>IF I ever did record anything, I'd certainly never tell anyone that I had it.
Even if you got a discovery request for any and all records of something?
Data can also be used in your favor during litigation: the downside to recording it is that whether it helps or hurts you it's expensive to copy it, review it for privileged material, and answer questions about it.
One easy indicator would be phase jitter. Contrary to what you might expect, the more regular a heartbeat is the more chance there is of heart failure. Store a standard deviation per day, search for trends: pretty small and manageable data handling problem.
US Constitution, Article I, Section 6: "They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other Place."
The US founders were definitely not setting up a police state.
Police are from the executive branch. If the executive branch harasses regular citizens, it's misconduct. If they attack members of Parliament it's a constitutional crisis.
The bigger incandescents are more efficient than the smaller ones. 40 watt incandescent, 280 lumens, 7 lumens per watt. It's really an infrared source that somehow leaks a little visible light. 100 watt incandescent, 1740 lumens, 17.4 lumens per watt.
If people responded to your tax by buying multiple smaller bulbs it would backfire. If they bought compact fluorescents then there's be big savings per bulb, but available compact fluoresents start getting thin on the ground if you need more light than a 100W incandescent. A 32W CFL will replace a 150W legacy bulb but those aren't on just every store shelf.
Like any other evidence: chain of custody, examination by experts, cross examination of the person presenting the evidence. It's a problem the legal system has been addressing since the first time a forged document came into a courtroom.
Ask an old-timer to bring in his 1980-vintage computer magazines. Notice all the opinion columns worrying about how the high priests of the mainframe glass house could "maintain control" as users brought in their own computers.
>I asked him what happens if he got pulled over for speeding. He said he simply shows the cop his police identification, and the cop will let him go about his way. So there you have it, he speeds because he can, not because he is on some evil power trip.
My hometown police department strictly forbids its officers to mention their job if they get pulled over. They recognize that there's a slippery slope once people start thinking themselves above the law.
You, too, can have an ethical police department. Elect a mayor who will insist on it. Elect a police chief who will enforce hiring standards. My hometown department once interviewed an officer from LA. He didn't get the job and the interview was short.
Get some professional pride going, run new recruits through a strong field training program, and you've got a self-perpetuating ethical culture.
Cryptographic time stamping is here now. If an uploaded video can be authenticated as existing ten minutes after the incident, and the camera operator isn't a wixard with editing software, no problem. If the video goes out streaming, even less problem. If not authenticated, an expert witness could still establish some level of confidence that all the histograms, stats and lighting lined up better than most editors could arrange.
Exactly. Earth's spacefaring capability is lower now than it was forty years ago.
Look what has to line up before someone can colonize the galaxy: o intelligent o technological o spacefaring o given to long term thinking o prosperous o willing to commit resources to something without an economic payoff o not diverted by other activities at their Singularity o not hindered by a Galactic Federation keeping certain planets fallow o keeping all the above factors lined up for millions of years.
Maybe They are out there but so far all of Them are stuck trying to make their quarterly earnings projections.
The mass media have been of negative value on this issue. I'd be surprised if a majority of USians know what is uncertain and what is known with reasonable confidence.
Anyone who wants an accessible overview of the science can do much better than watching the shouting heads by taking a look at the IPCC summary for policymakers.
And any story that talks about one Siberian town getting colder, or about one single hurricane, is an insult to your intelligence and should be treated as such.
Agreed. Why take a fascinating story and link it to something else?
The only connection this has is that if you're trying to quantify the effect of climate change on Antarctic glaciers you'd better understand how they move normally, and this work improves the models of how they move normally.
Unless the article was trying to avoid creating a misunderstanding by heading off a possible misconception. Anything's possible, but some things are more likely than others.
>when the storm shifted course, the call to evacuate was cancelled.
>the state government didn't folow protocal and request the help that the law says she needed to do untill after being reminded by an aid when a reporter asked why the national guard wasn't there yet.
Mayor Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation call August 27 at 5 PM and made it mandatory the next day. Also on the 28th, Governor Blanco asked the President for a major disaster declaration and invoked the Stafford Act. Counterflow traffic went into effect that day. That afternoon, Gov. Blanco accepted an offer of National Guard troops from the governor of New Mexico. Federal approval for the transfer didn't come until the following Thursday.
On August 28th the President got a briefing that used the word "catastrophe" and didn't ask a single question or give a single order. If he had, perhaps Chertoff would have activated the Critical Incident Annex to the National Response Plan.
Landfall was morning of Monday, the 29th.
On the 29th, Gov. Blanco said "Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you've got". The President went to senior centers to promote the Medicare prescription drug plan and went to a photo-op for McCain's birthday. He talked to Chertoff about -- immigration. He played guitar with Mark Willis, and said that when he returned to DC on Thursday he would "begin work". Thursday was when the DoD finally started giving logistics help to FEMA.
The valid point you make is that an article about one glacier does not help you determine global climate. What does is the fact that most of them are retreating.
>Human activity is responsible for 50% of CO2, the other 50% is volcanic sources.
Whoever told you this is not your friend.
Annual CO2 from volcanic activity, 130 to 230 teragrams(*). Annual CO2 from humans burning things, and not counting deforestation: 20,000 teragrams.
(*)Gerlach, T.M., 1992, Present-day CO2 emissions from volcanoes: Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, Vol. 72, No. 23, June 4, 1991, pp. 249, and 254-255
We only have about 25 years of direct measurement of solar intensity from outside the atmosphere. Indirect reconstructions have not converged yet. That's why there's such a range of uncertainty about the contribution of solar changes to global temperature increases.
The whole body of research is summarized in the latest IPCC report. The numbers are: "The combined radiative forcing due to increases in carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide is +2.30 [+2.07 to +2.53] W/m**-2" and "Changes in solar irradiance since 1750 are estimated to cause a radiative forcing of +0.12 [+0.06 to +0.30] W/m**-2" [Notice the factor of 5 between the low and high estimate of solar changes].
But as usual you can simplify the whole question by looking at one key point. Why are nights getting warmer? Solar input affects daytime temperatures. The predicted effect of longwave absorption is that nights won't cool off as quickly. The observation is the same.
Winter snowpack stores water for summer. If there isn't a deep freeze for the water, it comes out as devastating spring floods. Imagine the effect of tearing down a dam and draining the reservoir: same thing if you eliminate a frozen reservoir.
"I think you'll find that to demonstrate fault, the company would have to be aware of a problem."
"They are. I filled out a workplace hazard form about it six months ago."
The HR Guy looks at the Boss, who shrugs silently, having only been in the company a few weeks.
"The company MADE me look at porn - what people were browsing, what was in their fileshares, etc."
Harry Harrison, "Captive Universe"
on
Interstellar Ark
·
· Score: 1
Divide the crew's genome into two inbred groups, isolated from each other by killer robots and implanted superstitions. Each leads an ignorant agrarian life with an inbred low IQ. For arrival, the computer has the two populations interbreed and hybrid vigor produces an intelligent generation which will crawl over themselves to reach the teaching machines.
Isolated farming villages where nobody asks awkward questions can be stable for centuries. Social control is tight and effective.
Vinge's idea is a lot better. The self-repairing computer carries easily freezable cargo. It's supposed to have a complete university and trade school worth of teaching material, but even if it loses that to unanticipated memory rot it still has an amergency backup ROM that says "mix and wait nine months".
Right now the reason to use LEDs is if the environment is harsh (vibrations, impacts, etc.) or if you really, really don't want to change the light often (traffic lights, or that %^#@!! bulb over my stairs). LEDs also scale down better than anything else.
>hybrid vehicles; they only have 25% efficiency on the gasoline engine,
Toyota claims 45% for the Prius. I don't believe them, but one of the advantages of a hybrid is that it can keep the gas engine in the most efficient part of its working range. On top of that the availability of low-end torque from the electric system frees designers to use low-torque designs like the Atkinson (or Miller) cycle which are more efficient.
That's the right question, left neglected and alone by the story.
Poking around a bit, it turns out that the genetic engineers and the researchers were both looking at one particular lectin, introduced to make the potatoes resist insects and nematodes better. Which is important because "lectin" is a whole family of chemicals with different biological effects.
Now, the natural chemical defenses in plants are bad enough. Wild potatoes may need elaborate preparation to be safe to eat. Farmed ones are screened for solanine. Potatoes, in case you didn't know, are in the nightshade family.
So the real question here is what other research was done and what results it had. Does other work confirm or contradict the Russian study?
Then there's the systems question, which is whether we're better off with the risks of the engineered potatoes or the risks of the pesticides needed to keep "natural" ones alive. The word "natural" is in quotes because they're quite different from their wild relatives.
Slashdot Mirror
>IF I ever did record anything, I'd certainly never tell anyone that I had it.
Even if you got a discovery request for any and all records of something?
Data can also be used in your favor during litigation: the downside to recording it is that whether it helps or hurts you it's expensive to copy it, review it for privileged material, and answer questions about it.
One easy indicator would be phase jitter. Contrary to what you might expect, the more regular a heartbeat is the more chance there is of heart failure. Store a standard deviation per day, search for trends: pretty small and manageable data handling problem.
>Then they have to convince the democratically elected House of Commons to pass it.
How often do MPs in the UK defy their party leadership?
Here in the US a Republican who obeys the Party line 93% of the time is considered to have an "independent" voting record.
US Constitution, Article I, Section 6:
"They shall in all Cases, except Treason, Felony and Breach of the
Peace, be privileged from Arrest during their Attendance at the Session of
their respective Houses, and in going to and returning from the same; and for
any Speech or Debate in either House, they shall not be questioned in any other
Place."
The US founders were definitely not setting up a police state.
Police are from the executive branch. If the executive branch harasses regular citizens, it's misconduct. If they attack members of Parliament it's a constitutional crisis.
>Alot, if you use dimmers (which I do).
I've been buying dimmable compact fluorescents for ten years now.
>and also make my skin look like I'm under an autopsy light.
You may have to shop around but you can get a wide choice of color temperatures.
The bigger incandescents are more efficient than the smaller ones.
40 watt incandescent, 280 lumens, 7 lumens per watt. It's really an infrared source that somehow leaks a little visible light.
100 watt incandescent, 1740 lumens, 17.4 lumens per watt.
If people responded to your tax by buying multiple smaller bulbs it would backfire. If they bought compact fluorescents then there's be big savings per bulb, but available compact fluoresents start getting thin on the ground if you need more light than a 100W incandescent. A 32W CFL will replace a 150W legacy bulb but those aren't on just every store shelf.
Like any other evidence: chain of custody, examination by experts, cross examination of the person presenting the evidence. It's a problem the legal system has been addressing since the first time a forged document came into a courtroom.
Ask an old-timer to bring in his 1980-vintage computer magazines. Notice all the opinion columns worrying about how the high priests of the mainframe glass house could "maintain control" as users brought in their own computers.
>I asked him what happens if he got pulled over for speeding. He said he simply shows the cop his police identification, and the cop will let him go about his way. So there you have it, he speeds because he can, not because he is on some evil power trip.
My hometown police department strictly forbids its officers to mention their job if they get pulled over. They recognize that there's a slippery slope once people start thinking themselves above the law.
You, too, can have an ethical police department. Elect a mayor who will insist on it. Elect a police chief who will enforce hiring standards. My hometown department once interviewed an officer from LA. He didn't get the job and the interview was short.
Get some professional pride going, run new recruits through a strong field training program, and you've got a self-perpetuating ethical culture.
Cryptographic time stamping is here now. If an uploaded video can be authenticated as existing ten minutes after the incident, and the camera operator isn't a wixard with editing software, no problem. If the video goes out streaming, even less problem. If not authenticated, an expert witness could still establish some level of confidence that all the histograms, stats and lighting lined up better than most editors could arrange.
Exactly. Earth's spacefaring capability is lower now than it was forty years ago.
Look what has to line up before someone can colonize the galaxy:
o intelligent
o technological
o spacefaring
o given to long term thinking
o prosperous
o willing to commit resources to something without an economic payoff
o not diverted by other activities at their Singularity
o not hindered by a Galactic Federation keeping certain planets fallow
o keeping all the above factors lined up for millions of years.
Maybe They are out there but so far all of Them are stuck trying to make their quarterly earnings projections.
The mass media have been of negative value on this issue. I'd be surprised if a majority of USians know what is uncertain and what is known with reasonable confidence.
Anyone who wants an accessible overview of the science can do much better than watching the shouting heads by taking a look at the IPCC summary for policymakers.
And any story that talks about one Siberian town getting colder, or about one single hurricane, is an insult to your intelligence and should be treated as such.
Agreed. Why take a fascinating story and link it to something else?
The only connection this has is that if you're trying to quantify the effect of climate change on Antarctic glaciers you'd better understand how they move normally, and this work improves the models of how they move normally.
Unless the article was trying to avoid creating a misunderstanding by heading off a possible misconception. Anything's possible, but some things are more likely than others.
>when the storm shifted course, the call to evacuate was cancelled.
>the state government didn't folow protocal and request the help that the law says she needed to do untill after being reminded by an aid when a reporter asked why the national guard wasn't there yet.
Mayor Nagin issued a voluntary evacuation call August 27 at 5 PM and made it mandatory the next day. Also on the 28th, Governor Blanco asked the President for a major disaster declaration and invoked the Stafford Act. Counterflow traffic went into effect that day. That afternoon, Gov. Blanco accepted an offer of National Guard troops from the governor of New Mexico. Federal approval for the transfer didn't come until the following Thursday.
On August 28th the President got a briefing that used the word "catastrophe" and didn't ask a single question or give a single order. If he had, perhaps Chertoff would have activated the Critical Incident Annex to the National Response Plan.
Landfall was morning of Monday, the 29th.
On the 29th, Gov. Blanco said "Mr. President, we need your help. We need everything you've got". The President went to senior centers to promote the Medicare prescription drug plan and went to a photo-op for McCain's birthday. He talked to Chertoff about -- immigration. He played guitar with Mark Willis, and said that when he returned to DC on Thursday he would "begin work". Thursday was when the DoD finally started giving logistics help to FEMA.
More at the bipartisan Congressional report.
Local government down there has never worked right -- pointing to that is a lame excuse for the multiple failures at the federal level.
If it's not being reported, why was it so easy for me to find that the Hubbard glacier is expanding?
The valid point you make is that an article about one glacier does not help you determine global climate. What does is the fact that most of them are retreating.
>Human activity is responsible for 50% of CO2, the other 50% is volcanic sources.
Whoever told you this is not your friend.
Annual CO2 from volcanic activity, 130 to 230 teragrams(*). Annual CO2 from humans burning things, and not counting deforestation: 20,000 teragrams.
(*)Gerlach, T.M., 1992, Present-day CO2 emissions from volcanoes: Eos, Transactions, American Geophysical Union, Vol. 72, No. 23, June 4, 1991, pp. 249, and 254-255
We only have about 25 years of direct measurement of solar intensity from outside the atmosphere. Indirect reconstructions have not converged yet. That's why there's such a range of uncertainty about the contribution of solar changes to global temperature increases.
The whole body of research is summarized in the latest IPCC report. The numbers are:
"The combined radiative forcing due to increases in carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide is +2.30 [+2.07 to +2.53] W/m**-2"
and
"Changes in solar irradiance since 1750 are estimated to cause a radiative forcing of +0.12 [+0.06 to +0.30] W/m**-2"
[Notice the factor of 5 between the low and high estimate of solar changes].
But as usual you can simplify the whole question by looking at one key point. Why are nights getting warmer? Solar input affects daytime temperatures. The predicted effect of longwave absorption is that nights won't cool off as quickly. The observation is the same.
Winter snowpack stores water for summer. If there isn't a deep freeze for the water, it comes out as devastating spring floods. Imagine the effect of tearing down a dam and draining the reservoir: same thing if you eliminate a frozen reservoir.
Divide the crew's genome into two inbred groups, isolated from each other by killer robots and implanted superstitions. Each leads an ignorant agrarian life with an inbred low IQ. For arrival, the computer has the two populations interbreed and hybrid vigor produces an intelligent generation which will crawl over themselves to reach the teaching machines.
Isolated farming villages where nobody asks awkward questions can be stable for centuries. Social control is tight and effective.
Vinge's idea is a lot better. The self-repairing computer carries easily freezable cargo. It's supposed to have a complete university and trade school worth of teaching material, but even if it loses that to unanticipated memory rot it still has an amergency backup ROM that says "mix and wait nine months".
Compact fluorescents, 50-70 lumens per watt off the shelf.
8 34953712
White LEDs, 30-45 lumens per watt off the shelf, 131 in the lab. And way more expensive.
http://www.netl.doe.gov/ssl/faqs.htm
http://www.cree.com/press/press_detail.asp?i=1150
http://members.misty.com/don/lede.html
Right now the reason to use LEDs is if the environment is harsh (vibrations, impacts, etc.) or if you really, really don't want to change the light often (traffic lights, or that %^#@!! bulb over my stairs). LEDs also scale down better than anything else.
>hybrid vehicles; they only have 25% efficiency on the gasoline engine,
Toyota claims 45% for the Prius. I don't believe them, but one of the advantages of a hybrid is that it can keep the gas engine in the most efficient part of its working range. On top of that the availability of low-end torque from the electric system frees designers to use low-torque designs like the Atkinson (or Miller) cycle which are more efficient.
that it changes more from year to year and model to model than from one manufacturer to another?
That's the right question, left neglected and alone by the story.
Poking around a bit, it turns out that the genetic engineers and the researchers were both looking at one particular lectin, introduced to make the potatoes resist insects and nematodes better. Which is important because "lectin" is a whole family of chemicals with different biological effects.
Now, the natural chemical defenses in plants are bad enough. Wild potatoes may need elaborate preparation to be safe to eat. Farmed ones are screened for solanine. Potatoes, in case you didn't know, are in the nightshade family.
So the real question here is what other research was done and what results it had. Does other work confirm or contradict the Russian study?
Then there's the systems question, which is whether we're better off with the risks of the engineered potatoes or the risks of the pesticides needed to keep "natural" ones alive. The word "natural" is in quotes because they're quite different from their wild relatives.
>The trick is to target the one vulnerability all spammers have: A website to sell their goods.
Not any more. The stock scammers can get their money without any contact information whatever in the spam.