Or, rather, that it raises everyone's GPA the same amount, or would if it wasn't for the curves most classes grade on. In any decently taught class, exam questions should be made so that cheating has only a minimal effect anyways (it's rather harder to cheat on essay questions, for instance, than multiple choice concept ones.)
Then you punish them if they get caught. Works out the same for everyone, actually.
Re:66 billion in science dollars.
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
That's about 10 copies of the James Webb Telescope assuming absolutely worst case cost estimates. This is about fifteen times the cost that the Terrestrial Planet Finder would have been assuming it had been approved and then run over budget by a lot. It is about four times the cost of ITER, the next generation fusion reactor being built by an international consortium. It is about 1.5 human trips to Mars. It is about four times the maximal cost of the Superconducting Super Collider if it has been approved.Estimating the cost of the International Space Station is tough but this is clearly more than twice that cost. Most of these projects has been on the chopping block at one time. Two of these projects got axed and the Mars one never really got off the ground. This says something about our priorities and it isn't good.
I mostly agree with you, but I should point out: none of those things help you if you are dead. And while there may not currently be any major enemies to fight, I wouldn't bet on that not changing.
Re:Best comment in article:
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 1
According to Wikipedia, the Harrier only uses thrust-vectoring for VTOL, not for higher manuverability. The F-35A and C don't have vectoring at all, apparently. The advantage to the way the F-35B works is over twice the loaded weight of the Harrier for short-take-offs, and I'm guessing much higher carry-home weight as well (for vertical-landing). It would probably work for combat uses too, although I'm only guessing.
Re:Marine version tripped up the whole program
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 1
The F-35B issupposed to go on "probation". Actually, the British were almost as important in trying to make the F-35B work as the Marines were, since the British want to replace the Harrier, and their smaller carriers wouldn't work with the regular F-35. Then they decided the F-35C would work, so they changed their order and the B is probably going on hold.
Re:Affordable replacement for something paid for
on
The F-35 Story
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
No offense, but a no large country, or country with many potential enemies (the first usually implies the latter), can afford to stand still in military technology. You always have to be working towards the next generation. Otherwise, you both can and will get crushed if you end up being attacked by another country that hasn't remained stagnant in military tech. Military technology can't simply be developed to fight your present enemy. You must look towards the future. Otherwise, you will be crushed. Doesn't matter if no current country would be an enemy: one could emerge practically overnight.
The only case where a country could not continue to develop new technologies like these are if they know, with near absolute certainty, they simply won't be attacked. Otherwise, not developing means you simply look like an easier target for the next ego-maniac to take over a country. And as any student of history can tell you, with absolute 100% certainty, that will happen.
Nuclear weapons do have the potential to alter this dynamic somewhat, since no two nuclear countries want to go to war. On the other hand, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System could alter even that. Again, another example of military advancement which should hopefully never be needed, but which is still vitally important. You just know someone, eventually, is going to launch nuclear weapons. If we can stop that, we should.
Depends on the strength. Since they use (basically) thousands of microscopic hairs, they could vary the strength of adhesion to whatever they want by varying the hairs/ sq. millimeter.
Are we quite sure this server was hacked? I wouldn't put it past some college student, or possibly even a network admin, to do this personally. While that may technically still be "hacking", it wouldn't qualify for it in the popular-media definition (which is the way TFA seems to be using it... or maybe not, maybe the writer is using the term deliberately.) The proper term is "cracked."
Huh, that's odd. I have a Cowon D3, which only has 256MB too, and it runs just fine (well, more or less, but that's another issue) on Gingerbread. RAM doesn't tend to be a major problem, although I would have loved more (but then it is only a MP3 player/ MID, which it does just fine.)
Radioactive decay alone is enough to get true randomness. And there are several other (non-quantum) where 'capturing the surroundings' is actually considered theoretically impossible. Simple example would be Brownian motion (plus, it would give any amount of randomness desired from as small a sample as you want! Sort of anyways), which is actually what several of those techniques end up using (Brownian motion is just random thermal noise.) Technically, it is only non-random if you are able to predict the motion of billions of atoms simultaneously. That is very nearly utterly impossible.
Any reputation system that doesn't rely on some central authority to issue it can and will be gamed by crackers. With massive botnets and the like there is simply no way to rely on any number of "individuals" to issue correct information. The only way around this is to have some central authority say "your opinion matters and yours doesn't." Voila, you have the present system.
For unimportant things or things so unimportant the difficulty makes the problem not worthwhile, a distributed reputation system works. Someone above mentioned Ebay. This system works because the rating of individual sellers, while important to them, isn't terribly important to all that many people, and the system is rather difficult for an individual to game. But for a distributed SSL certificate network, not only is the incentive there, but the people involved are massive and extremely technologically sophisticated.
Convergence is unfortunately not the answer. Sure, you can say "I only trust this Notary", but how do you know that Notary is even who you think it is? You can't. The only way is if you have centrally distributed root certificates... and again, same problem you have now. Ultimately, the only real way to get guaranteed SSL security is to call up the bank/ whatever and manually verify the fingerprint. Or get the key on a USB drive at the bank. There simply isn't an easy solution.
And you won't get your average Internet browser to change. People conducting MITM attacks generally aren't concerned with people who are really security conscious. If they actually are conducting targeted attacks against you, then you should have much better security in place. Since most people simply won't switch, even if Convergence was 100% effective it wouldn't matter. Most SSL attacks would still take place just fine.
The only thing IPADs, Tablets, and Phones, lack is a word processor that is decent.
And a decent keyboard, reasonable screen real-estate, HDD space, durability, replaceable/ upgradeable components, and battery life. Other than that, they lack nothing!
Seriously, the reason those things won't replace desktops is the same reason laptops haven't, except much much more so. My desktop has a 24" monitor, a full keyboard, 1.5TB HDD space, and is ~5 years old but with incremental upgrades (technically, only the PS, HDDs, and some of the RAM are original.) Add in that desktops are cheaper and not beholden to a single device maker for software updates, and I don't think desktops will ever really go away (although we will probably transition to thin client systems in the future for businesses at least, I think even that is a ways away.)
This isn't non-mathematical random "music", it is mathematical "music" that is patternless. The first isn't music at all, while the second doesn't qualify by most definitions but could by logical extension (which mathematicians do so love.) I personally, as a musician, don't think either one would be music.
Meanwhile the nuclear figures don't contain construction or mining fatalities because it's fairly irrelevant when considering nuclear power, so the solar figures shouldn't either.
Seriously, dude, read the article. He factors in deaths from steel mining for construction, uranium ore mining, concrete workers, etc. Hell, one of the sources he cites factors in radon poisons from uranium ore mine waste. It even mentions greenhouse effects (although obviously that is difficult to determine exactly).
Diagram 6 in this (pdf warning) study shows deaths from major accidents alone (so ignoring constant health dangers of coal etc.) This ignores Fukishima (having not happened when the paper was written, and even now can't be precisely determined, but still). Nuclear is safer, just factoring the risk from major accidents, than hydro, gas, coal, and oil.
As others have pointed out, some of this data is based on a WHO study which is questionable, but even if you double or triple the values for nuclear, it is still safer than most sources of renewable energy. But AFAICT that study is extremely comprehensive on the dangers of energy sources, and nuclear is unequivocally one of the safest.
The figures count construction fatalities. Since most solar panels are roof-mounted (noticed the part were it says "rooftop" next to solar? Yeah, reading a source before commenting on it does help), lots of accidents and therefore lots of deaths. Probably other sources of fatalities too. Another source had non-rooftop solar (which is much lower but still higher than nuclear, ~0.10/TWh IIRC), but I couldn't find it. So... I didn't think you were stupid, no. Might have to revise that estimate now, though.
You may want to check out, well, the facts.. Nuclear is safer, by far, than any other power source. Yes, nuclear power, for all it's "shoddy" construction (never mind the concrete chimneys are designed to survive jumbo jets flying into them), the fact that power plants have been run for decades longer than intended instead of being replaced by newer, safer, and more efficient models (in part due to regulative costs. I won't get into the irony of that, since most of them have apparently been fixed recently), and counting in the horror that was Chernobyl (which still only managed to kill ~4000 people total), is safer than solar power.
Also, the best sources I can find agree that renewables aren't cheaper than other sources (and won't be for another good 5-15 years. Hence why there are government subsidies for them, at least in the US.) If that were true, we would be seeing a lot more of them. Companies don't buy gas and oil because they like ruining the environment, they do it because it is the cheapest option. Once you make solar, et al. cheaper than the alternatives, then people will start using them.
If the choice was really between solar and nuclear, I would agree with you. The problem is, that isn't the choice. The choice is between coal/ oil and nuclear. Solar (or geothermal and definitely not wind) isn't even a viable option yet. And presented with the dichotomy between nuclear and coal, I will vote for nuclear every single time. So would anyone else who understands how bad coal is (it's worse in normal operation than a nuclear plant is when it breaks down.)
That letter is somewhat deceptive, to say the very least. From Wikipedia:
On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown. The resulting explosion caused millions of liters of radioactive water to flood the reactor building’s basement, and the reactor’s core was no longer usable.[16] Carter was now ordered to Chalk River, joining other Canadian and American service personnel. He was the officer in charge of the U.S. team assisting in the shutdown of the Chalk River Nuclear Reactor.[17]
So yeah, I would say overseeing a nuclear reactor shutdown/cleanup (including being lowered in personally to work on the reactor) qualifies him for, if not "nuclear engineer", at least "knows a lot about nuclear power." Which is just about "nuclear engineer", considering what most politicians/presidents know about the issue.
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"Hands on testing" might not be the best way to phrase it when talking about college co-eds...
Or, rather, that it raises everyone's GPA the same amount, or would if it wasn't for the curves most classes grade on. In any decently taught class, exam questions should be made so that cheating has only a minimal effect anyways (it's rather harder to cheat on essay questions, for instance, than multiple choice concept ones.)
Then you punish them if they get caught. Works out the same for everyone, actually.
That's about 10 copies of the James Webb Telescope assuming absolutely worst case cost estimates. This is about fifteen times the cost that the Terrestrial Planet Finder would have been assuming it had been approved and then run over budget by a lot. It is about four times the cost of ITER, the next generation fusion reactor being built by an international consortium. It is about 1.5 human trips to Mars. It is about four times the maximal cost of the Superconducting Super Collider if it has been approved.Estimating the cost of the International Space Station is tough but this is clearly more than twice that cost. Most of these projects has been on the chopping block at one time. Two of these projects got axed and the Mars one never really got off the ground. This says something about our priorities and it isn't good.
I mostly agree with you, but I should point out: none of those things help you if you are dead. And while there may not currently be any major enemies to fight, I wouldn't bet on that not changing.
According to Wikipedia, the Harrier only uses thrust-vectoring for VTOL, not for higher manuverability. The F-35A and C don't have vectoring at all, apparently. The advantage to the way the F-35B works is over twice the loaded weight of the Harrier for short-take-offs, and I'm guessing much higher carry-home weight as well (for vertical-landing). It would probably work for combat uses too, although I'm only guessing.
The F-35B is supposed to go on "probation". Actually, the British were almost as important in trying to make the F-35B work as the Marines were, since the British want to replace the Harrier, and their smaller carriers wouldn't work with the regular F-35. Then they decided the F-35C would work, so they changed their order and the B is probably going on hold.
No offense, but a no large country, or country with many potential enemies (the first usually implies the latter), can afford to stand still in military technology. You always have to be working towards the next generation. Otherwise, you both can and will get crushed if you end up being attacked by another country that hasn't remained stagnant in military tech. Military technology can't simply be developed to fight your present enemy. You must look towards the future. Otherwise, you will be crushed. Doesn't matter if no current country would be an enemy: one could emerge practically overnight.
The only case where a country could not continue to develop new technologies like these are if they know, with near absolute certainty, they simply won't be attacked. Otherwise, not developing means you simply look like an easier target for the next ego-maniac to take over a country. And as any student of history can tell you, with absolute 100% certainty, that will happen.
Nuclear weapons do have the potential to alter this dynamic somewhat, since no two nuclear countries want to go to war. On the other hand, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense System could alter even that. Again, another example of military advancement which should hopefully never be needed, but which is still vitally important. You just know someone, eventually, is going to launch nuclear weapons. If we can stop that, we should.
The Nook Tablet will allow Hulu and Netflix streaming and sideloading of content
That what your looking for?
You had dreams about not being able to walk? :)
Depends on the strength. Since they use (basically) thousands of microscopic hairs, they could vary the strength of adhesion to whatever they want by varying the hairs/ sq. millimeter.
Are we quite sure this server was hacked? I wouldn't put it past some college student, or possibly even a network admin, to do this personally. While that may technically still be "hacking", it wouldn't qualify for it in the popular-media definition (which is the way TFA seems to be using it... or maybe not, maybe the writer is using the term deliberately.) The proper term is "cracked."
Huh, that's odd. I have a Cowon D3, which only has 256MB too, and it runs just fine (well, more or less, but that's another issue) on Gingerbread. RAM doesn't tend to be a major problem, although I would have loved more (but then it is only a MP3 player/ MID, which it does just fine.)
Radioactive decay alone is enough to get true randomness. And there are several other (non-quantum) where 'capturing the surroundings' is actually considered theoretically impossible. Simple example would be Brownian motion (plus, it would give any amount of randomness desired from as small a sample as you want! Sort of anyways), which is actually what several of those techniques end up using (Brownian motion is just random thermal noise.) Technically, it is only non-random if you are able to predict the motion of billions of atoms simultaneously. That is very nearly utterly impossible.
Any reputation system that doesn't rely on some central authority to issue it can and will be gamed by crackers. With massive botnets and the like there is simply no way to rely on any number of "individuals" to issue correct information. The only way around this is to have some central authority say "your opinion matters and yours doesn't." Voila, you have the present system.
For unimportant things or things so unimportant the difficulty makes the problem not worthwhile, a distributed reputation system works. Someone above mentioned Ebay. This system works because the rating of individual sellers, while important to them, isn't terribly important to all that many people, and the system is rather difficult for an individual to game. But for a distributed SSL certificate network, not only is the incentive there, but the people involved are massive and extremely technologically sophisticated.
Convergence is unfortunately not the answer. Sure, you can say "I only trust this Notary", but how do you know that Notary is even who you think it is? You can't. The only way is if you have centrally distributed root certificates... and again, same problem you have now. Ultimately, the only real way to get guaranteed SSL security is to call up the bank/ whatever and manually verify the fingerprint. Or get the key on a USB drive at the bank. There simply isn't an easy solution.
And you won't get your average Internet browser to change. People conducting MITM attacks generally aren't concerned with people who are really security conscious. If they actually are conducting targeted attacks against you, then you should have much better security in place. Since most people simply won't switch, even if Convergence was 100% effective it wouldn't matter. Most SSL attacks would still take place just fine.
The only thing IPADs, Tablets, and Phones, lack is a word processor that is decent.
And a decent keyboard, reasonable screen real-estate, HDD space, durability, replaceable/ upgradeable components, and battery life. Other than that, they lack nothing!
Seriously, the reason those things won't replace desktops is the same reason laptops haven't, except much much more so. My desktop has a 24" monitor, a full keyboard, 1.5TB HDD space, and is ~5 years old but with incremental upgrades (technically, only the PS, HDDs, and some of the RAM are original.) Add in that desktops are cheaper and not beholden to a single device maker for software updates, and I don't think desktops will ever really go away (although we will probably transition to thin client systems in the future for businesses at least, I think even that is a ways away.)
This isn't non-mathematical random "music", it is mathematical "music" that is patternless. The first isn't music at all, while the second doesn't qualify by most definitions but could by logical extension (which mathematicians do so love.) I personally, as a musician, don't think either one would be music.
Doesn't matter. You want the launch craft as light as possible, so you wouldn't send an American anyways. :)
Weightless on 1 April
Yeah, might wanna think about that date a little :)
explosions, terror and Micheal Bay movies.
No need to repeat yourself.
Meanwhile the nuclear figures don't contain construction or mining fatalities because it's fairly irrelevant when considering nuclear power, so the solar figures shouldn't either.
Seriously, dude, read the article. He factors in deaths from steel mining for construction, uranium ore mining, concrete workers, etc. Hell, one of the sources he cites factors in radon poisons from uranium ore mine waste. It even mentions greenhouse effects (although obviously that is difficult to determine exactly).
Diagram 6 in this (pdf warning) study shows deaths from major accidents alone (so ignoring constant health dangers of coal etc.) This ignores Fukishima (having not happened when the paper was written, and even now can't be precisely determined, but still). Nuclear is safer, just factoring the risk from major accidents, than hydro, gas, coal, and oil.
As others have pointed out, some of this data is based on a WHO study which is questionable, but even if you double or triple the values for nuclear, it is still safer than most sources of renewable energy. But AFAICT that study is extremely comprehensive on the dangers of energy sources, and nuclear is unequivocally one of the safest.
The figures count construction fatalities. Since most solar panels are roof-mounted (noticed the part were it says "rooftop" next to solar? Yeah, reading a source before commenting on it does help), lots of accidents and therefore lots of deaths. Probably other sources of fatalities too. Another source had non-rooftop solar (which is much lower but still higher than nuclear, ~0.10/TWh IIRC), but I couldn't find it. So... I didn't think you were stupid, no. Might have to revise that estimate now, though.
What a noff-topic point.
You may want to check out, well, the facts.. Nuclear is safer, by far, than any other power source. Yes, nuclear power, for all it's "shoddy" construction (never mind the concrete chimneys are designed to survive jumbo jets flying into them), the fact that power plants have been run for decades longer than intended instead of being replaced by newer, safer, and more efficient models (in part due to regulative costs. I won't get into the irony of that, since most of them have apparently been fixed recently), and counting in the horror that was Chernobyl (which still only managed to kill ~4000 people total), is safer than solar power.
Also, the best sources I can find agree that renewables aren't cheaper than other sources (and won't be for another good 5-15 years. Hence why there are government subsidies for them, at least in the US.) If that were true, we would be seeing a lot more of them. Companies don't buy gas and oil because they like ruining the environment, they do it because it is the cheapest option. Once you make solar, et al. cheaper than the alternatives, then people will start using them.
If the choice was really between solar and nuclear, I would agree with you. The problem is, that isn't the choice. The choice is between coal/ oil and nuclear. Solar (or geothermal and definitely not wind) isn't even a viable option yet. And presented with the dichotomy between nuclear and coal, I will vote for nuclear every single time. So would anyone else who understands how bad coal is (it's worse in normal operation than a nuclear plant is when it breaks down.)
On December 12, 1952, an accident with the experimental NRX reactor at Atomic Energy of Canada’s Chalk River Laboratories caused a partial meltdown. The resulting explosion caused millions of liters of radioactive water to flood the reactor building’s basement, and the reactor’s core was no longer usable.[16] Carter was now ordered to Chalk River, joining other Canadian and American service personnel. He was the officer in charge of the U.S. team assisting in the shutdown of the Chalk River Nuclear Reactor.[17]
So yeah, I would say overseeing a nuclear reactor shutdown/cleanup (including being lowered in personally to work on the reactor) qualifies him for, if not "nuclear engineer", at least "knows a lot about nuclear power." Which is just about "nuclear engineer", considering what most politicians/presidents know about the issue.
Well, we always need cooks and secretaries.