I would like to see naming rights to minor objects and surface features auctioned off to the highest bidder, the proceeds going to research in the field. Think of it as a star registry with official status. The human ego being what it is, naming rights on all the knobs and craters we just found on Pluto might possibly pay for the mission.
That's the problem. France has pre-Charlie laws making it illegal to criticize Islam. Can they reach oiut over the Internet and censor American comics? How about our profusion of ads for greasy fast food? Thailand still makes lèse-majeste, criticizing the king, a crime.
Let each country have fun trying to program a firewall to keep its own version of the bad stuff out.
"Cabs, on the other hand, can be identified by their colour. You can just hail one."
From your spelling, I'm assuming you're not a New Yorker. Yes, the protected medallion cab companies want everyone to stand outside in the rain, vainly screaming "Taxi!" like people in a 1935 George Raft movie.
But now that they are losing the ability to bully customers into using them exclusively, there is the "threat" as they call it, of competition. Instead of being part of that damp crowd you could be reserving a cab with an app while still in the comfort of the restaurant. If the app is well written, it will tell you when to go outside and meet your cab. No need for that picturesquely unruly crowd. And you will now be able to get a cab even if you're black.
"Why don't they just look at the stats of prison inmates?"
Not a good analogue, because being involuntarily cornholed by huge gangbangers carries a raft of unique psychological problems that will not be relevant to those faced by "Martians."
"...many of them secretly (or not so secretly) think that the best thing for the environment is if we (the human race as a whole) weren't alive anymore?"
"...we'll be able to ship excess heat off-planet."
I suppose we wil reach this capability eventually, but long before we get to that point we will be shipping energy-hog industries off planet and importing finished products.
"Ultimately, the source of our power will have to be the sun."
No, going all solar would not be a way around the ultimate heating problem. First, every solar panel 'blackens' its tiny patch of the Earth, this being an area of lower albedo. Then you get the same waste heat from consuming PV electricity as you would get from electricity generated any other way.
In any case, the thermodynamic heating problem has nothing to do with carbon warming and is minuscule in comparison to trapping of solar heat by greenhouse gases.
New Orleans has the inherent problem of being built ion a river delta. All deltas subside slowly with time, even given the same sea level, but in nature are continually replenished at the surface by new silt coming down the river. After you build a city, this process cannot continue.
Has anyone thought of drilling a grid of injection wells throughout New Orleans so that fresh mud could be injected at some calculated level under the city to slowly raise it? This would obviously have to take place at the same rate over the whole grid. What might the best depth be? What would the maximum well spacing be?
"If you live 1,000 ft above current sea level, you may need to be concerned in just 90000 years or so! "
Actually no, because if all the land-based ice (the kind that affects sea level) in the world were to melt, the sea would rise 70m (about 230').
Not all of the effects of global warming even of that magnitude would be catastrophic, or even negative. For example, Florida would disappear entirely.
An artificial market gives rise to bogus trading to game the system and milk it for competitive advantage. A cautionary tale for all believers in social Lysenkoism.
An automated car could be programmed to be pre-empted by emergency vehicles using lights in the standard manner, but how, exactly, would police stops be handled, especially when the stop is a gesture from the side of the road? There is going to have to be a device which police carry that broadcasts a standardized signal to pull over and stop. It will have to be secure against being imitated by criminals, perhaps with frequently-changed security keys.
Just deploying these to all the agencies that will need them is a non-insignificant problem. And cities are going to require that the devices, deployment and maintenance be paid for by the manufacturers.
"If the earth is so fragile and chaotic, you'd think it would have destroyed itself over the last 4.5 billion years. Maybe some of those feedback loops are negative, creating stability rather than chaos?"
As time goes on, the chaotic component of weather assures that any instances of positive feedback out there get triggers\ed, crashing some part of the system until it reaches a local point of stability once more. This means that with time, the natural world around us contains more and more negative (the good kind) feedback.
Yes, I've been following the saga of Ivanpah. By the skin of its teeth, it got built after surviving every lawsuit the flat-earth lobby could throw at it. And this was in the eastern Mojave Desert, the most featureless, empty, godforsaken, sun-blasted place this side of Mercury. An ideal place to build large arrays of solar collectors without affecting anything in the sacred Environment that one would actually care about, but then again it is in California, where there's a hippie mother to weep for the soul of every diamondback whose habitat would now be shaded.
West Texas is not quite as good climatically. It's in the Southwestern monsoon belt, so there some rain in July and August, but it's pretty flat and empty. Now that transmission lines are in - and you can no longer build those in California either, even to connect a windfield to an orphanage - this is now the place to farm for renewables.
Slashdot Mirror
I would like to see naming rights to minor objects and surface features auctioned off to the highest bidder, the proceeds going to research in the field. Think of it as a star registry with official status. The human ego being what it is, naming rights on all the knobs and craters we just found on Pluto might possibly pay for the mission.
"...one of the big misconceptions is that NASA is the only player in space."
Just look at the amazing proliferation of ISS cargo run providers we are seeing today.
"Define hate speech."
That's the problem. France has pre-Charlie laws making it illegal to criticize Islam. Can they reach oiut over the Internet and censor American comics? How about our profusion of ads for greasy fast food? Thailand still makes lèse-majeste, criticizing the king, a crime.
Let each country have fun trying to program a firewall to keep its own version of the bad stuff out.
"Cabs, on the other hand, can be identified by their colour. You can just hail one."
From your spelling, I'm assuming you're not a New Yorker. Yes, the protected medallion cab companies want everyone to stand outside in the rain, vainly screaming "Taxi!" like people in a 1935 George Raft movie.
But now that they are losing the ability to bully customers into using them exclusively, there is the "threat" as they call it, of competition. Instead of being part of that damp crowd you could be reserving a cab with an app while still in the comfort of the restaurant. If the app is well written, it will tell you when to go outside and meet your cab. No need for that picturesquely unruly crowd. And you will now be able to get a cab even if you're black.
Isn't this a neo-colonialist structure that angers the volcano gods? Given today's politics, actually putting the dome on Mars would have been easier.
"Personally I'd say do away with AC posting all together 90% of them are trolling."
I wish that mod points hadn't disappeared!
"Why don't they just look at the stats of prison inmates?"
Not a good analogue, because being involuntarily cornholed by huge gangbangers carries a raft of unique psychological problems that will not be relevant to those faced by "Martians."
"Biosphere II was located in the desert, north of Phoenix, where land is cheap."
You're thinking of Arcosanti. Biosphere II is near Tucson.
"...many of them secretly (or not so secretly) think that the best thing for the environment is if we (the human race as a whole) weren't alive anymore?"
This agenda is no longer even particularly hidden:
http://dgrnewsservice.org/2015...
"In this house we obey the laws of thermodynamics!"
-H. Simpson
No, I think it's the same one.
"...we'll be able to ship excess heat off-planet."
I suppose we wil reach this capability eventually, but long before we get to that point we will be shipping energy-hog industries off planet and importing finished products.
"Ultimately, the source of our power will have to be the sun."
No, going all solar would not be a way around the ultimate heating problem. First, every solar panel 'blackens' its tiny patch of the Earth, this being an area of lower albedo. Then you get the same waste heat from consuming PV electricity as you would get from electricity generated any other way.
In any case, the thermodynamic heating problem has nothing to do with carbon warming and is minuscule in comparison to trapping of solar heat by greenhouse gases.
New Orleans has the inherent problem of being built ion a river delta. All deltas subside slowly with time, even given the same sea level, but in nature are continually replenished at the surface by new silt coming down the river. After you build a city, this process cannot continue.
Has anyone thought of drilling a grid of injection wells throughout New Orleans so that fresh mud could be injected at some calculated level under the city to slowly raise it? This would obviously have to take place at the same rate over the whole grid. What might the best depth be? What would the maximum well spacing be?
"If you live 1,000 ft above current sea level, you may need to be concerned in just 90000 years or so! "
Actually no, because if all the land-based ice (the kind that affects sea level) in the world were to melt, the sea would rise 70m (about 230').
Not all of the effects of global warming even of that magnitude would be catastrophic, or even negative. For example, Florida would disappear entirely.
An artificial market gives rise to bogus trading to game the system and milk it for competitive advantage. A cautionary tale for all believers in social Lysenkoism.
In essence, we all become part of the city's urban transit system.
Yes. The other alternative to have the cities and states pay for the devices, which means paid by the consumer.
An automated car could be programmed to be pre-empted by emergency vehicles using lights in the standard manner, but how, exactly, would police stops be handled, especially when the stop is a gesture from the side of the road? There is going to have to be a device which police carry that broadcasts a standardized signal to pull over and stop. It will have to be secure against being imitated by criminals, perhaps with frequently-changed security keys.
Just deploying these to all the agencies that will need them is a non-insignificant problem. And cities are going to require that the devices, deployment and maintenance be paid for by the manufacturers.
"avoids many of the problems likely to confront conventional fusion power plants.""
Where is this magic industrial park when I can drive down a row of conventional fusion plants?
"What 'commodities' were they using? Gold and platinum, with a dash of uranium?"
No, they used an HP cartridge.
"If the earth is so fragile and chaotic, you'd think it would have destroyed itself over the last 4.5 billion years. Maybe some of those feedback loops are negative, creating stability rather than chaos?"
As time goes on, the chaotic component of weather assures that any instances of positive feedback out there get triggers\ed, crashing some part of the system until it reaches a local point of stability once more. This means that with time, the natural world around us contains more and more negative (the good kind) feedback.
"A wild SJW has appeared!"
If you capture one, remember: no meat, no gluten, no GMOs.
The bandwidth that any one user gets at free nodes is supposed to be limited, especially for non-Virgin customers.
Yes, I've been following the saga of Ivanpah. By the skin of its teeth, it got built after surviving every lawsuit the flat-earth lobby could throw at it. And this was in the eastern Mojave Desert, the most featureless, empty, godforsaken, sun-blasted place this side of Mercury. An ideal place to build large arrays of solar collectors without affecting anything in the sacred Environment that one would actually care about, but then again it is in California, where there's a hippie mother to weep for the soul of every diamondback whose habitat would now be shaded.
West Texas is not quite as good climatically. It's in the Southwestern monsoon belt, so there some rain in July and August, but it's pretty flat and empty. Now that transmission lines are in - and you can no longer build those in California either, even to connect a windfield to an orphanage - this is now the place to farm for renewables.