You're right, the heat flows do balance; the heat entering the object from the air must exactly balance the heat leaving to space due to radiation. But heat flows from high temperature to low, so that means that Tair > Tobject > Tspace i.e. the object can (and must) be cooler than the air.
Yes, but the equilibrium temperature of the object will be between the air temperature and the sky temperature. The object will be cooler than the air, and so heat transfer due to convection will go from the air to the object. However, the object will still be warmer than the sky, so heat transfer due to radiation will go from the object to space.
Sorry, not possible, as per the first law of thermodynamics.
Nope, quite possible per the first law of thermodynamics, as well as the second and zeroth laws.
If the atmosphere is transparent and the object is exposed to the sky, heat can radiate from the object to space (which, even accounting for solar exposure, has a mean effective temperature well below that of air temperature in many places ~ 230K). If the air is still and the object can reflect most of the incident radiation, there is no reason why the object can't cool below air temperature. It is a completely separate mechanism of heat transfer to a different heat sink.
What if the cast votes simply went to the system equivalent of/dev/null? That would be the electronic version of shredding ballots, with no unsightly cleanup or disposal of shredded paper.
Votes? What votes?
...how to land a probe on a comet.
Not.
OK, let's start shooting holes in the OP ignoramus'suggestions:
Q: "But, RTG!"
A: Umm, no, fuck RTG. That is a shitload of mass that the mission simply can't afford. Given that no one (even Slashdot ignoramuses) knew a priori what to expect at the comet surface, cheap and simple solar panels made the most sense.
Q: "But, harpoons didn't work!"
A: Yes, but no one (even Slashdot ignoramuses) knew a priori what to expect at the comet surface. Even if the harpoons worked, no one would really know if that was an advantage or disadvantage,
Bottom line, the average Slashdotter has not designed and deployed a space probe onto a comet surface. So, unless you have, and have the data to prove it, fuck you all and leave the science to the scientists, m'kay script-kiddies? Rocket science is hard, even harder than do loops. Try to wrap your heads around that.
Cool, let's all handle cash that has been breathed upon by anybody with a potentially communicable disease.
Screw phone sanitizers, Ark B needs cash sanitizers.
I was going to bitch about Slashdot editor qualifications, but yes, I do believe robotic elephants would be a suitable solution and will thus let the title stand.
Long live our Eletronic guards!
P.S. I love snarky Slashdot posters! That's why I come here folks! It's all about the snark.
Atmospheric temperatures on Mars can range from 20 deg. C to -150 deg. C, depending on where you are standing and the time of day. Since the atmosphere is so thin the relative importance of convection and radiation heat transfer tilts toward radiation being a bigger player. Standing in the sun when the atmosphere is 20 deg C might be uncomfortably warm as you don't just feel the atmospheric temperature, but you also get a radiation component unrelated to the air temperature. If you have ever skied or hiked in the mountains in the winter, on some clear calm sunny days you may be very warm despite the air temperature being quite frigid.
Upshot is that a suit would need a general thermal regulation capability (heating and cooling).
The thing that drives me nuts over the whole AGW thing is that it is a distraction from the real reason we need to embrace renewables - fossil fuels are non-renewable and will be depleted in hundred years or less. We're passing peak oil now and we're on the downhill slide. Screw the environmental aspects, the socio-economic aspects are what are going to kick our asses if we don't get in gear soon.
We have time to shift to a renewable energy infrastructure, particularly for transportation, but cheap gas slows progress in this regard. Gas will be inexpensive until it costs three of your newborn children for a gallon - it will be a quick hockey-stick exponential cost increase. At that point we will have weeks to build a new infrastructure that really requires decades to implement and must start now.
AGW might actually be a thing, but unfortunately it is based on predictions of the behavior of a wildly chaotic non-linear system, so no one will really know until it happens. We'll be out of fossil fuels before we know for sure. The economic impact is the argument that both the blue and red sides might agree upon. Or not.
The fundamental problem is that the average user cannot ever be certain that somewhere, someone has managed to tap in and listen. This would require that the user know the messaging system completely, and they also would have to have enough knowledge to understand all of the potential failure modes AND know without doubt that all of them were closed.
For everyone else in the world, using this system would have to be a matter of faith that someone with the above capabilities vetted the software correctly AND didn't use their knowledge to corrupt the system for their own gain.
This is impractical and probably impossible to achieve in a fool-proof fashion. The only way to ensure that your messages are not intercepted is to not send the message and assume messaging channels are compromised until proven otherwise (and good luck proving that). Everything else will involve a big leap of faith.
But why put the voting mechanics into a computer that the average Joe doesn't understand enough to verify? What is the advantage?
The least technically literate person eligible to cast a vote should be able to understand and verify the vote casting and counting technology. Everybody understands paper; the same cannot be said for Bitcoin blockchains.
Stalin has been quoted as saying "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything". I'm not sure whether that is an accurate quote or translation, but it is a thought-provoking statement.
In the U.S. outright voter fraud is possible but rare. A better statement would be "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who choose the candidates decide everything."
In the U.S. you can have a "free and fair" election, but generally only have the "choice" of only two candidates (Tweedledee and Tweedledum) for a given office. They have a good time pissing away money artificially trumpeting the illusion that there are differences between the candidates, but in the end you get two candidates who will pretty much do the same as the other once elected. People and corporations with deeper pockets than mine have already guaranteed that either one of the two will do their bidding when elected.
The real election has already occurred.
SS2 is the space equivalent of the biplane barnstormer giving rides around the fairgrounds post WWI. Not everyone could afford it, and it didn't really get you anywhere except 'up'. People died doing it every now and again too.
But people who took these rides a) had money and b) were able to see things from a different viewpoint and c) saw potential. These short rides turned into mail delivery, then short haul passenger service, then to airlines.
Take that short parabolic arc and extend it a bit, and you have a high speed passenger service between two airports/spaceports. NY to LA in 15 minutes? Yes, this is still Concorde-level cost wise, but people would pay for the experience and to actually travel in a timely manner.
Higher speeds and altitudes and you can get to the other side of the Earth in 45 minutes. Much more fun and adventurous than a 13+ hr flight.
Perhaps it will never advance to the point that commercial aviation has done (i.e. the travel mode for the masses), but then again, perhaps it will. If people want to try to do this, and people want to pay to do it with knowledge of the risks, I say let them. If we don't dare we will never advance.
The Russians lifted this idea from Han Solo in ESB - just hiding out in the Imperial Destroyer's garbage dump. If Boba Fett can see through that ploy, so can the US.
Read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
If our technology is the root cause for the apocalypse, the survivors may not want that technology anymore. If you have one of these Ipads/books, you better keep it out of sight for a while else the mob might get you.
Gosh, I guess we should just sit around and bang rocks together and grunt...until someone from the rock protection lobby sends a cease and desist letter for banging rocks. Or until the chimpanzees claim infringement on their "entertainment systems" patents.
How many contextual ads are for things the user just bought? These people are probably the *least* likely future customers.
I recently reinstalled my OS and started Chrome without AdBlock for the first time in a while. God, the internet is like walking through Times Square on an acid trip without AdBlock. It would be sadly funny if it didn't bring my browser to a crawl.
Online advertising is a waste of money as it often irritates the very people it is intended to draw in as customers. Actually searching online for something is terrible as the results you get are invariably based on page rank, not on the suitability of the product for the customer.
Slashdot Mirror
You're right, the heat flows do balance; the heat entering the object from the air must exactly balance the heat leaving to space due to radiation. But heat flows from high temperature to low, so that means that Tair > Tobject > Tspace i.e. the object can (and must) be cooler than the air.
Yes, but the equilibrium temperature of the object will be between the air temperature and the sky temperature. The object will be cooler than the air, and so heat transfer due to convection will go from the air to the object. However, the object will still be warmer than the sky, so heat transfer due to radiation will go from the object to space.
Sorry, not possible, as per the first law of thermodynamics.
Nope, quite possible per the first law of thermodynamics, as well as the second and zeroth laws. If the atmosphere is transparent and the object is exposed to the sky, heat can radiate from the object to space (which, even accounting for solar exposure, has a mean effective temperature well below that of air temperature in many places ~ 230K). If the air is still and the object can reflect most of the incident radiation, there is no reason why the object can't cool below air temperature. It is a completely separate mechanism of heat transfer to a different heat sink.
What if the cast votes simply went to the system equivalent of /dev/null? That would be the electronic version of shredding ballots, with no unsightly cleanup or disposal of shredded paper.
Votes? What votes?
Behold the Turbo Encabulator
This is just wonderful. I've had a crappy day (literally, my sewer line backed up). Just got cleaned up and found this. All is well.
...how to land a probe on a comet. Not. OK, let's start shooting holes in the OP ignoramus'suggestions: Q: "But, RTG!" A: Umm, no, fuck RTG. That is a shitload of mass that the mission simply can't afford. Given that no one (even Slashdot ignoramuses) knew a priori what to expect at the comet surface, cheap and simple solar panels made the most sense. Q: "But, harpoons didn't work!" A: Yes, but no one (even Slashdot ignoramuses) knew a priori what to expect at the comet surface. Even if the harpoons worked, no one would really know if that was an advantage or disadvantage, Bottom line, the average Slashdotter has not designed and deployed a space probe onto a comet surface. So, unless you have, and have the data to prove it, fuck you all and leave the science to the scientists, m'kay script-kiddies? Rocket science is hard, even harder than do loops. Try to wrap your heads around that.
Cool, let's all handle cash that has been breathed upon by anybody with a potentially communicable disease. Screw phone sanitizers, Ark B needs cash sanitizers.
I was going to bitch about Slashdot editor qualifications, but yes, I do believe robotic elephants would be a suitable solution and will thus let the title stand. Long live our Eletronic guards! P.S. I love snarky Slashdot posters! That's why I come here folks! It's all about the snark.
Atmospheric temperatures on Mars can range from 20 deg. C to -150 deg. C, depending on where you are standing and the time of day. Since the atmosphere is so thin the relative importance of convection and radiation heat transfer tilts toward radiation being a bigger player. Standing in the sun when the atmosphere is 20 deg C might be uncomfortably warm as you don't just feel the atmospheric temperature, but you also get a radiation component unrelated to the air temperature. If you have ever skied or hiked in the mountains in the winter, on some clear calm sunny days you may be very warm despite the air temperature being quite frigid. Upshot is that a suit would need a general thermal regulation capability (heating and cooling).
The thing that drives me nuts over the whole AGW thing is that it is a distraction from the real reason we need to embrace renewables - fossil fuels are non-renewable and will be depleted in hundred years or less. We're passing peak oil now and we're on the downhill slide. Screw the environmental aspects, the socio-economic aspects are what are going to kick our asses if we don't get in gear soon. We have time to shift to a renewable energy infrastructure, particularly for transportation, but cheap gas slows progress in this regard. Gas will be inexpensive until it costs three of your newborn children for a gallon - it will be a quick hockey-stick exponential cost increase. At that point we will have weeks to build a new infrastructure that really requires decades to implement and must start now. AGW might actually be a thing, but unfortunately it is based on predictions of the behavior of a wildly chaotic non-linear system, so no one will really know until it happens. We'll be out of fossil fuels before we know for sure. The economic impact is the argument that both the blue and red sides might agree upon. Or not.
The fundamental problem is that the average user cannot ever be certain that somewhere, someone has managed to tap in and listen. This would require that the user know the messaging system completely, and they also would have to have enough knowledge to understand all of the potential failure modes AND know without doubt that all of them were closed. For everyone else in the world, using this system would have to be a matter of faith that someone with the above capabilities vetted the software correctly AND didn't use their knowledge to corrupt the system for their own gain. This is impractical and probably impossible to achieve in a fool-proof fashion. The only way to ensure that your messages are not intercepted is to not send the message and assume messaging channels are compromised until proven otherwise (and good luck proving that). Everything else will involve a big leap of faith.
But why put the voting mechanics into a computer that the average Joe doesn't understand enough to verify? What is the advantage? The least technically literate person eligible to cast a vote should be able to understand and verify the vote casting and counting technology. Everybody understands paper; the same cannot be said for Bitcoin blockchains.
No hanging chads on a marked paper ballot.
We'll "get it right" when we knock off the electronic BS and use what has been tested to work, marked paper ballots. It.Just.Works.
It's reality that is frequently inaccurate.
(puts pinkie to corner of mouth)... "999,999 Zimbabwean Dollars!" (cronies laugh uproariously in background)
Stalin has been quoted as saying "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything". I'm not sure whether that is an accurate quote or translation, but it is a thought-provoking statement. In the U.S. outright voter fraud is possible but rare. A better statement would be "The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who choose the candidates decide everything." In the U.S. you can have a "free and fair" election, but generally only have the "choice" of only two candidates (Tweedledee and Tweedledum) for a given office. They have a good time pissing away money artificially trumpeting the illusion that there are differences between the candidates, but in the end you get two candidates who will pretty much do the same as the other once elected. People and corporations with deeper pockets than mine have already guaranteed that either one of the two will do their bidding when elected. The real election has already occurred.
SS2 is the space equivalent of the biplane barnstormer giving rides around the fairgrounds post WWI. Not everyone could afford it, and it didn't really get you anywhere except 'up'. People died doing it every now and again too. But people who took these rides a) had money and b) were able to see things from a different viewpoint and c) saw potential. These short rides turned into mail delivery, then short haul passenger service, then to airlines. Take that short parabolic arc and extend it a bit, and you have a high speed passenger service between two airports/spaceports. NY to LA in 15 minutes? Yes, this is still Concorde-level cost wise, but people would pay for the experience and to actually travel in a timely manner. Higher speeds and altitudes and you can get to the other side of the Earth in 45 minutes. Much more fun and adventurous than a 13+ hr flight. Perhaps it will never advance to the point that commercial aviation has done (i.e. the travel mode for the masses), but then again, perhaps it will. If people want to try to do this, and people want to pay to do it with knowledge of the risks, I say let them. If we don't dare we will never advance.
The Russians lifted this idea from Han Solo in ESB - just hiding out in the Imperial Destroyer's garbage dump. If Boba Fett can see through that ploy, so can the US.
Read A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz If our technology is the root cause for the apocalypse, the survivors may not want that technology anymore. If you have one of these Ipads/books, you better keep it out of sight for a while else the mob might get you.
The British fondly revere those who can maintain a stiff upper lip under trying circumstances.
Captain Scott's upper lip was decidedly stiff at the end of his expedition, as was his lower lip and the rest of him for that matter.
Gosh, I guess we should just sit around and bang rocks together and grunt...until someone from the rock protection lobby sends a cease and desist letter for banging rocks. Or until the chimpanzees claim infringement on their "entertainment systems" patents.
How many contextual ads are for things the user just bought? These people are probably the *least* likely future customers.
I recently reinstalled my OS and started Chrome without AdBlock for the first time in a while. God, the internet is like walking through Times Square on an acid trip without AdBlock. It would be sadly funny if it didn't bring my browser to a crawl.
Online advertising is a waste of money as it often irritates the very people it is intended to draw in as customers. Actually searching online for something is terrible as the results you get are invariably based on page rank, not on the suitability of the product for the customer.
...it's the only way to be sure.