As stated elsewhere, I've said I misunderstood something the article said. Yes, I did read the article.
The data gets to school from UCAR (I think it's UCAR, but I get them confused with NCAR).
Still the government has done these things for a rather long time. It's been my understanding that the private weather industry's job is to produce customized forecasts, whether for TV viewers, corporations, or another private interest. On the other hand, the government disseminates more general data, collects the data, and issues watches and warnings.
The CWSA comments on the 1991 agreement: "The private weather industry and the NWS will work together to protect the free and open international exchange of meteorologic, hydrologic, and oceanographic data provided by the' NWS by ensuring that the data are not used to compete directly with or to interfere with internal policies of national meteorological agencies in those countries where they also provide commercial weather services;"
It would seem like they would agree not to charge for the data. The agreement seems to say this data should be freely available, as in both speech and beer.
Lastly, the NWS is constantly modifying their site. The colors on the map on the front page of weather.gov were changed, they've introduced gridpoint forecasts, experimental graphical forecasts, and several other things within the last year or two. Some of the offices go farther, such as the Norman, OK office which has an enhanced page displaying information about severe weather in the area. And at times new forecasts and new graphics are added. For example, it hasn't been too long ago, a few years or so, since the SPC started producing a day 3 convective outlook.
I agree too about their issues with servers. You'll get no argument from me there.
By the way, I just used radial velocity images as an example of data that's produced but not distributed. NCEP distributes some data produced by computer models, and it's very useful, but stuff like forecast soundings aren't distributed AFAIK. My original point was there's lots of data they're already not distributing and as someone who's thankful for what they do distribute, I hope the private weather industry doesn't cause some of those products to go offline as well.
The data is already processed. Those images you see are just representations over level III data plotted over base maps. They already produce all of that level 3 data.
So, the only thing they would be doing is plotting data they've already got.
By the way, you're also incorrect about the government's priorities. After posting, I examined the NWS site and apparently they're creating new images for some radars which plot the data over a view of the terrain. And they've also produced some radial velocity images along with it. This data isn't available for most of the radar sites, but it is being developed.
Furthermore, not too long ago, the NHC was requesting comments on modifying some of its images issued to the public.
If the NWS didn't feel these things were important, would they be doing these things?
That data is generated by NWS radars and NWS computers. They already provide base reflectivity, composite reflectivity, and 1 hour and storm total precipitation totals. Why shouldn't they include radial velocity images along with it if they're already producing those products?
And for what it's worth, I already do exactly what you're describing. But that doesn't mean that most people are going to do that. I'm an atmospheric science major and many of my fellow students know very little about programming.
You may be correct. But I've found this quote from the CWSA's site where they actually discuss the 1991 agreement:
"The NWS will not compete with the private sector when a service is currently provided or can be provided by commercial enterprises, unless otherwise directed by applicable law."
TV stations are a form of private weather. What's the difference between a doppler radar operated by TV stations and by the NWS?
Also, the article talks about the NWS being distracted by certain responsibilities and they would do a better job issuing warnings if they weren't distracted.
For what it's worth, there's already a lot of data from the NWS not distributed in an easily viewed form. Try, for example, looking through the NWS sites for a radar image of radial velocity or storm relative radial velocity. You'll find the raw level 3 data on an FTP but you won't find an image.
"We feel that they spend a lot of their funding and attention on duplicating products and services that already exist in the private sector," Barry Lee Myers, executive vice president of AccuWeather, says of the weather service. "And they are not spending the kind of time and effort that is needed on catastrophic issues that involve lives and property, which I think is really their true function."
Maybe I'm misunderstanding that, but that's how I took it.
BTW, private industry has invested in this sort of thing. Just look at all the local TV stations with doppler radar and that run their own computer models.
You're absolutely correct. But this is about more than disseminating data.
Private industry wants to take over actually collecting the data. They can't tell the NWS what to do with data the NWS collects, but they want to take collection of data out of the NWS' control. That's what the article is saying.
What's so wrong about this is research is rarely profitable in a short period of time. Industry is about impressing shareholders as much as it is about producing a product. I'm of the opinion that taking data collection out of the hands of the government will stifle research to improve our ability to collect this data.
This is extremely important, especially in areas such as radar. The WSR-88D radars, many of which were deployed in the early 1990s, were developed through years of research. They have the important feature that their predecessors don't of being able to detect motion, not just reflectivity. This allows meteorologists to detect things such as rotation and better issue warnings (particularly tornado warnings)! It's important that this research continue.
That's really why private industry's stance on this is dangerous and flawed.
I'm a student studying meteorology. I've got a lot of data and software available to me when I'm at school that simply isn't available when I'm not there. It's frustrating to search for certain data and find that it's unavailable.
The private weather industry reached an agreement with the NWS before the internet that defined the seperation between the two. There were certain things that private industry would not do that the government would. It set the responsibilities for both. However, with advances in technology and lower costs, private weather can perform many tasks that the government legitimately does. Thus, NOAA believes it's time to redefine the boundary between the two. Presumably this would allow for some overlap.
Government has always been responsible for things such as soundings, radars, and issuing watches and warnings. There's many other things the NWS does as well. NOAA has attempted to make data available to the public whenever possible. For example, you can get a lot of radar data shortly after it's received from a NOAA ftp site. This is a good thing.
The way I see it is private industry has spent lots of money investing in things the NWS already does. Instead of just accepting this, they want to make money by taking over things that are normally done by the government and reducing the government's role.
Research is rarely profitable in the short term. It's an investment. Research in the meteorological community is ongoing. Constantly, work is being done to improve the data collected, our understanding of the weather, and the methods used to analyze the data. By taking things such as radar out of the hands of the government, we sacrifice the research that is currently being done. Remember, private industry isn't going to make the investment in research that the government is. After all, research doesn't make a profit quickly and doesn't impress investors.
IMHO, private industry is overstepping their bounds here. They're infringing into things the government already does. And they're pretending to be the victims in this.
If private industry gets their way, everyone who doesn't have a financial stake in this loses.
No, I think you misunderstood a couple of my points.
I'm suggesting first that other civilizations might well be broadcasting using the same radio frequencies we are. Even if it's not for the purpose of sending greetings to other civilizations, perhaps for the purpose of contacting others within their own civilization. Even looking at stars millions of light years away, one might expect to hear something outside of the normal hum of the universe. Even though we'd be listening to a signal from many millions of years ago, compared to the age of the universe or even our own sun, it is still rather recent.
Certainly it's possible God created life elsewhere, too. It would be foolish to assume he didn't. My point is that if we are as alone in this universe as it seems, it would be an argument that suggests the possibility of creation. If God were to have created life elsewhere, it certainly does not go against the concept of creation.
If we found other planets similar to Earth, and they're certainly out there, if life was likely to evolve on those planets, we'd expect a decent chance of finding life on those planets. If we didn't find life on those planets would we accept that we (life on Earth) was merely a fluke? Or would we attribute it to something like creation?
For fucks sake, a day is a fucking day. Nowhere else in the bible does it _EVER_ imply that a day is longer than 24 hours, and "days" are mentioned many times in the old testament. In fact, everywhere else in the old testament, a day is the period between dawn and dawn.
Actually the Bible indicates that God exists outside of time. It's reasonable that if God created the universe and all that is in it, that he also created time. Any decent cosmologist will tell you that the time dimension is as much a part of this universe as the three spatial dimensions we observe. If God created the universe, surely he exists outside of the universe and is not necessarily bound by the laws of space and time that exist within the universe.
The Bible suggests exactly this.
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
-- 2 Peter 3:8-9
It doesn't say that a day refers to a thousand years. What it says is God isn't bound by time as we know it. In other words, he exists outside of time.
I'm going to try to address some of the issues here.
But do not forget this one thing, dear friends: With the Lord a day is like a thousand years, and a thousand years are like a day. The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance.
-- 2 Peter 3:8-9
The point of that passage, from the Bible, isn't to say the world was created in six thousand years, as many people might argue. What it means is that God exists outside of time. I would go farther to say that God created time. Thus we cannot apply our notion of time to explain the behavior of God.
While many speculated about the presence of planets around other stars, scientists only managed to detect one in 1995. Since then, scientists have managed to discover many planets around many stars. And many of these systems are quite a bit different than our own, however at least one system similar in scale to our own has been found. This suggests that planets, including some like our own, are not rare throughout the universe. It would be foolish to assume otherwise.
The weak anthropic principle says that we see the universe as we do because if it were different, we would not be here to observe it. In other words, our existence implies that the surroundings we see are suitable for complex life such as our own.
Many other planets certainly exist with conditions similar to our own Earth. One argument against creation would be made if we were to discover other complex life that had developed independently of the Earth. It would suggest that complex life is reasonably likely to develop on its own. Furthermore, it's likely that at least some of these complex beings would have the same urges to explore and contact other beings. It is a reasonable assumption that other beings would have this desire to explore and seek out other life such as their own.
If this is the case, why then have we not been contacted? Why, when we listen to the cosmos, do we only hear the background hum of the universe and the noise from the stars and other celestial bodies emitting radiation? Why do we not hear the chatter of other complex beings?
If life is truly widespread in our universe, as one would expect to find if creationism were not the case, we ought to be finding other beings similar to us. One might argue that our civilization was one of the first to develop or that other civilizations are far enough away that radiation emitted would not have reached the Earth. The second argument, however, would suggest that life such as ours is not that likely and would favor creation. The first argument is unlikely as well. The sun is a second or third generation star in the middle of its life cycle. There have been many stars like it before and will be many stars like it in the future. It is foolish to believe that we, the race of humans, are the first complex life such as our own to exist in this universe.
If complex life such as our own is really this rare throughout the universe but planets such as Earth are not, and we can't fall back to the weak anthropic principle, it is truly a dilemma. Sure, it could be explained by saying we are the one in a very large number of planets like Earth that complex life happened to form on. But scientists would hate to fall back to that argument and accept that humans are a fluke. If this is the case, creation doesn't seem quite as unlikely.
I know I've made many assumptions in this argument, such that complex life would attempt to seek out other beings and that they would use methods detectable to us. But that being said, I still believe this is a reasonably sound argument that says creation isn't as unreasonable as it seems.
It's the responsibility of law enforcement to enforce all the laws. And when the content being distributed reaches a certain value, it does become a criminal offense.
There's a big difference between an operation like this and the lawsuits filed by the RIAA.
First of all, the RIAA stated previously that the people they sue on average are distributing 1,000 titles. The college student mentioned in the story was distributing about 13,000 titles. That's a big difference. I also can bet you that most of the people that got sued by the RIAA were downloading music for their enjoyment and weren't doing it with the intent of distributing it to other people. On the other hand, this sting operation was busting a piracy ring. These people ran the servers for the sole purpose of illegally distributing copyrighted materials to others.
The amount of material and the intent is very different.
I've got some experience with forecasting. I feel the need to answer this.
First of all, there's several computer models that play a key role in forecasting. Basically, with a set of observations (surface observations, soundings, etc.) the model builds an initialization - an image of the current weather. There's really not that many observations, and even less soundings. Lack of available data really is a limiting factor in predicting the weather. Most models are gridded. This means that there's a limited resolution to the models. In other words, predicting the temperature at a certain point can be a matter of interpolation and may or may not necessarily be accurate.
Sometimes the models are in good agreement with each other. In this case, the forecaster can have good confidence when he or she is producing a forecast. Sometimes, however, the models are not in agreement, and the forecast is produced with less confidence. A forecaster doesn't have the option, however, of saying the models don't agree with each other and choosing to not do a forecast.
Also, I disagree with your definition of an accurate forecast.
I believe the forecast earlier today for tonight called for a high in the low 40s with temperatures dropping throughout the day as a cold front pushed through and very low temperatures tonight. The cold front pushed through slightly later and temperatures reached 50 degrees. It's still expected to get very cold tonight, though. By your definition, it was a bad forecast. Yet the forecast, for the most part, was correct.
That's the problem. Forecasters can tell you what's going to happen with the weather to a reasonably good degree of accuracy. But that's not what people are interested in. People don't care that a front is passing through and it's bringing arctic air behind it. That's not what they want. People want a number. They want to know how cold it's going to get. That's a lot more challenging and a lot less accurate.
I really believe a lot of the forecasts you count as wrong are forecasts that were right, but the number wasn't close enough. Yes, there are some forecasts that are just dead wrong. I've seen plenty. But the situation I describe is probably more common.
And remember that data about current surface weather is very limited. Data about the upper air is even more limited. This affects the ability to produce accurate forecasts.
I just think you should reconsider many of the points you make. I'd be willing to bet a forecast now is a lot more accurate than a forecast 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
The story isn't suggesting global warming is causing climate change. What the story is suggesting, however, is that changes in solar output might once again have major effects on the Earth's climate.
There's a number referred to as the solar constant. While we refer to it as a constant, it's not really constant. The sun's output does vary. A decrease in solar output, even a small decrease, can have major effects on climate. Interestingly enough, a decrease in sunspots has been associated with a decrease in solar output.
This means it's more likely for any given place to get colder than it is for that place to get warmer.
Interestingly enough, the author cites the desertification of the Sahara as one of the climate changes. There's a reason the Sahara is a desert today. There are three "cells" in the currently accepted model of global circulation. Those are the Hadley cell, Ferrel cell, and Polar cell. The Hadley cell and Ferrel cell meet about 30 degrees both north and south. Air converges aloft, sinks, and diverges at the surface. This tendency to have high pressure at the surface results in some semi-permanent features of the weather such as the "Bermuda high." Many of the world's deserts are found near these latitudes, including the Sahara.
What's my point?
If the Sahara was previously habitable and suddenly became a desert, it's likely due to a change in global circulation. I don't care to speculate on this, except to say that a change in global circulation will have major consequences on weather throughout the world. Global circulation is responsible for such things as the intertropical convergence zone, the general west-to-east movement of weather systems in the United States, and a lot of things we take for granted. While a change in solar output might not change a lot of that, weather we once expected one place might occur somewhere else.
They're only flying as high as about 20,000 feet at the most. The pressure up there is about 500 mb. Sea level pressure is approximately 1000 mb. Consider an experiment at the surface where we inflate a balloon in a 1000 mb environment. We then keep the same temperature, but drop the pressure to 500 mb. That means for the balloon to maintain equal pressure with its surroundings, it must double in volume. That means, since volume is a three dimensional quantity that the diameter must increase by the cube root of 2. The diameter is only 1.26 times what it was before. Even at 125 mb, the balloon would only be twice its previous size.
The 300 mb level in the atmosphere is around 32,000 feet. That's higher than the peak of Mt. Everest. Unless you brought oxygen tanks along, you would almost certainly be unconscious at that pressure. And yet in our surface experiement, at 300 mb, the balloon would only have a diameter of 1.49 times its diameter at 1000 mb.
And if your balloon is still intact at 300 mb and you're still conscious, you'd have more to worry about than your balloon bursting. You're likely to encounter some pretty strong winds at that altitude which might make steering a bit of a challenge.
But unless you fill your balloon almost completely full at the surface, you'd likely be unconscious before you'd see your balloon burst.
There are two types of text formatting that are used on IRC. One uses ANSI escapes (nowadays these are rarely seen) and the other uses the mIRC style of color. Nearly every IRC client I've seen supports mIRC color codes, including BitchX, irssi, xircon, epic, ircii, and just about any other client made in the last 5 years or so.
The protocols have changed over time, and as such, several RFCs have been released as updates to the original RFC1459. In addition, many networks add their own nonstandard features and hacks to further improve their users experience. These new RFCs were released in 2000, IIRC.
Floods are rare and are rather difficult to do well nowadays. Most channels are protected with bots of some sort and most of these bots automatically prevent floods and nickfloods. In addition, these bots enforce bans, automatically kicking a banned user from the channel. While it's not directly part of the IRC protocol, bots and enhancements in client software have eliminated most of these problems. The same goes for a screen full of mode changes. I use irssi, which will condense mode changes into less lines so your screen isn't full of flooding.
Splitting any major network to get ops in a channel is virtually impossible now. For the most part, that issue was solved in 1996 when TS (on EFnet) and delay (on IRCNet) were implemented. At least on the EFnet side of things, this has been enhanced to TS3, TS5, and then a CHANFIX bot was added. Now on EFnet, even a channel which has been taken over can be fixed. Packeting servers to gain ops is useless and just doesn't happen anymore. So, unless you've been away from IRC for about the past eight years, you would know this isn't a problem.
As for the nat-unfriendly transfers, that's another myth. In mIRC, there's an option of how to obtain your IP. One method is "normal" and the other is "server." If you're behind a NAT, just select server. Instead of looking up your IP the normal way, it gets your IP from the server and as a result will get the IP of your gateway, thus allowing DCC to work correctly. You might have to forward a few ports if you want to DCC send, but that shouldn't be a huge issue. Nearly every other IRC client has a similar feature to get your IP from the server. I'm behind a NAT and have no trouble with DCC.
While all of your complaints were true at one time in the past, IRC has improved greatly in recent years. Just about every issue you mention has been addressed.
Often, I find my network and servers I use for my small business come under attack by script kiddies. Sometimes it's a DDoS attack, but more often than not, it's just getting hammered by one machine. When I contact the ISP involved, generally one of the large US ISPs, I am told that they will look into it. Nothing ever happens, however, and ISPs are generally unwilling to provide assistance in tracking down attacks. This means my complaint ends up in the circular file. The ISPs are protecting criminals because they don't want to lose business, and I have no way of making sure my complaint doesn't end up lost in this black hole. As an individual representing a small business, what recourse do I have in dealing with ISPs to make sure my complaints are heard and taken seriously?
The Mario game you speak of is sqrxz, which isn't emulated. It's a unique Mario-like game and could not possibly qualify as prior art. While on the subject of TI calculators, however, you bring up an interesting suggestion for possible prior art.
One of the best possible examples of prior art just happens to be Virtual TI, which emulates TI calculators on a Windows machine.
The reason for this is Virtual TI emulates many different calculators. It detects which calculator a ROM image is for and uses different emulation routines to emulate that particular calculator.
Remember, there wasn't much protection provided by the spaceship. I recognize that the astronauts weren't exposed to radiation much, but you didn't answer the question about the film.
You haven't answered my question about the effects of radiation on the film, but yet you ridicule me. Why is that?
As another poster pointed out, covered up wasn't quite the best choice of words. But in the case of near-Earth asteroids, scientists and the government do keep things quiet while they have a chance to investigate. It's not unreasonable to suggest that this sort of thing could be done in other instances as well. Have they covered up disasters? I didn't word that well. Have they kept things quiet about potential disasters for one reason or another? You bet.
I think at times we are unreasonably harsh toward people who ask questions. Sure, the threat in the articles is exaggerated, but I tend to think the government would downplay the threat of a volcanic eruption at Yellowstone while it's being investigated.
As for the moon landings, I believe they really did happen. On the other hand, I am open minded and there are some reasonable questions asked, some which I have not seen answers for. Let me pose one to you. While we don't really know the effects radiation could have on astronauts, we do know the effects radiation has on film. The astronauts traveled through the Van Allen belts without a great deal of shielding and with film that AFAIK wasn't protected well either. The effects of lesser radiation can be demonstrated on film at any dentist's office. And that exposure lasts only a few seconds. The question is why the film brought with the astronauts on their voyage to the moon wasn't affected by radiation. I'm just curious.:)
The threat of a massive eruption is exaggerated in the articles, without a doubt. There is, however, a lot of interesting scientific data presented.
The interview points out that since the last caldera-forming eruption, which was 640,000 years ago, there have been 30 smaller eruptions. That's an average of one eruption per 21,000 years. According to the USGS, the last eruption at Yellowstone was 70,000 years ago. It's not unreasonable to suggest that another eruption could occur in the near future.
As for the threat of a massive caldera-forming eruption. the same USGS site reports that they tend to have occurred every 600,000 to 800,000 years over the past 2.1 million years. Since the last such eruption was 640,000 years, it's not unreasonable to suggest that such an eruption could occur within the next 200,000 years if the pattern continues. The threat of such an eruption is overplayed in some of the articles cited in the story, but is not completely unreasonable.
Note, also, that there aren't any records of what happened the last time Yellowstone had a massive eruption. Such an eruption has not been observed.
Also, the government does have a tendency to downplay threats while they are still being investigated.
I tend to think the questions are reasonable but exaggerated. But if the government downplays stuff, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I just don't think people ought to be ridiculed when it's easy enough just to debunk them with the facts if they really are wrong.
I've read all the articles and I've come to a couple of conclusions.
The threat of a massive eruption is hyped too much in the articles discussing the threat of such a thing. They fail to point out that there have been many smaller eruptions at Yellowstone. The fact is that there is a threat of a volcanic eruption at Yellowstone and a much much smaller threat of a massive eruption that was discussed.
Also, it's worth noting that the lack of funding prevents Yellowstone from having some monitoring equipment to monitor seismic and volcanic activity. Without all the information, it's hard to completely dismiss the questions asked about the possibility of volcanic eruptions at Yellowstone in the near future.
I admit that the threats in the article are exagerrated. On the other hand, I have no doubt the government and authorities tend to downplay such dangers, probably more than they ought to.
Despite the exaggerations, there are some interesting observations reported in the articles. There's a lot of hard science presented. If the views of the people asking questions are wrong, we ought to be able to dismiss their questions with science and with the facts alone, and without insults and ridiculing. Personally, I think we ought to encourage people to ask questions. Unfortunately, the ridiculing people often receive discourages questioning things. That's a bad thing, in my opinion.
What I don't understand is why anyone who suggests something like the government covering up a disaster or questioning something like the moon landings is immediately ridiculed. There is precedent for such a thing, particularly in the case of near Earth asteroids. In an effort not to alarm the public and to prevent the media from distorting the facts, things are covered up while examined and studied. Stuff like this is plausible and questions need to be asked. If the events such as the seismic activity are still being studied, and nothing is being said to keep the story away from the media, certainly one interview with a member of the USGS isn't going to change things.
My point is this: why is it so bad to ask these questions? We're perfectly willing to believe conspiracies between SCO and Microsoft but we accept the government at face value on things such as this and ridicule the doubters? Why is this?
I'm not trying to start a flame war, but I'm genuinely curious why we take such negative attitudes toward questions such as whether the government doesn't yet want to inform the public over seismic concerns in the Yellowstone area. I'll probably get modded down, but I'd like to know.
It's an unpleasant truth, but Bill Gates was right when he suggested that perfect bug-free, unexploitable code is impossible. There are going to be vulnerabilities, no matter how much of an effort you make to keep them out of code.
Security has to be achieved through firewalling, shutting off unnecessary services, keeping software up to date with the latest security-related patches, and some common sense on the part of the user. In my experience, a lot of Linux users are every bit as ignorant as their Windows counterparts when it comes to security. I know plenty of people who don't know what daemons are running on their computers, who don't keep their software updated, and who don't follow basic common-sense security procedures. Unfortunately, there's the perception among a lot of people that just running Linux makes them secure. They feel they don't need to bother with things such as firewalls, because they're invincible. Even among their Windows counterparts, firewalls are considered a necessary tool for security.
There's a basic competence needed to run Linux. Unfortunately, beyond that, many users are clueless when it comes to security.
Linux doesn't lend itself to many of the problems Windows does. But that's only part of being secure.
Linux distributions shouldn't come with lots and lots of services enabled by default. We complain at Microsoft because a lot of users have IIS running on their machines and just aren't aware of it. Many Linux distributions are just as guilty as Microsoft here.
If we want to make Linux more secure, we need to fix the two biggest vulnerabilities - the default settings of many Linux distributions and the user.
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As stated elsewhere, I've said I misunderstood something the article said. Yes, I did read the article.
The data gets to school from UCAR (I think it's UCAR, but I get them confused with NCAR).
Still the government has done these things for a rather long time. It's been my understanding that the private weather industry's job is to produce customized forecasts, whether for TV viewers, corporations, or another private interest. On the other hand, the government disseminates more general data, collects the data, and issues watches and warnings.
The CWSA comments on the 1991 agreement: "The private weather industry and the NWS will work together to protect the free and open international exchange of meteorologic, hydrologic, and oceanographic data provided by the' NWS by ensuring that the data are not used to compete directly with or to interfere with internal policies of national meteorological agencies in those countries where they also provide commercial weather services;"
It would seem like they would agree not to charge for the data. The agreement seems to say this data should be freely available, as in both speech and beer.
Actually I do understand the computer requirements. It's a lot of data and a lot of bandwidth. That's true.
And as far as the NHC, I'll show you what I'm talking about.
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/graphicsprototypes.shtml
Lastly, the NWS is constantly modifying their site. The colors on the map on the front page of weather.gov were changed, they've introduced gridpoint forecasts, experimental graphical forecasts, and several other things within the last year or two. Some of the offices go farther, such as the Norman, OK office which has an enhanced page displaying information about severe weather in the area. And at times new forecasts and new graphics are added. For example, it hasn't been too long ago, a few years or so, since the SPC started producing a day 3 convective outlook.
I agree too about their issues with servers. You'll get no argument from me there.
By the way, I just used radial velocity images as an example of data that's produced but not distributed. NCEP distributes some data produced by computer models, and it's very useful, but stuff like forecast soundings aren't distributed AFAIK. My original point was there's lots of data they're already not distributing and as someone who's thankful for what they do distribute, I hope the private weather industry doesn't cause some of those products to go offline as well.
Nice reply.
The data is already processed. Those images you see are just representations over level III data plotted over base maps. They already produce all of that level 3 data.
So, the only thing they would be doing is plotting data they've already got.
By the way, you're also incorrect about the government's priorities. After posting, I examined the NWS site and apparently they're creating new images for some radars which plot the data over a view of the terrain. And they've also produced some radial velocity images along with it. This data isn't available for most of the radar sites, but it is being developed.
Furthermore, not too long ago, the NHC was requesting comments on modifying some of its images issued to the public.
If the NWS didn't feel these things were important, would they be doing these things?
That data is generated by NWS radars and NWS computers. They already provide base reflectivity, composite reflectivity, and 1 hour and storm total precipitation totals. Why shouldn't they include radial velocity images along with it if they're already producing those products?
And for what it's worth, I already do exactly what you're describing. But that doesn't mean that most people are going to do that. I'm an atmospheric science major and many of my fellow students know very little about programming.
You may be correct. But I've found this quote from the CWSA's site where they actually discuss the 1991 agreement:
"The NWS will not compete with the private sector when a service is currently provided or can be provided by commercial enterprises, unless otherwise directed by applicable law."
TV stations are a form of private weather. What's the difference between a doppler radar operated by TV stations and by the NWS?
Also, the article talks about the NWS being distracted by certain responsibilities and they would do a better job issuing warnings if they weren't distracted.
For what it's worth, there's already a lot of data from the NWS not distributed in an easily viewed form. Try, for example, looking through the NWS sites for a radar image of radial velocity or storm relative radial velocity. You'll find the raw level 3 data on an FTP but you won't find an image.
"We feel that they spend a lot of their funding and attention on duplicating products and services that already exist in the private sector," Barry Lee Myers, executive vice president of AccuWeather, says of the weather service. "And they are not spending the kind of time and effort that is needed on catastrophic issues that involve lives and property, which I think is really their true function."
Maybe I'm misunderstanding that, but that's how I took it.
BTW, private industry has invested in this sort of thing. Just look at all the local TV stations with doppler radar and that run their own computer models.
You're absolutely correct. But this is about more than disseminating data.
Private industry wants to take over actually collecting the data. They can't tell the NWS what to do with data the NWS collects, but they want to take collection of data out of the NWS' control. That's what the article is saying.
What's so wrong about this is research is rarely profitable in a short period of time. Industry is about impressing shareholders as much as it is about producing a product. I'm of the opinion that taking data collection out of the hands of the government will stifle research to improve our ability to collect this data.
This is extremely important, especially in areas such as radar. The WSR-88D radars, many of which were deployed in the early 1990s, were developed through years of research. They have the important feature that their predecessors don't of being able to detect motion, not just reflectivity. This allows meteorologists to detect things such as rotation and better issue warnings (particularly tornado warnings)! It's important that this research continue.
That's really why private industry's stance on this is dangerous and flawed.
I'm a student studying meteorology. I've got a lot of data and software available to me when I'm at school that simply isn't available when I'm not there. It's frustrating to search for certain data and find that it's unavailable.
The private weather industry reached an agreement with the NWS before the internet that defined the seperation between the two. There were certain things that private industry would not do that the government would. It set the responsibilities for both. However, with advances in technology and lower costs, private weather can perform many tasks that the government legitimately does. Thus, NOAA believes it's time to redefine the boundary between the two. Presumably this would allow for some overlap.
Government has always been responsible for things such as soundings, radars, and issuing watches and warnings. There's many other things the NWS does as well. NOAA has attempted to make data available to the public whenever possible. For example, you can get a lot of radar data shortly after it's received from a NOAA ftp site. This is a good thing.
The way I see it is private industry has spent lots of money investing in things the NWS already does. Instead of just accepting this, they want to make money by taking over things that are normally done by the government and reducing the government's role.
Research is rarely profitable in the short term. It's an investment. Research in the meteorological community is ongoing. Constantly, work is being done to improve the data collected, our understanding of the weather, and the methods used to analyze the data. By taking things such as radar out of the hands of the government, we sacrifice the research that is currently being done. Remember, private industry isn't going to make the investment in research that the government is. After all, research doesn't make a profit quickly and doesn't impress investors.
IMHO, private industry is overstepping their bounds here. They're infringing into things the government already does. And they're pretending to be the victims in this.
If private industry gets their way, everyone who doesn't have a financial stake in this loses.
No, I think you misunderstood a couple of my points.
I'm suggesting first that other civilizations might well be broadcasting using the same radio frequencies we are. Even if it's not for the purpose of sending greetings to other civilizations, perhaps for the purpose of contacting others within their own civilization. Even looking at stars millions of light years away, one might expect to hear something outside of the normal hum of the universe. Even though we'd be listening to a signal from many millions of years ago, compared to the age of the universe or even our own sun, it is still rather recent.
Certainly it's possible God created life elsewhere, too. It would be foolish to assume he didn't. My point is that if we are as alone in this universe as it seems, it would be an argument that suggests the possibility of creation. If God were to have created life elsewhere, it certainly does not go against the concept of creation.
If we found other planets similar to Earth, and they're certainly out there, if life was likely to evolve on those planets, we'd expect a decent chance of finding life on those planets. If we didn't find life on those planets would we accept that we (life on Earth) was merely a fluke? Or would we attribute it to something like creation?
The Bible suggests exactly this. -- 2 Peter 3:8-9
It doesn't say that a day refers to a thousand years. What it says is God isn't bound by time as we know it. In other words, he exists outside of time.
The point of that passage, from the Bible, isn't to say the world was created in six thousand years, as many people might argue. What it means is that God exists outside of time. I would go farther to say that God created time. Thus we cannot apply our notion of time to explain the behavior of God.
While many speculated about the presence of planets around other stars, scientists only managed to detect one in 1995. Since then, scientists have managed to discover many planets around many stars. And many of these systems are quite a bit different than our own, however at least one system similar in scale to our own has been found. This suggests that planets, including some like our own, are not rare throughout the universe. It would be foolish to assume otherwise.
The weak anthropic principle says that we see the universe as we do because if it were different, we would not be here to observe it. In other words, our existence implies that the surroundings we see are suitable for complex life such as our own.
Many other planets certainly exist with conditions similar to our own Earth. One argument against creation would be made if we were to discover other complex life that had developed independently of the Earth. It would suggest that complex life is reasonably likely to develop on its own. Furthermore, it's likely that at least some of these complex beings would have the same urges to explore and contact other beings. It is a reasonable assumption that other beings would have this desire to explore and seek out other life such as their own.
If this is the case, why then have we not been contacted? Why, when we listen to the cosmos, do we only hear the background hum of the universe and the noise from the stars and other celestial bodies emitting radiation? Why do we not hear the chatter of other complex beings?
If life is truly widespread in our universe, as one would expect to find if creationism were not the case, we ought to be finding other beings similar to us. One might argue that our civilization was one of the first to develop or that other civilizations are far enough away that radiation emitted would not have reached the Earth. The second argument, however, would suggest that life such as ours is not that likely and would favor creation. The first argument is unlikely as well. The sun is a second or third generation star in the middle of its life cycle. There have been many stars like it before and will be many stars like it in the future. It is foolish to believe that we, the race of humans, are the first complex life such as our own to exist in this universe.
If complex life such as our own is really this rare throughout the universe but planets such as Earth are not, and we can't fall back to the weak anthropic principle, it is truly a dilemma. Sure, it could be explained by saying we are the one in a very large number of planets like Earth that complex life happened to form on. But scientists would hate to fall back to that argument and accept that humans are a fluke. If this is the case, creation doesn't seem quite as unlikely.
I know I've made many assumptions in this argument, such that complex life would attempt to seek out other beings and that they would use methods detectable to us. But that being said, I still believe this is a reasonably sound argument that says creation isn't as unreasonable as it seems.
It's the responsibility of law enforcement to enforce all the laws. And when the content being distributed reaches a certain value, it does become a criminal offense.
There's a big difference between an operation like this and the lawsuits filed by the RIAA.
First of all, the RIAA stated previously that the people they sue on average are distributing 1,000 titles. The college student mentioned in the story was distributing about 13,000 titles. That's a big difference. I also can bet you that most of the people that got sued by the RIAA were downloading music for their enjoyment and weren't doing it with the intent of distributing it to other people. On the other hand, this sting operation was busting a piracy ring. These people ran the servers for the sole purpose of illegally distributing copyrighted materials to others.
The amount of material and the intent is very different.
I've got some experience with forecasting. I feel the need to answer this.
First of all, there's several computer models that play a key role in forecasting. Basically, with a set of observations (surface observations, soundings, etc.) the model builds an initialization - an image of the current weather. There's really not that many observations, and even less soundings. Lack of available data really is a limiting factor in predicting the weather. Most models are gridded. This means that there's a limited resolution to the models. In other words, predicting the temperature at a certain point can be a matter of interpolation and may or may not necessarily be accurate.
Sometimes the models are in good agreement with each other. In this case, the forecaster can have good confidence when he or she is producing a forecast. Sometimes, however, the models are not in agreement, and the forecast is produced with less confidence. A forecaster doesn't have the option, however, of saying the models don't agree with each other and choosing to not do a forecast.
Also, I disagree with your definition of an accurate forecast.
I believe the forecast earlier today for tonight called for a high in the low 40s with temperatures dropping throughout the day as a cold front pushed through and very low temperatures tonight. The cold front pushed through slightly later and temperatures reached 50 degrees. It's still expected to get very cold tonight, though. By your definition, it was a bad forecast. Yet the forecast, for the most part, was correct.
That's the problem. Forecasters can tell you what's going to happen with the weather to a reasonably good degree of accuracy. But that's not what people are interested in. People don't care that a front is passing through and it's bringing arctic air behind it. That's not what they want. People want a number. They want to know how cold it's going to get. That's a lot more challenging and a lot less accurate.
I really believe a lot of the forecasts you count as wrong are forecasts that were right, but the number wasn't close enough. Yes, there are some forecasts that are just dead wrong. I've seen plenty. But the situation I describe is probably more common.
And remember that data about current surface weather is very limited. Data about the upper air is even more limited. This affects the ability to produce accurate forecasts.
I just think you should reconsider many of the points you make. I'd be willing to bet a forecast now is a lot more accurate than a forecast 10, 20, or 30 years ago.
The story isn't suggesting global warming is causing climate change. What the story is suggesting, however, is that changes in solar output might once again have major effects on the Earth's climate.
There's a number referred to as the solar constant. While we refer to it as a constant, it's not really constant. The sun's output does vary. A decrease in solar output, even a small decrease, can have major effects on climate. Interestingly enough, a decrease in sunspots has been associated with a decrease in solar output.
This means it's more likely for any given place to get colder than it is for that place to get warmer.
Interestingly enough, the author cites the desertification of the Sahara as one of the climate changes. There's a reason the Sahara is a desert today. There are three "cells" in the currently accepted model of global circulation. Those are the Hadley cell, Ferrel cell, and Polar cell. The Hadley cell and Ferrel cell meet about 30 degrees both north and south. Air converges aloft, sinks, and diverges at the surface. This tendency to have high pressure at the surface results in some semi-permanent features of the weather such as the "Bermuda high." Many of the world's deserts are found near these latitudes, including the Sahara.
What's my point?
If the Sahara was previously habitable and suddenly became a desert, it's likely due to a change in global circulation. I don't care to speculate on this, except to say that a change in global circulation will have major consequences on weather throughout the world. Global circulation is responsible for such things as the intertropical convergence zone, the general west-to-east movement of weather systems in the United States, and a lot of things we take for granted. While a change in solar output might not change a lot of that, weather we once expected one place might occur somewhere else.
They're only flying as high as about 20,000 feet at the most. The pressure up there is about 500 mb. Sea level pressure is approximately 1000 mb. Consider an experiment at the surface where we inflate a balloon in a 1000 mb environment. We then keep the same temperature, but drop the pressure to 500 mb. That means for the balloon to maintain equal pressure with its surroundings, it must double in volume. That means, since volume is a three dimensional quantity that the diameter must increase by the cube root of 2. The diameter is only 1.26 times what it was before. Even at 125 mb, the balloon would only be twice its previous size.
The 300 mb level in the atmosphere is around 32,000 feet. That's higher than the peak of Mt. Everest. Unless you brought oxygen tanks along, you would almost certainly be unconscious at that pressure. And yet in our surface experiement, at 300 mb, the balloon would only have a diameter of 1.49 times its diameter at 1000 mb.
And if your balloon is still intact at 300 mb and you're still conscious, you'd have more to worry about than your balloon bursting. You're likely to encounter some pretty strong winds at that altitude which might make steering a bit of a challenge.
But unless you fill your balloon almost completely full at the surface, you'd likely be unconscious before you'd see your balloon burst.
Okay, troll, I'll bite.
There are two types of text formatting that are used on IRC. One uses ANSI escapes (nowadays these are rarely seen) and the other uses the mIRC style of color. Nearly every IRC client I've seen supports mIRC color codes, including BitchX, irssi, xircon, epic, ircii, and just about any other client made in the last 5 years or so.
The protocols have changed over time, and as such, several RFCs have been released as updates to the original RFC1459. In addition, many networks add their own nonstandard features and hacks to further improve their users experience. These new RFCs were released in 2000, IIRC.
Floods are rare and are rather difficult to do well nowadays. Most channels are protected with bots of some sort and most of these bots automatically prevent floods and nickfloods. In addition, these bots enforce bans, automatically kicking a banned user from the channel. While it's not directly part of the IRC protocol, bots and enhancements in client software have eliminated most of these problems. The same goes for a screen full of mode changes. I use irssi, which will condense mode changes into less lines so your screen isn't full of flooding.
Splitting any major network to get ops in a channel is virtually impossible now. For the most part, that issue was solved in 1996 when TS (on EFnet) and delay (on IRCNet) were implemented. At least on the EFnet side of things, this has been enhanced to TS3, TS5, and then a CHANFIX bot was added. Now on EFnet, even a channel which has been taken over can be fixed. Packeting servers to gain ops is useless and just doesn't happen anymore. So, unless you've been away from IRC for about the past eight years, you would know this isn't a problem.
As for the nat-unfriendly transfers, that's another myth. In mIRC, there's an option of how to obtain your IP. One method is "normal" and the other is "server." If you're behind a NAT, just select server. Instead of looking up your IP the normal way, it gets your IP from the server and as a result will get the IP of your gateway, thus allowing DCC to work correctly. You might have to forward a few ports if you want to DCC send, but that shouldn't be a huge issue. Nearly every other IRC client has a similar feature to get your IP from the server. I'm behind a NAT and have no trouble with DCC.
While all of your complaints were true at one time in the past, IRC has improved greatly in recent years. Just about every issue you mention has been addressed.
Often, I find my network and servers I use for my small business come under attack by script kiddies. Sometimes it's a DDoS attack, but more often than not, it's just getting hammered by one machine. When I contact the ISP involved, generally one of the large US ISPs, I am told that they will look into it. Nothing ever happens, however, and ISPs are generally unwilling to provide assistance in tracking down attacks. This means my complaint ends up in the circular file. The ISPs are protecting criminals because they don't want to lose business, and I have no way of making sure my complaint doesn't end up lost in this black hole. As an individual representing a small business, what recourse do I have in dealing with ISPs to make sure my complaints are heard and taken seriously?
The Mario game you speak of is sqrxz, which isn't emulated. It's a unique Mario-like game and could not possibly qualify as prior art. While on the subject of TI calculators, however, you bring up an interesting suggestion for possible prior art.
One of the best possible examples of prior art just happens to be Virtual TI, which emulates TI calculators on a Windows machine.
The reason for this is Virtual TI emulates many different calculators. It detects which calculator a ROM image is for and uses different emulation routines to emulate that particular calculator.
More information on the vulnerability can be found here.
Remember, there wasn't much protection provided by the spaceship. I recognize that the astronauts weren't exposed to radiation much, but you didn't answer the question about the film.
You haven't answered my question about the effects of radiation on the film, but yet you ridicule me. Why is that?
As another poster pointed out, covered up wasn't quite the best choice of words. But in the case of near-Earth asteroids, scientists and the government do keep things quiet while they have a chance to investigate. It's not unreasonable to suggest that this sort of thing could be done in other instances as well. Have they covered up disasters? I didn't word that well. Have they kept things quiet about potential disasters for one reason or another? You bet.
:)
I think at times we are unreasonably harsh toward people who ask questions. Sure, the threat in the articles is exaggerated, but I tend to think the government would downplay the threat of a volcanic eruption at Yellowstone while it's being investigated.
As for the moon landings, I believe they really did happen. On the other hand, I am open minded and there are some reasonable questions asked, some which I have not seen answers for. Let me pose one to you. While we don't really know the effects radiation could have on astronauts, we do know the effects radiation has on film. The astronauts traveled through the Van Allen belts without a great deal of shielding and with film that AFAIK wasn't protected well either. The effects of lesser radiation can be demonstrated on film at any dentist's office. And that exposure lasts only a few seconds. The question is why the film brought with the astronauts on their voyage to the moon wasn't affected by radiation. I'm just curious.
The threat of a massive eruption is exaggerated in the articles, without a doubt. There is, however, a lot of interesting scientific data presented.
The interview points out that since the last caldera-forming eruption, which was 640,000 years ago, there have been 30 smaller eruptions. That's an average of one eruption per 21,000 years. According to the USGS, the last eruption at Yellowstone was 70,000 years ago. It's not unreasonable to suggest that another eruption could occur in the near future.
As for the threat of a massive caldera-forming eruption. the same USGS site reports that they tend to have occurred every 600,000 to 800,000 years over the past 2.1 million years. Since the last such eruption was 640,000 years, it's not unreasonable to suggest that such an eruption could occur within the next 200,000 years if the pattern continues. The threat of such an eruption is overplayed in some of the articles cited in the story, but is not completely unreasonable.
Note, also, that there aren't any records of what happened the last time Yellowstone had a massive eruption. Such an eruption has not been observed.
Also, the government does have a tendency to downplay threats while they are still being investigated.
I tend to think the questions are reasonable but exaggerated. But if the government downplays stuff, the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. I just don't think people ought to be ridiculed when it's easy enough just to debunk them with the facts if they really are wrong.
No, you're not troll bait. :)
I've read all the articles and I've come to a couple of conclusions.
The threat of a massive eruption is hyped too much in the articles discussing the threat of such a thing. They fail to point out that there have been many smaller eruptions at Yellowstone. The fact is that there is a threat of a volcanic eruption at Yellowstone and a much much smaller threat of a massive eruption that was discussed.
Also, it's worth noting that the lack of funding prevents Yellowstone from having some monitoring equipment to monitor seismic and volcanic activity. Without all the information, it's hard to completely dismiss the questions asked about the possibility of volcanic eruptions at Yellowstone in the near future.
I admit that the threats in the article are exagerrated. On the other hand, I have no doubt the government and authorities tend to downplay such dangers, probably more than they ought to.
Despite the exaggerations, there are some interesting observations reported in the articles. There's a lot of hard science presented. If the views of the people asking questions are wrong, we ought to be able to dismiss their questions with science and with the facts alone, and without insults and ridiculing. Personally, I think we ought to encourage people to ask questions. Unfortunately, the ridiculing people often receive discourages questioning things. That's a bad thing, in my opinion.
What I don't understand is why anyone who suggests something like the government covering up a disaster or questioning something like the moon landings is immediately ridiculed. There is precedent for such a thing, particularly in the case of near Earth asteroids. In an effort not to alarm the public and to prevent the media from distorting the facts, things are covered up while examined and studied. Stuff like this is plausible and questions need to be asked. If the events such as the seismic activity are still being studied, and nothing is being said to keep the story away from the media, certainly one interview with a member of the USGS isn't going to change things.
My point is this: why is it so bad to ask these questions? We're perfectly willing to believe conspiracies between SCO and Microsoft but we accept the government at face value on things such as this and ridicule the doubters? Why is this?
I'm not trying to start a flame war, but I'm genuinely curious why we take such negative attitudes toward questions such as whether the government doesn't yet want to inform the public over seismic concerns in the Yellowstone area. I'll probably get modded down, but I'd like to know.
It's an unpleasant truth, but Bill Gates was right when he suggested that perfect bug-free, unexploitable code is impossible. There are going to be vulnerabilities, no matter how much of an effort you make to keep them out of code.
Security has to be achieved through firewalling, shutting off unnecessary services, keeping software up to date with the latest security-related patches, and some common sense on the part of the user. In my experience, a lot of Linux users are every bit as ignorant as their Windows counterparts when it comes to security. I know plenty of people who don't know what daemons are running on their computers, who don't keep their software updated, and who don't follow basic common-sense security procedures. Unfortunately, there's the perception among a lot of people that just running Linux makes them secure. They feel they don't need to bother with things such as firewalls, because they're invincible. Even among their Windows counterparts, firewalls are considered a necessary tool for security.
There's a basic competence needed to run Linux. Unfortunately, beyond that, many users are clueless when it comes to security.
Linux doesn't lend itself to many of the problems Windows does. But that's only part of being secure.
Linux distributions shouldn't come with lots and lots of services enabled by default. We complain at Microsoft because a lot of users have IIS running on their machines and just aren't aware of it. Many Linux distributions are just as guilty as Microsoft here.
If we want to make Linux more secure, we need to fix the two biggest vulnerabilities - the default settings of many Linux distributions and the user.