the train operating during periods where it will be forced to pull from the grid.
You're spot-on, Batman. In the summer, the sun angle is poor during the early-morning and late-afternoon commuting times; in the winter, erm, what sun?
Yes, there are. The problem is, estimates of those costs can and do vary by orders of magnitude, depending on who's doing the estimating. Thus, many a project that should have gotten a green light, because it would have been a great boon to our economy, instead got deep-sixed because authorities listened to people whose radical agenda led them to exaggerate environmental costs.
And it occasionally works the other way: a project that should have been deep-sixed instead gets a green light because authorities listened to people who, knowingly or unknowingly, underestimated the environmental costs.
So naturally, policymakers should be very skeptical of these estimates -- proceeding with caution, and deciding to not proceed with even more caution.
(The preceding comment applies to U.S. policymakers, and obviously not to PRC policymakers, who have screwed up royally. On the whole, the U.S. is doing well environmentally. Thanks to improved engine technology, the air is much cleaner than it was 30 years ago. The EPA Superfund sites are slowly but surely being remediated -- even during the evil Bush Administration, imagine that! -- and sites are being delisted at a much faster rate than they are being added.)
My commute by car takes 65 minutes each way. When I click Google Maps' Public Transit button, it tells me that the same commute would be 4.5 hours each way.
Even the assertion that Bush limited embryonic stem cell research is false. In the latter years of the Clinton administration there was a total ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Bush issued an executive order to liberalize the policy by lifing the ban for the existing lines of embryonic stem cells. So the most accurate way to describe it is that Bush removed some of the limits on embryonic stem cell research. (Clinton could have done this, but chose not to, or more likely, didn't get around to because he was busy with an intern.) Bush didn't remove all of the limits because he didn't want to see viable frozen embryos destroyed in order to harvest additional cells. Of course, removing "some" of the limits is not good enough for the absolutists; hence, in the years since, there's been a campaign to grossly oversimplify the narrative and say that "Bush banned stem cell research."
The controversy comes when dealing with frozen embryos, which are capable of being thawed and implanted into a surrogate mother, or into a woman who "adopts" the embryos, resulting in a full-term pregnancy.
When George W. Bush issued an executive order to lift the federal ban on funding embryonic stem cell research, he did so only for the existing lines of embryonic stem cells, because he didn't want additional frozen embryos destroyed in order to harvest cells. At the time, media pundits praised this decision as a wise compromise between the two extreme positions (zero funding, or a free-for-all). In the years since, however, the narrative has been grossly oversimplified into "Bush banned stem cell research." President Obama has eliminated the nuanced compromise and placed us in the free-for-all situation.
There's no need to resort to quantum theory. The results of the gambling study mentioned in the article can be explained by human superstition and belief in "luck." Even when told that the odds of winning each trial are exactly 50%, average humans will let the outcome of the previous trial influence their perception of the odds.
* Subjects who are informed that they had won the first game tend to think, "I am lucky at this game. It is in my interest to play again." Hence the 69% participation rate.
* A different irrational notion affects subjects who are informed that they had lost the first game. They tend to think, "I'm not likely to lose again." For some of them, the incorrect aphorism about "lightning doesn't strike twice" may have come mind. Hence the 59% participation rate. [69 + 59 > 100, so it's numerically obvious that some of the same people who would have chosen to play in the first scenario, also choose to play in this case.]
* Neither of these phenomena comes into play when the subject is not told the outcome of the first game. These people tend to think, "I don't know whether I'm lucky at this game or not." They make the cautious, guarded choice: not playing at all. Hence the 36% participation rate.
I don't doubt that the researchers' quantum interference formula happens to closely match these results, but to call its application "rigorously justified" is quite a stretch!
The lawmakers can't even get a simple green-energy incentive right; what further evidence do you need that they must not be allowed to get anywhere near your healthcare?
It's not a lie, but the person who started this thread misremembered the quote (and who said it). The actual quote was spoken by Princeton physicist Dr. WIll Happer, whom Al Gore fired. According to Happer, Gore said that "science will not intrude on public policy." Happer went on to say, "I did not need the job that badly."
You want to limit 747s and Gulfstreams to 120 mph? I don't think so... even if you allow higher speeds in the higher "altitude layers," the faster craft still have to ascend and descend through the lower layers; and if the lower layers are thick with traffic, odds of a collision are pretty high.
You also haven't addressed the huge problem that the 747's wake vortices pose to the smaller aircraft.
Think about it: when you encounter a pedestrian, there's a finite risk of the pedestrian darting out in front of your car.
An unsophisticated autonomous ground vehicle would have to slow down every time it encounters something that might be a pedestrian. It will take a lot of sophistication for the control software to determine that the advertisement on the bus stop is not an actual pedestrian, and blow by it at full speed.
Anti collision and autonomous technology need to be as ubiquitous as laser reading technology for Compact Discs are today for such a system to be viable.
Yes, that was part of my premise: all aircraft will have avionics that transmit their positions and velocities to each other. During the transition period, when some aircraft have not yet been retrofitted with the requisite avionics, you can't eliminate the possibility of a collision.
There are parallels to the digital TV transition. The FAA could subsidize the retrofitting of aircraft, just as the NTIA subsidized DTV converter boxes.
and decide to take a break on critical systems like guidance, collision avoidance, or even navigation, and you really don't want to reboot and pray that it starts functioning normally again before there is a serious problem
In the unlikely event that your primary autonomous flight control computer crashes, and your backup computer (running a different real-time operating system, for good measure) also fails, and you don't have a licensed pilot in the cabin, that would be the time to pull the handle on your ballistic parachute.
if you've watched the DARPA urban challenge, you'll get a sense of how good we are at automating things like collision avoidance in an uncontrolled arena
That's a ground vehicle, which needs to use machine vision to avoid other (uncooperative) vehicles, pedestrians, etc. and plot a safe driving path. Elsewhere in this thread I've discussed how that's a much more difficult problem than autonomous flight control. In a world where all aircraft fly autonomously, they all cooperate by transmitting their positions and velocities to each other.
Your concerns are valid for Terrafugia, which is not an autonomously-flown aircraft. But they aren't relevant to the post you were replying to, which envisions a world in which all aircraft are autonomously flown.
It won't be enough to use GPS and WiMax, both of these periodically fail due to RFI, lightning, etc.
Yes, my proposed autonomous aircraft would have to frequently check its own health. Any performance problems with the GPS or WiMAX; any corruption of the terrain database; any corruption of the one of the redundant databases of safe landing spots; and it would use the other database to automatically touch down at the closest safe landing spot. In the case of Terrafugia, the vehicle is "roadable," so it would continue to function as a vehicle until the avionics are repaired.
My wife's iPod contains more computing power than all of NASA's mainframes at the time of the Apollo missions. Based on trends like that, surely avionics will soon be reliable enough and affordable enough to make autonomous aircraft feasible.
double-digit percent probability of death... You'll need alternate systems which are reliable in case of primary system failure, or you won't be operating over my house.
Terrafugia's ballistic parachute means a very low probablility of death. If one parachutes down onto your house, your roof will probably be damaged, but you probably won't get smooshed.
Machine vision wouldn't have to distinguish between an actual pedestrian and a bus stop ad. I don't want to run over either of them.
When you encounter a pedestrian, there's a finite risk of the pedestrian darting out in front of your car.
An unsophisticated autonomous ground vehicle would have to slow down every time it encounters something that might be a pedestrian. It will take a lot of sophistication for the control software to determine that the advertisement on the bus stop is not an actual pedestrian, and blow by it at full speed.
Everyone worries that the skies will become a deathtrap when flying cars, driven by people without pilots' licenses, hit the market. But the collision-avoidance solution is simple if they're all flying autonomously. In 2009, it's trivial for inexpensive consumer devices to communicate with each other wirelessly. Similarly, flying cars need to broadcast their positions and velocities to all other aircraft within a few km radius (via WiMAX or similar technology).
Then, all it takes are some simple "right of way" rules and a small amount of computing power to compute the slight course adjustments needed to avoid collisions, or even to avoid intersecting another aircraft's wake vortices. This will also eliminate "air lanes," and the fear of them becoming saturated with traffic. All aircraft will simply fly the shortest point-to-point great circle route, except when the computer tells it to deviate to avoid another aircraft, another aircraft's wake vortices, a region of bad weather, or an ADIZ.
Because three-dimensional airspace is so vast, it will be able to accommodate exponentially more traffic than the current "air lanes" concept.
Autonomous flight is a much easier problem to solve than autonomous ground vehicles. A large but simple database will allow the aircraft to avoid obstacles like mountains and tall structures. An autonomous ground vehicle, on the other hand, would need to tackle machine vision problems like discriminating between an actual pedestrian and a picture of human on a bus-stop advertisement.
Some people will produce just for the heck of it. Or because it alleviates their boredom.
Ok, I exaggerated when I said there would be "zero" incentive to produce. More accurately, the incentive to produce would be vastly reduced. There is also a strong disincentive: the resentment felt by most producers when the fruits of their labor are confiscated and given to slackers.
You want to try to sustain the standard of living of the entire human population with the efforts of those very few individuals who work because they're bored, and don't resent the freeloaders who are in the majority? Like I said, that's a prescription for massive human suffering.
There will always be limited resources, and those who would deny those resources to others as leverage against their fellow man. It's about power, not scarcity of resources.
To restate this using less socialistic language: There will always be private ownership of resources, and the owners will never be 100% charitable with their property.
I certainly hope that statement is true. If it's not, there will be zero incentive to produce. The size of the pie, that will be oh-so-equitably divided, will shrink to zero. A prescription for massive human suffering.
So this one has been explained away by Google, but the sunken city found near Cuba has never been explained. In fact, since National Geographic reported on it in 2002, everything has been all hush-hush -- promises of follow-up exploration, but no hard information to be found.
If you're curious about this, perform further searches using the following keywords: sonar, Zelitsky, Weinzweig, "Advanced Digital Communications".
Slashdot Mirror
the train operating during periods where it will be forced to pull from the grid.
You're spot-on, Batman. In the summer, the sun angle is poor during the early-morning and late-afternoon commuting times; in the winter, erm, what sun?
there are true costs to environmental damages
Yes, there are. The problem is, estimates of those costs can and do vary by orders of magnitude, depending on who's doing the estimating. Thus, many a project that should have gotten a green light, because it would have been a great boon to our economy, instead got deep-sixed because authorities listened to people whose radical agenda led them to exaggerate environmental costs.
And it occasionally works the other way: a project that should have been deep-sixed instead gets a green light because authorities listened to people who, knowingly or unknowingly, underestimated the environmental costs.
So naturally, policymakers should be very skeptical of these estimates -- proceeding with caution, and deciding to not proceed with even more caution.
(The preceding comment applies to U.S. policymakers, and obviously not to PRC policymakers, who have screwed up royally. On the whole, the U.S. is doing well environmentally. Thanks to improved engine technology, the air is much cleaner than it was 30 years ago. The EPA Superfund sites are slowly but surely being remediated -- even during the evil Bush Administration, imagine that! -- and sites are being delisted at a much faster rate than they are being added.)
My commute by car takes 65 minutes each way. When I click Google Maps' Public Transit button, it tells me that the same commute would be 4.5 hours each way.
Even the assertion that Bush limited embryonic stem cell research is false. In the latter years of the Clinton administration there was a total ban on federal funding of embryonic stem cell research. Bush issued an executive order to liberalize the policy by lifing the ban for the existing lines of embryonic stem cells. So the most accurate way to describe it is that Bush removed some of the limits on embryonic stem cell research. (Clinton could have done this, but chose not to, or more likely, didn't get around to because he was busy with an intern.) Bush didn't remove all of the limits because he didn't want to see viable frozen embryos destroyed in order to harvest additional cells. Of course, removing "some" of the limits is not good enough for the absolutists; hence, in the years since, there's been a campaign to grossly oversimplify the narrative and say that "Bush banned stem cell research."
The controversy comes when dealing with frozen embryos, which are capable of being thawed and implanted into a surrogate mother, or into a woman who "adopts" the embryos, resulting in a full-term pregnancy.
When George W. Bush issued an executive order to lift the federal ban on funding embryonic stem cell research, he did so only for the existing lines of embryonic stem cells, because he didn't want additional frozen embryos destroyed in order to harvest cells. At the time, media pundits praised this decision as a wise compromise between the two extreme positions (zero funding, or a free-for-all). In the years since, however, the narrative has been grossly oversimplified into "Bush banned stem cell research." President Obama has eliminated the nuanced compromise and placed us in the free-for-all situation.
There's no need to resort to quantum theory. The results of the gambling study mentioned in the article can be explained by human superstition and belief in "luck." Even when told that the odds of winning each trial are exactly 50%, average humans will let the outcome of the previous trial influence their perception of the odds.
* Subjects who are informed that they had won the first game tend to think, "I am lucky at this game. It is in my interest to play again." Hence the 69% participation rate.
* A different irrational notion affects subjects who are informed that they had lost the first game. They tend to think, "I'm not likely to lose again." For some of them, the incorrect aphorism about "lightning doesn't strike twice" may have come mind. Hence the 59% participation rate. [69 + 59 > 100, so it's numerically obvious that some of the same people who would have chosen to play in the first scenario, also choose to play in this case.]
* Neither of these phenomena comes into play when the subject is not told the outcome of the first game. These people tend to think, "I don't know whether I'm lucky at this game or not." They make the cautious, guarded choice: not playing at all. Hence the 36% participation rate.
I don't doubt that the researchers' quantum interference formula happens to closely match these results, but to call its application "rigorously justified" is quite a stretch!
The lawmakers can't even get a simple green-energy incentive right; what further evidence do you need that they must not be allowed to get anywhere near your healthcare?
the solution for this is for the president to order the IRS to withhold these payouts
it would be illegal to withhold payments specified by law... you're stuck with the law as written until someone changes it.
The law as written also does not give the president the power to fire GM's CEO. But that didn't stop him, did it?
It's not a lie, but the person who started this thread misremembered the quote (and who said it). The actual quote was spoken by Princeton physicist Dr. WIll Happer, whom Al Gore fired. According to Happer, Gore said that "science will not intrude on public policy." Happer went on to say, "I did not need the job that badly."
Here are 96 Google hits to back me up.
there is a distinct shortage of people who are actually able to provide DATA to support their opposition to it.
I am one of those people who can provide data to support my opposition to it. Namely, the very compelling data that Professor Patterson collected in the field.
I am the only person who knows the true cause of gamma-ray bursts.
They are alien civilizations who just switched on their LHCs.
You want to limit 747s and Gulfstreams to 120 mph? I don't think so... even if you allow higher speeds in the higher "altitude layers," the faster craft still have to ascend and descend through the lower layers; and if the lower layers are thick with traffic, odds of a collision are pretty high.
You also haven't addressed the huge problem that the 747's wake vortices pose to the smaller aircraft.
Think about it: when you encounter a pedestrian, there's a finite risk of the pedestrian darting out in front of your car.
An unsophisticated autonomous ground vehicle would have to slow down every time it encounters something that might be a pedestrian. It will take a lot of sophistication for the control software to determine that the advertisement on the bus stop is not an actual pedestrian, and blow by it at full speed.
Anti collision and autonomous technology need to be as ubiquitous as laser reading technology for Compact Discs are today for such a system to be viable.
Yes, that was part of my premise: all aircraft will have avionics that transmit their positions and velocities to each other. During the transition period, when some aircraft have not yet been retrofitted with the requisite avionics, you can't eliminate the possibility of a collision.
There are parallels to the digital TV transition. The FAA could subsidize the retrofitting of aircraft, just as the NTIA subsidized DTV converter boxes.
you don't want to have Vista in control
Agreed!
and decide to take a break on critical systems like guidance, collision avoidance, or even navigation, and you really don't want to reboot and pray that it starts functioning normally again before there is a serious problem
In the unlikely event that your primary autonomous flight control computer crashes, and your backup computer (running a different real-time operating system, for good measure) also fails, and you don't have a licensed pilot in the cabin, that would be the time to pull the handle on your ballistic parachute.
if you've watched the DARPA urban challenge, you'll get a sense of how good we are at automating things like collision avoidance in an uncontrolled arena
That's a ground vehicle, which needs to use machine vision to avoid other (uncooperative) vehicles, pedestrians, etc. and plot a safe driving path. Elsewhere in this thread I've discussed how that's a much more difficult problem than autonomous flight control. In a world where all aircraft fly autonomously, they all cooperate by transmitting their positions and velocities to each other.
Your concerns are valid for Terrafugia, which is not an autonomously-flown aircraft. But they aren't relevant to the post you were replying to, which envisions a world in which all aircraft are autonomously flown.
It won't be enough to use GPS and WiMax, both of these periodically fail due to RFI, lightning, etc.
Yes, my proposed autonomous aircraft would have to frequently check its own health. Any performance problems with the GPS or WiMAX; any corruption of the terrain database; any corruption of the one of the redundant databases of safe landing spots; and it would use the other database to automatically touch down at the closest safe landing spot. In the case of Terrafugia, the vehicle is "roadable," so it would continue to function as a vehicle until the avionics are repaired.
My wife's iPod contains more computing power than all of NASA's mainframes at the time of the Apollo missions. Based on trends like that, surely avionics will soon be reliable enough and affordable enough to make autonomous aircraft feasible.
double-digit percent probability of death... You'll need alternate systems which are reliable in case of primary system failure, or you won't be operating over my house.
Terrafugia's ballistic parachute means a very low probablility of death. If one parachutes down onto your house, your roof will probably be damaged, but you probably won't get smooshed.
Machine vision wouldn't have to distinguish between an actual pedestrian and a bus stop ad. I don't want to run over either of them.
When you encounter a pedestrian, there's a finite risk of the pedestrian darting out in front of your car.
An unsophisticated autonomous ground vehicle would have to slow down every time it encounters something that might be a pedestrian. It will take a lot of sophistication for the control software to determine that the advertisement on the bus stop is not an actual pedestrian, and blow by it at full speed.
These simple right of way rules result in lots of collisions on the road.
Only when a driver decides not to follow them. In an autonomously-flown aircraft, following the rules would not be optional.
Everyone worries that the skies will become a deathtrap when flying cars, driven by people without pilots' licenses, hit the market. But the collision-avoidance solution is simple if they're all flying autonomously. In 2009, it's trivial for inexpensive consumer devices to communicate with each other wirelessly. Similarly, flying cars need to broadcast their positions and velocities to all other aircraft within a few km radius (via WiMAX or similar technology).
Then, all it takes are some simple "right of way" rules and a small amount of computing power to compute the slight course adjustments needed to avoid collisions, or even to avoid intersecting another aircraft's wake vortices. This will also eliminate "air lanes," and the fear of them becoming saturated with traffic. All aircraft will simply fly the shortest point-to-point great circle route, except when the computer tells it to deviate to avoid another aircraft, another aircraft's wake vortices, a region of bad weather, or an ADIZ.
Because three-dimensional airspace is so vast, it will be able to accommodate exponentially more traffic than the current "air lanes" concept.
Autonomous flight is a much easier problem to solve than autonomous ground vehicles. A large but simple database will allow the aircraft to avoid obstacles like mountains and tall structures. An autonomous ground vehicle, on the other hand, would need to tackle machine vision problems like discriminating between an actual pedestrian and a picture of human on a bus-stop advertisement.
Some Dubai properties lost 64% of their value from 2001 to November 2008: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/constructionandproperty/3489393/Dubais-Palm-Jumeirah-sees-prices-fall-as-crunch-moves-in.html
Some people will produce just for the heck of it. Or because it alleviates their boredom.
Ok, I exaggerated when I said there would be "zero" incentive to produce. More accurately, the incentive to produce would be vastly reduced. There is also a strong disincentive: the resentment felt by most producers when the fruits of their labor are confiscated and given to slackers.
You want to try to sustain the standard of living of the entire human population with the efforts of those very few individuals who work because they're bored, and don't resent the freeloaders who are in the majority? Like I said, that's a prescription for massive human suffering.
It's been tried many times throughout history, and failed every time. I urge you to read the lesson learned by the Plymouth Colony's Gov. William Bradford: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/11/the_tragedy_of_the_commons.html
The Grey Goo disaster happened 3 billion years ago. This rock is covered in self replicating machines!
Yes, but few organisms are grey (there's a wonderful diversity of color) and many of them are not gooey. It wasn't such a disaster after all.
There will always be limited resources, and those who would deny those resources to others as leverage against their fellow man. It's about power, not scarcity of resources.
To restate this using less socialistic language: There will always be private ownership of resources, and the owners will never be 100% charitable with their property.
I certainly hope that statement is true. If it's not, there will be zero incentive to produce. The size of the pie, that will be oh-so-equitably divided, will shrink to zero. A prescription for massive human suffering.
So this one has been explained away by Google, but the sunken city found near Cuba has never been explained. In fact, since National Geographic reported on it in 2002, everything has been all hush-hush -- promises of follow-up exploration, but no hard information to be found.
If you're curious about this, perform further searches using the following keywords: sonar, Zelitsky, Weinzweig, "Advanced Digital Communications".