> Most solar radiation gets blocked by the ionosphere and magnetosphere
Not most, a little less than half. Much more important, the parts that do get blocked are not very useful for power generation. With current materials, anything below red and above UV is essentially useless. The vast majority of that portion of the spectrum DOES reach the Earth's surface, as one can trivially see by comparing AM0 with AM1. (which, I notice, I switched above).
There's lots of power to be captured in the IR region that we're currently losing, but that makes it to the surface anyway. Lower frequencies, radio and such, are on the wrong side of the blackbody curve to be really useful. The same is true above UV, with the added complication that they are difficult to capture even in theory.
> Take a wind turbine, make it from lighter carbon fiber composites, dope some of the carbon to form conductive > paths on the blades, use Nanosolar's spray-on PV tech and coat the wind turbine blades, support tower, everything, > turning the entire wind turbine into a solar collector
Let me get this straight, you're suggesting we take a structure who's entire design philosophy is to be as small and light as possible - the turbine blades - and cover that with something who's entire design philosophy is to cover as much area as possible regardless of weight - solar cells?!
And that we should take something, solar cells, who's best quality is that they have no moving parts, and put them onto a moving part?!
I'm sorry, but that has to be the dumbest idea I've ever heard. What exactly do you think this design would accomplish? I mean what would this design do that taking the same cells and putting them on the ground below the wind turbine wouldn't, without having to change anything of either part? Nothing, that's what.
That cuts both ways. Note that the company doesn't even have a web page.
Do the math yourself. The best solar cells available are about 30% efficient in AM0. AM0 is about 1,400 W/m^2. So to get the 200 MW, assuming 100% efficient transfer, you'll need 200,000,000/1,400*0.3 = ~ 500,000 m^2, or about 1/2 a square kilometer. This can be reduced a little by using concentrators, which boosts efficiency to about 40%, but this is a minor consideration.
Those cells weight ~ 84 mg/cm^2, or 0.83 kg/m^2 (I think I did that right...). So that means you'll need 415,000 kg of cells. The absolute cheapest way to GEO is on Long March II (and only because of the exchange rate) at $7,500 a kilo. So launch costs of the cells alone will be over 3 billion dollars. Again, if you go with concentrators you can replace the cells with lighter reflectors, but that is unlikely to reduce the weight by a factor of 10, and every attempt to unfurl large lightweight structures in space has failed.
If we assume a 10 year life span and take 200 MW at face value, that means the satellite will generate a total of 17.5 billion kilowatts. A kW on the grid here in Toronto retails for about 4.8 cents, so the commercial value of that electricity is LESS than 1 billion dollars.
Does anyone else see the problem here? The cost of launching the cells, not buying them, just launching them, is an order of magnitude greater than the value of the electricity it could produce. With massive cuts in launch costs, weight of materials AND up-front material costs you might be able to get this down to a slim positive margin, but then your profit margin is going to be close to zero. No one is going to touch this with a 23,000 mile pole.
I should also point out that no one has ever built anything this large in space before (attempts have failed 100% of the time), that the entire worldwide launch capacity is nowhere even close to being able to handle this job, that GEO is pretty much filled up and has already suffered at least one catastrophic collision (on a much smaller satellite), and there's simply nowhere to put this thing where it's not going to get hit sooner or later.
For comparison, you could mount the exact same set of cells on the ground in Mohave and get about 1/3rd to 1/4 the amount of power, but remove 7 billion in launch costs. Maybe that's why emcore features this on their home page?
Extra price? $6 billion for 1100 MWe is just under $6 a watt, which is pretty much completely inline with general reactor costs. The $30 billion they're putting into Darlington B for ~4000 MWe is pretty much identical once you do CAD->USD.
> iPhone is all about status/style anyway, it's got NOTHING to do with functionality...
Pffft. I went through two dumb phones immediately before the iPhone. Here are some of the things I could not get working:
1) syncing anything with my PC 2) getting photos off of it 3) playing music, although both claimed to be able to do so 4) using the web, which was useless 5) using any sort of e-mail 6) using any other apps 7) using the picture system with anything else, including the MMS that was built in ($5 charge PER)
Then I got the iPhone. All the problems went away. I browse the internet from anywhere at any time, can get directions without fail, use e-mail, sync everything, and listen to music (which is, a surprise to me, the #1 thing I use it for). I still can't get MMS though, which is ironic but pointless because I can now post the images directly to the web.
The Motorola was $150, the iPhone $200. If you post that this has nothing to do with functionality, I have to conclude that you're a troll.
> The fact that you say this shows that you do not know a lot about high energy physics
Pfft, try harder.
The only reason we're looking for the Higgs is because we can. We simply don't have any other HEP we can do. Every alternative theory so far needs energy levels at least an order or two of mag more than LHC to even approach usefulness, and that's simply not going to happen any time soon. Oh, we've tried, but we've failed. I still have a soft spot in my heart for the surfatron, but that's just because of the cool name. So all we're left with is the bastard stepchild of HEP, Higgs. And it's not like this is any secret, this malaise dates back to SSC when one of the big arguments for building it was to give PhDs something to do (I'm not kidding).
HEP is dead. There is another way, however, and it's well on it's already far more interesting. That's astronomy. Every time we turn on the newest telescope we immediately find something that's essentially impossible under current models. Fully formed galaxies 12+ billion years old? Hmmm. Long-range expansion that doesn't follow the Hubble constant? Hmmm. Galaxies that spin too fast and need undetectable mass? Hmmm. Galactic clusters need 10 times that to keep themselves together? Hmmm. The universe needs 10 times THAT to be flat? Uhhh, ok, this is getting nuts.
And what part of this can SM/Higgs explain? None of it. Not one bit. That's why it's much more interesting if LHC fails than if it succeeds. We've sunk ~6 billion into this hole in the ground (literally). Do you know how many super-telescopes you can buy with that? ALL OF THEM.
How many questions has HEP answered in the last 25 years that aren't internal to HEP? None. Meanwhile the rest of the sciences have been leaping over each other at speeds that make Moore's Law look slow. Did you hear about that high school competition that made E.Coli that smelled different at different stages of their development so you could tell where they were in their experiment just by taking a whiff? "Wintergreen... not ready yet" And HEP's done what in that time? Spend billions of dollars to answer questions they're already utterly convinced they know the answer to? Great!
I hope the search fails. It would be the most positive outcome possible.
> Because right now I'm seriously concerned that a LOT of time, brainpower, and natural resources are being invested in something that has no value other than knowledge.
The good news is its not all that much time and effort. If there's one great thing about CERN it's the funding model.
> I don't think we can say we know everything that is left to know about high energy physics except the big Higgs.
No no, I think everyone would agree that we _don't_ know everything. The problem is that the Higgs is the only thing left that we can actually build an accelerator to see. So if we DO find it, then it's going to be the Standard Model for a VERY long time.
It's a much better outcome if we don't find the Higgs. In that case we need to start some serious soul searching.
> He has some pretty compelling explanations illustrating exponential trends
Compelling if you don't read history.
Ohain published his thesis on the jet engine in 1933, received a patent in 1936, had it working the same year, and flying by the summer of 1939. Whittle patented his design in 1930 and in spite of HUGE burdens, got WU running in 1937. Both efforts turned into real production lines by 1943. So basically one decade from initial idea to real-world use.
Vitelli introduced the luminance-chrominance color television signal in 1938. RCA picked up Vitelli's dot-sequential color television concept around 1945. They demonstrated it in 1949, but lost to CBS, but then won in 1953. Sets were on the market early next year. So basically a decade from idea to real-world use.
Watson-Watt took over the RRS in 1934. Wimperis asked him about reports of a German "death ray" and he replied that it was bogus but they could use it to detect aircraft. Chain home went live in '39. So basically 5 years from idea to production.
Parsons came up with the "Card-a-matic" machine tool concept around 1947. In 1949 he got a contract to develop it, and got MIT involved. They took over development and showed the machine publicly in 1952. By 1955 there were several NC systems on the market. So again, about five years.
2MJ of _laser_energy_in_the_UV_. Getting that requires 4MJ of IR. Getting that requires over 250 MJ of electricity. Getting that requires 1000 MJ of coal.
> Obviously the fact that it's not ready for commercialization now is indicative of it's future potential as a technology
*sigh*
The basic physics of NIF is simple. The lasers are about 1.5% efficient. Of that, about 10 to 20% makes it into the fuel, the rest is lost through a variety of blowoff processes. Fusion gains are below 50, and really below 35. Best-case energy capture would be on the order of 50%. So just do the math. For every megawatt you put in, you get 15 kW of laser, which provides 2 kW of compression, which generates ~70 kW of fusion, which you MIGHT be able to get 35 kW of power.
So it's 30 to 1 the wrong way. No amount of development will ever turn NIF into a power-producing system.
Nor is it supposed to. NIF is either a way to test hydrogen bombs without actually building hydrogen bombs, or if you're less charitable, an enormous make-work project to ensure that all the physicists don't leave LLNL and get real jobs. Don't ever think that this has anything to do with energy production.
There are ways to use ICF to build energy-positive devices. One way to improve the process is to move to diode lasers, which offer efficiencies on the order of 10%. That's still not nearly enough though. Other modifications include the "fast ignition" approach or similar, but although these look like NIF, they are different beasts entirely. Personally my money's on magnetized target fusion (just for fun).
> This still doesn't rival the brightness of an Iridium flare.
Yes it does. It does already. You're comparing flare mags with standard mags. The ISS _does_ flare, and when it does it is much brighter than Iridium. Sadly, Mike Tyrrell's page is gone, but there was a collection of images there.
For anyone that has both a Mac and PC, one of the minor frustrations you face is constantly having to remember to use different keyboard shortcuts when you move back and forth. Safari on the PC was an option for me for this reason alone. Sadly, the Mac-look, odd window handling, terrible font rendering and random long pauses (something to do with advertisements I think) made it an option only - I had to keep Chrome and FF around for some sites.
No longer. Safari 4 is now my default Windows browser. And not just because of the keystrokes, it's faster than any of the other (always up-to-date) browsers on this machine, renders everything perfectly (Chrome still has serious problems here), the font problems are gone (now Chrome is the one that looks bad), the random pauses are missing, etc.
So basically Safari now does everything any of the other browsers does, plus more, plus its faster, AND it has the same keystrokes.
Still not perfect though: I'm still trying to get the font sizes right (the readable text above is fine, but this editor has HUGE text) and I want to remove the Chrome-like tools menus (I like real menu bars, thanks), and there's some oddity when scrolling long pages. But nevertheless the problems are less than those in Chrome and the speed of FF in comparison makes me willing to overlook them.
If you're going to assign probabilities to arguments as the starting point of the discussion, well, fine.
Cosmic rays shower the Earth with energies that are higher than LHC. These have failed to create black holes that have eaten the Earth. Thus, it is impossible for LHC to create black holes that will eat the Earth.
Probability of this argument being correct? 100%, give or take zero.
> The average [Dutch] downloader buys more DVDs, music, and games than people who never download
BREAKING NEWS: old people who don't listen to rock music don't buy rock music!
NEWS FLASH: people who don't watch television don't buy new televisions!
FLASH TRAFFIC: people who listen to music pirate it AND buy it too
Duh. The fact that you download music puts you into the portion of the population that listens to music. People who listen to music generally buy it too. If anyone's trying to conclude that piracy has positive benefits, this study absolutely does not say that.
> Wait a few days to get yourself a confirmation to edit all semi-protected articles ever, or always bother the much-hated > administrative nazi bastards and hope they add the precious bit of information to the protected article? I'm pretty > sure most people feel the former is more within the spirit of open editing.
As one of the Wiki's longest-serving and most prolific _authors_ (not editor, AUTHOR) I think I get my 2 cents.
The problem is that it's the administrative nazi bastards that have decided, amongst themselves, what "the problem with the wikipedia is". Apparently, it's us authors who go around adding content? What ARE we thinking?
So all the administrative nazi bastards, (who don't write articles, BTW just argue about them) got together and decided that flagged revisions is the proper solution to the problem they all decided on. None of the people involved bother to ask anyone outside the group, they just all decided amongst themselves.
Slashdot Mirror
> You have no idea what you're talking about
I don't believe that, but regardless, I do.
> Most solar radiation gets blocked by the ionosphere and magnetosphere
Not most, a little less than half. Much more important, the parts that do get blocked are not very useful for power generation. With current materials, anything below red and above UV is essentially useless. The vast majority of that portion of the spectrum DOES reach the Earth's surface, as one can trivially see by comparing AM0 with AM1. (which, I notice, I switched above).
There's lots of power to be captured in the IR region that we're currently losing, but that makes it to the surface anyway. Lower frequencies, radio and such, are on the wrong side of the blackbody curve to be really useful. The same is true above UV, with the added complication that they are difficult to capture even in theory.
Maury
> Take a wind turbine, make it from lighter carbon fiber composites, dope some of the carbon to form conductive
> paths on the blades, use Nanosolar's spray-on PV tech and coat the wind turbine blades, support tower, everything,
> turning the entire wind turbine into a solar collector
Let me get this straight, you're suggesting we take a structure who's entire design philosophy is to be as small and light as possible - the turbine blades - and cover that with something who's entire design philosophy is to cover as much area as possible regardless of weight - solar cells?!
And that we should take something, solar cells, who's best quality is that they have no moving parts, and put them onto a moving part?!
I'm sorry, but that has to be the dumbest idea I've ever heard. What exactly do you think this design would accomplish? I mean what would this design do that taking the same cells and putting them on the ground below the wind turbine wouldn't, without having to change anything of either part? Nothing, that's what.
Maury
> Then publish your research and promote it.
That cuts both ways. Note that the company doesn't even have a web page.
Do the math yourself. The best solar cells available are about 30% efficient in AM0. AM0 is about 1,400 W/m^2. So to get the 200 MW, assuming 100% efficient transfer, you'll need 200,000,000/1,400*0.3 = ~ 500,000 m^2, or about 1/2 a square kilometer. This can be reduced a little by using concentrators, which boosts efficiency to about 40%, but this is a minor consideration.
Those cells weight ~ 84 mg/cm^2, or 0.83 kg/m^2 (I think I did that right...). So that means you'll need 415,000 kg of cells. The absolute cheapest way to GEO is on Long March II (and only because of the exchange rate) at $7,500 a kilo. So launch costs of the cells alone will be over 3 billion dollars. Again, if you go with concentrators you can replace the cells with lighter reflectors, but that is unlikely to reduce the weight by a factor of 10, and every attempt to unfurl large lightweight structures in space has failed.
If we assume a 10 year life span and take 200 MW at face value, that means the satellite will generate a total of 17.5 billion kilowatts. A kW on the grid here in Toronto retails for about 4.8 cents, so the commercial value of that electricity is LESS than 1 billion dollars.
Does anyone else see the problem here? The cost of launching the cells, not buying them, just launching them, is an order of magnitude greater than the value of the electricity it could produce. With massive cuts in launch costs, weight of materials AND up-front material costs you might be able to get this down to a slim positive margin, but then your profit margin is going to be close to zero. No one is going to touch this with a 23,000 mile pole.
I should also point out that no one has ever built anything this large in space before (attempts have failed 100% of the time), that the entire worldwide launch capacity is nowhere even close to being able to handle this job, that GEO is pretty much filled up and has already suffered at least one catastrophic collision (on a much smaller satellite), and there's simply nowhere to put this thing where it's not going to get hit sooner or later.
For comparison, you could mount the exact same set of cells on the ground in Mohave and get about 1/3rd to 1/4 the amount of power, but remove 7 billion in launch costs. Maybe that's why emcore features this on their home page?
*sniff* What's that smell? Smells like...
Maury
> And the fact that whereas we use electricity 24x7, PVs are only useful during the daytime
We use the VAST majority of power during the daytime. PV is a perfect peak power play.
> and lose a good amount of that efficiency after 5 years.
Every panel I've ever seen is guaranteed to deliver 80% of design after 20 years.
Maury
Extra price? $6 billion for 1100 MWe is just under $6 a watt, which is pretty much completely inline with general reactor costs. The $30 billion they're putting into Darlington B for ~4000 MWe is pretty much identical once you do CAD->USD.
Maury
> from what I understand, simply leaving can prove problematic for those folks
Hmmm, Vancouver added a million of those folks over the last 20 years, so I'd have to disagree.
Maury
Why not just make everything tax exempt? Then everyone would be more profitable, not just the failed buggy-whip companies.
> iPhone is all about status/style anyway, it's got NOTHING to do with functionality...
Pffft. I went through two dumb phones immediately before the iPhone. Here are some of the things I could not get working:
1) syncing anything with my PC
2) getting photos off of it
3) playing music, although both claimed to be able to do so
4) using the web, which was useless
5) using any sort of e-mail
6) using any other apps
7) using the picture system with anything else, including the MMS that was built in ($5 charge PER)
Then I got the iPhone. All the problems went away. I browse the internet from anywhere at any time, can get directions without fail, use e-mail, sync everything, and listen to music (which is, a surprise to me, the #1 thing I use it for). I still can't get MMS though, which is ironic but pointless because I can now post the images directly to the web.
The Motorola was $150, the iPhone $200. If you post that this has nothing to do with functionality, I have to conclude that you're a troll.
Maury
> If people are simply pressing buttons, let alone out of the view of public, they lose some buzz.
Which is why they put completely functional controls on the ear phones, so you could operate it without pulling it out of your pocket?
Your lawgic is showing.
Maury
> The fact that you say this shows that you do not know a lot about high energy physics
Pfft, try harder.
The only reason we're looking for the Higgs is because we can. We simply don't have any other HEP we can do. Every alternative theory so far needs energy levels at least an order or two of mag more than LHC to even approach usefulness, and that's simply not going to happen any time soon. Oh, we've tried, but we've failed. I still have a soft spot in my heart for the surfatron, but that's just because of the cool name. So all we're left with is the bastard stepchild of HEP, Higgs. And it's not like this is any secret, this malaise dates back to SSC when one of the big arguments for building it was to give PhDs something to do (I'm not kidding).
HEP is dead. There is another way, however, and it's well on it's already far more interesting. That's astronomy. Every time we turn on the newest telescope we immediately find something that's essentially impossible under current models. Fully formed galaxies 12+ billion years old? Hmmm. Long-range expansion that doesn't follow the Hubble constant? Hmmm. Galaxies that spin too fast and need undetectable mass? Hmmm. Galactic clusters need 10 times that to keep themselves together? Hmmm. The universe needs 10 times THAT to be flat? Uhhh, ok, this is getting nuts.
And what part of this can SM/Higgs explain? None of it. Not one bit. That's why it's much more interesting if LHC fails than if it succeeds. We've sunk ~6 billion into this hole in the ground (literally). Do you know how many super-telescopes you can buy with that? ALL OF THEM.
How many questions has HEP answered in the last 25 years that aren't internal to HEP? None. Meanwhile the rest of the sciences have been leaping over each other at speeds that make Moore's Law look slow. Did you hear about that high school competition that made E.Coli that smelled different at different stages of their development so you could tell where they were in their experiment just by taking a whiff? "Wintergreen... not ready yet" And HEP's done what in that time? Spend billions of dollars to answer questions they're already utterly convinced they know the answer to? Great!
I hope the search fails. It would be the most positive outcome possible.
Maury
> Because right now I'm seriously concerned that a LOT of time, brainpower, and natural resources are being invested in something that has no value other than knowledge.
The good news is its not all that much time and effort. If there's one great thing about CERN it's the funding model.
Maury
> I don't think we can say we know everything that is left to know about high energy physics except the big Higgs.
No no, I think everyone would agree that we _don't_ know everything. The problem is that the Higgs is the only thing left that we can actually build an accelerator to see. So if we DO find it, then it's going to be the Standard Model for a VERY long time.
It's a much better outcome if we don't find the Higgs. In that case we need to start some serious soul searching.
Maury
The fact that this is all that's left of high energy physics says a lot. The worst possible outcome is that they actually find the thing.
> He has some pretty compelling explanations illustrating exponential trends
Compelling if you don't read history.
Ohain published his thesis on the jet engine in 1933, received a patent in 1936, had it working the same year, and flying by the summer of 1939. Whittle patented his design in 1930 and in spite of HUGE burdens, got WU running in 1937. Both efforts turned into real production lines by 1943. So basically one decade from initial idea to real-world use.
Vitelli introduced the luminance-chrominance color television signal in 1938. RCA picked up Vitelli's dot-sequential color television concept around 1945. They demonstrated it in 1949, but lost to CBS, but then won in 1953. Sets were on the market early next year. So basically a decade from idea to real-world use.
Watson-Watt took over the RRS in 1934. Wimperis asked him about reports of a German "death ray" and he replied that it was bogus but they could use it to detect aircraft. Chain home went live in '39. So basically 5 years from idea to production.
Parsons came up with the "Card-a-matic" machine tool concept around 1947. In 1949 he got a contract to develop it, and got MIT involved. They took over development and showed the machine publicly in 1952. By 1955 there were several NC systems on the market. So again, about five years.
Should I go on?
Maury
> 2MJ goes in, 20 comes out.
2MJ of _laser_energy_in_the_UV_. Getting that requires 4MJ of IR. Getting that requires over 250 MJ of electricity. Getting that requires 1000 MJ of coal.
See the problem?
Maury
Whoops, I forgot the 50% losses on laser conversion from IR to UV. Make that 60 to 1 the wrong way.
> Obviously the fact that it's not ready for commercialization now is indicative of it's future potential as a technology
*sigh*
The basic physics of NIF is simple. The lasers are about 1.5% efficient. Of that, about 10 to 20% makes it into the fuel, the rest is lost through a variety of blowoff processes. Fusion gains are below 50, and really below 35. Best-case energy capture would be on the order of 50%. So just do the math. For every megawatt you put in, you get 15 kW of laser, which provides 2 kW of compression, which generates ~70 kW of fusion, which you MIGHT be able to get 35 kW of power.
So it's 30 to 1 the wrong way. No amount of development will ever turn NIF into a power-producing system.
Nor is it supposed to. NIF is either a way to test hydrogen bombs without actually building hydrogen bombs, or if you're less charitable, an enormous make-work project to ensure that all the physicists don't leave LLNL and get real jobs. Don't ever think that this has anything to do with energy production.
There are ways to use ICF to build energy-positive devices. One way to improve the process is to move to diode lasers, which offer efficiencies on the order of 10%. That's still not nearly enough though. Other modifications include the "fast ignition" approach or similar, but although these look like NIF, they are different beasts entirely. Personally my money's on magnetized target fusion (just for fun).
Maury
> This still doesn't rival the brightness of an Iridium flare.
Yes it does. It does already. You're comparing flare mags with standard mags. The ISS _does_ flare, and when it does it is much brighter than Iridium. Sadly, Mike Tyrrell's page is gone, but there was a collection of images there.
Maury
...or for that matter, Project Gutenberg?
For anyone that has both a Mac and PC, one of the minor frustrations you face is constantly having to remember to use different keyboard shortcuts when you move back and forth. Safari on the PC was an option for me for this reason alone. Sadly, the Mac-look, odd window handling, terrible font rendering and random long pauses (something to do with advertisements I think) made it an option only - I had to keep Chrome and FF around for some sites.
No longer. Safari 4 is now my default Windows browser. And not just because of the keystrokes, it's faster than any of the other (always up-to-date) browsers on this machine, renders everything perfectly (Chrome still has serious problems here), the font problems are gone (now Chrome is the one that looks bad), the random pauses are missing, etc.
So basically Safari now does everything any of the other browsers does, plus more, plus its faster, AND it has the same keystrokes.
Still not perfect though: I'm still trying to get the font sizes right (the readable text above is fine, but this editor has HUGE text) and I want to remove the Chrome-like tools menus (I like real menu bars, thanks), and there's some oddity when scrolling long pages. But nevertheless the problems are less than those in Chrome and the speed of FF in comparison makes me willing to overlook them.
Maury
Is anyone even seriously considering deploying anything other than LTE for 4G?
And if the answer is "basically no", which it seems to be, does this mean that basic GSM will piggyback? Or would that be entirely optional?
I ask because I've seen a number of news stories about former CDMA carriers adding HSDPA, but it seems that they don't offer GSM at the same time.
If you're going to assign probabilities to arguments as the starting point of the discussion, well, fine.
Cosmic rays shower the Earth with energies that are higher than LHC. These have failed to create black holes that have eaten the Earth. Thus, it is impossible for LHC to create black holes that will eat the Earth.
Probability of this argument being correct? 100%, give or take zero.
Maury
> The average [Dutch] downloader buys more DVDs, music, and games than people who never download
BREAKING NEWS: old people who don't listen to rock music don't buy rock music!
NEWS FLASH: people who don't watch television don't buy new televisions!
FLASH TRAFFIC: people who listen to music pirate it AND buy it too
Duh. The fact that you download music puts you into the portion of the population that listens to music. People who listen to music generally buy it too. If anyone's trying to conclude that piracy has positive benefits, this study absolutely does not say that.
Maury
> Wait a few days to get yourself a confirmation to edit all semi-protected articles ever, or always bother the much-hated
> administrative nazi bastards and hope they add the precious bit of information to the protected article? I'm pretty
> sure most people feel the former is more within the spirit of open editing.
As one of the Wiki's longest-serving and most prolific _authors_ (not editor, AUTHOR) I think I get my 2 cents.
The problem is that it's the administrative nazi bastards that have decided, amongst themselves, what "the problem with the wikipedia is". Apparently, it's us authors who go around adding content? What ARE we thinking?
So all the administrative nazi bastards, (who don't write articles, BTW just argue about them) got together and decided that flagged revisions is the proper solution to the problem they all decided on. None of the people involved bother to ask anyone outside the group, they just all decided amongst themselves.
And they wonder why edit counts are falling?
Maury
> Early government estimates are showing 212,000 jobs could be created by this plan."
Uhhh, what? Adding computer automation generally _decreases_ employment - that's the idea anyway.
Part time jobs maybe? If so, that seems pretty important to mention.
Maury