Before UFO's there were demons, beasts, witches, etc. The current myth-of-the day is UFO's.
Ah, I see what you did there. Demons and witches are imaginary, so UFO's must be too. Sagan was a smart guy, but I don't see why his application of pop-psychology to the matter has any weight.
The evidence he speaks of includes the hard data of sensor technology that has frequently confirmed the reality of physical craft and the high quality of extremely reliable eyewitnesses who are "neither misreporting facts nor delusional."
Ah, good point. The environmental impacts are lower and the efficiency can be much higher. The required land use is still astronomical, though. Or 'planetary', I guess would be more apropos.
Do you think there is, or for some reason that I was creating, a false dichotomy between idiots trying to overturn physics without understanding it, and current theory being indubitably correct?
I suspect "latched on to" is the point of confusion. I had put the Pioneer Anomaly into the "this needs explaining" category - and something I wasn't willing to let go of for the sake of mathematical purity. From your response, I think your usage meant, "this proves all of physics is wrong." So, it seems we're in agreement, just a difference in usage of an idiom.
Of course nobody who latched on to the anomaly will be satisfied by this explanation. So it goes...
Not so. Since I heard about it, I've allowed the possibility that Newtonian/relativistic physics may have some inaccuracies at very large scales, or that something about space was unknown.
Now this calculation offers a much simpler explanation, so I'll count it as far more likely to be true. I'd previously assumed those writing the papers would have accounted for it.
But until we have a Grand Unified Theory, or at least a provable theory of gravity that works at quantum scales, I'm not going to place any 300-year bets that our current understanding of physics is Correct(tm). Useful tools, definitely, but any higher level of Belief is religious in nature.
I helped a friend with this once - he was being recruited by a very small startup (he had a good job at a growing company you've now heard of). They promised him a low salary but lots of stock options and all kinds of talk about how he'd own a big chunk of the company (something like 5%).
He asked me about this, and I told him they were going to screw him with stock dilution. I suggested he counter with 0.5% non-dilutable shares.
They immediately broke off negotiations. Illusionists don't like smart-asses who know their tricks - this one just happened to have an MBA.
Seriously, this is 2011. WiFi in dorms was standard by the middle of last decade. Heck, I just installed a mesh in an on-campus residence last week (new building). It cost about $1500 to cover a 26-bedroom facility, including the managed gigabit PoE switch.
which is insane. If it's the same data, why should we need to make many copies?
Because the music industry hates the planet. So does Hollywood - they won't let me stream movies I want, insisting on having my agent put plastic discs in paper envelopes and pushing them over asphalt roads in diesel trucks.
Sorry, I'll actually try to solve the issues. The OP's point was that there isn't enough solar energy to meet our needs. I, and you, clearly demonstrated there is many times over enough energy available.
Yeah, the insolation numbers work out, but you have to wreck a significant percentage of the environment to 'save' it. Besides all the forests destroyed for this vision, you've seen what rare earth mines do to the environment, right?
To stay on topic, the safe nuclear designs don't suffer either problem. IFR-type designs are actually nuclear waste clean-up machines. So, you can have your energy needs met and have a better environment. And by time the waste clean-up is done, the fusion systems ought to be ready. That's all win.
Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far.
This is the Godzilla Argument.
Why didn't they plan for a 46' tsunami? Why didn't they plan for a 600' tsunami? Why didn't they plan for a Godzilla attack (being in Japan is just a poetic coincidence)?
No matter how good the plans are, something worse can happen. So, rather than building a 700' sea wall, they went with their best predictions. Turns out they were wrong. If a comet had hit the ocean instead, they'd be even more screwed. Heck if a comet hits the Atlantic, all the nuclear plants on the US East Coast get wiped off the map.
They say there's no danger of a Chernobyl style catastrophe, but what credibility do they have?
To people who understand what happened at Chernobyl and what is happening at Fukushima Daiichi, plenty. It's not impenetrable knowledge - Wikipedia has all you need to know. Also check out the Union of Concerned Scientists daily updates.
The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year. In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year. Photosynthesis captures approximately 3,000 EJ per year in biomass. The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined.
Let's go with those numbers. 3,000 EJ per year is the amount captured by all the world's forests, plains, farms, golf courses, backyard gardens, and jungles. These are machines tuned by a billion years of evolution.
Current energy usage is 474 EJ per year, and doubling every 20 years or so. Let's say we're willing to sacrifice 25% of the world's photosynthetic land area (ignoring oxygen) to solar panels (currently 22% for top-notch silicon stuff).
Besides the fact that humans have never done such a massive undertaking, and that we don't have the raw materials, how long would this meet the needs of the population?
So what you're saying is because we haven't invested in either renewable sources or thorium reactor/molten salt type technologies...we don't have them.
I think what he's getting at is that there's just not enough renewable energy. Total worldwide energy usage is about 132,000 TWh and doubling about every 20 years.
If you cover the entire planet with 22% efficient solar panels you'll get 113,000 TWh. Dot all the mountaintops with windmills, 167,000 TWh. Plumb all the volcanos, 139,000TWh; cut down and burn the forests, 70,000 TWh. Damn all the rivers, 14,000 TWh. Wave-generate on all the coastlines, 280TWh.
In theory, it's possible, but you wreck the environment in the process, and humans have never built anything on that scale - the Great Wall of China is a dwarf of a project in comparison. Then what have you accomplished? Proved a point that you're down with Jane Fonda?
Or, you can clean up all the existing nuclear waste with IFR's and cover all the world's energy needs for decades (just by cleaning up). By then, they ought to have a good fusion system running.
The IFR research was done and the reactor was constructed, tested, they pulled the plug, etc. Al Gore led the charge to kill that project shortly before he began profiting massively from the Global Warming industry and lobbying for government take-over of the energy industry. No conflict of interest there....
In all likelihood it could have gone... "was anybody hurt here? No? OK, there's nothing to worry about. Next."
But now, the Authority will almost certainly have to follow the absolute strictest letter of the law, just to send a message to other pilots/operators/owners, don't play with us.
Great, they're butthurt so they'll reign down with all their terror. And you think the father is the spoiled brat?
"A publicly-referenced SMTP server MUST NOT require use of the STARTTLS extension in order to deliver mail locally."
You have to allow clear SMTP to deliver to you, but you can chose to not deliver to servers that won't negotiate STARTTLS. That would be very inconvenient for most, but perhaps critically important to some.
If he were working for a private company, he'd have confidentiality and trade secret laws to help protect that stuff.
Right, but he doesn't work for a private company. He works for a government, which has a monopoly.
In exchange for the citizens (aka taxpayers) allowing the monopoly, they get to see how it works. If their money is being used to orchestrate political action, they deserve to know that.
And if this professor wants to organize a recall, great, do it on his own time, on his own dime.
Heck, there's a small brouhaha around here because cops were driving around on the job asking store owners to put up election signs for the Chief of Police. Doing it on their own time, using their private cars, out of uniform is 100% OK - doing it in uniform during their shift is 100% against the law.
Yes, the political hack making this request is politically motivated, but he has a legitimate point. If the professor did this using publicly owned equipment, on the job, he made a serious error*.
* I'm assuming his State's laws are similar to most others.
And how DDP worked c. 1985. The secret is a decent naming service, which AppleTalk had, so nobody ever worried about addresses. It worked very well for local networks. Lord knows why the rest of the world hasn't figured out mDNS's place by now.
Slashdot Mirror
Before UFO's there were demons, beasts, witches, etc. The current myth-of-the day is UFO's.
Ah, I see what you did there. Demons and witches are imaginary, so UFO's must be too. Sagan was a smart guy, but I don't see why his application of pop-psychology to the matter has any weight.
Here's a US Army Colonel who contradicts Sagan:
What is the alternative?
Call up the guys at pingtest.net and ask them to send them the data set for amount < what this program is costing.
Still, this program is far better than the $300M database that doesn't do anything. <----- I'm not even sure if that's hyperbole or not at this point.
Ah, good point. The environmental impacts are lower and the efficiency can be much higher. The required land use is still astronomical, though. Or 'planetary', I guess would be more apropos.
Do you think there is, or for some reason that I was creating, a false dichotomy between idiots trying to overturn physics without understanding it, and current theory being indubitably correct?
I suspect "latched on to" is the point of confusion. I had put the Pioneer Anomaly into the "this needs explaining" category - and something I wasn't willing to let go of for the sake of mathematical purity. From your response, I think your usage meant, "this proves all of physics is wrong." So, it seems we're in agreement, just a difference in usage of an idiom.
Thank you for stating the problem so completely.
Of course nobody who latched on to the anomaly will be satisfied by this explanation. So it goes...
Not so. Since I heard about it, I've allowed the possibility that Newtonian/relativistic physics may have some inaccuracies at very large scales, or that something about space was unknown.
Now this calculation offers a much simpler explanation, so I'll count it as far more likely to be true. I'd previously assumed those writing the papers would have accounted for it.
But until we have a Grand Unified Theory, or at least a provable theory of gravity that works at quantum scales, I'm not going to place any 300-year bets that our current understanding of physics is Correct(tm). Useful tools, definitely, but any higher level of Belief is religious in nature.
Is there any defense to stock dilution?
Yes, ask.
I helped a friend with this once - he was being recruited by a very small startup (he had a good job at a growing company you've now heard of). They promised him a low salary but lots of stock options and all kinds of talk about how he'd own a big chunk of the company (something like 5%).
He asked me about this, and I told him they were going to screw him with stock dilution. I suggested he counter with 0.5% non-dilutable shares.
They immediately broke off negotiations. Illusionists don't like smart-asses who know their tricks - this one just happened to have an MBA.
Seriously, this is 2011. WiFi in dorms was standard by the middle of last decade. Heck, I just installed a mesh in an on-campus residence last week (new building). It cost about $1500 to cover a 26-bedroom facility, including the managed gigabit PoE switch.
Gimme a shout, BC, I'm about two hours away.
They delete all kinds of highly referenced and relevant articles simply because the editor does not know about the subject.
I will never understand why wikiepdia is so frenzied about deletions.
Gee, you stated the answer and then asked the question.
This is why academics won't do much with wikipedia unless article editors get a major ego reduction. "This idiot is arguing with my edits?"
These are good arguments for why big corporations are unmanageable. Too big to fail, too big to punish, too big to hold accountable.
Perhaps we should stop allowing the the government to protect these giant corporations.
which is insane. If it's the same data, why should we need to make many copies?
Because the music industry hates the planet. So does Hollywood - they won't let me stream movies I want, insisting on having my agent put plastic discs in paper envelopes and pushing them over asphalt roads in diesel trucks.
Google has totally been publicly whipped for Buzz and for collecting WiFi data....
And does anybody think those two decisions were more than 2 years in the planning?
The disaster that struck was patently within the realms of "perfectly likely"
What's the upper limit of "perfectly likely" tsunami waves at the Fukushima Daiichi location?
Good thing there is still GPS, NTP, etc.
Good thing GPS is still useful for something there. All the recent land surveys done there via GPS are all off by 8 feet or so now.
Sorry, I'll actually try to solve the issues. The OP's point was that there isn't enough solar energy to meet our needs. I, and you, clearly demonstrated there is many times over enough energy available.
Yeah, the insolation numbers work out, but you have to wreck a significant percentage of the environment to 'save' it. Besides all the forests destroyed for this vision, you've seen what rare earth mines do to the environment, right?
To stay on topic, the safe nuclear designs don't suffer either problem. IFR-type designs are actually nuclear waste clean-up machines. So, you can have your energy needs met and have a better environment. And by time the waste clean-up is done, the fusion systems ought to be ready. That's all win.
Apparently earthquake and tsunami's were part of the planned failure modes of the reactors as well. We've all seen how well things have gone so far.
This is the Godzilla Argument.
Why didn't they plan for a 46' tsunami? Why didn't they plan for a 600' tsunami? Why didn't they plan for a Godzilla attack (being in Japan is just a poetic coincidence)?
No matter how good the plans are, something worse can happen. So, rather than building a 700' sea wall, they went with their best predictions. Turns out they were wrong. If a comet had hit the ocean instead, they'd be even more screwed. Heck if a comet hits the Atlantic, all the nuclear plants on the US East Coast get wiped off the map.
They say there's no danger of a Chernobyl style catastrophe, but what credibility do they have?
To people who understand what happened at Chernobyl and what is happening at Fukushima Daiichi, plenty. It's not impenetrable knowledge - Wikipedia has all you need to know. Also check out the Union of Concerned Scientists daily updates.
The total solar energy absorbed by Earth's atmosphere, oceans and land masses is approximately 3,850,000 exajoules (EJ) per year. In 2002, this was more energy in one hour than the world used in one year. Photosynthesis captures approximately 3,000 EJ per year in biomass. The amount of solar energy reaching the surface of the planet is so vast that in one year it is about twice as much as will ever be obtained from all of the Earth's non-renewable resources of coal, oil, natural gas, and mined uranium combined.
Let's go with those numbers. 3,000 EJ per year is the amount captured by all the world's forests, plains, farms, golf courses, backyard gardens, and jungles. These are machines tuned by a billion years of evolution.
Current energy usage is 474 EJ per year, and doubling every 20 years or so. Let's say we're willing to sacrifice 25% of the world's photosynthetic land area (ignoring oxygen) to solar panels (currently 22% for top-notch silicon stuff).
Besides the fact that humans have never done such a massive undertaking, and that we don't have the raw materials, how long would this meet the needs of the population?
So what you're saying is because we haven't invested in either renewable sources or thorium reactor/molten salt type technologies...we don't have them.
I think what he's getting at is that there's just not enough renewable energy. Total worldwide energy usage is about 132,000 TWh and doubling about every 20 years.
If you cover the entire planet with 22% efficient solar panels you'll get 113,000 TWh. Dot all the mountaintops with windmills, 167,000 TWh. Plumb all the volcanos, 139,000TWh; cut down and burn the forests, 70,000 TWh. Damn all the rivers, 14,000 TWh. Wave-generate on all the coastlines, 280TWh.
In theory, it's possible, but you wreck the environment in the process, and humans have never built anything on that scale - the Great Wall of China is a dwarf of a project in comparison. Then what have you accomplished? Proved a point that you're down with Jane Fonda?
Or, you can clean up all the existing nuclear waste with IFR's and cover all the world's energy needs for decades (just by cleaning up). By then, they ought to have a good fusion system running.
The IFR research was done and the reactor was constructed, tested, they pulled the plug, etc. Al Gore led the charge to kill that project shortly before he began profiting massively from the Global Warming industry and lobbying for government take-over of the energy industry. No conflict of interest there....
In all likelihood it could have gone ... "was anybody hurt here? No? OK, there's nothing to worry about. Next."
But now, the Authority will almost certainly have to follow the absolute strictest letter of the law, just to send a message to other pilots/operators/owners, don't play with us.
Great, they're butthurt so they'll reign down with all their terror. And you think the father is the spoiled brat?
I would have expected Bill Gates to have a much, much lower Slashdot number.
Please, you and I had Slashdot accounts when Bill Gates was still saying that the Internet was a fad.
Yes, it does sound that way. Heh, well, hopefully he stays interested.
And hopefully he's not getting his ego inflated to the degree that he assumes that because he's so smart he can always see farther than others.
"A publicly-referenced SMTP server MUST NOT require use of the STARTTLS extension in order to deliver mail locally."
You have to allow clear SMTP to deliver to you, but you can chose to not deliver to servers that won't negotiate STARTTLS. That would be very inconvenient for most, but perhaps critically important to some.
If he were working for a private company, he'd have confidentiality and trade secret laws to help protect that stuff.
Right, but he doesn't work for a private company. He works for a government, which has a monopoly.
In exchange for the citizens (aka taxpayers) allowing the monopoly, they get to see how it works. If their money is being used to orchestrate political action, they deserve to know that.
And if this professor wants to organize a recall, great, do it on his own time, on his own dime.
Heck, there's a small brouhaha around here because cops were driving around on the job asking store owners to put up election signs for the Chief of Police. Doing it on their own time, using their private cars, out of uniform is 100% OK - doing it in uniform during their shift is 100% against the law.
Yes, the political hack making this request is politically motivated, but he has a legitimate point. If the professor did this using publicly owned equipment, on the job, he made a serious error*.
* I'm assuming his State's laws are similar to most others.
This is how IPv6 address assignment works today.
And how DDP worked c. 1985. The secret is a decent naming service, which AppleTalk had, so nobody ever worried about addresses. It worked very well for local networks. Lord knows why the rest of the world hasn't figured out mDNS's place by now.
Look guys even though my day job right now is at Wendys that gives you all no right to talk about Drupal developers as if all they do is make burgers.
Makes sense - when you get up to the counter at Wendy's, they've got that menu across the top too.