I hear you man. I felt the exact same way at my friend's wedding. They're both atheists, and made quite a lot of fun of the ceremony before and after (the godfather had to take a good sip of whiskey before) but I still felt the uselessness, no, the wrongness of it all. I do understand and support the need for ceremonies and such, but religion simply makes me sick.
That's actually a lot more optimistic then I would have thought. More realistically, if you cover half the surface with 30% efficiency you get 1.2 kw? My Fiat Punto has 44 kw max, and I almost never use more then half in the city. Umm... no, this is wrong. There should be a better way to compute energy (not power) consumption. Peak power is not an issue with electric motors enyways. Most gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines, even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, have a mechanical efficiency of about 20%, dicet wikipedia. Also wikipedia says the energy content for Diesel is 38.6 MJ/l, which if I'm not wrong is about 11 kwh. Good. Now, I make around 8 km/l in the city, or about 1.4 kwh per km at 20% efficienty. At 85% efficienty for an electric motor that is 0.30 kw/h per kilometer, so in about 12 hours of light that's 48 kilometers. More than I make everyday, anyways. And the power is not limited. In fact if i'm not mistaking, electric motors have higher efficiencies at higher powers.
The problem here is of course the surface, which is never going to be even half covered. But it may be worth a shot in sunier latitudes.
If you're still here after fighting every other post for a few hours:) I do see two positive side effects from this. One is the obvious publicity, which is pretty good. Second this may give birth to a whole range of suborbital planes, which right now just don't exist. After all, their company isn't some rocket experts making the next generation space shuttle, but some plane experts making some pretty cool planes. And they're good at it, once you get over people expecting them to reach the moon next year.
Wasn't I saying something about special cases? Like substance abuse for example?
Anyways, just let it go. I completely agree with you that the moderation system on slashdot is little better then crap (though most others are a lot less). This was far from my best post, and personaly I wouldn't have moderated it. The ones I would have usually stayed at 2.
Funny thing is, vacuum tubes are actually better quality-wise. Something to do with response times and stuff. Fiability however is crap, plus the little problem of a few million bulbs in the room...
As for sourcing, I won't. Instead of hunting some obscure study I'll just tell you that A) It's kinda' obvious... researchers dwell in universities, universities have lots of students and B) In most general research studies I read (not targeting a specific demographic or a special group) the subjects were students, and usualy rewarded by credit. I even saw this particular issue mentioned when it was likely to cause problems, like when the results may be dependent on the education level or age.
As for the 90%... I don't think it was understood as beeing the result of a study. Most likely the direct concequence of point A. The real number, if you include every research and don't weight it by funds of results will probably be much much closer to 100%. Few studies get the money for something else.
90% of psychological research is done with college students. The side effects of this practice are well known to any researcher worthy of the name, and probably considered when drawing conclusions. I haven't RTFA yet, but if you dismiss it on this motive alone, you'd have to dismiss half of modern psychology with it.
The received power decreases with the cube of the distance. So a phone at 1-2 cm away (plastic and skin) may have less effect then a n embedded RFID. Not that it means radio waves do cause cancer.
It's amazing to what lenghts people go to deny reality. Averages have at best a trivia value most of the time. You say that because there are usually more facts to consider on any given issue, each fact is useless, so all facts are useless. It's PC gone to extremes. Sunblock and tanning beds? Go ahead and invest in them, if you want to put your money where your mouth is. Oh, you just meant "somebody (not me, someone who actually has/makes money)" should invest in it because it sounds PC. On AVERAGE, there is less market in Africa. On AVERAGE, the density of possible buyers is much lower. On AVERAGE, you'd build a shop for just 500 possible clients, when in Europe it would be 10.000. But who cares about averages, or making money. I'm sure if someone tries hard enough and pours enough resources they'll sell sunblock in Africa. And they will. But ON AVERAGE, they'll make much less for dollar invested then in Europe. True, there are exceptions. White neighborhoods and such. But they're exceptions. Most times, the average matters. And so do facts.
So what's your point? I was saying just that pretty much nobody cares what happens to Africa. This still stands. You say it's our fault? Well, first, it has no connection to my post. Second, I don't feel guilty. I really don't. Neither me nor my family nor my friends or aquintances had anything to do with African history. Ergo, me not guilty. At all. Really. I insist.
But for the sake of the conversation (and i don't admit anything by it) i'll point out that most (all) african countries went downwards exactly when they threw out European leadership. Independence is a pretty goal, but executing all management resources in the meantime is pure stupidity, and they're still paying for it.
My main point btw was that, if we think practically, global warming doesn't hurt us as bad as we think. And about the ways is hurts others (Africa), that's a different discussion. Ok, let's have it.
For once, most of "humanitarian help" directed at Africa hurts their economies. Every ton of cereals given away there means: 900 kg (ok, some) as bribe for the current governement, and 100 kg at dumping prices. What does this mean for local economy? Well, since it's base on agriculture, it means they can't sell their products at prices compeating with the humanitarian help. So, +1 for the corrupt governemet, -1 for the entrepreneurs. And this is repeating year by year. How long do you think they'll last? The real entrepreneurs?
Second (and maybe more important) is the informational embargo. I wasn't kidding abour wars and casualties. Astronomic numbers die every year there, and all CNN cares about is 3000 americans who died 6 years ago. Thousands die every month there.
Third is lack of realistic thinking. What do Africans lack? Money. What do they have? Cheap workforce. The solution? It's obvious for anybody not brainwashed (if you don't see it, you're brainwashed). Why doesn't it work? That's the most important question nobody is asking. Nobody is supposed to HELP them, they're supposed to become able to offer real value. A lot of the reason they still aren't have to do with the way we consider the problem: official help (foreign aids) and no real interest (business ventures which would require political pressure for some real capitalism/free market).
The best of his arguments isn't about numbers at all. He makes a very good point about part of the issue beeing values: humanist or a naturalist. Some of the direst concequences of global warming seem to be: Africa gets scorced, Europe gets warmer. Now, get real: nobody gives a f*ck about Africa. More people died there this year in a single war then in the rest of the world in the past 10, and no one you know can tell why it started or when. Neither can I, btw. Helping Africa is very much not about environment and a lot about politics.
As for Europe getting warmer... less heating, more air coditioning and overall a better climate.
Now, this is what _they_ are saying are the worst concequences. Over about 100 years. Now tell me, why should everything be about global warming because of that? From the car I drive, the house I live in, the food I eat, everything influenced by something that may happen in 100 years that I don't even mind?!
PS: He makes a very good point about humaninsts seeing man grow _with_ the environment. I very much support economic lightning and clean cars. However my reasons are very human-centric: they're cheaper and make for cleaner air to breathe. Such small, egoistic steps will make for a very green civilisation in the (near) future, without all the histeria of killing the planet.
We need a geophysicist to give a proper answer to that - but I'm a suspicious bugger and all this "free" electricity looks too good to be true - you know what they say about free lunches. Essentially, we'd be using the planet like a battery: it's just a question of how long it will last - millions of years? Thousands?
How about longer then the Sun? Well, at least until it becomes a red giant and destroys earth. It's a matter of scale... pinching the crust and allowing minutes amounts of heat to reach the surface is not even close to really doing something to the core. I could try and calculate how much heat is in a 12000 km sphere of molten rock and iron, but I'll let you just imagine how much heat is in one 1 km wide and multiply this by 150,000,000.
If there is a true free source of energy, this is it. We're sitting on a big lump of fire, and we only need the technology to use it. It's a lot like building a dam was the last century. The basics are obvious, you only need to make the effort - which indeed now is still pretty big.
Why trilions? If you take Einstein seriously (and I do) the most likely came from our own back yard. Titan, Europa, lots of places we didn't look at close enough.
SMS IS cheap. Just not with most providers. When bought in bulk (around 500), either in an sms-plan or in a web plan, it goes as low as 2 cents. The thing is, even 2 cents is a lot. For once, there used to be (may still be out there) web sites which allow you to send sms for free. Dont know their economics, but since they functioned for years without bankrupcy or lawsuits i guess the publicity was worth the sms costs. I think a fair (competition-driven) price would be around 1-2 cents, but the costs are much lower.
Good points. About the shop classes, I can theorise their purpose is less to teach you how to do these things, but to understand them so you're able to supervise/teach the people who would do that. So their numbers decreasing could mean the teaching or the management of those tasks is a mature science. At least that's what I'd like to say, but I have too many doubts.
As for the younger generation taking over the net, like slashdot, that's painfully obvious. I'm constantly seeking better forums, but with little success. Have any sugestions?
Come on, this is a non issue. The world evolve isn't used in scientific papers because things don't just "evolve". Yes, evolution is the end product, but it's not very useful when you look under the hood. It's like asking an engine engineer why he doesn't talk more about "driving" or "accelerating". They're user concepts, not expert concepts.
Yeah, and the rich are evil and eat puppies for breakfast. Get over it. The reason taxing income isn't such a bright ideea, especially for high-income people is that most of it (hell, almost all of it) gets reinvested. Money you just hoard don't make wealth, money you invest make wealth for more then the owner.
Yeah, maybe when you think at movie stars or hip hop singers spending like crazy you feel like scratching your eyeballs (totally understandable) but most sane people made money for a good reason. And while on the subject. this is most interesting.
If it can touch 50000 people at once, then it's spread over a surface of many thousands of square meters and I doubt it will be seen much less cause any damage.
Also as it was pointed earlier, reflective armor doesn't do much for lasers. Once it's slightly heated it will loose reflectivity in a positive feedback loop until it's charred. Much better defence is movement, and that's why missles are the worst target for lasers: many are already spinning at high rates for stability, not to mantion flying at mach speeds. The ideea is nice in theory, but in practice where they'd be most needed lasers are most inefficient. It's still gonna take a while.
Nope, he actually makes a good point. If people are good and bad, doesn't necessarily mean cops are good and bad. Average Joe can be an asshole (as a person), but he can't become a cop if he behaves like an asshole on the job. Or if he does he can cease being a cop (well, in theory). So it's a good observation.
Very very good point, wish I had mod points. That's the way society naturaly evolved: few intelligent people at the top and the "unwashed masses" doind the menial works. Always the evolution of the more complex structure (society) takes precedence over the evolution of the individual.
As for the second part, the problem is pretty much solved, isn't it? Most of the developed world already runs in a rat-wheel, working to satisfy created needs (like a new car every five years). So no, they won't die of boredom, unless they already are. As for the few who gave up the idiot box and try to find interesing things to do - well there is still huge work to be done for at least a couple of hundred years. Just in programming - if I had a spare year or so I'd work on this and for 5-10 years or more there is still a good open source Common Lisp distribution missing. And then the whole meeting girls in bars thing to work out... Come to think of it, life is actualy short, isn't it?
Well, how about the competition? You know, the one that says, ok, we'll hack something right up. And unfortunately, in most cases the hack works.
No, the "hack" option is very much on the table. The thing is, right now the software industry WORKS. True, there is way to much software to be done and too little good programmers. True, most development has turned into training code monkeys as quickly and cheaply as possible and letting them follow (better or worse) specifications. In a perfect world all software developers would be either herdened profesionals or young aprentices, but in the real world, most don't have any talent whatsoever. It just pays good.
And things probably won't change, not in this respect. It becomes easier and easier to build software, so there is more and more reason to hire cheaply and quickly. I don't really know where the change will come from. I do know that software is needed, it's hard to build and harder to automate, so things will probably limp for several more decades. But in the end the big technical hurdle (how to LINK/SEPARATE UI from logic) will be solved, and then... many programmers will lose jobs. But it's still in the distant future.
And the fact that his arguments actually make sense?
My reason for liking cameras is different: if properly used, they watch the watchers too. I feel MUCH safer talking with a policeman at night if there is a camera nearby. All it takes for this to work is make sure the records don't dissapear at convenient times.
And I'm not in "the business" btw. And I'm a firefly fan too:)
Used to go to a japanese class in college. For some reason, it was extremely popular with girls, and since it was both optional and very hard the attendance was a lot higher in the beginning. Now, with 30-40 girls and 2 guys in a room for 20, god knows how many at their period, windows closed... yes, girls smell different. And, at least to me, much stronger then guys.
Slashdot Mirror
I hear you man. I felt the exact same way at my friend's wedding. They're both atheists, and made quite a lot of fun of the ceremony before and after (the godfather had to take a good sip of whiskey before) but I still felt the uselessness, no, the wrongness of it all. I do understand and support the need for ceremonies and such, but religion simply makes me sick.
That's actually a lot more optimistic then I would have thought. More realistically, if you cover half the surface with 30% efficiency you get 1.2 kw? My Fiat Punto has 44 kw max, and I almost never use more then half in the city. Umm... no, this is wrong. There should be a better way to compute energy (not power) consumption. Peak power is not an issue with electric motors enyways.
Most gasoline-fueled internal combustion engines, even when aided with turbochargers and stock efficiency aids, have a mechanical efficiency of about 20%, dicet wikipedia.
Also wikipedia says the energy content for Diesel is 38.6 MJ/l, which if I'm not wrong is about 11 kwh. Good. Now, I make around 8 km/l in the city, or about 1.4 kwh per km at 20% efficienty. At 85% efficienty for an electric motor that is 0.30 kw/h per kilometer, so in about 12 hours of light that's 48 kilometers. More than I make everyday, anyways. And the power is not limited. In fact if i'm not mistaking, electric motors have higher efficiencies at higher powers.
The problem here is of course the surface, which is never going to be even half covered. But it may be worth a shot in sunier latitudes.
Don Quijote :) Btw, if you ever find a better forum, let the rest of us know. I've been looking for years.
If you're still here after fighting every other post for a few hours :) I do see two positive side effects from this. One is the obvious publicity, which is pretty good.
Second this may give birth to a whole range of suborbital planes, which right now just don't exist. After all, their company isn't some rocket experts making the next generation space shuttle, but some plane experts making some pretty cool planes. And they're good at it, once you get over people expecting them to reach the moon next year.
If Asia's one contender in the race, who's the other?
Wasn't I saying something about special cases? Like substance abuse for example?
Anyways, just let it go. I completely agree with you that the moderation system on slashdot is little better then crap (though most others are a lot less). This was far from my best post, and personaly I wouldn't have moderated it. The ones I would have usually stayed at 2.
Funny thing is, vacuum tubes are actually better quality-wise. Something to do with response times and stuff. Fiability however is crap, plus the little problem of a few million bulbs in the room...
I saw your post! That'll show you!
As for sourcing, I won't. Instead of hunting some obscure study I'll just tell you that A) It's kinda' obvious... researchers dwell in universities, universities have lots of students and B) In most general research studies I read (not targeting a specific demographic or a special group) the subjects were students, and usualy rewarded by credit. I even saw this particular issue mentioned when it was likely to cause problems, like when the results may be dependent on the education level or age.
As for the 90%... I don't think it was understood as beeing the result of a study. Most likely the direct concequence of point A. The real number, if you include every research and don't weight it by funds of results will probably be much much closer to 100%. Few studies get the money for something else.
90% of psychological research is done with college students. The side effects of this practice are well known to any researcher worthy of the name, and probably considered when drawing conclusions. I haven't RTFA yet, but if you dismiss it on this motive alone, you'd have to dismiss half of modern psychology with it.
The received power decreases with the cube of the distance. So a phone at 1-2 cm away (plastic and skin) may have less effect then a n embedded RFID. Not that it means radio waves do cause cancer.
It's amazing to what lenghts people go to deny reality. Averages have at best a trivia value most of the time. You say that because there are usually more facts to consider on any given issue, each fact is useless, so all facts are useless. It's PC gone to extremes. Sunblock and tanning beds? Go ahead and invest in them, if you want to put your money where your mouth is. Oh, you just meant "somebody (not me, someone who actually has/makes money)" should invest in it because it sounds PC. On AVERAGE, there is less market in Africa. On AVERAGE, the density of possible buyers is much lower. On AVERAGE, you'd build a shop for just 500 possible clients, when in Europe it would be 10.000. But who cares about averages, or making money. I'm sure if someone tries hard enough and pours enough resources they'll sell sunblock in Africa. And they will. But ON AVERAGE, they'll make much less for dollar invested then in Europe. True, there are exceptions. White neighborhoods and such. But they're exceptions. Most times, the average matters. And so do facts.
So what's your point? I was saying just that pretty much nobody cares what happens to Africa. This still stands. You say it's our fault? Well, first, it has no connection to my post. Second, I don't feel guilty. I really don't. Neither me nor my family nor my friends or aquintances had anything to do with African history. Ergo, me not guilty. At all. Really. I insist.
But for the sake of the conversation (and i don't admit anything by it) i'll point out that most (all) african countries went downwards exactly when they threw out European leadership. Independence is a pretty goal, but executing all management resources in the meantime is pure stupidity, and they're still paying for it.
My main point btw was that, if we think practically, global warming doesn't hurt us as bad as we think. And about the ways is hurts others (Africa), that's a different discussion. Ok, let's have it.
For once, most of "humanitarian help" directed at Africa hurts their economies. Every ton of cereals given away there means: 900 kg (ok, some) as bribe for the current governement, and 100 kg at dumping prices. What does this mean for local economy? Well, since it's base on agriculture, it means they can't sell their products at prices compeating with the humanitarian help. So, +1 for the corrupt governemet, -1 for the entrepreneurs. And this is repeating year by year. How long do you think they'll last? The real entrepreneurs?
Second (and maybe more important) is the informational embargo. I wasn't kidding abour wars and casualties. Astronomic numbers die every year there, and all CNN cares about is 3000 americans who died 6 years ago. Thousands die every month there.
Third is lack of realistic thinking. What do Africans lack? Money. What do they have? Cheap workforce. The solution? It's obvious for anybody not brainwashed (if you don't see it, you're brainwashed). Why doesn't it work? That's the most important question nobody is asking. Nobody is supposed to HELP them, they're supposed to become able to offer real value. A lot of the reason they still aren't have to do with the way we consider the problem: official help (foreign aids) and no real interest (business ventures which would require political pressure for some real capitalism/free market).
The best of his arguments isn't about numbers at all. He makes a very good point about part of the issue beeing values: humanist or a naturalist. Some of the direst concequences of global warming seem to be: Africa gets scorced, Europe gets warmer. Now, get real: nobody gives a f*ck about Africa. More people died there this year in a single war then in the rest of the world in the past 10, and no one you know can tell why it started or when. Neither can I, btw. Helping Africa is very much not about environment and a lot about politics.
As for Europe getting warmer... less heating, more air coditioning and overall a better climate.
Now, this is what _they_ are saying are the worst concequences. Over about 100 years. Now tell me, why should everything be about global warming because of that? From the car I drive, the house I live in, the food I eat, everything influenced by something that may happen in 100 years that I don't even mind?!
PS: He makes a very good point about humaninsts seeing man grow _with_ the environment. I very much support economic lightning and clean cars. However my reasons are very human-centric: they're cheaper and make for cleaner air to breathe. Such small, egoistic steps will make for a very green civilisation in the (near) future, without all the histeria of killing the planet.
We need a geophysicist to give a proper answer to that - but I'm a suspicious bugger and all this "free" electricity looks too good to be true - you know what they say about free lunches. Essentially, we'd be using the planet like a battery: it's just a question of how long it will last - millions of years? Thousands?
How about longer then the Sun? Well, at least until it becomes a red giant and destroys earth. It's a matter of scale... pinching the crust and allowing minutes amounts of heat to reach the surface is not even close to really doing something to the core. I could try and calculate how much heat is in a 12000 km sphere of molten rock and iron, but I'll let you just imagine how much heat is in one 1 km wide and multiply this by 150,000,000.
If there is a true free source of energy, this is it. We're sitting on a big lump of fire, and we only need the technology to use it. It's a lot like building a dam was the last century. The basics are obvious, you only need to make the effort - which indeed now is still pretty big.
Why trilions? If you take Einstein seriously (and I do) the most likely came from our own back yard. Titan, Europa, lots of places we didn't look at close enough.
SMS IS cheap. Just not with most providers. When bought in bulk (around 500), either in an sms-plan or in a web plan, it goes as low as 2 cents.
The thing is, even 2 cents is a lot. For once, there used to be (may still be out there) web sites which allow you to send sms for free. Dont know their economics, but since they functioned for years without bankrupcy or lawsuits i guess the publicity was worth the sms costs. I think a fair (competition-driven) price would be around 1-2 cents, but the costs are much lower.
Good points. About the shop classes, I can theorise their purpose is less to teach you how to do these things, but to understand them so you're able to supervise/teach the people who would do that. So their numbers decreasing could mean the teaching or the management of those tasks is a mature science. At least that's what I'd like to say, but I have too many doubts.
As for the younger generation taking over the net, like slashdot, that's painfully obvious. I'm constantly seeking better forums, but with little success. Have any sugestions?
Come on, this is a non issue. The world evolve isn't used in scientific papers because things don't just "evolve". Yes, evolution is the end product, but it's not very useful when you look under the hood. It's like asking an engine engineer why he doesn't talk more about "driving" or "accelerating". They're user concepts, not expert concepts.
Yeah, and the rich are evil and eat puppies for breakfast. Get over it. The reason taxing income isn't such a bright ideea, especially for high-income people is that most of it (hell, almost all of it) gets reinvested. Money you just hoard don't make wealth, money you invest make wealth for more then the owner.
Yeah, maybe when you think at movie stars or hip hop singers spending like crazy you feel like scratching your eyeballs (totally understandable) but most sane people made money for a good reason. And while on the subject. this is most interesting.
If it can touch 50000 people at once, then it's spread over a surface of many thousands of square meters and I doubt it will be seen much less cause any damage.
Also as it was pointed earlier, reflective armor doesn't do much for lasers. Once it's slightly heated it will loose reflectivity in a positive feedback loop until it's charred. Much better defence is movement, and that's why missles are the worst target for lasers: many are already spinning at high rates for stability, not to mantion flying at mach speeds. The ideea is nice in theory, but in practice where they'd be most needed lasers are most inefficient. It's still gonna take a while.
Nope, he actually makes a good point. If people are good and bad, doesn't necessarily mean cops are good and bad. Average Joe can be an asshole (as a person), but he can't become a cop if he behaves like an asshole on the job. Or if he does he can cease being a cop (well, in theory). So it's a good observation.
Very very good point, wish I had mod points. That's the way society naturaly evolved: few intelligent people at the top and the "unwashed masses" doind the menial works. Always the evolution of the more complex structure (society) takes precedence over the evolution of the individual.
As for the second part, the problem is pretty much solved, isn't it? Most of the developed world already runs in a rat-wheel, working to satisfy created needs (like a new car every five years). So no, they won't die of boredom, unless they already are.
As for the few who gave up the idiot box and try to find interesing things to do - well there is still huge work to be done for at least a couple of hundred years. Just in programming - if I had a spare year or so I'd work on this and for 5-10 years or more there is still a good open source Common Lisp distribution missing. And then the whole meeting girls in bars thing to work out... Come to think of it, life is actualy short, isn't it?
"and neither should we"?
Well, how about the competition? You know, the one that says, ok, we'll hack something right up. And unfortunately, in most cases the hack works.
No, the "hack" option is very much on the table. The thing is, right now the software industry WORKS. True, there is way to much software to be done and too little good programmers. True, most development has turned into training code monkeys as quickly and cheaply as possible and letting them follow (better or worse) specifications. In a perfect world all software developers would be either herdened profesionals or young aprentices, but in the real world, most don't have any talent whatsoever. It just pays good.
And things probably won't change, not in this respect. It becomes easier and easier to build software, so there is more and more reason to hire cheaply and quickly. I don't really know where the change will come from. I do know that software is needed, it's hard to build and harder to automate, so things will probably limp for several more decades. But in the end the big technical hurdle (how to LINK/SEPARATE UI from logic) will be solved, and then... many programmers will lose jobs. But it's still in the distant future.
And the fact that his arguments actually make sense?
:)
My reason for liking cameras is different: if properly used, they watch the watchers too. I feel MUCH safer talking with a policeman at night if there is a camera nearby. All it takes for this to work is make sure the records don't dissapear at convenient times.
And I'm not in "the business" btw. And I'm a firefly fan too
Used to go to a japanese class in college. For some reason, it was extremely popular with girls, and since it was both optional and very hard the attendance was a lot higher in the beginning. Now, with 30-40 girls and 2 guys in a room for 20, god knows how many at their period, windows closed... yes, girls smell different. And, at least to me, much stronger then guys.