Some. Let's get real: anything delivered to your house in pipes is going to be pretty cheap anyway. There will always be a few nitwits who will think that the perfect lawn is worth the risk --even in the middle of a serious drought. We do our best to ticket them if there is a mandate to do so. Yet there are always a few idiots out there trying to show the rest of the world how arrogantly stupid they are.
I say this despite an experience when a large pipeline broke. We were desperately pleading with everyone to conserve because we simply didn't have enough remaining capacity to keep the area wet. Despite our plea for help and even mandatory conservation edicts from local county government our consumption patterns barely changed. Most people are not too bright about their water use. Not until it is either contaminated or stops coming out of the tap altogether do they stop to wonder about what they take for granted every day.
I wish mere billing could cure this problem. However, not until we are forced to track each drop of water we consume do we appreciate the gift of cheap, clean water.
Re:this has nothing to do with whats better
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To Flush Or Not To Flush
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Speaking as an employee of an east coat water and sewer company, we have an interesting take on it. The first so many gallons are priced pretty much at cost. The second band of usage have extra added on. The third band of residential use is seriously expensive. Typical use will result in a very reasonable bill. Lots of laundry, high flow toilets and so forth will result in a moderately higher water bill. Leaky plumbing, especially leaky toilets, can result in an astronomical bill.
Our customer service agents usually forgive the first really large water bill, but following ones are expected to be more normal.
In any case, we do try to use economics to encourage water conservation.
name the denomination of the christian fundamentalists? Honestly, from where I sit, it matters little. I've spoken to fundamentalists of several religions, including Christianity. From where I look at things, the fundamentalist approach is a dead end. There are verbs, nouns, scribe marks and the like in the Hebrew Bible which we simply do not know the meanings for. An interpretive view is the only option.
Regarding ID versus SETI, I don't regard either effort with much positive light. We can certainly learn from these efforts, but I personally don't see them as admirable things to do with one's life.
It seems to me that this has happened before. Around the turn of the last century, Lee DeForrest patented a whole bunch of undeveloped ideas and nonsense concerning electron tubes on the theory that something might stick. He really didn't know what he had when he developed the very first triode. But that didn't stop him from trying to patent every conceivable circuit he could imagine.
Unfortunately, Armstrong did know what the tube was good for and actually developed some very innovative circuits that lead to the Regenerative receiver. However, DeForrest's lawyers sued him because they thought they had a patent on the circuit before Armstrong did. The court couldn't sort out the details because they didn't understand the technology all that well either. They awarded damages to DeForrest, whose lawyers were well fed...
Today, you can look at DeForrest's patents and decide for yourself whether he really had a clue as to what a regenerative receiver was. Most technically literate people agree that his patent was merely a fishing expedition.
So here we are today: The AAAS has just realized that there might be a problem with patents. Golly! They're about 100 years too late IMNSHO. This festering heap of a stupid idea called patents began to be a problem when it became apparent that no one person could know all there was to know about science as people could claim in Ben Franklin's day. Today, it's harder and harder to find people who know all there is worth knowing about even a small branch of physics.
This concept of patent reform is so overdue that the best thing we can do about it is to junk the whole edifice and start over. It's that bad. We've known it since the last century. Why is it still here?
Also, as a Jew, what do you think about the racial implications about the theory of evolution? Also, I heard they don't teach evolution in Israel. What's the truth about this?
To answer your last question first, some of my experience was from having been in Israeli public schools for fourth grade and for seventh grade. Yes, we did study the Hebrew Bible as a seperate class from science. The two were considered unrelated and taught as such. I don't know what you are referring to when you ask about Racial Implications.
About point number 4, I would like to ask you how many fundamentalist leaders do you know, have you ever been to such a church, how many people's lives do you know who are fundamentalist? Do you think they are so stupied not to have learned anything from the Middle Ages?
I have spoken to a fair number of fundamentalists, cult members, and mystics, both here in the US and in Israel. I must confess, there is something about the Middle East that brings the very worst out of religious leaders. Baha'is, Jews, Moslems, Zoroastrians, and Christians have done things there which are remarkably untrue to their faiths. In any case, I never meant to indicate that there was the slightest stupidity involved in any follower's behavior. Laziness? Possibly. Ignorance? Probably. But not stupidity. Were that the case, I would have no reason to expect better of them.
Considering my third point, I was expressing my personal opinion. You are welcome to call physical events miracles. In a very abstract sense, the consistency of nature itself (the fact that the same natural laws seem to apply everywhere and all the time) is no small miracle. However, I do not expect an omnipotent being to screw around with natural laws just to fit my world view --or especially to change it. Were that the case, I'd be highly inclined to believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real.
You wrote that the Catholic Church isn't the final authority. I agree, it isn't. I see it as merely one authority among many. You cited the Book of Revelations as your authority. I'm sorry, but that book holds no religious significance to me, and even if it did I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion you seem to be reaching for.
Please understand, I bear no malice toward other religions, even fundamentalists, mystics, or cults of personality. Like most Jews, I recognize that righteous behavior can come from anyone and anywhere. I'm not trying to evangelize my own religion --in fact, I'd prefer to do just the opposite. What I am trying to emphasize is that issues such as Intelligent Design are not essential to a religious person's view of the world. Those who insist otherwise are pushing an obvious religious belief.
But go ahead, have at it while you can. I'd like to see what will happen to proponents of ID, when the technology to compare entire gene sequences of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of related species becomes available. Of course, to a believer in miracles, facts are just annoying details...
Unlike several major religions, Judaism does not have a central or final authority to interpret what the religion means. It is normal for there to be disagreements among even the most famous rabbis. Judaism emphasises study, thought, and careful consideration of past traditions. However, in the end, the decision of how to act is yours and yours alone.
Judiasm takes interesting views on morality. For instance, if a leader asks a person to kill, and that person kills another, there is no fault assigned to the leader. The individual is responsible for his own actions. Likewise, it's entirely possible for other reasoned people, especially Jews, to disagree with me. I do not pretend to speak for all Jews. I merely speak for myself, as one who has received a formal Jewish education.
Having read "Bresheet" (Most English speakers call it the Book of Genesis) for many years in the original Hebrew, and having been through the experience of a technical education, these are my opinions:
1) The Catholic Church isn't stupid about this issue. They've learned a thing or two since they contradicted Galileo. Basically, The Bible is not a text to tell us what we can figure out for ourselves. It is a text for the purpose of telling us the appropriate morals upon which we can build a lasting society. To assign it a purpose other than that would denigrate the human race's image in God's eyes.
2) The real miracles are not physical. They are social. The miracles we should be thankful for are when a criminal develops a concience and turns him/her-self in; when a person finds a large sum of unmarked money and returns it to the owner; or when a person reveals the truth on the witness stand in a court of law. Those are the acts of faith that we should all take note of and be thankful for. If they didn't exist, our societies would not last long.
3) Many people are happy with a very childish God-in-Sky view of things. But for those who seek it, there is plenty more to study in most religions. I am quite content and clear minded about my beliefs. I also don't think those beliefs have anything to do with Science except in an extremely abstract way.
4) Fundamentalists and cults of all faiths attempt to install a denial of surrounding community in their followers so that they can wrench their flock from the communities and build one of their very own. It's a power trip. There are plenty of wide eyed people who are willing to follow because they do not understand the nature of religion. I fault the leaders of these movements, but I also fault the followers just as well. We all have a responsibility to understand the world around us better. You can't get that veiwpoint from inside a cult, a fundamentalist movement, or even from a nebulous bit of philosophical quackery called Intelligent Design.
In fact, This one is very timely and informative. Horace Feeland Judson demonstrated in this book that fraud in science is nothing new. Even "great" and classic experiments have been the subject of fraud.
What is new here are the pressures since WWII in the academic world to get results. Some major cases of fraud were so egregious that these people would have to have been writing papers every two or three days on average --for periods of years. Nobody is that productive.
It's sad that MIT had to make such a discovery. Worse still is knowing that such fakery exists and doing nothing about it. Judson found more than a few institutions, many in the US, but even more world wide, where such things were covered up instead of dealt with.
I'm disappointed but not surprised that you see things this way. Too many directors want to make that huge blockbuster money maker. And if that's what you want, go for it. But it ain't art.
However, I suspect that if Hollywood were interested in another film making model, they might want to explore the idea of running these scripts you "dumb down" in a largely unmolested state. These films would not have to be big budget films. In fact, now that movie quality screens are popping up in homes across the country and now that broadband is able to deliver such films to audiences never before thought of as economical, perhaps there is a new business model for the film industry: Films of cultural importance about real subjects of concern to be shown in micro markets.
Here's the funny part: Some of these will make it fabulously well. Remember Clerks? The Blair Witch Project? The amazing thing is that they made it at all. This could be a distribution vehicle for many more.
As you pointed out, this crap is getting too predictable. Now you know why I don't bother going to first run movies much any more. What the industry needs is a new business model that doesn't depend on insanely expensive yet pointlessly drab movies.
I agree. The fact that the FCC does its job poorly does not mean that this job doesn't need to be done.
Ultimately, GNU radio is not a problem. If someone had developed a software driven car, would that make it legal to use it to trespass on someone's land because --hey, it's free speech software?
Hams have been building radios since the dawn of radio itself (receivers AND transmitters). It's not hard to do. The fact that someone has figured out how to make a radio do what he wants it to through software is no argument for allowing it to radiate. It's a matter of cooperation. Just as you can't set up your lawn chair in the middle of a busy intersection and start hollering your political views while remaining unmolested; so it is that you can't expect to radiate a signal on 121.5 MHz without the Civil Air Patrol knocking on your door. Welcome to the limits of the first amendment's free speech clause.
Let's get real: the radio spectrum is more akin to a BLM Forest than it is "public." The FCC, through the limits established in Part 15 of their regulations allows for other unlicensed uses within limits. This is a good thing. Daniel Fisher needs to acknowlege the concept of primary users of the spectrum and recognize that they DO have a right to conduct themselves there without a bunch of hippie idiots going pirate on them.
If you want a hi-res view of the white house roof, just launch a kite nearby with a decent camera on board. People do it all the time at the Smithsonian kite festival every spring.
One thing about most of these studies concerning the quality of US education is that it is often influenced by general perceptions from Hollywood movies.
The reason the US has managed to achieve all the things it has in the worlds of science is because we generally leave smart people alone and give them a relatively free hand to pursue the answers they seek. This is not a race for education. This is not a race for money. This is a race for freedom to explore.
This is not about hacking code. It's not about secret laboratories where diabolical experiments are performed. It's not about eggheads who decide to get even with the bullies who beat them up. It's about freedom to pursue what we nerds have always wanted to explore. Hollywood doesn't get it. It's also not about homegrown smart people.
In some ways we're still ahead. In others we're doomed. I'm particularly dismayed by the religious right's policy influence with medical research. However, this country still has silicon valley. In fact, it not only has silicon valley, it has Research Triangle Park, the suburbs of DC, Los Alamos National Labs, and similar collaborative institutions near most major cities.
Most other countries would give anything to have these informal and pragmatic social institutions where results are rewarded and where failures are detected early and aren't pursued. But no. Those countries have entrusted their governments or large industry groups to guide them. Sometimes it bears fruit. But the solutions aren't usually radical. The truly revolutionary discoveries are often kept on the shelf for further research. Big organizations don't usually know better.
Now we can squeal and holler about the rotten quality of US educational standards. And it's true. The average education received in public institutions frankly isn't good for much. What the US does differently is that it rewards talent. And by so doing, it often attracts talent from overseas. Yes, we have our own homegrown talent too. But we also count at least as many first generation immigrants among their number.
Yes, we had Thomas Edison. But we also count Nicholai Tesla along with him. We had Richard Feynnman, but we also count Paul Dirac with him too. We had Robert Goddard, but we also had Werner Von Braun. The Sciences here in the US got a huge head start from these first generation immigrants.
The only thing we need to ask is whether we're still encouraging and rewarding good work. If we are, then we aren't losing ground.
Hollywood can can portray these scientists as silly, just as they were portrayed in so many B Movies from the 1950s. No, I wish the reputations were different, but Hollywood is really nothing more than a place for Art students to get even with all of us smug and supercillious engineers and scientists. Most of Hollywood is filled with pretty people, most of couldn't learn enough to be good at much of anything. Thankfully, looking good is nearly all there is to a good career in Hollywood. It's nice that they can get rich doing what they like. I wish it didn't have to be at the expense of the reputation of another pillar of society. But that's no different than it's ever been.
big business CONSTANTLY makes accusations that environmental protections and other things that "cost money" and "reduce profit" are impacting america's ability to remain competitive in the world marketplace
and they COMPLETELY ignore the fact that america is less profitable in the global marketplace not because our "stuff" is more expensive
...And your post is absolutely stilted toward one side. The reality is that Conservatives are as correct as the Liberals on this issue. They both are one sided views of the same coin. To claim that one side is more important or more relevant than the other is silly. To wit: the Soviets were pretty good at educating people in their worker's paradise. The problem was that these well educated people had too many obstacles imposed before them to be allowed to keep their economy afloat. Likewise, fundamentalist societies such as most Arab states in the Middle Eastern oil states had very few laws against commerce, but left their populace mostly uneducated. They haven't accomplished all that much either. Money comes in, and then doesn't trickle down too far.
It is the balance of these concepts where our society does best. Pretending that a coin can have only one side is not going to help your case very much.
My skin crawls whenever marketeers speak too. Marketing murders language. It's that simple. If customers knew precisely what they were buying, most probably wouldn't bother. We don't buy ground up dead bovine animal. We buy hamburger.
However, that said, Salespeople (like managers) are a necessary evil. If they didn't create the sizzle, open source would still be a hippie programmer's toy.
This is the development I had hoped for. Marketing "solution stacks" of open source software customized for individual clients is where the real money will be made for most open source firms. Migration of older to newer OSS is also where reasonably good individual consultants can make a living.
It may be yet another abuse of the language, but it it isn't nearly as bad as some of the nonsense I see used. I say suck it up and smell the money...
Where are you going to find a DVD of a presidential debate four years after the fact when the candidate is up for reelection?
First, there are many media out there, not just TV. If someone is so illiterate that s/he can't possibly conceive of them, then I can't imagine why they'd care about such things.
Second, where do you find such things TODAY? In libraries of course. You yourself probably would not tape these things. Libraries will have them, however, just as they now have all sorts of other copywritten media.
Keep in mind, this is about recovery of costs for paid performances. Do you really think news organizations do their thing for free? They need to recover their costs as well. And folks, the way in which they market themselves has a lot to do with how I think we ought to perceive them.
This may come as a shock to you, but there never was such a thing as free media. You paid for it somehow, either through advertising, through subscriptions, or through your taxes --but you still paid for it. The notion of a free source of news is as ignorant as it is wrong.
A cable company can specify whatever they want to be attached to their network. You are a client on their network. If you don't like it, don't sign on. It's their service, you are buying an appliance to work with it. The features that box may have are determined by the service agreement.
After all, did you squeal when distributors used Macrovision to prevent easy copying from DVD to VCR? Yes, it's your media, you ought to be able to do what you want with it. But that's the format it came in. Don't like it? Don't buy it. But that's the only format it comes in.
I know this is hard to accept. We'd all like to believe we have more control than this. But that is the social agreement. If you don't like it, create your own, find some way to distribute it --and try not to starve...
Who put a gun to your head and told you to subscribe to cable? Who says you MUST be able to see the latest and "greatest" TV for free without any advertising?
To use your logic, movie theaters ought to be free and their popcorn ought to be sold at grocery store rates. Furthermore, you ought to have the right to take a video camera in to the theater to record what you see. Riiiiight...
This is not about rights. It's about a medium. The distributors of these shows are free to market them in any manner they choose. It's your choice whether you want to watch them.
Your rights are not being infringed. I'd feel differently if we were discussing the purchase of media in the store (a DVD, for example) and then weren't able to quote it or resell it. However, this issue is about a service, not the media itself. This is a subtle point, to be sure. But it is important.
First, very few households get broadcast TV any more. I have seen numbers as low as 20%. Most housholds have cable.
Second, what about the mantra that if you don't want people to record things, then don't send it on the radio spectrum? Cable companies can ask you to sign terms of agreements for viewing their broadcasts. They could put broadcast flags in their transmissions if they so choose --and there isn't much that anyone can do about it except not subscribe.
Ultimately I don't think producers and broadcast networks realize that it is their very own throats they are cutting. Those people who have a life do not schedule them around television broadcasts any more. That's what VCRs and TiVO are for. If too many programs have this flag, those who sell advertising will notice that the circulation isn't as wide as it used to be. And then guess what: It will not get used.
Television shows aren't free. If the distributors choose to stop airing this stuff because they can't get the broadcast flag, that's their business. Are we so far gone that we're back to bread and circuses to keep us passified? I say let Congress pass this bill. It will be an interesting experiment. I can't wait to see how much illiterate hate mail the congress critters get because kids can't watch their cartoons on TiVO, housewives can watch their soaps, and those with little imagination can't watch their gussied up game shows we call "reality television"...
I think this is a lot of hooey over nothing. Nobody's got the guts to use a broadcast flag. I dare these guys to do this to this to a program for one year. It'll never survive.
For those of you who have never looked at a real phone network, allow me some bandwidth:
Nobody has ever allowed for a one to one switching network like you may have seen with a switched hub. It's too expensive. They use trunk lines instead. The number of trunk lines depends on the statistics of the local area calling. There are benchmarks to use for various types of service. These systems are designed for four and five nines of up time. But it's not overload proof. You have all gotten fast busy signals before. That's because there were no trunks available.
What these folks have figured out is how much bandwidth a typical cell site can have. They have figured out how many text messages it would take to fill up that available bandwidth. Big Deal. Cell sites do saturate. This is not a design "flaw" --it's a design point. Just as almost nobody builds buildings to withstand 200 MPH winds, almost nobody builds that much bandwidth in to a cell site. You could, but it would almost never get used.
Instead we build them to handle almost all conditions. Yes, they can saturate. That's a political design issue. Someone who knows the design points can certainly overload one. But during normal use, they will work just fine. Since there are no lasting effects from such overload, most engineers figure that people will just clear out before things get too dicey.
Naturally, some twits who want to jam cell phone conversations will find plenty of ways to do this. The network is built for civil use --not military use. That's why police and fire authorities use seperate communications networks (or if they don't they're just asking for trouble). That's why ham radio operators are often able to render assistance when everyone else is busy trying to call home. Common Carrier networks will overload at some point, just as roads can saturate and slow to a crawl. We'll never have enough bandwidth or enough roads. But we can ensure that there will be enough to get by.
The Times could do for a brief lesson in engineering design criteria...
The Highway In The Sky concept is something that has been evolving ever since the dawn of aviation. We've used different tools. In the 1920s and 1930s we used ranges with lights at night. When the weather turned sour, they used AN radio ranges and Non-Directional Beacons. That technology lasted for many years. Later in the 1950s we migrated to VHF OmniRange (VOR) technology. It lead from the AN ranges, to the "Golf" airways to the "Victor" airways. Today the skies are filled with Victor and Juliet (high altitude) airways. There ARE highways in the skies. Just ask any instrument pilot.
Today NDBs are being phased out. The VOR is still going to be around for at least the next decade. GPS and its ilk have taken over. Many, if not most, cockpits already have moving map displays. We don't need highways. We can navigate direct. But air traffic control systems have difficulty with this because they can't handle arbitrary waypoints from outside their sectors. The notion of a heads up display with a snaking tube of airspace in front has been knocked around in research halls for at least the last decade or so. It's merely the latest evolutionary thing from what we have been doing ever since the dawn of aviation.
Oh, and Moller has been at this skycar thing since the 1970s at least. I can remember reading about him in Popular Science when I was a kid. He has yet to produce a skycar that actually flies in any way remotely similar to what he claimed he could do. In fact, I've never even heard of his creations flying out of ground effect with a human being on board. Many whose opinions I have respect for question whether the engine technology Moller claims to use is thermodynamically capable of delivering the output he says he gets.
This man isn't selling anything but the appearance of a dream to the technically illiterate. You're welcome to believe that his project is only just around the corner. Just understand that he has a long track record going back decades. I'd rather believe in the tooth fairy than listen to still more BS from Moller.
The thing about digital information is that you can continue copying it as many times as you like without degradation. This is a unique thing about digital data. It's not about the media. No, there won't be a digital dark age. Anything important will be archived in multiple places with regular backups.
I know, because I have had this very problem at work. At the water utility where I work, we have to archive years and years of data from our SCADA system. Right now, we have the last 18 years of data at our fingertips. It's stored in a lowest common denominator form: Text files of CSV data on CD. In addition, we keep the CD data online (hard drive storage is cheap now). Keep in mind what the technology looked like back then...
The file formats will change eventually, but we are always seeking the lowest common denominator. We move the data to new media when it becomes feasible.
As for those older documents... Who keeps memos forever? How many paper documents have been lost to the mists of time? We aren't writing literature here. This is common communication. I'll bet historians of the future will be drowning in daily trivia from our time.
Those CD media may rot after a decade or two. But who cares? If it is important, there will be copies online somewhere. And some important things will be lost. It's sad, but it happens. Even libraries burn sometimes. Shall we start trying to develop fire-proof paper?
It's not about the media, folks; it's about using well known file formats and placing the files in a reasonable, well kept and well known server.
Umm, alternators aren't all that inefficient. They can demand more or less torque depending on how much work is required to maintain a voltage.
There is a voltage regulator built in to the unit which adjusts the current on a field coil inside the alternator. That in turn adjusts how "hard" the alternator works.
As for whether Brown's Gas is useful... What about the situation I recall reading recently about hydrogen combustion being worse for the environment than gasolene?
No, you just might like it. DC Public Schools spend more money per pupil than nearly all administrations anywhere in the country. However the students continue to perform poorly. Solution? Spend still more money.
There is very little accountability anywhere in DC government. Some parts work. Most are marginal. Many parts are just so messed up that they have almost nothing to show for their money and "efforts".
I'll bet the IT manager gets promoted. Wouldn't you like to be in a position like that?
It's funny. I just flew back from a visit to one of aviation's great monuments: Kill-Devil Hills, where the Wright brothers figured out how to build a controllable aircraft and actually flew it.
The interesting thing about the Wright Brothers is that they approached the "aviation problem" with a totally different view of how the Europeans were approaching it. They studied the European data for why it didn't work, rather than why it did. They discovered, for example, that the Lilienthal tables of aerodynamic performance were far more inaccurate than anyone realized.
Perhaps, with all the effort that we're seeing toward research on the "fusion problem" we ought to ask ourselves, why this isn't working, instead of how it can. And then perhaps someone can think of something better than the brute force methods that everyone seems to enjoy funding. The turn of the last century was one where many governments were throwing money at all sorts of outlandish research projects to figure out how to aviate. Socially this feels remarkably similar to the "fusion problem" of today.
OK, so the first "cold fusion" experiments weren't the real thing. How about Sonoluminescence? And let's not stop there-- there are many other theories about how one might be able to get fusion energy surplusses on a smaller scale. Ultimately, this may be a class of problem like the power to weight ratio that the Wright Brothers noticed.
Where are those Wright Brother types when you need them?
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Some. Let's get real: anything delivered to your house in pipes is going to be pretty cheap anyway. There will always be a few nitwits who will think that the perfect lawn is worth the risk --even in the middle of a serious drought. We do our best to ticket them if there is a mandate to do so. Yet there are always a few idiots out there trying to show the rest of the world how arrogantly stupid they are.
I say this despite an experience when a large pipeline broke. We were desperately pleading with everyone to conserve because we simply didn't have enough remaining capacity to keep the area wet. Despite our plea for help and even mandatory conservation edicts from local county government our consumption patterns barely changed. Most people are not too bright about their water use. Not until it is either contaminated or stops coming out of the tap altogether do they stop to wonder about what they take for granted every day.
I wish mere billing could cure this problem. However, not until we are forced to track each drop of water we consume do we appreciate the gift of cheap, clean water.
Speaking as an employee of an east coat water and sewer company, we have an interesting take on it. The first so many gallons are priced pretty much at cost. The second band of usage have extra added on. The third band of residential use is seriously expensive. Typical use will result in a very reasonable bill. Lots of laundry, high flow toilets and so forth will result in a moderately higher water bill. Leaky plumbing, especially leaky toilets, can result in an astronomical bill.
Our customer service agents usually forgive the first really large water bill, but following ones are expected to be more normal.
In any case, we do try to use economics to encourage water conservation.
name the denomination of the christian fundamentalists?
Honestly, from where I sit, it matters little. I've spoken to fundamentalists of several religions, including Christianity. From where I look at things, the fundamentalist approach is a dead end. There are verbs, nouns, scribe marks and the like in the Hebrew Bible which we simply do not know the meanings for. An interpretive view is the only option.
Regarding ID versus SETI, I don't regard either effort with much positive light. We can certainly learn from these efforts, but I personally don't see them as admirable things to do with one's life.
That's it for now. I have kids to put to bed...
It seems to me that this has happened before. Around the turn of the last century, Lee DeForrest patented a whole bunch of undeveloped ideas and nonsense concerning electron tubes on the theory that something might stick. He really didn't know what he had when he developed the very first triode. But that didn't stop him from trying to patent every conceivable circuit he could imagine.
Unfortunately, Armstrong did know what the tube was good for and actually developed some very innovative circuits that lead to the Regenerative receiver. However, DeForrest's lawyers sued him because they thought they had a patent on the circuit before Armstrong did. The court couldn't sort out the details because they didn't understand the technology all that well either. They awarded damages to DeForrest, whose lawyers were well fed...
Today, you can look at DeForrest's patents and decide for yourself whether he really had a clue as to what a regenerative receiver was. Most technically literate people agree that his patent was merely a fishing expedition.
So here we are today: The AAAS has just realized that there might be a problem with patents. Golly! They're about 100 years too late IMNSHO. This festering heap of a stupid idea called patents began to be a problem when it became apparent that no one person could know all there was to know about science as people could claim in Ben Franklin's day. Today, it's harder and harder to find people who know all there is worth knowing about even a small branch of physics.
This concept of patent reform is so overdue that the best thing we can do about it is to junk the whole edifice and start over. It's that bad. We've known it since the last century. Why is it still here?
Considering my third point, I was expressing my personal opinion. You are welcome to call physical events miracles. In a very abstract sense, the consistency of nature itself (the fact that the same natural laws seem to apply everywhere and all the time) is no small miracle. However, I do not expect an omnipotent being to screw around with natural laws just to fit my world view --or especially to change it. Were that the case, I'd be highly inclined to believe the Flying Spaghetti Monster is real.
You wrote that the Catholic Church isn't the final authority. I agree, it isn't. I see it as merely one authority among many. You cited the Book of Revelations as your authority. I'm sorry, but that book holds no religious significance to me, and even if it did I'm not sure how you arrive at the conclusion you seem to be reaching for.
Please understand, I bear no malice toward other religions, even fundamentalists, mystics, or cults of personality. Like most Jews, I recognize that righteous behavior can come from anyone and anywhere. I'm not trying to evangelize my own religion --in fact, I'd prefer to do just the opposite. What I am trying to emphasize is that issues such as Intelligent Design are not essential to a religious person's view of the world. Those who insist otherwise are pushing an obvious religious belief.
But go ahead, have at it while you can. I'd like to see what will happen to proponents of ID, when the technology to compare entire gene sequences of nuclear and mitochondrial DNA of related species becomes available. Of course, to a believer in miracles, facts are just annoying details...
Unlike several major religions, Judaism does not have a central or final authority to interpret what the religion means. It is normal for there to be disagreements among even the most famous rabbis. Judaism emphasises study, thought, and careful consideration of past traditions. However, in the end, the decision of how to act is yours and yours alone.
Judiasm takes interesting views on morality. For instance, if a leader asks a person to kill, and that person kills another, there is no fault assigned to the leader. The individual is responsible for his own actions. Likewise, it's entirely possible for other reasoned people, especially Jews, to disagree with me. I do not pretend to speak for all Jews. I merely speak for myself, as one who has received a formal Jewish education.
Make of it what you will.
Having read "Bresheet" (Most English speakers call it the Book of Genesis) for many years in the original Hebrew, and having been through the experience of a technical education, these are my opinions:
1) The Catholic Church isn't stupid about this issue. They've learned a thing or two since they contradicted Galileo. Basically, The Bible is not a text to tell us what we can figure out for ourselves. It is a text for the purpose of telling us the appropriate morals upon which we can build a lasting society. To assign it a purpose other than that would denigrate the human race's image in God's eyes.
2) The real miracles are not physical. They are social. The miracles we should be thankful for are when a criminal develops a concience and turns him/her-self in; when a person finds a large sum of unmarked money and returns it to the owner; or when a person reveals the truth on the witness stand in a court of law. Those are the acts of faith that we should all take note of and be thankful for. If they didn't exist, our societies would not last long.
3) Many people are happy with a very childish God-in-Sky view of things. But for those who seek it, there is plenty more to study in most religions. I am quite content and clear minded about my beliefs. I also don't think those beliefs have anything to do with Science except in an extremely abstract way.
4) Fundamentalists and cults of all faiths attempt to install a denial of surrounding community in their followers so that they can wrench their flock from the communities and build one of their very own. It's a power trip. There are plenty of wide eyed people who are willing to follow because they do not understand the nature of religion. I fault the leaders of these movements, but I also fault the followers just as well. We all have a responsibility to understand the world around us better. You can't get that veiwpoint from inside a cult, a fundamentalist movement, or even from a nebulous bit of philosophical quackery called Intelligent Design.
In fact, This one is very timely and informative. Horace Feeland Judson demonstrated in this book that fraud in science is nothing new. Even "great" and classic experiments have been the subject of fraud.
What is new here are the pressures since WWII in the academic world to get results. Some major cases of fraud were so egregious that these people would have to have been writing papers every two or three days on average --for periods of years. Nobody is that productive.
It's sad that MIT had to make such a discovery. Worse still is knowing that such fakery exists and doing nothing about it. Judson found more than a few institutions, many in the US, but even more world wide, where such things were covered up instead of dealt with.
I'm disappointed but not surprised that you see things this way. Too many directors want to make that huge blockbuster money maker. And if that's what you want, go for it. But it ain't art.
However, I suspect that if Hollywood were interested in another film making model, they might want to explore the idea of running these scripts you "dumb down" in a largely unmolested state. These films would not have to be big budget films. In fact, now that movie quality screens are popping up in homes across the country and now that broadband is able to deliver such films to audiences never before thought of as economical, perhaps there is a new business model for the film industry: Films of cultural importance about real subjects of concern to be shown in micro markets.
Here's the funny part: Some of these will make it fabulously well. Remember Clerks? The Blair Witch Project? The amazing thing is that they made it at all. This could be a distribution vehicle for many more.
As you pointed out, this crap is getting too predictable. Now you know why I don't bother going to first run movies much any more. What the industry needs is a new business model that doesn't depend on insanely expensive yet pointlessly drab movies.
I agree. The fact that the FCC does its job poorly does not mean that this job doesn't need to be done.
Ultimately, GNU radio is not a problem. If someone had developed a software driven car, would that make it legal to use it to trespass on someone's land because --hey, it's free speech software?
Hams have been building radios since the dawn of radio itself (receivers AND transmitters). It's not hard to do. The fact that someone has figured out how to make a radio do what he wants it to through software is no argument for allowing it to radiate. It's a matter of cooperation. Just as you can't set up your lawn chair in the middle of a busy intersection and start hollering your political views while remaining unmolested; so it is that you can't expect to radiate a signal on 121.5 MHz without the Civil Air Patrol knocking on your door. Welcome to the limits of the first amendment's free speech clause.
Let's get real: the radio spectrum is more akin to a BLM Forest than it is "public." The FCC, through the limits established in Part 15 of their regulations allows for other unlicensed uses within limits. This is a good thing. Daniel Fisher needs to acknowlege the concept of primary users of the spectrum and recognize that they DO have a right to conduct themselves there without a bunch of hippie idiots going pirate on them.
If you want a hi-res view of the white house roof, just launch a kite nearby with a decent camera on board. People do it all the time at the Smithsonian kite festival every spring.
One thing about most of these studies concerning the quality of US education is that it is often influenced by general perceptions from Hollywood movies.
The reason the US has managed to achieve all the things it has in the worlds of science is because we generally leave smart people alone and give them a relatively free hand to pursue the answers they seek. This is not a race for education. This is not a race for money. This is a race for freedom to explore.
This is not about hacking code. It's not about secret laboratories where diabolical experiments are performed. It's not about eggheads who decide to get even with the bullies who beat them up. It's about freedom to pursue what we nerds have always wanted to explore. Hollywood doesn't get it. It's also not about homegrown smart people.
In some ways we're still ahead. In others we're doomed. I'm particularly dismayed by the religious right's policy influence with medical research. However, this country still has silicon valley. In fact, it not only has silicon valley, it has Research Triangle Park, the suburbs of DC, Los Alamos National Labs, and similar collaborative institutions near most major cities.
Most other countries would give anything to have these informal and pragmatic social institutions where results are rewarded and where failures are detected early and aren't pursued. But no. Those countries have entrusted their governments or large industry groups to guide them. Sometimes it bears fruit. But the solutions aren't usually radical. The truly revolutionary discoveries are often kept on the shelf for further research. Big organizations don't usually know better.
Now we can squeal and holler about the rotten quality of US educational standards. And it's true. The average education received in public institutions frankly isn't good for much. What the US does differently is that it rewards talent. And by so doing, it often attracts talent from overseas. Yes, we have our own homegrown talent too. But we also count at least as many first generation immigrants among their number.
Yes, we had Thomas Edison. But we also count Nicholai Tesla along with him. We had Richard Feynnman, but we also count Paul Dirac with him too. We had Robert Goddard, but we also had Werner Von Braun. The Sciences here in the US got a huge head start from these first generation immigrants.
The only thing we need to ask is whether we're still encouraging and rewarding good work. If we are, then we aren't losing ground.
Hollywood can can portray these scientists as silly, just as they were portrayed in so many B Movies from the 1950s. No, I wish the reputations were different, but Hollywood is really nothing more than a place for Art students to get even with all of us smug and supercillious engineers and scientists. Most of Hollywood is filled with pretty people, most of couldn't learn enough to be good at much of anything. Thankfully, looking good is nearly all there is to a good career in Hollywood. It's nice that they can get rich doing what they like. I wish it didn't have to be at the expense of the reputation of another pillar of society. But that's no different than it's ever been.
It is the balance of these concepts where our society does best. Pretending that a coin can have only one side is not going to help your case very much.
My skin crawls whenever marketeers speak too. Marketing murders language. It's that simple. If customers knew precisely what they were buying, most probably wouldn't bother. We don't buy ground up dead bovine animal. We buy hamburger.
However, that said, Salespeople (like managers) are a necessary evil. If they didn't create the sizzle, open source would still be a hippie programmer's toy.
This is the development I had hoped for. Marketing "solution stacks" of open source software customized for individual clients is where the real money will be made for most open source firms. Migration of older to newer OSS is also where reasonably good individual consultants can make a living.
It may be yet another abuse of the language, but it it isn't nearly as bad as some of the nonsense I see used. I say suck it up and smell the money...
First, there are many media out there, not just TV. If someone is so illiterate that s/he can't possibly conceive of them, then I can't imagine why they'd care about such things.
Second, where do you find such things TODAY? In libraries of course. You yourself probably would not tape these things. Libraries will have them, however, just as they now have all sorts of other copywritten media.
Keep in mind, this is about recovery of costs for paid performances. Do you really think news organizations do their thing for free? They need to recover their costs as well. And folks, the way in which they market themselves has a lot to do with how I think we ought to perceive them.
This may come as a shock to you, but there never was such a thing as free media. You paid for it somehow, either through advertising, through subscriptions, or through your taxes --but you still paid for it. The notion of a free source of news is as ignorant as it is wrong.
A cable company can specify whatever they want to be attached to their network. You are a client on their network. If you don't like it, don't sign on. It's their service, you are buying an appliance to work with it. The features that box may have are determined by the service agreement.
After all, did you squeal when distributors used Macrovision to prevent easy copying from DVD to VCR? Yes, it's your media, you ought to be able to do what you want with it. But that's the format it came in. Don't like it? Don't buy it. But that's the only format it comes in.
I know this is hard to accept. We'd all like to believe we have more control than this. But that is the social agreement. If you don't like it, create your own, find some way to distribute it --and try not to starve...
Who put a gun to your head and told you to subscribe to cable? Who says you MUST be able to see the latest and "greatest" TV for free without any advertising?
To use your logic, movie theaters ought to be free and their popcorn ought to be sold at grocery store rates. Furthermore, you ought to have the right to take a video camera in to the theater to record what you see. Riiiiight...
This is not about rights. It's about a medium. The distributors of these shows are free to market them in any manner they choose. It's your choice whether you want to watch them.
Your rights are not being infringed. I'd feel differently if we were discussing the purchase of media in the store (a DVD, for example) and then weren't able to quote it or resell it. However, this issue is about a service, not the media itself. This is a subtle point, to be sure. But it is important.
First, very few households get broadcast TV any more. I have seen numbers as low as 20%. Most housholds have cable.
Second, what about the mantra that if you don't want people to record things, then don't send it on the radio spectrum? Cable companies can ask you to sign terms of agreements for viewing their broadcasts. They could put broadcast flags in their transmissions if they so choose --and there isn't much that anyone can do about it except not subscribe.
Ultimately I don't think producers and broadcast networks realize that it is their very own throats they are cutting. Those people who have a life do not schedule them around television broadcasts any more. That's what VCRs and TiVO are for. If too many programs have this flag, those who sell advertising will notice that the circulation isn't as wide as it used to be. And then guess what: It will not get used.
Television shows aren't free. If the distributors choose to stop airing this stuff because they can't get the broadcast flag, that's their business. Are we so far gone that we're back to bread and circuses to keep us passified? I say let Congress pass this bill. It will be an interesting experiment. I can't wait to see how much illiterate hate mail the congress critters get because kids can't watch their cartoons on TiVO, housewives can watch their soaps, and those with little imagination can't watch their gussied up game shows we call "reality television"...
I think this is a lot of hooey over nothing. Nobody's got the guts to use a broadcast flag. I dare these guys to do this to this to a program for one year. It'll never survive.
Aren't we supposed to assume innocence before guilt?
Oh, wait, you're posting as AC...
For those of you who have never looked at a real phone network, allow me some bandwidth:
Nobody has ever allowed for a one to one switching network like you may have seen with a switched hub. It's too expensive. They use trunk lines instead. The number of trunk lines depends on the statistics of the local area calling. There are benchmarks to use for various types of service. These systems are designed for four and five nines of up time. But it's not overload proof. You have all gotten fast busy signals before. That's because there were no trunks available.
What these folks have figured out is how much bandwidth a typical cell site can have. They have figured out how many text messages it would take to fill up that available bandwidth. Big Deal. Cell sites do saturate. This is not a design "flaw" --it's a design point. Just as almost nobody builds buildings to withstand 200 MPH winds, almost nobody builds that much bandwidth in to a cell site. You could, but it would almost never get used.
Instead we build them to handle almost all conditions. Yes, they can saturate. That's a political design issue. Someone who knows the design points can certainly overload one. But during normal use, they will work just fine. Since there are no lasting effects from such overload, most engineers figure that people will just clear out before things get too dicey.
Naturally, some twits who want to jam cell phone conversations will find plenty of ways to do this. The network is built for civil use --not military use. That's why police and fire authorities use seperate communications networks (or if they don't they're just asking for trouble). That's why ham radio operators are often able to render assistance when everyone else is busy trying to call home. Common Carrier networks will overload at some point, just as roads can saturate and slow to a crawl. We'll never have enough bandwidth or enough roads. But we can ensure that there will be enough to get by.
The Times could do for a brief lesson in engineering design criteria...
The Highway In The Sky concept is something that has been evolving ever since the dawn of aviation. We've used different tools. In the 1920s and 1930s we used ranges with lights at night. When the weather turned sour, they used AN radio ranges and Non-Directional Beacons. That technology lasted for many years. Later in the 1950s we migrated to VHF OmniRange (VOR) technology. It lead from the AN ranges, to the "Golf" airways to the "Victor" airways. Today the skies are filled with Victor and Juliet (high altitude) airways. There ARE highways in the skies. Just ask any instrument pilot.
Today NDBs are being phased out. The VOR is still going to be around for at least the next decade. GPS and its ilk have taken over. Many, if not most, cockpits already have moving map displays. We don't need highways. We can navigate direct. But air traffic control systems have difficulty with this because they can't handle arbitrary waypoints from outside their sectors. The notion of a heads up display with a snaking tube of airspace in front has been knocked around in research halls for at least the last decade or so. It's merely the latest evolutionary thing from what we have been doing ever since the dawn of aviation.
Oh, and Moller has been at this skycar thing since the 1970s at least. I can remember reading about him in Popular Science when I was a kid. He has yet to produce a skycar that actually flies in any way remotely similar to what he claimed he could do. In fact, I've never even heard of his creations flying out of ground effect with a human being on board. Many whose opinions I have respect for question whether the engine technology Moller claims to use is thermodynamically capable of delivering the output he says he gets.
This man isn't selling anything but the appearance of a dream to the technically illiterate. You're welcome to believe that his project is only just around the corner. Just understand that he has a long track record going back decades. I'd rather believe in the tooth fairy than listen to still more BS from Moller.
The thing about digital information is that you can continue copying it as many times as you like without degradation. This is a unique thing about digital data. It's not about the media. No, there won't be a digital dark age. Anything important will be archived in multiple places with regular backups.
I know, because I have had this very problem at work. At the water utility where I work, we have to archive years and years of data from our SCADA system. Right now, we have the last 18 years of data at our fingertips. It's stored in a lowest common denominator form: Text files of CSV data on CD. In addition, we keep the CD data online (hard drive storage is cheap now). Keep in mind what the technology looked like back then...
The file formats will change eventually, but we are always seeking the lowest common denominator. We move the data to new media when it becomes feasible.
As for those older documents... Who keeps memos forever? How many paper documents have been lost to the mists of time? We aren't writing literature here. This is common communication. I'll bet historians of the future will be drowning in daily trivia from our time.
Those CD media may rot after a decade or two. But who cares? If it is important, there will be copies online somewhere. And some important things will be lost. It's sad, but it happens. Even libraries burn sometimes. Shall we start trying to develop fire-proof paper?
It's not about the media, folks; it's about using well known file formats and placing the files in a reasonable, well kept and well known server.
Umm, alternators aren't all that inefficient. They can demand more or less torque depending on how much work is required to maintain a voltage.
There is a voltage regulator built in to the unit which adjusts the current on a field coil inside the alternator. That in turn adjusts how "hard" the alternator works.
As for whether Brown's Gas is useful... What about the situation I recall reading recently about hydrogen combustion being worse for the environment than gasolene?
No, you just might like it. DC Public Schools spend more money per pupil than nearly all administrations anywhere in the country. However the students continue to perform poorly. Solution? Spend still more money.
There is very little accountability anywhere in DC government. Some parts work. Most are marginal. Many parts are just so messed up that they have almost nothing to show for their money and "efforts".
I'll bet the IT manager gets promoted. Wouldn't you like to be in a position like that?
It's funny. I just flew back from a visit to one of aviation's great monuments: Kill-Devil Hills, where the Wright brothers figured out how to build a controllable aircraft and actually flew it.
The interesting thing about the Wright Brothers is that they approached the "aviation problem" with a totally different view of how the Europeans were approaching it. They studied the European data for why it didn't work, rather than why it did. They discovered, for example, that the Lilienthal tables of aerodynamic performance were far more inaccurate than anyone realized.
Perhaps, with all the effort that we're seeing toward research on the "fusion problem" we ought to ask ourselves, why this isn't working, instead of how it can. And then perhaps someone can think of something better than the brute force methods that everyone seems to enjoy funding. The turn of the last century was one where many governments were throwing money at all sorts of outlandish research projects to figure out how to aviate. Socially this feels remarkably similar to the "fusion problem" of today.
OK, so the first "cold fusion" experiments weren't the real thing. How about Sonoluminescence?
And let's not stop there-- there are many other theories about how one might be able to get fusion energy surplusses on a smaller scale. Ultimately, this may be a class of problem like the power to weight ratio that the Wright Brothers noticed.
Where are those Wright Brother types when you need them?