Icebergs are natural, icebergs so far up north aren't.
Actually, if you read the TFA, or know anything about icebergs - you'll realize you are full of crap. Icebergs have been sited near NZ in the past - it's a rare occurence, but it does happen. A singular reccurence of something that has happened in the recent past and repeatedly across recorded history does not constitute proof (or disproof) of anything.
Perhaps I've been sleeping in class, but I thought the whole "peak oil" thing we've been hearing about had to do with refining facilities rather than extraction efforts.
I also thought it was uncontroversial that there are huge reservoirs that will become economically feasible for exploitation if the price goes up enough. Something about Canada... IIRC.
It's uncontroversial that they exist, but opinions vary greatly about what they will cost to exploit.
I doubt scanning GE provides much more than warm fuzzy feeling to the scanners - as the data is routinely anwhere from 1-5 years (or more) out of date. The article itself is little more than a fuzzy headed puff piece.
It seems you haven't read the article, otherwise you would of read where it says "When Google Earth updated these images earlier this year with higher resolution versions, we could find nearly all the disturbances in the forest. Our guys have been finding gold mines we didn't know about at all."
Actually, I did read the article - and dismissed the above statement as PR, as even Googles recently updated high res data is... you guessed it, 1-5 years out of date. (The update was recent - the data varies greatly in age.) The article implies, nay states outright, that they use Google Earth for searching for incursions - which is fine for those that a) existed at the unknown date in the past then the photo was taken and, b) exists currently. I suspect that's a bare fraction of the incursions, so they found a few new ones they didn't know about - bully for them! Google Earth won't show the ones established last week.
Interestingly enough, the congress that authorized the money for the development of the shuttle also made a stipulation that the plans of the previous generation of Apollo rockets had to be destroyed - in other words, go forward or don't go.
That may have happened in some alternate universe - but in this one, the plans are in a variety of archives.
I've been wondering for years why we would ever want to step foot again on the moon given the risks and massive costs (other than the obviously political reason of: the chinese are doing it).
The problem with your theory is that the Chinese aren't doing it. The head of their space agency has spun a pipe dream he hopes to someday accomplish - but thats about it. To call the pace of the Chinese [manned] space program 'glacial' is unfair to the glacier, as it implies it is virtually unmoving.
Those maps are out of date, it'll be useless to find new operations.
They have satellites up there which are dedicated to monitoring the amazon, as well as radar stations on the ground. So they're using google earth for mapping, not for imaging, I would infer.
TFA directly states that they are obtaining evidence from Google Earth of the existence of the mines and other incursions - I.E. for imaging, not mapping.
I know that they have active satellites in orbit currently because my father worked on the project that put them there. I'm rather puzzled though by this story which does not mention either the company my father works for nor the name of the project.
Your reference is a puff piece from eight years ago, it's entirely possible that the birds/system is not present, or entirely operational. Or it may not produce imagery of high enough quality, (land use images can be fairly coarse and still usefull). The lack of mention of them in TFA may indicate (if it is operational) that they are not available to the activists.
OTOH - TFA is a fuzzy headed puff piece, so their ignorance of sources of information other than populist ones can easily be explained by their naivete.
If you replace "everyone else" with "the vast majority" than the grandposter's comment is correct.
No, it remains fantasy nonsense - as no such consensus holds, except by Peak Oil advocates who do not constitute a majority of the field.
The vast majority of scientists in this field don't understand how oil companies can keep on saying "business as usual" when their product is running out.
An odd assertion - since I see no such consensus, except (as I have said) among a particular political subgroup.
Most scientists do recognise it would be feasibly possible for oil companies to hold the world to ransom and say "we'll offer you this sub-standard product for 100x the price you use to pay" but that is more blackmail than proper business.
Anyone who claims that is, quite frankly, deranged. This is again, a consensus that arises from a particular political belief - not science.
I doubt scanning GE provides much more than warm fuzzy feeling to the scanners - as the data is routinely anwhere from 1-5 years (or more) out of date. The article itself is little more than a fuzzy headed puff piece.
Which brings me to one last point I'd like to make on this topic. I think that this cat n' mouse game of Blizzard versus the cheaters is good for AI. The last possible domain we have is people writing applications that extract data from video memory and use computer vision algorithms to write if-then-case bots. Yes, bots are bad but this is driving people to a corner where they essentially strive to pass the Turing Test... after all, you don't want a GM messaging your bot as he sits idle doing his repetitive task, do you?
Actually - it's probably doing very litte for AI research. The hackers work isn't being peer reviewed and published - and I find it very unlikely that you have an AI researcher who is an WoW 'black hat' on the side.
I don't think people are quite grasping the significance of this.
What will happen when we have replicators (like the ones on Star Trek) that allow us to replicate everything in the real world quickly and easily? (not just music)
Think about it... the end of scarcity.
Only in some fantasy world where the replicator creates its copies from thin air - rather than manipulating and modifying existing material, and where the energy costs are negligible or free.
I.E. a world where the laws of physics have been repealed and replaced by magic.
The businesses that are closing were all operating on the wrong business model. Rather than try to make money selling the same object over and over, as if each copy had some value, they should have been figuring out ways to make money selling unique, individually created, bespoke objects.
Ah - the ever popular 'blame the victim' arguement...
Not to mention the fact - there is a reason why, IRL and ISL, there aren't hordes of people creating 'unique, individually created, bespoke objects'; nobody will pay for them! That model is fundementally broken.
But if you could create something new for each person, then you'd not be selling bits, but your creative labor and skills -- it's not "bits" that you're selling anymore, but "service." That's a sustainable, proven business model.
The problem is, it takes anywhere from 5-10 hours (at a bare minimum) to create a new object - any guesses how much the new object must then be sold for? As I said, there's a reason why your local mall has a Target rather than a slew of custom clothing makers - and the same economic model holds in SL.
I will believe this when I hear that the oil companies have built enough new refinery capacity to process all this oil for the next 14 years. Let them put their money where their mouth is. If the oil companies actually believed that peak oil were not the case, they would be building capacity so they could sell all that they could pump.
If an oil company did this - I'd think they'd gone stark frigging insane.
Why?
Because refineries are horribly capital intensive - it takes decades (under the best of circumstances) to repay the investment. Why would you do something that risky when you know that Americans aren't going suddenly to start driving 'x' times as much just because you refine 'y' times as much. (Ditto for the other uses of petrochemicals, fertilizers, drugs, plastics, etc... etc...) The market is pretty inelastic, the demand fairly steady, and the changes fairly predictable. (And its not just the refinery you have to upsize - its also your distribution network etc...) Even worse - any additional income comes after a decade or more of design, construction, and lawsuits from NIMBY's and greens.
Its nowhere near as simple as you seem to believe.
Hell, in 1879 Edison invented the light bulb. Who would have thought after 100+ years, the only thing a house from 1890 and 2006 would have in common is a lightbulb?
And any number of pieces and types of furniture, as well as plumbing fixtures, door handles, etc.. etc..
Well, instead of just saying "tough shit", and giving up, some of us have come up with better metrics to judge what "experts" say.
The problem is, you confuse cheap shots and personal biases with metrics. They aren't the same.
One of the methods people use to evaluate the statements of experts (without becoming experts themselves) is to try to find out if they have an agenda beyond educating people about stuff.
That's very true - but nobody here as adressed that issue. Instead they claim an organization that studies energy policy must be biased - because they invite people knowledgeable about energy policy to speak at their conferences! That's pretty much a clear cut case of dammed if they do, and dammed if they don't.
I can't imagine why an energy research organization would actually seek out and listen to national energy secretaries in developing energy analysis - can't they just publish some near-term doom-and-gloom conclusions with only selective data like everyone else?
So when a single company with stated links to oil-producing countries comes up with the conclusion that we should continue to rely on oil, that's "seeking out and listening... in developing energy analysis", but when "everyone else" (and that does include pretty much everyone) comes to opposite conclusion, that's "doom-and-gloom... with only selective data"?
The problem with that theory is that "everyone else" doesn't uniformly come to the [near term] "doom-and-gloom" conclusion that Peak Oil advocates do. Estimates vary (wildly) as to exactly how much oil remains that is extractable economically at current prices - and even more wildly when it comes to the amounts economically extractable as prices rise.
That's some good, objective critical thinking skills you got there...
In addition to the general comfort provided by more warmth and sunlight, there is actually a huge environmental benefit. A 20 degree increase in temperatures for a large metro area would significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions and conserve plenty of fuel that would have been used for heating.
And dumping significant amounts of heat higher up in the atmosphere won't have any detrimental effect? (The atmosphere is not 100% transparent to visible light - thus some of the light you reflect to the surface will end up heating the atmospher column it passes through.)
From what I understood of the limited amount we were told
Of course, the trick was not producing the image per-se, but producing it fast enough to be useful as part of a firing solution, i,.e a crystal clear shot of the target that takes 5 minutes to produce is of limited utility
I suspect you misunderstood entirely - as a crystal clear picture is pretty useless in generating a firing solution, whether produced in 5 nanoseconds or 5 minutes. To generate a firing solution, you need (at a minimum) relative position and hopefully range. Once you have several sucessive sets, you can derive the reminder of the firing terms merely from the change in relative position. [1]
Pictures don't help do this except in bad SF movies where they put crosshairs on a screen. Pictures *do* help with positive target ID (I.E. screening out decoys.)
[1] You can derive range and velocity from sucessive relative positions by plugging in 'guesses' as to each and seeing if they produce an identical set of relative positions. Of course the more terms you have to start with (derived directly from observation), the more you can constrain the spread of any remaining terms that must be 'guessed' and the faster you can obtain a solution.
Disclaimer: Yes, I have worked fire control IRL, just not on this kind of system. I have studied systems much akin to it as a non-professional.
Ah, back in the good old days when 640K _was_ enough for anyone...
Dude, my first computer had 256 Bytes (not K -- *BYTES*) of memory (Built form the September 1976 issue of Popular Electronics -- Build Your Own Microcomputer, based on the COSMAC 1802 processor). 640K was beyond freaking imagination.
Yep. And the computer that controlled the Apollo spacecraft (designed while Billy Boy was still in single digit years), wasn't much better than your homebrew (around 8K IIRC). The fire control system I worked on in the Navy (I was in over the eighties, the system was designed in the seventies) controlled sixteen missiles (each with eight warheads) using around 512K.
Fact is - most folks (including programmers) forget, or never knew in the first place, how much can be done with quite little. Cheap memory, fast processors, and cheap hard drives encourage sloppy habits.
The second monolith was a simple beacon to indicate when mankind was ready to travel away from its home planet. It was buried under the crust of the moon, and the ONLY indication it gave to humanity was that it disturbed the natural magnetic flux of an inert rocky ball. Tycho itself may have even been shaped to help lead mankind to it. Once exposed to the vacuum of space, it sent a loud radio signal that would be heard by the likely discoverers as well as lead them to the next monolith breadcrumb.
Nit: TMA-1 was always exposed to the vacuum of space - the regolith it was buried under is not pressure tight. The monolith transmitted its signal when exposed to the Sun.
She said Linden is using a "hands-off" approach when it comes to the mix of in-world businesses, real-world brands and individual residents, and that at the moment "the concept seems to be working well".
Of course its working well - because to the Lindens 'working well' means they don't have to, well..., actually work.
The current state of development tools is hideous. We have some very nice powerful languages, Java, C#/.Net, some very powerful databases, but we still have to spend hideous amounts of time making them work together.
That should come as no surprise as lanquages today are designed by marketing, or standards bodies, or comittees, or academics, or amatuers... Instead of by programmers *for* programmers.
What went wrong? The dBase III of the 80s was a far better development environment than what we have today. We have taken several steps backwards.
Thats because the xBase lanquage was designed to produce functional code - rather than to adhere to the latest and greatest paradigm/buzzword.
if I can see my backyard from google maps.. that's (ahem) [B] VISIBLE FROM SPACE [/B]
How precisely does being visible in aerial photographs prove anything about being visible from space? (Very little of Google Map's imagery is from orbit.)
I've thought about the book quite a bit more since. I did not make the same connection to 9/11 that the reviewer made. There were similarities, but the description could have fit another set of events that would be in our future. Heinlein did this himself and so I took it the same way - as referring to events that have not happened yet.
I picked out the 'modern' references just reading the introductory material available on the web. Between that, and a quick scan once it hit the shelves, it was baldy obvious that this isn't a Heinlein novel, it's a Robinson novel written while Robinson was wearing a (very cheap) Heinlein mask. It echoes his (Robinson's) political sensibilities (very different from Heinlein's) and reeks of Robinson's love of complex puns and allusions (something Heinlein used sparingly and rarely if at all). In that one quick scan, I found half-a-dozen instances where Robinson had (as is his wont) lifted a paragraph from one of his earlier works, rephrased it, and inserted into this book - a habit of his that is among the reasons why I stopped reading him.
I had pre-ordered my copy and read it right away. Of course, you can't really go back. It's not Heinlein, it couldn't be. But it is pretty close and I guess it speaks volumes about how many of us feel, that we would be willing to grasp at those straws.
It's decidely not Heinlein - and it's not even close. Too much of the novel reeks of Robinson - his ego seemingly too great to write consistently in the style of the Master and his skills too poor to even ape it convincingly when he tried.
Yes pay movie, but I do pay for cable TV ($50) and still get bombarded with commercials.
You are, to some degree, confusing apples and oranges. Paying for cable is nothing more than paying for shipping and handling, commercials pay for the content.
Which reveals in stark relief what sensible people have been saying for a while - Google isn't a search company, or a technology company - it's an advertising agency.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, if you read the TFA, or know anything about icebergs - you'll realize you are full of crap. Icebergs have been sited near NZ in the past - it's a rare occurence, but it does happen. A singular reccurence of something that has happened in the recent past and repeatedly across recorded history does not constitute proof (or disproof) of anything.
Yep, you've been sleeping in class...
It's uncontroversial that they exist, but opinions vary greatly about what they will cost to exploit.
Actually, I did read the article - and dismissed the above statement as PR, as even Googles recently updated high res data is... you guessed it, 1-5 years out of date. (The update was recent - the data varies greatly in age.) The article implies, nay states outright, that they use Google Earth for searching for incursions - which is fine for those that a) existed at the unknown date in the past then the photo was taken and, b) exists currently. I suspect that's a bare fraction of the incursions, so they found a few new ones they didn't know about - bully for them! Google Earth won't show the ones established last week.
That may have happened in some alternate universe - but in this one, the plans are in a variety of archives.
The problem with your theory is that the Chinese aren't doing it. The head of their space agency has spun a pipe dream he hopes to someday accomplish - but thats about it. To call the pace of the Chinese [manned] space program 'glacial' is unfair to the glacier, as it implies it is virtually unmoving.
TFA directly states that they are obtaining evidence from Google Earth of the existence of the mines and other incursions - I.E. for imaging, not mapping.
Your reference is a puff piece from eight years ago, it's entirely possible that the birds/system is not present, or entirely operational. Or it may not produce imagery of high enough quality, (land use images can be fairly coarse and still usefull). The lack of mention of them in TFA may indicate (if it is operational) that they are not available to the activists.
OTOH - TFA is a fuzzy headed puff piece, so their ignorance of sources of information other than populist ones can easily be explained by their naivete.
No, it remains fantasy nonsense - as no such consensus holds, except by Peak Oil advocates who do not constitute a majority of the field.
An odd assertion - since I see no such consensus, except (as I have said) among a particular political subgroup.
Anyone who claims that is, quite frankly, deranged. This is again, a consensus that arises from a particular political belief - not science.
I doubt scanning GE provides much more than warm fuzzy feeling to the scanners - as the data is routinely anwhere from 1-5 years (or more) out of date. The article itself is little more than a fuzzy headed puff piece.
Actually - it's probably doing very litte for AI research. The hackers work isn't being peer reviewed and published - and I find it very unlikely that you have an AI researcher who is an WoW 'black hat' on the side.
Only in some fantasy world where the replicator creates its copies from thin air - rather than manipulating and modifying existing material, and where the energy costs are negligible or free.
I.E. a world where the laws of physics have been repealed and replaced by magic.
Ah - the ever popular 'blame the victim' arguement...
Not to mention the fact - there is a reason why, IRL and ISL, there aren't hordes of people creating 'unique, individually created, bespoke objects'; nobody will pay for them! That model is fundementally broken.
The problem is, it takes anywhere from 5-10 hours (at a bare minimum) to create a new object - any guesses how much the new object must then be sold for? As I said, there's a reason why your local mall has a Target rather than a slew of custom clothing makers - and the same economic model holds in SL.
If an oil company did this - I'd think they'd gone stark frigging insane.
Why?
Because refineries are horribly capital intensive - it takes decades (under the best of circumstances) to repay the investment. Why would you do something that risky when you know that Americans aren't going suddenly to start driving 'x' times as much just because you refine 'y' times as much. (Ditto for the other uses of petrochemicals, fertilizers, drugs, plastics, etc... etc...) The market is pretty inelastic, the demand fairly steady, and the changes fairly predictable. (And its not just the refinery you have to upsize - its also your distribution network etc...) Even worse - any additional income comes after a decade or more of design, construction, and lawsuits from NIMBY's and greens.
Its nowhere near as simple as you seem to believe.
And any number of pieces and types of furniture, as well as plumbing fixtures, door handles, etc.. etc..
The problem is, you confuse cheap shots and personal biases with metrics. They aren't the same.
That's very true - but nobody here as adressed that issue. Instead they claim an organization that studies energy policy must be biased - because they invite people knowledgeable about energy policy to speak at their conferences! That's pretty much a clear cut case of dammed if they do, and dammed if they don't.
The problem with that theory is that "everyone else" doesn't uniformly come to the [near term] "doom-and-gloom" conclusion that Peak Oil advocates do. Estimates vary (wildly) as to exactly how much oil remains that is extractable economically at current prices - and even more wildly when it comes to the amounts economically extractable as prices rise.
Pot, kettle...
And dumping significant amounts of heat higher up in the atmosphere won't have any detrimental effect? (The atmosphere is not 100% transparent to visible light - thus some of the light you reflect to the surface will end up heating the atmospher column it passes through.)
I suspect you misunderstood entirely - as a crystal clear picture is pretty useless in generating a firing solution, whether produced in 5 nanoseconds or 5 minutes. To generate a firing solution, you need (at a minimum) relative position and hopefully range. Once you have several sucessive sets, you can derive the reminder of the firing terms merely from the change in relative position. [1]
Pictures don't help do this except in bad SF movies where they put crosshairs on a screen. Pictures *do* help with positive target ID (I.E. screening out decoys.)
[1] You can derive range and velocity from sucessive relative positions by plugging in 'guesses' as to each and seeing if they produce an identical set of relative positions. Of course the more terms you have to start with (derived directly from observation), the more you can constrain the spread of any remaining terms that must be 'guessed' and the faster you can obtain a solution.
Disclaimer: Yes, I have worked fire control IRL, just not on this kind of system. I have studied systems much akin to it as a non-professional.
Yep. And the computer that controlled the Apollo spacecraft (designed while Billy Boy was still in single digit years), wasn't much better than your homebrew (around 8K IIRC). The fire control system I worked on in the Navy (I was in over the eighties, the system was designed in the seventies) controlled sixteen missiles (each with eight warheads) using around 512K.
Fact is - most folks (including programmers) forget, or never knew in the first place, how much can be done with quite little. Cheap memory, fast processors, and cheap hard drives encourage sloppy habits.
Nit: TMA-1 was always exposed to the vacuum of space - the regolith it was buried under is not pressure tight. The monolith transmitted its signal when exposed to the Sun.
Of course its working well - because to the Lindens 'working well' means they don't have to, well..., actually work.
That should come as no surprise as lanquages today are designed by marketing, or standards bodies, or comittees, or academics, or amatuers... Instead of by programmers *for* programmers.
Thats because the xBase lanquage was designed to produce functional code - rather than to adhere to the latest and greatest paradigm/buzzword.
How precisely does being visible in aerial photographs prove anything about being visible from space? (Very little of Google Map's imagery is from orbit.)
I picked out the 'modern' references just reading the introductory material available on the web. Between that, and a quick scan once it hit the shelves, it was baldy obvious that this isn't a Heinlein novel, it's a Robinson novel written while Robinson was wearing a (very cheap) Heinlein mask. It echoes his (Robinson's) political sensibilities (very different from Heinlein's) and reeks of Robinson's love of complex puns and allusions (something Heinlein used sparingly and rarely if at all). In that one quick scan, I found half-a-dozen instances where Robinson had (as is his wont) lifted a paragraph from one of his earlier works, rephrased it, and inserted into this book - a habit of his that is among the reasons why I stopped reading him.
It's decidely not Heinlein - and it's not even close. Too much of the novel reeks of Robinson - his ego seemingly too great to write consistently in the style of the Master and his skills too poor to even ape it convincingly when he tried.
You are, to some degree, confusing apples and oranges. Paying for cable is nothing more than paying for shipping and handling, commercials pay for the content.
Which reveals in stark relief what sensible people have been saying for a while - Google isn't a search company, or a technology company - it's an advertising agency.