Saying "God did it" is unacceptable, and that is not critical thinking; it's idiotic thinking.
Really? Why is it so crossways with your thinking to believe in a creator? Is it because it violates your view of the world and you won't admit that your view is not provable either? Idiocy is not realizing that there are other valid base assumptions or being willing to acknowledge your bias then calling folks who don't hold your assumptions names.
Then give us something we can test and verify to prove it. Otherwise we will stick to what the evidence shows us.
I think you misunderstand the crux of the matter here. There are a set of assumptions that you must start with. If you don't assume a creator, so be it, but you cannot dismiss the thinking someone who does make that assumption. I hear you saying "Prove there is a creator". There is evidence for the existence of a creator, despite what you likely think. I may not be able to come up with an overwhelming argument from your prospective, but neither can you prove there is no creator to my satisfaction. You see, it's about the assumptions you start with in this case, and both are not ruled out by evidence.
So don't fool yourself into thinking there is no methodological thinking involved in creationists theory, there generally is. Also don't figure evolution is the "honest to God truth" because there are valid alternative views that involve a creator. The issue is one of starting assumptions and not about scientific methods or logical thinking.
Hadn't thought of that option, but now we are just sending up blimps with solar panels on them? Would we not be at the mercy of the prevailing winds aloft? It will take a lot of energy to stay on station, or at least in view of the power receiver site...
I'm going to need to see that demonstrated though the entire life cycle of the system you describe.
There is going to have to be significantly more energy produced from space borne arrays to account for the transfer losses, make up for the launch energy needed to get the array in orbit, create the ground station and actually create usable amounts of energy above that. Where it might produce a little bit of energy, but my guess is that it simply won't be an energy plus situation, much less a cost efficient means of power generation.
So, I presume that these drones are powered by the power they collect and that they stay aloft at night...
There is no way this works in a financially viable way. Getting any kind of aircraft in the air and keeping it there is a power intensive operation. We only recently demonstrated a solar powered aircraft capable of staying aloft overnight. Even so, it wasn't a power generation platform because it returned with less of a charge in the battery than it left with. So I think they are being a bit optimistic about being able to stay aloft, much less collect enough energy to send some of it home. But let's assume they manage to be power positive.
Now they have to somehow transfer this fraction of the power they collect down some wireless link. This will be extremely inefficient and very hard to do on an industrial scale. Assuming the airborne equipment doesn't wreak the efficiency of the drone, I just don't see how this will be possible.
In the end, this really just looks like a ploy to get government money for R&D work where the execs and owners can skim off funds and not have to worry about making any actual progress. In fact, the less progress the better, because all they will likely prove is stupid this idea actually is. It's just a fly by night operation.
You haven't been in my lab, it's pretty loud in there... Earplugs are standard and in fact are issued for free just inside the door. So, I might or might not hear a PSK conversation over the din. However, in such an environment would not be very hospitable to acoustic communications in the first place. But I don't think that trying to be covert is going to do anything but lower your though put to near useless.
Like in RF communications, AF links will need to have a minimum S/N ratio and bandwidth. If you keep the used frequency out of the normal audio range (say above 16 Khz where only a few folks might hear it) you are going to have to be loud enough and use enough bandwidth that it's going to be hard for even deaf old guys like me not to notice. You might get by me with a carrier centered on 16Khz, but if you are trying to transfer data at any kind of useable data rate (say 9600 bps) you will have a minimum bandwidth of about 10 Khz. Keeping things above 16 Khz means your going to be transmitting between 16 and 26 Khz, which is way outside the usable specs of almost all audio hardware (speakers and microphones) I've happened onto in real life. So the only choice is really going extremely low bandwidth or venture into non covert frequencies and risk detection. I say this is either easily heard, not that useful, prone to interference or low bandwidth.
Never the less, I'm guessing the next thing I'm going to have to do is disable/remove all of the audio hardware..
Oh great... Can't you hackers just leave well enough alone?
I've had to disconnect my network cable, remove the wireless card, and disable all the USB ports to make my machine secure and now I have to disable the audio hardware too? Man, this is getting out of hand..
Seriously though... This is new how? We have been sending data using audio cards between computers for decades. I remember cranking up the cassette tape drive to load programs into my TRS-80 in high school and hooking up to an acoustic modem to get on dial up AOL. Recently I've used my computer to talk to another computer halfway around the world though an RF link provided by my ham radio. Hams routinely transfer "data" over packet, PSK and other modes over audio links using their audio cards in their computers.
Oh, wait, so the ad-hock links are the new thing? Um, not so fast there either. Mesh networks have been around long enough to fall in and out of favor once or twice. Ham radio operators might know about HSMM Mesh http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/ has been doing mesh networks for nearly a decade, and the protocol it uses internally wasn't the first. So this is not new..
I conclude that NOTHING here is new, except perhaps combining an audio network link with a mesh networking protocol.... But I don't see that as ground breaking..
The only thing this will really do is make it necessary to disable/remove audio hardware from secure computers, just because somebody might try to use it for something stupid. Thanks guys (and gals if there are any working on this) for making my life harder...
Sounds like a plan for making lots of money... Hey, I have an idea to add to this..
Why don't we have congress just repeal the laws of thermodynamics? After all, it's these laws that are making all these energy generation programs SOO hard to get done... Without these laws, perpetual motion machines would be possible and we could just get free energy anyplace we wanted. Think of how much more efficient our current generators would be if it wasn't for that Entropy thing?
A guy called "Tesla" had it all figured out way back in the 19th century.
So he said. We just cannot duplicate his experiments because he died and kept no useable documentation. Indications are that where he may have succeeded in transferring energy over RF, it was extremely limited and very short lived. Every attempt to duplicate his claims have shown to be extremely inefficient, so much so that the process is not cost effective for large scale power transmission.
The understatement of the century, references to Tesla aside. Transmitting power without wires is indeed possible, but unsuitable for any kind of industrial level power transfer. Getting a few more than a fraction of a watt though free space on an electromagnetic wave is going to be really difficult and extremely inefficient. Doing it at an industrial scale will be pretty much impossible.
Not true. Texas is connected to the rest of North America at a limited number of interconnects. The Texas grid can be quickly isolated when desired, but the standard configuration has us connected for redundancy. This way we can buy or sell power as necessary to make up gaps or overages in generation capacity.
Texas can be disconnected, but this is an emergency situation and not the normal operating configuration. Being disconnected might be desirable when other areas of the country are unstable or if there is a major problem inside of Texas. The region can be quickly disconnected should it be necessary to protect the Texas or adjoining regions from abnormal power fluctuations, but in general, you want to keep things connected. It provides redundancy, allows you to operate on thinner generation margins and is generally a good idea.
So, we are all normally connected to the same pool of electrical power, or as I put it in my original post, we are all connected to the same three wires. At least in normal circumstances.
You electricity comes from the same three wires as mine here in Texas (assuming Texas hasn't disconnected from the rest of ya'll for some technical reason). We generate using mostly Natural Gas and Nuclear round these parts.
Why do you care? Cause, we are all interconnected here in North America, so you are burning coal and natural gas right along with my using your hydro power down here. Everybody dumps and draws power from the same pot so if you used less, we'd all pollute less.
It's like all the folks who pay extra for "green" power... I find it funny that somebody would elect to pay more for the same thing I get for less. You are no exception, despite where you live. It's the same three wires if you are on the grid.
Huh? 180% efficient by getting 1.8 times the energy out than you put in? Our fuel problems are solved! Just have a few of these 180% efficient cars sitting there and charge up the first one, then charge two cars to 90% from that. Next charge two other cars to 100% from the 90% cars, leaving you with two fully charged cars and two with about half charges. Roll up two more cars and charge them from the half charged cars... Now you have three fully charged cars from just one... See where this is going? Do this enough and it's endless free energy... Yea!
Oh, but wait. What's that pesky law about energy not being created or destroyed? Dang, something is wrong with this...
... you'd think they would have told us if they had.
You'd think they would have told us before October 1 that there were going to be some problems with healthcare.gov. They were either ignorant, incompetent or in denial.
Indications are that they choose to ignore what they where being told by their contractor. They had a political agenda and where choosing to lie about the situation in the off chance of a miracle or that the news cycle rescues them from the public flogging that was (is still) coming.
So far, there hasn't been an earthquake, terrorist attack or something else to deflect public attention from this yet so the beating continues in the polls.
HHS has money they are spending on this. How can the house prevent HHS from doing this? It's not like they can pass a law all by themselves, the Senate AND the president would all have to agree.
It's even more crazy than that... If you actually make it work, you get to stop collecting checks from your deep pocketed client who is desperate to fix it and doesn't really care how much they spend to accomplish their goals. Plus, the longer this goes, the more desperate they will be. As desperation increases, so does the potential profit.
So for the unethical, it's onto the gravy train, start billing as many hours as you can while keeping the train rolling for as long as possible.
Not having the power to make any decisions and working for a bureaucracy only enhances the profit making potential and lowers the risks. You can always claim that the changing requirements are making you late and costing you more, not to mention that because they didn't answer your questions and make timely choices, you are not responsible for the ensuing delays. It's a win win win... Unless of course you are the tax payer.
Tell me, what do YOU think is going to happen? I'm betting we are going to spend a lot of money on nearly nothing and it will be really late.
Of course they've told us. They told us they're doing a "tech surge," and bringing in the "best and brightest," and that the web site will be working smoothly for the "vast majority" of users nine days from now. That's all pretty cut and dry, and there's no way that anyone in the administration would be foolish enough to promise something like that if it weren't plainly true. If it weren't true, that would be due to either staggering incompetence, or a willingness to baldly lie about it, and of course neither of those can be the case with this much scrutiny. So, I don't know what the OP is implying.
This is either sarcastic, or just plain stupid. I'm voting for sarcasm.
"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period." and "The website will be working by... " are both whoppers being told for political purposes.
If you are not sure I'm right you need to read what Fredrick P. Brooks said in "The Mythical Man Month" about such attempts to use a "Tech surge" to get a failing project working. If there is anything I can say for sure, it's that throwing people at a project like this will only make it later and cost more. But this is politics, it's about optics and the sound bite. Plus the media cycle is about 2 weeks so it is usually safe to lie in politics because everybody will forget about it in about 14 days and should they bring back the tape, you just claim that you actually said something else when taken in context.
Sarcasm aside though, this administration is stupid if it really thinks the website will be working anytime before next year, no matter how much money they throw at the problem. But that's the government way... Huge, inefficient drain on resources for very little gain. The very thing that brought the USSR down to it's knees..
How on earth did *they* cause the website to fail? They are pretty much powerless, and have been since 2008. About all they can do is stop their feet and vote for bills Obama will never see, much less sign.
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Saying "God did it" is unacceptable, and that is not critical thinking; it's idiotic thinking.
Really? Why is it so crossways with your thinking to believe in a creator? Is it because it violates your view of the world and you won't admit that your view is not provable either? Idiocy is not realizing that there are other valid base assumptions or being willing to acknowledge your bias then calling folks who don't hold your assumptions names.
Then give us something we can test and verify to prove it. Otherwise we will stick to what the evidence shows us.
I think you misunderstand the crux of the matter here. There are a set of assumptions that you must start with. If you don't assume a creator, so be it, but you cannot dismiss the thinking someone who does make that assumption. I hear you saying "Prove there is a creator". There is evidence for the existence of a creator, despite what you likely think. I may not be able to come up with an overwhelming argument from your prospective, but neither can you prove there is no creator to my satisfaction. You see, it's about the assumptions you start with in this case, and both are not ruled out by evidence.
So don't fool yourself into thinking there is no methodological thinking involved in creationists theory, there generally is. Also don't figure evolution is the "honest to God truth" because there are valid alternative views that involve a creator. The issue is one of starting assumptions and not about scientific methods or logical thinking.
Hadn't thought of that option, but now we are just sending up blimps with solar panels on them? Would we not be at the mercy of the prevailing winds aloft? It will take a lot of energy to stay on station, or at least in view of the power receiver site...
Nope, still not viable.
I'm going to need to see that demonstrated though the entire life cycle of the system you describe.
There is going to have to be significantly more energy produced from space borne arrays to account for the transfer losses, make up for the launch energy needed to get the array in orbit, create the ground station and actually create usable amounts of energy above that. Where it might produce a little bit of energy, but my guess is that it simply won't be an energy plus situation, much less a cost efficient means of power generation.
So, I presume that these drones are powered by the power they collect and that they stay aloft at night...
There is no way this works in a financially viable way. Getting any kind of aircraft in the air and keeping it there is a power intensive operation. We only recently demonstrated a solar powered aircraft capable of staying aloft overnight. Even so, it wasn't a power generation platform because it returned with less of a charge in the battery than it left with. So I think they are being a bit optimistic about being able to stay aloft, much less collect enough energy to send some of it home. But let's assume they manage to be power positive.
Now they have to somehow transfer this fraction of the power they collect down some wireless link. This will be extremely inefficient and very hard to do on an industrial scale. Assuming the airborne equipment doesn't wreak the efficiency of the drone, I just don't see how this will be possible.
In the end, this really just looks like a ploy to get government money for R&D work where the execs and owners can skim off funds and not have to worry about making any actual progress. In fact, the less progress the better, because all they will likely prove is stupid this idea actually is. It's just a fly by night operation.
You haven't been in my lab, it's pretty loud in there... Earplugs are standard and in fact are issued for free just inside the door. So, I might or might not hear a PSK conversation over the din. However, in such an environment would not be very hospitable to acoustic communications in the first place. But I don't think that trying to be covert is going to do anything but lower your though put to near useless.
Like in RF communications, AF links will need to have a minimum S/N ratio and bandwidth. If you keep the used frequency out of the normal audio range (say above 16 Khz where only a few folks might hear it) you are going to have to be loud enough and use enough bandwidth that it's going to be hard for even deaf old guys like me not to notice. You might get by me with a carrier centered on 16Khz, but if you are trying to transfer data at any kind of useable data rate (say 9600 bps) you will have a minimum bandwidth of about 10 Khz. Keeping things above 16 Khz means your going to be transmitting between 16 and 26 Khz, which is way outside the usable specs of almost all audio hardware (speakers and microphones) I've happened onto in real life. So the only choice is really going extremely low bandwidth or venture into non covert frequencies and risk detection. I say this is either easily heard, not that useful, prone to interference or low bandwidth.
Never the less, I'm guessing the next thing I'm going to have to do is disable/remove all of the audio hardware..
Oh great... Can't you hackers just leave well enough alone?
I've had to disconnect my network cable, remove the wireless card, and disable all the USB ports to make my machine secure and now I have to disable the audio hardware too? Man, this is getting out of hand..
Seriously though... This is new how? We have been sending data using audio cards between computers for decades. I remember cranking up the cassette tape drive to load programs into my TRS-80 in high school and hooking up to an acoustic modem to get on dial up AOL. Recently I've used my computer to talk to another computer halfway around the world though an RF link provided by my ham radio. Hams routinely transfer "data" over packet, PSK and other modes over audio links using their audio cards in their computers.
Oh, wait, so the ad-hock links are the new thing? Um, not so fast there either. Mesh networks have been around long enough to fall in and out of favor once or twice. Ham radio operators might know about HSMM Mesh http://www.broadband-hamnet.org/ has been doing mesh networks for nearly a decade, and the protocol it uses internally wasn't the first. So this is not new..
I conclude that NOTHING here is new, except perhaps combining an audio network link with a mesh networking protocol.... But I don't see that as ground breaking..
The only thing this will really do is make it necessary to disable/remove audio hardware from secure computers, just because somebody might try to use it for something stupid. Thanks guys (and gals if there are any working on this) for making my life harder...
Sounds like a plan for making lots of money... Hey, I have an idea to add to this..
Why don't we have congress just repeal the laws of thermodynamics? After all, it's these laws that are making all these energy generation programs SOO hard to get done... Without these laws, perpetual motion machines would be possible and we could just get free energy anyplace we wanted. Think of how much more efficient our current generators would be if it wasn't for that Entropy thing?
Oh wait.... would that work?
But an apt analogy for why this idea is doomed.. Pesky thermodynamics gets in the way again. We need to Repeal those laws..
A guy called "Tesla" had it all figured out way back in the 19th century.
So he said. We just cannot duplicate his experiments because he died and kept no useable documentation. Indications are that where he may have succeeded in transferring energy over RF, it was extremely limited and very short lived. Every attempt to duplicate his claims have shown to be extremely inefficient, so much so that the process is not cost effective for large scale power transmission.
It just terribly inefficient.
The understatement of the century, references to Tesla aside. Transmitting power without wires is indeed possible, but unsuitable for any kind of industrial level power transfer. Getting a few more than a fraction of a watt though free space on an electromagnetic wave is going to be really difficult and extremely inefficient. Doing it at an industrial scale will be pretty much impossible.
BTW, your Hawaiian island reference.. http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/09/visionary-beams/
Not true. Texas is connected to the rest of North America at a limited number of interconnects. The Texas grid can be quickly isolated when desired, but the standard configuration has us connected for redundancy. This way we can buy or sell power as necessary to make up gaps or overages in generation capacity.
Texas can be disconnected, but this is an emergency situation and not the normal operating configuration. Being disconnected might be desirable when other areas of the country are unstable or if there is a major problem inside of Texas. The region can be quickly disconnected should it be necessary to protect the Texas or adjoining regions from abnormal power fluctuations, but in general, you want to keep things connected. It provides redundancy, allows you to operate on thinner generation margins and is generally a good idea.
So, we are all normally connected to the same pool of electrical power, or as I put it in my original post, we are all connected to the same three wires. At least in normal circumstances.
You electricity comes from the same three wires as mine here in Texas (assuming Texas hasn't disconnected from the rest of ya'll for some technical reason). We generate using mostly Natural Gas and Nuclear round these parts.
Why do you care? Cause, we are all interconnected here in North America, so you are burning coal and natural gas right along with my using your hydro power down here. Everybody dumps and draws power from the same pot so if you used less, we'd all pollute less.
It's like all the folks who pay extra for "green" power... I find it funny that somebody would elect to pay more for the same thing I get for less. You are no exception, despite where you live. It's the same three wires if you are on the grid.
I'm a frayed knot... Said the mixed up rope..
sheepishly....
Aren't they in the tea?
When it catches fire?
It creates emissions then...
Huh? 180% efficient by getting 1.8 times the energy out than you put in? Our fuel problems are solved! Just have a few of these 180% efficient cars sitting there and charge up the first one, then charge two cars to 90% from that. Next charge two other cars to 100% from the 90% cars, leaving you with two fully charged cars and two with about half charges. Roll up two more cars and charge them from the half charged cars... Now you have three fully charged cars from just one... See where this is going? Do this enough and it's endless free energy... Yea!
Oh, but wait. What's that pesky law about energy not being created or destroyed? Dang, something is wrong with this...
And getting buried IN your car..
50% of ridiculous is still out of reach, even if the car is on fire..
Oh you C programmers are all alike... The heck with type safety! Who needs it?
You'd think they would have told us before October 1 that there were going to be some problems with healthcare.gov. They were either ignorant, incompetent or in denial.
Indications are that they choose to ignore what they where being told by their contractor. They had a political agenda and where choosing to lie about the situation in the off chance of a miracle or that the news cycle rescues them from the public flogging that was (is still) coming.
So far, there hasn't been an earthquake, terrorist attack or something else to deflect public attention from this yet so the beating continues in the polls.
HHS has money they are spending on this. How can the house prevent HHS from doing this? It's not like they can pass a law all by themselves, the Senate AND the president would all have to agree.
Personally, I think you are all wet..
It's even more crazy than that... If you actually make it work, you get to stop collecting checks from your deep pocketed client who is desperate to fix it and doesn't really care how much they spend to accomplish their goals. Plus, the longer this goes, the more desperate they will be. As desperation increases, so does the potential profit.
So for the unethical, it's onto the gravy train, start billing as many hours as you can while keeping the train rolling for as long as possible.
Not having the power to make any decisions and working for a bureaucracy only enhances the profit making potential and lowers the risks. You can always claim that the changing requirements are making you late and costing you more, not to mention that because they didn't answer your questions and make timely choices, you are not responsible for the ensuing delays. It's a win win win... Unless of course you are the tax payer.
Tell me, what do YOU think is going to happen? I'm betting we are going to spend a lot of money on nearly nothing and it will be really late.
Of course they've told us. They told us they're doing a "tech surge," and bringing in the "best and brightest," and that the web site will be working smoothly for the "vast majority" of users nine days from now. That's all pretty cut and dry, and there's no way that anyone in the administration would be foolish enough to promise something like that if it weren't plainly true. If it weren't true, that would be due to either staggering incompetence, or a willingness to baldly lie about it, and of course neither of those can be the case with this much scrutiny. So, I don't know what the OP is implying.
This is either sarcastic, or just plain stupid. I'm voting for sarcasm.
"If you like your plan, you can keep your plan. Period." and "The website will be working by... " are both whoppers being told for political purposes.
If you are not sure I'm right you need to read what Fredrick P. Brooks said in "The Mythical Man Month" about such attempts to use a "Tech surge" to get a failing project working. If there is anything I can say for sure, it's that throwing people at a project like this will only make it later and cost more. But this is politics, it's about optics and the sound bite. Plus the media cycle is about 2 weeks so it is usually safe to lie in politics because everybody will forget about it in about 14 days and should they bring back the tape, you just claim that you actually said something else when taken in context.
Sarcasm aside though, this administration is stupid if it really thinks the website will be working anytime before next year, no matter how much money they throw at the problem. But that's the government way... Huge, inefficient drain on resources for very little gain. The very thing that brought the USSR down to it's knees..
Republican Sabotage? Surely you jest...
How on earth did *they* cause the website to fail? They are pretty much powerless, and have been since 2008. About all they can do is stop their feet and vote for bills Obama will never see, much less sign.