> This is no such thing implied by Bells theorem or entanglement experiments such as those by Aspect
In QM, sure. In classical mechanics or relativistic treatments, there most definitely is.
That's the beauty of Bell. You are forced to choose between accepting the weirdness of QM, or demanding FTL information transfer. The relativists consider the later to be even worse than the former.
> You post 2 envelopes containing cards in opposite directions, > one with a printed letter A, the other card with the letter B.
BZZZZT.
You have 2 envelopes, one contains an "AB" and the other contains a second "AB". When you open the first envelop, the AB *turns into an A*, and the other envelope *instantly turns into a B*.
What you are describing, where the contents have actual values before measurement, is known as "hidden variables". Einstein liked it. However, Alain Aspect demonstrated the universe simply doesn't work that way.
> It's not costing them money in infrastructure; that is still being paid for by all its customers - including those using solar power
So lets say I put up exactly the number of panels that net meters me to zero on a yearly basis.
Due to night, seasonality, weather, etc, that means that what's actually going on is that I'm exporting major quantities of power during the day, and then buying from the grid those other times. So it's not like I'm not using the infrastructure just as much as the guy next to me that doesn't have panels. In fact, I'm using it more.
Yet because my bill is zero, I'm paying less than him as a function of maintaining the grid. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
The contrary argument is equally interesting. Let's say I don't put up that many panels, but just one of them. That produces about the same amount of power that my fridge uses daily. So in fact, there is exactly zero difference between putting up a panel, and buying a new energy star fridge. Both of those will have the exact same effect on my total use of the grid. Yet in one I will now be charged $4.90 a month, and the other I won't.
The actual problem here is that some of the grid cost is buried in the electricity rate. If they truly separated the two, then this problem wouldn't have existed in the first place. However, that is likely on the order of hundreds of dollars a month. For the average user the cost would be identical in the end, one line on the bill would go up and another down. However, for people who sip power, or turn it off completely (at the cottage in the winter), their bills will go way up.
> Heard on NPR more whining about the medical costs of smoking, yet massive > cigarette taxes, and most of the smoking settlement money from 15 years ago, is spent on other BS.
The two statements do not appear to be connected in any way in your post.
In any event, VAT style taxes, like GST, are the way to go.
Here in Canuckistan, they were introduced by the *conservative* government, specifically to help eliminate the odd sorts of multi-taxing others have posted about in this thread.
There was considerable wailing and crying at the time, but in retrospect it's the only practical way to do this. Everyone along the value chain pays a little bit of the pain, no one ends up holding the whole bag.
For 30 years the evidence that the SM is incomplete has been building. This result, which frankly I didn't expect, seems like the final nail in the coffin.
The sad thing, of course, is that we have no model for anything else. Nor have we figured out any tests that might find new physics. We've spent the last 30 years building machines to tell us what we already knew.
The happy part of the story is that it's the low-cost machines like this, and telescopes, that keep putting out the real physics.
I assume you mean "AirSea Battle", as opposed to the Atari game spelled as you have. Although he may have been involved, even greatly, it is important to note that this is an offshoot of AirLand Battle, written by Starry in the 70's.
> He predicted in the 70's that the Soviet Union's economy was in terrible shape
As I mentioned above, this was already well known and part of the National Intelligence Assessments in the early/mid 1970s. Again, he might have had input, but this was certainly not "his idea".
> He predicted the need for precision weapons in the 60'
Precision weapons have been in use since WWII (Bat, AZON, etc) and their need has always been known. The only thing that changed was the introduction of the transistor and the laser, which made these concepts practical. These both pre-date the timeline given here.
> In 2003 during an interview he discussed the use of predator drones moving from surveillance to a strike platform
And we were all discussing this in-depth in rec.aviation.military in the 90's. Maybe they should pay me?
And given that the plants in question are almost always crappy ones, I'm not very happy seeing our money go to a short-term solution that will hurt the health of the local residents for decades.
Long and short, the number of such incidents is tiny, and the cost of fixing it so small, that few municipalities (if any) bothered installing active fixes, and even sending out crews to brush the snow away was still far less expensive than fixing incandescent versions that burn out all the time.
It always astonishes me how people will take the smallest possible issue, and then think that its more important than all the advantages. I'm glad no one listens to nay sayers, otherwise we wouldn't have Google or the Internet to read all the whining.
> In Canada it's common, the problem that we find up here though is the LED street lights don't generate enough heat to keep the cover clear in the winter
Ummm, the cover is on the bottom of the lamp. Not a lot of snow there. And yes, I'm Canadian.
Street *signals* might have problems with warm sticky snow, but studies demonstrated this was not a problem in actual use. The only example was runway lighting, but this was addressed by designing the system to take heat from the heat sink on the electronics and routing it to the luminare. In fact, the new PAR20's I purchased last week did something similar to re-route hot air back out of the socket. All passive.
> And it pretty much negates any energy savings
Right, because heating the lamps for a few hours 20 days a year would offset the energy use of conventional lamps, which heat them the same amount for 365 days a year.
Do you really think about your statements before posting them?
> Meanwhile, there's some debate [newyorker.com] about whether street lights reduce crime.
No there isn't. There's a single statement in the entire multi-page article about crime, and it specifically refers to security lighting. There is nothing in the article that could be considered "debate", and certainly no hint of anything as generalized as you imply here. It's the New Yorker, so don't expect facts anyway.
With the power of Google at my fingertips, I went looking for a credible meta-study and found one almost instantly:
I quote from the introduction, "Results of this review indicate that improved street lighting significantly reduces crime."
What *is* interesting from the results is that "The review also found that nighttime crimes did not decrease more than daytime crimes." This means that the use of lighting is changing patterns of crime not through direct observation, but due to increased social cohesiveness.
That said, all of this ignores the overarching fact that crime is going down, all the time, faster than anyone imagined. Whatever speculative effect lighting *might* have, I guarantee the former is orders of magnitude greater.
>They create dark pockets where attackers can hide:
Oh geez, that is the dumbest argument I've ever read. The lack of street lights creates one gigantic "dark pocket", so obviously that's worse, right?
Crime goes down in lit areas. Period.
> and the illumination they provide helps burglars see what they're doing.
This is the second dumbest: the same person just argued the criminals use the dark areas.
> Near observatories to cut down on light pollution
The vast majority of useful astronomy takes place in far remote locations like Atacama and the top of Mauna Loa. Complains from telescopes near urban areas, like the DDO and Mount Wilson are victims of urban growth, no light source is going to fix their problems.
Lots of complaints from the amateur astronomers, sure, but they can move their equipment in the back of the car.
I used to live in downtown Toronto and then moved to the burbs. I can say with no hesitation that I never had problems seeing people crossing roads downtown. It is downright scary out here. I've had numerous occasions where someone suddenly appears in my headlights less than a second away. 3M reflective tape works wonders, but perhaps 5% of people have that on them at night.
Solar powered lamps at intersections and crosswalks are an *extremely* good idea. The only question is whether or not to have the panel, or just keep the battery fresh using the grid. Today today a full-sized ~255W panel is around $200, a MPPT charge controller with lighting control and remove sensing about $175, and NiFe and LiFe batteries with 20 year life cycles about $1200. The total is far less than the price of getting an electrician to wire into the grid, which costs a minimum of $2000 *not* including parts and labor.
> Yes, in studies that compare pedestrians in unlit crossings to lit crossings
So, "good" studies then.
> not by comparing pedestrians hit anywhere in an unlit city to pedestrians hit anywhere in a lit city
Given the paucity of "unlit cities" that might be used apples-to-apples, I'll stick with the studies I have to the ones I don't.
> it can actually cause accidents if misused
Note the term "misused" and the lack of the term "pedestrians".
Also note that the only referenced statement in the entire section has to do with stray voltage.
Also note that if you look up any of the unreferenced claims made in this section, the only hits you'll find are people quoting this article.
In fact, I'm going to mark it up now and take it to the talk page.
> Try reading something not written by people with a vested interest in increasing regulations
Instead, read something written by people who have a vested interest in the opposite, and brag about it on their web page. Yeah, I'll get right on that.
Slashdot Mirror
A smaller, reversible USB? Where do they come up with these ideas?
Oh right, from Apple.
> This is no such thing implied by Bells theorem or entanglement experiments such as those by Aspect
In QM, sure. In classical mechanics or relativistic treatments, there most definitely is.
That's the beauty of Bell. You are forced to choose between accepting the weirdness of QM, or demanding FTL information transfer. The relativists consider the later to be even worse than the former.
> You post 2 envelopes containing cards in opposite directions,
> one with a printed letter A, the other card with the letter B.
BZZZZT.
You have 2 envelopes, one contains an "AB" and the other contains a second "AB". When you open the first envelop, the AB *turns into an A*, and the other envelope *instantly turns into a B*.
What you are describing, where the contents have actual values before measurement, is known as "hidden variables". Einstein liked it. However, Alain Aspect demonstrated the universe simply doesn't work that way.
+1 million
Absolutely what this is.
> There's a difference between "meets none of the standards" and "compliant, but untested".
No there isn't. You comply with the standard when the pass the tests. You comply with nothing before that point.
The long and short of it is that you don't get sued for false positives, but you DO get sued for false negatives.
Any device that can't pass testing and demonstrate that the balance is in the favour of false positives simply will not be used.
Period.
> It's not costing them money in infrastructure; that is still being paid for by all its customers - including those using solar power
So lets say I put up exactly the number of panels that net meters me to zero on a yearly basis.
Due to night, seasonality, weather, etc, that means that what's actually going on is that I'm exporting major quantities of power during the day, and then buying from the grid those other times. So it's not like I'm not using the infrastructure just as much as the guy next to me that doesn't have panels. In fact, I'm using it more.
Yet because my bill is zero, I'm paying less than him as a function of maintaining the grid. It shouldn't be that way, but it is.
The contrary argument is equally interesting. Let's say I don't put up that many panels, but just one of them. That produces about the same amount of power that my fridge uses daily. So in fact, there is exactly zero difference between putting up a panel, and buying a new energy star fridge. Both of those will have the exact same effect on my total use of the grid. Yet in one I will now be charged $4.90 a month, and the other I won't.
The actual problem here is that some of the grid cost is buried in the electricity rate. If they truly separated the two, then this problem wouldn't have existed in the first place. However, that is likely on the order of hundreds of dollars a month. For the average user the cost would be identical in the end, one line on the bill would go up and another down. However, for people who sip power, or turn it off completely (at the cottage in the winter), their bills will go way up.
"may collect about $4.90 a month from customers with solar systems. Arizona Public is required to buy solar power from customers with rooftop panels"
They likely charge about the same for connecting for import, so this seems perfectly fair to me.
And I install solar panels for a living.
"They are pumping a billion dollars into the company. Less than the 2 to 3 billion the buyout would have pumped in but still a large amount."
Apple made 10 billion in deferred profits last quarter. DEFERRED profits.
A billion is *not* enough.
> Heard on NPR more whining about the medical costs of smoking, yet massive
> cigarette taxes, and most of the smoking settlement money from 15 years ago, is spent on other BS.
The two statements do not appear to be connected in any way in your post.
In any event, VAT style taxes, like GST, are the way to go.
Here in Canuckistan, they were introduced by the *conservative* government, specifically to help eliminate the odd sorts of multi-taxing others have posted about in this thread.
There was considerable wailing and crying at the time, but in retrospect it's the only practical way to do this. Everyone along the value chain pays a little bit of the pain, no one ends up holding the whole bag.
For 30 years the evidence that the SM is incomplete has been building. This result, which frankly I didn't expect, seems like the final nail in the coffin.
The sad thing, of course, is that we have no model for anything else. Nor have we figured out any tests that might find new physics. We've spent the last 30 years building machines to tell us what we already knew.
The happy part of the story is that it's the low-cost machines like this, and telescopes, that keep putting out the real physics.
"Cost per kilowatt calculations in the first world assume that a high-voltage grid is already in place"
Good point!
> He came up with the concept of Air-Sea Battle
I assume you mean "AirSea Battle", as opposed to the Atari game spelled as you have. Although he may have been involved, even greatly, it is important to note that this is an offshoot of AirLand Battle, written by Starry in the 70's.
> He predicted in the 70's that the Soviet Union's economy was in terrible shape
As I mentioned above, this was already well known and part of the National Intelligence Assessments in the early/mid 1970s. Again, he might have had input, but this was certainly not "his idea".
> He predicted the need for precision weapons in the 60'
Precision weapons have been in use since WWII (Bat, AZON, etc) and their need has always been known. The only thing that changed was the introduction of the transistor and the laser, which made these concepts practical. These both pre-date the timeline given here.
> In 2003 during an interview he discussed the use of predator drones moving from surveillance to a strike platform
And we were all discussing this in-depth in rec.aviation.military in the 90's. Maybe they should pay me?
> He's credited with foreseeing the demise of the soviet union in the blurb
There were CIA reports from the early/mid 1970s saying this, and why.
Unless he was working at the CIA at that time, I'm not sure this is accurate.
"and the probability is only twice in a hundred years"
Which is clearly wrong, because we've had cities for about 5000 years and exactly zero such kill events.
"Astronomers have warned that our planet is long overdue for a defense plan against catastrophic asteroid collisions"
Meanwhile, we do nothing about all those earthquakes, which actually kill people.
Man against Nature! On to Victory!
"short end of the stick from every policy ever"
Exactly.
And given that the plants in question are almost always crappy ones, I'm not very happy seeing our money go to a short-term solution that will hurt the health of the local residents for decades.
> which could be a safety hazard.
Could?
http://www.lumec.com/newsletter/architect_03-10/Snow_storms_and_outdoor_LED_lighting.html
http://ledsmagazine.com/news/7/1/4
http://www.allledlighting.com/author.asp?section_id=3040&doc_id=559911
http://boingboing.net/2009/12/17/led-traffic-lights-d.html
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prince-edward-island/led-traffic-lights-trouble-in-snow-1.1311220
Long and short, the number of such incidents is tiny, and the cost of fixing it so small, that few municipalities (if any) bothered installing active fixes, and even sending out crews to brush the snow away was still far less expensive than fixing incandescent versions that burn out all the time.
It always astonishes me how people will take the smallest possible issue, and then think that its more important than all the advantages. I'm glad no one listens to nay sayers, otherwise we wouldn't have Google or the Internet to read all the whining.
> In Canada it's common, the problem that we find up here though is the LED street lights don't generate enough heat to keep the cover clear in the winter
Ummm, the cover is on the bottom of the lamp. Not a lot of snow there. And yes, I'm Canadian.
Street *signals* might have problems with warm sticky snow, but studies demonstrated this was not a problem in actual use. The only example was runway lighting, but this was addressed by designing the system to take heat from the heat sink on the electronics and routing it to the luminare. In fact, the new PAR20's I purchased last week did something similar to re-route hot air back out of the socket. All passive.
> And it pretty much negates any energy savings
Right, because heating the lamps for a few hours 20 days a year would offset the energy use of conventional lamps, which heat them the same amount for 365 days a year.
Do you really think about your statements before posting them?
> Your eyes are adjusted to the lights, so you can't see into these pockets, but muggers in the shadows sure can see you.
Which, I guess, is why lit areas have significantly less crime, and that the crime rates keep going down. Right?
> Meanwhile, there's some debate [newyorker.com] about whether street lights reduce crime.
No there isn't. There's a single statement in the entire multi-page article about crime, and it specifically refers to security lighting. There is nothing in the article that could be considered "debate", and certainly no hint of anything as generalized as you imply here. It's the New Yorker, so don't expect facts anyway.
With the power of Google at my fingertips, I went looking for a credible meta-study and found one almost instantly:
http://www.crim.cam.ac.uk/people/academic_research/david_farrington/light.pdf
I quote from the introduction, "Results of this review indicate that improved street lighting significantly reduces crime."
What *is* interesting from the results is that "The review also found that nighttime crimes did not decrease more than daytime crimes." This means that the use of lighting is changing patterns of crime not through direct observation, but due to increased social cohesiveness.
That said, all of this ignores the overarching fact that crime is going down, all the time, faster than anyone imagined. Whatever speculative effect lighting *might* have, I guarantee the former is orders of magnitude greater.
>They create dark pockets where attackers can hide:
Oh geez, that is the dumbest argument I've ever read. The lack of street lights creates one gigantic "dark pocket", so obviously that's worse, right?
Crime goes down in lit areas. Period.
> and the illumination they provide helps burglars see what they're doing.
This is the second dumbest: the same person just argued the criminals use the dark areas.
> In areas of high population density it will become impossible to see the night sky
Impossible eh? We just went to a star party at a marina, under parking lot lamps. Saw the coal sack and Orion just fine. Maybe you need new eyes?
> without traveling vast distances
Good thing we invented cars then.
> The night sky is a massive part of our natural heritage
And there's more of it all the time, a side effect of people moving out of the country into the cities.
Don't be lazy, the journey is the reward.
> Near observatories to cut down on light pollution
The vast majority of useful astronomy takes place in far remote locations like Atacama and the top of Mauna Loa. Complains from telescopes near urban areas, like the DDO and Mount Wilson are victims of urban growth, no light source is going to fix their problems.
Lots of complaints from the amateur astronomers, sure, but they can move their equipment in the back of the car.
> They are just too fragile to hope to survive things like hurricanes, tornadoes, really bad thunderstorms, and earthquakes.
So are power plants and distribution systems. The first thing that goes in these situations is the power.
> So the power goes out, and it is dark. So what
So the major injuries due to collisions between cars and everything else goes up by about 100%.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2564438/
I used to live in downtown Toronto and then moved to the burbs. I can say with no hesitation that I never had problems seeing people crossing roads downtown. It is downright scary out here. I've had numerous occasions where someone suddenly appears in my headlights less than a second away. 3M reflective tape works wonders, but perhaps 5% of people have that on them at night.
Solar powered lamps at intersections and crosswalks are an *extremely* good idea. The only question is whether or not to have the panel, or just keep the battery fresh using the grid. Today today a full-sized ~255W panel is around $200, a MPPT charge controller with lighting control and remove sensing about $175, and NiFe and LiFe batteries with 20 year life cycles about $1200. The total is far less than the price of getting an electrician to wire into the grid, which costs a minimum of $2000 *not* including parts and labor.
> Yes, in studies that compare pedestrians in unlit crossings to lit crossings
So, "good" studies then.
> not by comparing pedestrians hit anywhere in an unlit city to pedestrians hit anywhere in a lit city
Given the paucity of "unlit cities" that might be used apples-to-apples, I'll stick with the studies I have to the ones I don't.
> it can actually cause accidents if misused
Note the term "misused" and the lack of the term "pedestrians".
Also note that the only referenced statement in the entire section has to do with stray voltage.
Also note that if you look up any of the unreferenced claims made in this section, the only hits you'll find are people quoting this article.
In fact, I'm going to mark it up now and take it to the talk page.
> Try reading something not written by people with a vested interest in increasing regulations
Instead, read something written by people who have a vested interest in the opposite, and brag about it on their web page. Yeah, I'll get right on that.