Actually, these things are important because they mean a constant source of energy (from solar cells) and a relatively constant energy requirement (for heating the place.) If you don't have to keep a lot of energy storage around then you can build a smaller cheaper moonbase. Save a billion here, a billion there and it might actually get built.
Of the people I know at NASA, I'd have to say that I know not a single one who thinks that way. Of course, that could just be that I know only optimists. HST has been a huge success for NASA in spite of failures and NASA people seem to believe they do their best work when unforseen difficulties have to be resolved (Apollo 13 got this spot on.) Hubble has generated an enormous amount of scientific discoveries plus fabulous pictures to show to the kids. Everyone I know of at NASA calls it a big plus and not to be swept under the rug.
One can disagree with that. As Voyager gets further and further away, the radio receivers required to hear it and transmit to it must get more powerful/ more sensitive (read that as more expensive.) The Mars probes, sitting on Mars, are at a relatively fixed distance from Earth (note to planetary orbital geeks: I know that the distance isn't really fixed, it just varies within the limits of E + M to M - E and I don't care to describe the pattern of this distribution, just permit "relatively fixed" to be adequate.) and hence have fixed reception/ transmission requirements. Thus an important component of their costs don't acclerate upward and outward as Voyager's do.
. . . maybe the Chinese will end up giving NASA the drive it needs to get a working space program. China's economy isn't on the rocks like the USSR during the space race so they would actually be able to compete with us.
China's space technology is virtually an exact copy of what they got from us due to their friendship with Bill Clinton. They haven't 'advanced' the tech one iota since he left office. They've completed projects they've had planned, but their science isn't on a par with NASA by a long shot.
I personally would rather see the degradation of information over time or generations of tellings. I'm presuming most people have done this in school, with one person getting the story from a written source and a sequence of people telling the story one to another and seeing how accurately the original story is retained. I had a sociology class were this was done in a myths and legends context.
For years every member of the military has had to submit to fingerprinting and having their dental records retained for exactly the same reason. Both of those could also be miss-used. I for one would rather know that a million extra fingerprints, dental records and even DNA were kept, that one guilty person might be caught.
I am not saying that cellphones are worthless. I am saying that if you have a choice between a land line connection and a cellular one that the landline one will save energy. I've got a mobile phone and if it saves me a trip I consider that great.
Like any technology they can be used efficiently or inefficiently and they do have a hidden energy cost. No ethical judgement passed by me.
I'm just curious who moderated this comment as flamebait. Disagree sure, plenty of people do, but flamebait? I hope you get your come uppance from the meta-moderators.
The cell phone itself is probably using about the same amount of energy as the landline handset, but the connection between one cell phone and another cell phone involves going through a transmission tower, which has very heady electricity consumption requirements.
When I call you, cell phone to cell phone, my phone generates a very weak signal, which is picked up by the tower, amplified greatly and transmitted to the tower nearest to you and sent to your cell phone, which because it's a very small receiver has to get a fairly high powered transmission. Your signal follows the reverse path.
It's actually the transmission towers and their need to hook up to honestly, pretty lousy transmitters and receivers in all of our cell phones, which is very energy inefficient.
Sorry for the inexactness, but I don't like being called a troll.
Considering that the actual wattage usage of a cell phone is more than 2 and a half times as great as the same connection via landline, I find the increase in cell phones hardly something to be admired.
Just my ex-Greenpeace side kicking through though.
Actually, this smacks of a classic political turf battle. NASA has been a political agency since day one. The Houston Space Center was a payoff to Sen (later VP) LB Johnson of Texas. Mikulski is a Democrat from Maryland and unless she and her fellow Dems get more cooperative, her request is unlikely to amount to much. The Mars mission would be launched from Florida and run from Houston, both Bush states.
That being said, I think NASA should launch a Hubble rescue mission but announce it from the start as the last upgrade. Renew the equipment (gyros, fuel, instruments, etc) and attach the eventual de-orbit module rocket packs. Make a final schedule and publish some objective, engineer-certified, standards for when it will be de-orbitted. Then run it until that day/ hour and then plunk it.
Anti-American comments about to break out here !!! We all know the USA id the root of all evil in the world. Heck, Amnesty International claims that Iraqi women were better off under Sadaam Hussein and that American soldiers are mass raping them. ((Reality check, please!!!))
the texts it has worked on. If all you give this programme is a steady diet of weather reports to translate and learn from, it will make everything else sound like a weather report. Most contexts employ similiar words with a significant contextual meaning to them. 'Pea-soup' means very different things in weather reports and cooking recipes.
Who else distributes high quality images for free?
As a US taxpayer, if a server goes down a month before it is supposed to be retired, I say good, save the money by not rebuilding it.
I hope the peace loving French, recipients of Sadaam Hussein's billions of dollars stolen from the Iraqi people can provide the world with such images for free.
Dave, I hope you are still reading because I've done some digging on this one. It turns out that 60% of the retributive force of Kyoto is aimed at the USA in spite of the USA only contributing 25% of the pollution. Now, this calculates out as requiring more than $90 billion per year to address in the USA (a conservative estimate.) That is, to adhere to Kyoto, the USA would have to spend more per year than a) the GDP of 90% of the world's countries, b) more than is spent in Iraq every year, c) more than is spent in any single department of the USA government and c) more than the cost of WWII over all years. We haven't got that kind of money to spare and we aren't planning to borrow more to do it.
IMHO it is quite clear that a terrorist, with adequate education, can aquire/ develop a plan for a working nuclear device.
Getting the nuclear material and refining it to useable weapons grade is much harder. Then again, given proper funding or complete disregard for ones own populace (see North Korea) it is possible.
Slashdot Mirror
Game on.
No way!!!
Actually, these things are important because they mean a constant source of energy (from solar cells) and a relatively constant energy requirement (for heating the place.) If you don't have to keep a lot of energy storage around then you can build a smaller cheaper moonbase. Save a billion here, a billion there and it might actually get built.
Of the people I know at NASA, I'd have to say that I know not a single one who thinks that way. Of course, that could just be that I know only optimists. HST has been a huge success for NASA in spite of failures and NASA people seem to believe they do their best work when unforseen difficulties have to be resolved (Apollo 13 got this spot on.) Hubble has generated an enormous amount of scientific discoveries plus fabulous pictures to show to the kids. Everyone I know of at NASA calls it a big plus and not to be swept under the rug.
No. The peak of my intelligence is required just to post on Slashdot.
I think these are the same reasons for treating the Earth we live on decently.
Spirit and Opportunity will still be there, they might put up a fight.
One can disagree with that. As Voyager gets further and further away, the radio receivers required to hear it and transmit to it must get more powerful/ more sensitive (read that as more expensive.) The Mars probes, sitting on Mars, are at a relatively fixed distance from Earth (note to planetary orbital geeks: I know that the distance isn't really fixed, it just varies within the limits of E + M to M - E and I don't care to describe the pattern of this distribution, just permit "relatively fixed" to be adequate.) and hence have fixed reception/ transmission requirements. Thus an important component of their costs don't acclerate upward and outward as Voyager's do.
. . . maybe the Chinese will end up giving NASA the drive it needs to get a working space program. China's economy isn't on the rocks like the USSR during the space race so they would actually be able to compete with us.
China's space technology is virtually an exact copy of what they got from us due to their friendship with Bill Clinton. They haven't 'advanced' the tech one iota since he left office. They've completed projects they've had planned, but their science isn't on a par with NASA by a long shot.
What wrong on no grammer checkings?
I personally would rather see the degradation of information over time or generations of tellings. I'm presuming most people have done this in school, with one person getting the story from a written source and a sequence of people telling the story one to another and seeing how accurately the original story is retained. I had a sociology class were this was done in a myths and legends context.
For years every member of the military has had to submit to fingerprinting and having their dental records retained for exactly the same reason. Both of those could also be miss-used. I for one would rather know that a million extra fingerprints, dental records and even DNA were kept, that one guilty person might be caught.
Not a word from this ex-Greenpeace slashdotter.
I am not saying that cellphones are worthless. I am saying that if you have a choice between a land line connection and a cellular one that the landline one will save energy. I've got a mobile phone and if it saves me a trip I consider that great.
Like any technology they can be used efficiently or inefficiently and they do have a hidden energy cost. No ethical judgement passed by me.
I'm just curious who moderated this comment as flamebait. Disagree sure, plenty of people do, but flamebait? I hope you get your come uppance from the meta-moderators.
I may have been missinterpreted.
The cell phone itself is probably using about the same amount of energy as the landline handset, but the connection between one cell phone and another cell phone involves going through a transmission tower, which has very heady electricity consumption requirements.
When I call you, cell phone to cell phone, my phone generates a very weak signal, which is picked up by the tower, amplified greatly and transmitted to the tower nearest to you and sent to your cell phone, which because it's a very small receiver has to get a fairly high powered transmission. Your signal follows the reverse path.
It's actually the transmission towers and their need to hook up to honestly, pretty lousy transmitters and receivers in all of our cell phones, which is very energy inefficient.
Sorry for the inexactness, but I don't like being called a troll.
Considering that the actual wattage usage of a cell phone is more than 2 and a half times as great as the same connection via landline, I find the increase in cell phones hardly something to be admired.
Just my ex-Greenpeace side kicking through though.
Actually, this smacks of a classic political turf battle. NASA has been a political agency since day one. The Houston Space Center was a payoff to Sen (later VP) LB Johnson of Texas. Mikulski is a Democrat from Maryland and unless she and her fellow Dems get more cooperative, her request is unlikely to amount to much. The Mars mission would be launched from Florida and run from Houston, both Bush states.
That being said, I think NASA should launch a Hubble rescue mission but announce it from the start as the last upgrade. Renew the equipment (gyros, fuel, instruments, etc) and attach the eventual de-orbit module rocket packs. Make a final schedule and publish some objective, engineer-certified, standards for when it will be de-orbitted. Then run it until that day/ hour and then plunk it.
I find an MS is statistics most useful to pair with my info science degree.
Anti-American comments about to break out here !!! We all know the USA id the root of all evil in the world. Heck, Amnesty International claims that Iraqi women were better off under Sadaam Hussein and that American soldiers are mass raping them. ((Reality check, please!!!))
the texts it has worked on. If all you give this programme is a steady diet of weather reports to translate and learn from, it will make everything else sound like a weather report. Most contexts employ similiar words with a significant contextual meaning to them. 'Pea-soup' means very different things in weather reports and cooking recipes.
Who else distributes high quality images for free?
As a US taxpayer, if a server goes down a month before it is supposed to be retired, I say good, save the money by not rebuilding it.
I hope the peace loving French, recipients of Sadaam Hussein's billions of dollars stolen from the Iraqi people can provide the world with such images for free.
Dave, I hope you are still reading because I've done some digging on this one. It turns out that 60% of the retributive force of Kyoto is aimed at the USA in spite of the USA only contributing 25% of the pollution. Now, this calculates out as requiring more than $90 billion per year to address in the USA (a conservative estimate.) That is, to adhere to Kyoto, the USA would have to spend more per year than a) the GDP of 90% of the world's countries, b) more than is spent in Iraq every year, c) more than is spent in any single department of the USA government and c) more than the cost of WWII over all years. We haven't got that kind of money to spare and we aren't planning to borrow more to do it.
Help stamp out and abolish redundancy (again) !!!
This would also improve machine translation of human languages quite a lot.
There was an effort at Cambridge University in the 1960s (called the CLRU, Cambridge Language Research Unit) to do exactly this.
IMHO it is quite clear that a terrorist, with adequate education, can aquire/ develop a plan for a working nuclear device.
Getting the nuclear material and refining it to useable weapons grade is much harder. Then again, given proper funding or complete disregard for ones own populace (see North Korea) it is possible.