in mitochondrial DNA diversity, but since animal life only inherits that from one parent, there's no risk of recessive disease through inbreeding. It also apparently mutates quite rapidly.
Obviously PJ arranged the new funding so Groklaw could continue operating.
Wikipedia cites anthropologist John H. Moore as saying the minimum reasonable size is around 170. I'm assuming these individuals would be measurably unrelated.
Yep.
However, we might be able to spot changes in a star leading up to the actual burst. If we knew what to look for.
A not guilty verdict can be successfully appealed by the prosecution if they can show the trial was a fraud. However, this would result in a new trial, not a conviction.
The standard of proof in a criminal case is 'beyond a reasonable doubt'. This is far less than 'beyond a shadow of a doubt'.
I am getting sick of this HDR stuff.
BeOS (1991) - Yes
You should have just said "a movie in a window" instead of DVD. The DVD spec was finalized in December 1995. BeOS had its awesome points, but playing data storage media from the future wasn't one.
Calling The SCO Group "SCO" confuses them with the Santa Cruz Operation (SCO), which previously owned the UnixWare and OpenServer rights and SCO trademark. The SCO causing all the trouble had the NASDAQ symbol SCOX, the earlier company had SCOC.
Unlike calling Microsoft 'MSFT', calling The SCO Group SCOX actually helps avoid confusion between two similar entities. I've seen a few people try to promote the use of 'TSG', but it did not catch on.
You have again assumed that group A would be completely dissatisfied with Z and B would be completely dissatisfied with X.
Satisfaction is analog, not binary. All we know is that group A gives X a high value and Y a low value. These satisfaction values probably won't even be 1.000 and 0.000. We don't know if group A would give Z 0.95, 0.05, or something anywhere in between. Plurality voting does not even ask the question. It assumes 1.0 for the choice you select, and 0.0 for everything else.
Let's assume groups A and B both pretty much like candidates X and Y (and assume group satisfaction can be calculated by a simple weighting):
- A - 30% - X:1.00 - Y:0.95 - Z: 0.00
- B - 30% - X:0.95 - Y:1.00 - Z: 0.00
- C - 50% - X:0.00 - Y:0.00 - Z: 1.00
Resulting satisfaction:To maximize satisfaction, either X or Y should be the winner.
Part of the point of explanatory examples is to not confuse the example with reality. What's next, you're going to question the example's 30% national support for Ron Paul?
Gambler's fallacy. A random event happening does not affect the future probability of the random event happening. And why would it be in the same sea? We're talking about separate ships here.
It might just be a cover up for incompetency. but I don't buy the three accidental anchor drags story.Two. Two anchor drags.
There were similar outages due to supposedly broken cables a year (or two?) ago in the Indian ocean, which affected UAE Internet services. Those cables were dozens of kilometers apart too.The cables in the Mediterranean were only a few hundred meters apart near the shore where they were cut. They're only sending one ship to fix both.
Let's hold a vote on a national method of transportation. 30% want a red car. 30% want a blue car. 40% want a motorcycle. By your logic, the correct choice is for everyone to ride motorcycles, when 60% want a car.
Because presumably, from your statements, 70% don't want Paul and 70% don't want Obama, while only 30-60% don't want Romney.The statement "30% of the people wanted Ron Paul to win and hated Romney" implies that that 30% would prefer Obama to Romney. Likewise, the 30% who want a blue car would probably prefer a red car to the motorcycle. This is why alternative voting systems tend to actually ask for preferences, rather than saying "choose one".
You might be tempted to say that we should separate the question of car vs motorcycle and the question of color, and you would be right. But with political candidates, we can't. I can't go out and vote for a candidate to be in charge of war, another to be in charge of economic policy, another to handle diplomacy, and so forth. All these positions are rolled into inseparable bundles.
With the current system we can all end up riding motorcycles when most people would prefer a car of any color.
You assume the US can afford to be in Iraq. It can't. The war has been charged on the national credit card, and the country is only able to make the minimum payment.
And to think that I was the paranoid one.
If I owned a geiger counter and was visiting a mine that boasts of its uranium deposits, I'd bring the device too.
I think part of it is that people don't know how it's supposed to be used. Fake southerners/Texans in the media often use it incorrectly in place of the singular 'you'. This turns it into just an excuse to laugh at a group for being different.
Hydrogen is too hard to make, too hard to move, and too hard to store. Battery technology is already approaching practicality for automotive use. It's far more efficient to just use electricity than try to build a hydrogen distribution system. There'd be less up-front investment, and less wasted energy once it was in place. A hydrogen fuel cell has about 25% grid-to-motor efficiency. Batteries are around 86%. There's a bit of rebalancing from the extra battery weight, but I doubt it's enough to consume 3x the energy.
Oil companies would be mandated to assist with the conversion as well as automobile manufacturers to create vehicles in all classes trucks, buses, SUV, sedans, etc that run on fuel cells.Or we could just let them all work on the electrics they're already working on. Hell, even ExxonMobil is already working on battery technology (they know peak oil is coming/here, and want to sell the plastics that go into the things).
The major difference being that hurricanes behave chaotically and can make a sudden 90 degree turn at the last moment. Even if you're outside the 24-hour cone, you should keep your shutters up until the thing hits.
Asteroids don't generally change course unpredictably.
Yes, I knew I was providing the rope with that one. Perhaps I should have said, the choice of labels is not important so long as they can be used to communicate. The problem is the communication breakdown, not the change in meaning itself.
For example, "trees" or "bushes" has no connotation of ancestry beyond they are all plants.Indeed, some "trees" and "bushes" are cultivars of the same species.
And, on top of that, "redefining the meanings of existing labels" is the daily work of the World's scientists I guess. I think today (in organismal classification at least), the meaning gives the label, whereas two hundred years ago (before Darwin) the label gave the meaning.I think the evolutionary biologists can muddle through if they keep in mind that laymen are speaking a language that has a lot of familiar words that have somewhat different meanings. Homo sapiens are Osteichthyes, but you don't call your neighbor a bony fish. Not to his face, anyway.
Riiight. What kind of insane physics did your high school teach? Protons are accelerated by gravity and electric fields just like anything else with mass and a charge.
Hydrogen ions can move through liquids or gases, but this guy's device looks like a solid.What do you think a hydrogen ion is? It's a proton. You have just said protons don't move and protons do move.
And again, this is the same sort of proton-permeable membrane used in hydrogen fuel cells.
Wait and see how a proof of concept works? Yes. Yes. A hundred times yes.
Like a completely vague and unexplained perpetual motion machine? No.
Johnson is not claiming to do the impossible, merely the unlikely. And he's provided enough of the idea for others to do some analysis of the concept. Steorn provided no information that would enable outsiders to even discover their basic principles of operation.
Unlikely and probably exaggerated, but not on their face impossible.
Not a smidgen of actual technical data. I mean stuff like "prototype X199 put out 3.4 gigawatts for 1200 hours with an input temp of 821C, output temp of 183.5C." You know, measureable facts.If he was up to running his 199th prototype for 50 days straight at gigawatt power levels, they'd already be on sale. Right now he's at the proof of concept stage, and this is just an interesting idea.
Instead we get animated GIFs of protons moving (diffusing?). In case you never took high-school science, this is impossible.The hydrogen fuel cell people would be very interested to know that protons can't move or diffuse, what with it being the entire operating principle of their devices. Anyone who works with ionized hydrogen would also want to hear about this amazing discovery.
Or maybe you were declaring the animated GIF impossible?
And we get a lot of personal aggrandization.Saying the guy did all the things he did is basic reporting. That he invented the super soaker is just a journalistic hook. I don't see Johnson engaging in much waving of his own flag here.
Just in case yo haven't figured it out, working at a govt lab is not necessarily a mark of distinction. Having worked at several, many of us have first hand knowledge that the govt often hires and promotes total idiots. Not saying anything about this guy, just sayin.....You are calling him an idiot. You're just using weasel words to pretend you aren't. I'm going to trust the guy with an impressive resume over a slashdotter who can't spell and can't get get basic physics correct.
Seattle doesn't get that much rain. Average annual rainfall there is only 37 inches. That's less than New York (45"), Houston (54"), or (before the drought) Atlanta (50").
It just seems like a lot because it's delivered as a constant drizzle.
Desert? Atlanta?
Sprawling suburban wasteland and desert are not the same thing.