Reread your post replacing "wireless power" with "wireless connectivity." Ubiquitous connectivity is more than just convenience of not lugging network cables around. Wireless power has similar potential.
Yeah, that's a use case where profiles aren't just a hacked-together version of user accounts. You can do that right now with Firefox profiles, if you want. I assume the new Chrome profiles are the same way. Of course, they may correlate you by ip anyway...
Re:I was "almost" a subject of this experiment
on
My Genome, My Self?
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· Score: 1
That doesn't strike me as what I'd normally consider "dangerous" in a medical context. "Dangerous" to me has connotations of risky procedures. Regardless, it sounds bad enough, and I think you did the right thing in declining. Thanks for clarifying.
Re:I was "almost" a subject of this experiment
on
My Genome, My Self?
·
· Score: 1
How would it be dangerous? This is me being curious, not disagreeing, btw. Obviously it's an invasion of privacy, and I'd like to think I'd have said the same thing had I been in your position. But I haven't heard anything about the PGP that suggests they're doing much beyond collecting DNA and records, which doesn't sound dangerous to me. Is there more going on I don't know about?
You know that crystal ball you have there that lets you predict the cost of common treatments for common problems 30 years in the future can probably tell you all sorts of neat things. You should try playing with it more, I bet there are all kinds of other social problems it can reduce to a paragraph of arrogantly vague policy directives.
I am young and in good health. Right now, I could not afford a $10k hospital stay -- yes, eventually I could save up for it, but right now I can't. I can, however, afford an insurance premium that will cover it. As mentioned, I'm young and in good health, so that premium isn't terribly pricey. What would you have me do?
Well, as I've said... I'm not convinced this patent is useful. And I don't think it should be patentable. But I do think it's original. I could see deciding that the game was too hard (or, say, I was too tired/inebriated/distracted) but that I was enjoying the plot and wanted to watch it. I see it as a blurring of the line between games and movies.
I'm nowhere near as qualified to comment on the economic and organizational aspects of these plans as I am on their technical merits. That said, I think you're basically right. I imagine some of the Shuttle technicians will end up doing work on Orion and Ares or Jupiter; those rockets need a skilled workforce, so some of the jobs will move over. Also remember that to some degree, if NASA saves money on their launch vehicle, it will get spent on other projects through budget reallocations, which will (to some degree, at least) employ the same set of people. The jobs aspect is all a big political dance, and if it's politically important to both have a cheaper launcher and not get rid of those jobs, they can find ways to do that.
Mostly because it doesn't exist (in a useful form), and couldn't reasonably be made to exist in the time required. For the record, they didn't "decide to land it on its side." It fell over after landing, as a result of a hydraulic line that was not properly reattached after some regular maintenance.
The DC-X was a very interesting project, but there is a lot more research and development that would have to be done to make it usable (even ignoring the question of whether it's the right answer -- I happen to think it's not). It simply isn't reasonable to believe that restarting that program now would result in a usable craft soon enough.
Of course I can't make a perfect judgment on the matter. However, I think that for someone not directly involved in the projects in question, I'm quite well qualified. And yes, I'm aware that paper projects always look better. The thing is, Ares never looked all that good -- even on paper. The idea that an extended SRB is anything other than a new large solid is a fantasy; it was obvious to everyone with technical knowledge on the matter from the beginning that any nontrivial changes to the SRBs lost most of the advantages of keeping Shuttle hardware involved. Changes to the main fuel tank are less problematic, but still not wonderful. Using only a single (extended, and therefore new) SRB as the first stage of Ares I obviously had problems -- the performance characteristics meant it was being used in a highly suboptimal manner in that application.
To an observer who hasn't been paying attention since the early Ares proposals, I can see how this would look like jumping ship as soon as the paper project met reality, only to start a new paper project. However, that is not an apt description. Ares was based on a set of highly optimistic assumptions -- basically, that the designers knew how heavy the payloads would be, and could design to those targets. Unsurprisingly, the Orion capsule grew in mass and Ares I had to find extra performance to make up for it. In contrast, the Jupiter 120 has 40t of throw capability to LEO for a 20t capsule. The extra 20t is allocated to "extra payload." In the event that Orion gets heavier still (which it probably will do, though a lot of the weight gain has likely already happened), it's far, far easier to reallocate a few tons from "extra payload" to "capsule" than it is to pull those tons out of a hat. That sort of planning is what makes DIRECT better, even when comparing apples to apples. Any aerospace engineer who looked at early Ares proposals should have had warning flags going up in their mind as soon as they saw how small the gap between the target capsule mass and the lift capability of the booster was.
For the record, I think there is a lot less wrong with Ares V than there is with Ares I. The Jupiter is still a better choice, I believe, but the difference is less drastic. There is a middle ground that would cancel Ares I, and use Ares V to launch the capsule -- I think this would be an improvement over the current plan, but that the DIRECT plan would be better still. None of these are how I think the rocket *should* be designed, given ample time and budget -- but replacing the Shuttle is a project that doesn't have ample time. If NASA is to get anything flying soon, it will have to be a suboptimal design that has significant Shuttle heritage. Of such projects that I've seen proposed, DIRECT is the best compromise between doing the job well and something that could actually be built in time.
While not a NASA engineer, I am a rocket engineer, and I've worked indirectly with NASA. I've also been following Ares and the DIRECT plan in some detail. I believe I'm qualified to say that the DIRECT plan looks better now than Ares did at a similar point in its development. Even including sunk costs on Ares, it seems quite likely to me that DIRECT is cheaper, quicker, more reliable, and more capable. Ares is already overweight and behind schedule; I would rather bet that it will become more so rather than less so before development is done. DIRECT is not immune to the same effects, but it is a much wiser plan in that it has *much* more margin to work with at a comparable stage in development. Its engineers understand that rockets always get heavier as they get closer to completion, never lighter.
Oddly enough, the only way to compare the two projects is to actually look at the details. The fact that one is further along in development than the other does not automatically make it better, any more than it automatically makes it worse. It may take a little bit of effort to make a reasonable apples-to-apples comparison between the two programs, but it is by no means impossible. AFAICT, comparisons of that sort appear to either be products of bureaucratic inertia ("we've already decided on Ares, therefore it must be right") or they conclude that DIRECT appears to be faster, cheaper, safer, and more capable.
Yes, but taken further in a way that makes it qualitatively different. I have yet to see a flight sim autopilot that will fly the entire mission, including any combat sequences...
I think software patents are bad, and that therefore this is not patent worthy, but I'd be hard pressed to find a game that does this. Sure, there are the occasional playable cutscenes. But in how many of those can you do more than wander around? Can you name a single game where you can just decide to not to play while in the middle of any given level, and the game will play for you? I'm not sure I like the idea, but it does sound different and neat. Possibly very interesting, if used well -- or possibly doomed to the trash can and a few gimmicky bargain bin games. Time will tell, I suppose, but it certainly sounds like something that hasn't been tried before.
Often times the creativity lies not in producing the answer, but in framing the question. Sure, it's obvious how to do it -- but no one noticed that it needed doing before. Maybe that's because it doesn't, or maybe it's because no one had the flash of inspiration. Time will tell, I suppose.
And when I "log in" as my "user" the email program magically knows which "email address" I want to use! I don't even have to tell it! How cool is that?
Hey, I know! We can have the email program have profiles too! And the photo editor, and the instant messaging client! Perhaps one day someone will come up with a unified way to have them synchronize, so that I don't have to create and manage a set of profiles on every application. It could also unify password management, and give each profile its own common place to put files.
Or, I don't know, we could actually use the user system that exists. Poorly reimplementing users in every single program is a horrible idea.
That said, there are uses for profiles that aren't just crippled reimplementations of the user concept. But they have more to do with wanting a different, well, profile of settings for different tasks -- things like the private browsing mode. Or, for example, I use a different Firefox profile for browsing Freenet (there are both performance and security reasons for that).
Perhaps you should simply buy one of the less expensive cards out there? Of course the highest performing card available uses lots of power and costs a lot. Get something less powerful.
It looks scavengy to you? How nice. Did you read the bit where the people studying it say it eats live prey, and is very specially adapted to doing just that?
You can't be serious. Yes, plants remove CO2 from the air (they also add it in lesser amounts). That doesn't mean they absorb all the CO2 that goes by them, or that all the atmosphere passes by plants (hint: the atmosphere is taller than trees). Yes, the presence of plants and finite diffusion rates means that local emissions create a local bubble. However, localized emissions will also impact CO2 levels around the globe. OTOH, localized ozone sources (or sinks) have *no* effect on the ozone layer -- ozone is too unstable, and it breaks down on its own (and reacts with other things in the atmosphere) before it gets very far. (Ozone depleting chemicals are different -- they are long-lived, and last long enough to drift into the upper atmosphere where they do their damage.)
Climate science is complicated. Gee, how surprising.
Too much oxygen is bad for you. Too little is also bad. The fact that some CO2 is a necessary component of our atmosphere has very little bearing on whether some larger amount is better, worse, or about the same. There are a *wide* variety of substances that are important in small amounts and problematic in large amounts. It seems reasonable to consider them pollutants if they're man-made and at problematic levels.
Except that the ozone doesn't last long enough to move between the two zones, whereas CO2 does last long enough to largely equalize concentrations around the globe.
Normally I would agree that it's not the government's problem to pay for your entertainment. But, in this case, you're losing said entertainment as a direct result of government action. And furthermore, said action produced massive revenue for them. And said loss can easily be rectified by some of that cash. I don't see any real reason to delay the switch, but I certainly support the idea of funding the coupons. We should acknowledge that many people won't go get the converter boxes until after the switch, but I don't really see a problem with that -- provided the program is funded.
Car companies are intelligently designed, not evolved. OK, maybe not intelligently, but they're definitely designed rather than evolved through sexual reproduction. I'd say no.
A global limit with an exception that grants a per-ip limit to ips that have previously had a successful login (within the last $time_period) does better than those options.
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Reread your post replacing "wireless power" with "wireless connectivity." Ubiquitous connectivity is more than just convenience of not lugging network cables around. Wireless power has similar potential.
Yeah, that's a use case where profiles aren't just a hacked-together version of user accounts. You can do that right now with Firefox profiles, if you want. I assume the new Chrome profiles are the same way. Of course, they may correlate you by ip anyway...
That doesn't strike me as what I'd normally consider "dangerous" in a medical context. "Dangerous" to me has connotations of risky procedures. Regardless, it sounds bad enough, and I think you did the right thing in declining. Thanks for clarifying.
How would it be dangerous? This is me being curious, not disagreeing, btw. Obviously it's an invasion of privacy, and I'd like to think I'd have said the same thing had I been in your position. But I haven't heard anything about the PGP that suggests they're doing much beyond collecting DNA and records, which doesn't sound dangerous to me. Is there more going on I don't know about?
You know that crystal ball you have there that lets you predict the cost of common treatments for common problems 30 years in the future can probably tell you all sorts of neat things. You should try playing with it more, I bet there are all kinds of other social problems it can reduce to a paragraph of arrogantly vague policy directives.
I am young and in good health. Right now, I could not afford a $10k hospital stay -- yes, eventually I could save up for it, but right now I can't. I can, however, afford an insurance premium that will cover it. As mentioned, I'm young and in good health, so that premium isn't terribly pricey. What would you have me do?
Well, as I've said... I'm not convinced this patent is useful. And I don't think it should be patentable. But I do think it's original. I could see deciding that the game was too hard (or, say, I was too tired/inebriated/distracted) but that I was enjoying the plot and wanted to watch it. I see it as a blurring of the line between games and movies.
I'm nowhere near as qualified to comment on the economic and organizational aspects of these plans as I am on their technical merits. That said, I think you're basically right. I imagine some of the Shuttle technicians will end up doing work on Orion and Ares or Jupiter; those rockets need a skilled workforce, so some of the jobs will move over. Also remember that to some degree, if NASA saves money on their launch vehicle, it will get spent on other projects through budget reallocations, which will (to some degree, at least) employ the same set of people. The jobs aspect is all a big political dance, and if it's politically important to both have a cheaper launcher and not get rid of those jobs, they can find ways to do that.
Mostly because it doesn't exist (in a useful form), and couldn't reasonably be made to exist in the time required. For the record, they didn't "decide to land it on its side." It fell over after landing, as a result of a hydraulic line that was not properly reattached after some regular maintenance.
The DC-X was a very interesting project, but there is a lot more research and development that would have to be done to make it usable (even ignoring the question of whether it's the right answer -- I happen to think it's not). It simply isn't reasonable to believe that restarting that program now would result in a usable craft soon enough.
Of course I can't make a perfect judgment on the matter. However, I think that for someone not directly involved in the projects in question, I'm quite well qualified. And yes, I'm aware that paper projects always look better. The thing is, Ares never looked all that good -- even on paper. The idea that an extended SRB is anything other than a new large solid is a fantasy; it was obvious to everyone with technical knowledge on the matter from the beginning that any nontrivial changes to the SRBs lost most of the advantages of keeping Shuttle hardware involved. Changes to the main fuel tank are less problematic, but still not wonderful. Using only a single (extended, and therefore new) SRB as the first stage of Ares I obviously had problems -- the performance characteristics meant it was being used in a highly suboptimal manner in that application.
To an observer who hasn't been paying attention since the early Ares proposals, I can see how this would look like jumping ship as soon as the paper project met reality, only to start a new paper project. However, that is not an apt description. Ares was based on a set of highly optimistic assumptions -- basically, that the designers knew how heavy the payloads would be, and could design to those targets. Unsurprisingly, the Orion capsule grew in mass and Ares I had to find extra performance to make up for it. In contrast, the Jupiter 120 has 40t of throw capability to LEO for a 20t capsule. The extra 20t is allocated to "extra payload." In the event that Orion gets heavier still (which it probably will do, though a lot of the weight gain has likely already happened), it's far, far easier to reallocate a few tons from "extra payload" to "capsule" than it is to pull those tons out of a hat. That sort of planning is what makes DIRECT better, even when comparing apples to apples. Any aerospace engineer who looked at early Ares proposals should have had warning flags going up in their mind as soon as they saw how small the gap between the target capsule mass and the lift capability of the booster was.
For the record, I think there is a lot less wrong with Ares V than there is with Ares I. The Jupiter is still a better choice, I believe, but the difference is less drastic. There is a middle ground that would cancel Ares I, and use Ares V to launch the capsule -- I think this would be an improvement over the current plan, but that the DIRECT plan would be better still. None of these are how I think the rocket *should* be designed, given ample time and budget -- but replacing the Shuttle is a project that doesn't have ample time. If NASA is to get anything flying soon, it will have to be a suboptimal design that has significant Shuttle heritage. Of such projects that I've seen proposed, DIRECT is the best compromise between doing the job well and something that could actually be built in time.
While not a NASA engineer, I am a rocket engineer, and I've worked indirectly with NASA. I've also been following Ares and the DIRECT plan in some detail. I believe I'm qualified to say that the DIRECT plan looks better now than Ares did at a similar point in its development. Even including sunk costs on Ares, it seems quite likely to me that DIRECT is cheaper, quicker, more reliable, and more capable. Ares is already overweight and behind schedule; I would rather bet that it will become more so rather than less so before development is done. DIRECT is not immune to the same effects, but it is a much wiser plan in that it has *much* more margin to work with at a comparable stage in development. Its engineers understand that rockets always get heavier as they get closer to completion, never lighter.
Oddly enough, the only way to compare the two projects is to actually look at the details. The fact that one is further along in development than the other does not automatically make it better, any more than it automatically makes it worse. It may take a little bit of effort to make a reasonable apples-to-apples comparison between the two programs, but it is by no means impossible. AFAICT, comparisons of that sort appear to either be products of bureaucratic inertia ("we've already decided on Ares, therefore it must be right") or they conclude that DIRECT appears to be faster, cheaper, safer, and more capable.
Yes, but taken further in a way that makes it qualitatively different. I have yet to see a flight sim autopilot that will fly the entire mission, including any combat sequences...
I think software patents are bad, and that therefore this is not patent worthy, but I'd be hard pressed to find a game that does this. Sure, there are the occasional playable cutscenes. But in how many of those can you do more than wander around? Can you name a single game where you can just decide to not to play while in the middle of any given level, and the game will play for you? I'm not sure I like the idea, but it does sound different and neat. Possibly very interesting, if used well -- or possibly doomed to the trash can and a few gimmicky bargain bin games. Time will tell, I suppose, but it certainly sounds like something that hasn't been tried before.
Often times the creativity lies not in producing the answer, but in framing the question. Sure, it's obvious how to do it -- but no one noticed that it needed doing before. Maybe that's because it doesn't, or maybe it's because no one had the flash of inspiration. Time will tell, I suppose.
Or like complaining that instead of office chair, package contained bobcat.
And when I "log in" as my "user" the email program magically knows which "email address" I want to use! I don't even have to tell it! How cool is that?
Hey, I know! We can have the email program have profiles too! And the photo editor, and the instant messaging client! Perhaps one day someone will come up with a unified way to have them synchronize, so that I don't have to create and manage a set of profiles on every application. It could also unify password management, and give each profile its own common place to put files.
Or, I don't know, we could actually use the user system that exists. Poorly reimplementing users in every single program is a horrible idea.
That said, there are uses for profiles that aren't just crippled reimplementations of the user concept. But they have more to do with wanting a different, well, profile of settings for different tasks -- things like the private browsing mode. Or, for example, I use a different Firefox profile for browsing Freenet (there are both performance and security reasons for that).
Perhaps you should simply buy one of the less expensive cards out there? Of course the highest performing card available uses lots of power and costs a lot. Get something less powerful.
It looks scavengy to you? How nice. Did you read the bit where the people studying it say it eats live prey, and is very specially adapted to doing just that?
You can't be serious. Yes, plants remove CO2 from the air (they also add it in lesser amounts). That doesn't mean they absorb all the CO2 that goes by them, or that all the atmosphere passes by plants (hint: the atmosphere is taller than trees). Yes, the presence of plants and finite diffusion rates means that local emissions create a local bubble. However, localized emissions will also impact CO2 levels around the globe. OTOH, localized ozone sources (or sinks) have *no* effect on the ozone layer -- ozone is too unstable, and it breaks down on its own (and reacts with other things in the atmosphere) before it gets very far. (Ozone depleting chemicals are different -- they are long-lived, and last long enough to drift into the upper atmosphere where they do their damage.)
Climate science is complicated. Gee, how surprising.
Too much oxygen is bad for you. Too little is also bad. The fact that some CO2 is a necessary component of our atmosphere has very little bearing on whether some larger amount is better, worse, or about the same. There are a *wide* variety of substances that are important in small amounts and problematic in large amounts. It seems reasonable to consider them pollutants if they're man-made and at problematic levels.
Except that the ozone doesn't last long enough to move between the two zones, whereas CO2 does last long enough to largely equalize concentrations around the globe.
Normally I would agree that it's not the government's problem to pay for your entertainment. But, in this case, you're losing said entertainment as a direct result of government action. And furthermore, said action produced massive revenue for them. And said loss can easily be rectified by some of that cash. I don't see any real reason to delay the switch, but I certainly support the idea of funding the coupons. We should acknowledge that many people won't go get the converter boxes until after the switch, but I don't really see a problem with that -- provided the program is funded.
Can you give the Darwin award to a car maker?
Car companies are intelligently designed, not evolved. OK, maybe not intelligently, but they're definitely designed rather than evolved through sexual reproduction. I'd say no.
What's that you say? It might be like other software and have occasional security holes in it? I'm sure that won't be a problem.
A global limit with an exception that grants a per-ip limit to ips that have previously had a successful login (within the last $time_period) does better than those options.