Anyway, I always wonder if it wouldn't be possible to drill a hole in the volcano and let off some pressure or something.
While this would be a very good source of geothermal power for us puny humans, I doubt that we could drill a hole wide enough to accommodate 1 cubic meter per second, which according to TFA, is the rate at which the magma chamber is growing. That, and you are left with the problem of what to do with the 86,400 cubic meters of magma per day (about 170,000 tonnes' worth), every day. Where do you plan on parking it?
While we humans pride ourselves on our technology and our ability to move things around and build things, a supervolcano is simply on too big of a scale for us. It would be like a mite imagining it had the power to tell an elephant where to go. Geology (vulcanism, earthquakes) and meteorology (hurricanes, tornadoes) is going to happen to us whether we like it or not. Hopefully one day we'll be smart enough to just get out of the way in time when it does happen.
The bacteria, if deprived of nutrients for too long will simply go dormant, and won't reawaken until fresh nutrients appear.
Ok, call me when you learn how to sporulate. As far as I know, humans can't do this yet. Maybe I slept through that class in med school.
And unlike bacteria, we can escape the petri dish.
Yes, Mars and Venus look like perfect little inhabitable planets for us. Sending people to start a colony there - assuming we could - automatically solves all the problems of the billions left here on Earth, right? Or do you plan to invent magic and we can all astral travel to the unicorn planet? And you call me the dumb one.
So prevent them from having any privacy, and also prevent them from any meaningful employment or source of income. Surely then they will just "disappear" and not bother you anymore instead of oh I don't know, turn to crime to support themselves or I know, re-offend knowing full well they will get both food and shelter (and even privacy) when they are in jail again? Great plan.
any sort of innovation or invention MUST have a practical use.
No, but it must provide a foreseeable return on investment if you expect the idea to ever leave the prototype stage. It's easy to beg for money for projects. It's hard to take projects and turn them into money. How can this be turned into money?
I'm not afraid of the government failing. Governments fail at their tasks every day, and no one seems to notice much. People prefer to believe in the illusion of security that somewhere out there "the government" exists, ready to come running like a worried parent to pick them up if they fall. Reality is quite different. The government doesn't give a shit about you. The only purpose of government is to crush the people. Governments put criminals in jail not because they care about you, but because they would rather pretend to give you something like justice than permit the disorder that arises from vigilante-ism. Do governments prevent natural disasters? No. They will tell you to abandon your home so that thieves can rob you while you are evacuated, though. They can't stop the thieves, but they can push you around because you let yourself be pushed. Can government stop revolutions? Look at the middle east. When people are pissed off enough, governments are powerless. The worst a government can do to you is take your life. But it can't give you what you don't already have. Unless of course you are friends with it, then it will let you find new ways to steal from people./rant
Which means that the death rate increases and the birth rate declines until an equilibrium is reached.
However your model is very obviously assuming unlimited nutrients, as in the case of a colony growing somewhere in the wild, hopefully on an organism that is moving around and feeding itself and hence the bacteria. Put a limit on those nutrients - place that colony on a petri dish and make it a closed system - like our planet is. What happens? You end up with the classical bacterial growth curve. The same will happen to us. You can argue about conservation of matter, and that we're not shipping our waste off into space, and that is true. However converting waste back into useable resources takes energy and surface area. Converting sunlight into food takes surface area. Our limit will be how many square km we can organize into productive land, and how efficient we can become in recycling our waste.
But what happens when you bump up against those real limits and there's a natural disaster, a flood, a war, or something that upsets the delicate balance between producing at the maximum rate and consuming at the maximum rate? What happens when there is no longer any reserve left, and all production is being instantly consumed - and then production decreases suddenly because of unforseen or uncontrollable circumstances? This means that millions, or even billions, die suddenly. You think this is a future we should be proud of as a species?
Everyone today wants to be "disruptive". What will end up happening is this CIO will end up creating yet another useless system that is over budget and no one wants. But for 10 times the cost, because it's "disruptive".
Yeah and look where it got them. I'm not saying it can't be done - it can. This does not create new energy. In fact, it consumes even more energy than before.
I fail to see the practical applications of this. I mean yeah, instead of relying on sensors that are orders of magnitude more sensitive or precise than the human hand, let's re-create a virtual world with a bad physics system and let people use their extremely low resolution hands to do things that they could do for real with real objects. I mean short of being a toy, what is the point?
Trademark? It would be hard to defend a trademark of something that doesn't exist, much less hasn't ever been traded. When they start selling holo-decks maybe they will have a case. Now copyright, on the other hand, might be a problem.
Technology does not get to cheat thermodynamics. Why is it so hard to accept that overpopulation, which has been evidenced in biological and microbiological systems time and time again, does not become its own population control when it comes to the human race? Technology requires energy. When we exhaust our cheap energy supplies there will be a correction. When you are forced to sit and decide if you are going to use land to produce energy (I have yet to see an alternative energy proposal that does not require surface area, be it corn->ethanol, algae->biodiesel or solar/wind->electricity) or to produce food for people, you run into your hard limit that no technology can circumvent. It's not a question of "if", it's a question of "when".
They tell me they can identify species. Now tell me that no one decided to plug "Cannabis indica" into the machines. The US government would want that information if only to sell it to Brazil, Colombia, etc.
Umm, no. there are 100's of years of fossil fuels. see:Coal.
[citation needed] But that's ok I will provide them.
First, I dare you to design coal-powered cars and airplanes.
Second, yet another person who doesn't know how to divide. According to the US government, there are about 2.75 x 10^11 short tons of coal in the US. That 275 billion tons may seem like a lot. Now consider that the US currently is consuming (again according to the US government) over a billion tons a year. That means that at current levels of production, there are under 275 years worth of coal left. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?
Now consider that US coal production is not fixed but is growing every year - and will grow even faster when oil starts getting seriously expensive because it's running out, and you have far less than 275 years remaining. In fact you may not even have 100 years remaining. Especially when you also consider your population is doubling every 50 years or so. Who cares, in 100 years we will all be dead right? Yeah, but when it's gone, it's gone forever.
I know the latter will eventually happen by burning fossil fuels, too.
No it won't. If we burn fossil fuels at today's rate, there are only 30-odd years of fossil fuels left. Even less if our energy needs keep expanding. What you expected it to last forever?
why not do it immediately for humanity and the planet's survival?
Increasing our available sources of energy and thus allowing for even more uncontrolled growth and overpopulation is not ensuring the planet's survival but rather its destruction.
As for Latin America, Africa, I'm not sure of the data network coverage.
It sucks in the countryside, but it's adequate near population centers. Guess where most of the customers are? Population centers (shocker!). I live in latin America and my maid, who earns $20 a day, has a smart phone.
Slashdot Mirror
Anyway, I always wonder if it wouldn't be possible to drill a hole in the volcano and let off some pressure or something.
While this would be a very good source of geothermal power for us puny humans, I doubt that we could drill a hole wide enough to accommodate 1 cubic meter per second, which according to TFA, is the rate at which the magma chamber is growing. That, and you are left with the problem of what to do with the 86,400 cubic meters of magma per day (about 170,000 tonnes' worth), every day. Where do you plan on parking it?
While we humans pride ourselves on our technology and our ability to move things around and build things, a supervolcano is simply on too big of a scale for us. It would be like a mite imagining it had the power to tell an elephant where to go. Geology (vulcanism, earthquakes) and meteorology (hurricanes, tornadoes) is going to happen to us whether we like it or not. Hopefully one day we'll be smart enough to just get out of the way in time when it does happen.
Don't lose hope, some people can lose upper limbs to disease.
You are dumb, boy.
Yet still I managed to get a medical degree.
The bacteria, if deprived of nutrients for too long will simply go dormant, and won't reawaken until fresh nutrients appear.
Ok, call me when you learn how to sporulate. As far as I know, humans can't do this yet. Maybe I slept through that class in med school.
And unlike bacteria, we can escape the petri dish.
Yes, Mars and Venus look like perfect little inhabitable planets for us. Sending people to start a colony there - assuming we could - automatically solves all the problems of the billions left here on Earth, right? Or do you plan to invent magic and we can all astral travel to the unicorn planet? And you call me the dumb one.
So prevent them from having any privacy, and also prevent them from any meaningful employment or source of income. Surely then they will just "disappear" and not bother you anymore instead of oh I don't know, turn to crime to support themselves or I know, re-offend knowing full well they will get both food and shelter (and even privacy) when they are in jail again? Great plan.
any sort of innovation or invention MUST have a practical use.
No, but it must provide a foreseeable return on investment if you expect the idea to ever leave the prototype stage. It's easy to beg for money for projects. It's hard to take projects and turn them into money. How can this be turned into money?
OK. This time it will be different. Ignore the 21 (according to the summary) other times.
The problem is that you do not see this as a continuation of the status quo.
I'm not afraid of the government failing. Governments fail at their tasks every day, and no one seems to notice much. People prefer to believe in the illusion of security that somewhere out there "the government" exists, ready to come running like a worried parent to pick them up if they fall. Reality is quite different. The government doesn't give a shit about you. The only purpose of government is to crush the people. Governments put criminals in jail not because they care about you, but because they would rather pretend to give you something like justice than permit the disorder that arises from vigilante-ism. Do governments prevent natural disasters? No. They will tell you to abandon your home so that thieves can rob you while you are evacuated, though. They can't stop the thieves, but they can push you around because you let yourself be pushed. Can government stop revolutions? Look at the middle east. When people are pissed off enough, governments are powerless. The worst a government can do to you is take your life. But it can't give you what you don't already have. Unless of course you are friends with it, then it will let you find new ways to steal from people. /rant
at which point growth stops
Which means that the death rate increases and the birth rate declines until an equilibrium is reached.
However your model is very obviously assuming unlimited nutrients, as in the case of a colony growing somewhere in the wild, hopefully on an organism that is moving around and feeding itself and hence the bacteria. Put a limit on those nutrients - place that colony on a petri dish and make it a closed system - like our planet is. What happens? You end up with the classical bacterial growth curve. The same will happen to us. You can argue about conservation of matter, and that we're not shipping our waste off into space, and that is true. However converting waste back into useable resources takes energy and surface area. Converting sunlight into food takes surface area. Our limit will be how many square km we can organize into productive land, and how efficient we can become in recycling our waste.
But what happens when you bump up against those real limits and there's a natural disaster, a flood, a war, or something that upsets the delicate balance between producing at the maximum rate and consuming at the maximum rate? What happens when there is no longer any reserve left, and all production is being instantly consumed - and then production decreases suddenly because of unforseen or uncontrollable circumstances? This means that millions, or even billions, die suddenly. You think this is a future we should be proud of as a species?
Everyone today wants to be "disruptive". What will end up happening is this CIO will end up creating yet another useless system that is over budget and no one wants. But for 10 times the cost, because it's "disruptive".
Yeah and look where it got them. I'm not saying it can't be done - it can. This does not create new energy. In fact, it consumes even more energy than before.
I fail to see the practical applications of this. I mean yeah, instead of relying on sensors that are orders of magnitude more sensitive or precise than the human hand, let's re-create a virtual world with a bad physics system and let people use their extremely low resolution hands to do things that they could do for real with real objects. I mean short of being a toy, what is the point?
And can be photoshopped to be the same size as one of their products.
Trademark? It would be hard to defend a trademark of something that doesn't exist, much less hasn't ever been traded. When they start selling holo-decks maybe they will have a case. Now copyright, on the other hand, might be a problem.
Technology does not get to cheat thermodynamics. Why is it so hard to accept that overpopulation, which has been evidenced in biological and microbiological systems time and time again, does not become its own population control when it comes to the human race? Technology requires energy. When we exhaust our cheap energy supplies there will be a correction. When you are forced to sit and decide if you are going to use land to produce energy (I have yet to see an alternative energy proposal that does not require surface area, be it corn->ethanol, algae->biodiesel or solar/wind->electricity) or to produce food for people, you run into your hard limit that no technology can circumvent. It's not a question of "if", it's a question of "when".
They tell me they can identify species. Now tell me that no one decided to plug "Cannabis indica" into the machines. The US government would want that information if only to sell it to Brazil, Colombia, etc.
Umm, no. there are 100's of years of fossil fuels. see:Coal.
[citation needed] But that's ok I will provide them.
First, I dare you to design coal-powered cars and airplanes.
Second, yet another person who doesn't know how to divide. According to the US government, there are about 2.75 x 10^11 short tons of coal in the US. That 275 billion tons may seem like a lot. Now consider that the US currently is consuming (again according to the US government) over a billion tons a year. That means that at current levels of production, there are under 275 years worth of coal left. Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?
Now consider that US coal production is not fixed but is growing every year - and will grow even faster when oil starts getting seriously expensive because it's running out, and you have far less than 275 years remaining. In fact you may not even have 100 years remaining. Especially when you also consider your population is doubling every 50 years or so. Who cares, in 100 years we will all be dead right? Yeah, but when it's gone, it's gone forever.
Yeah, but god isn't so good at avoiding things like famine, war and disease. Population control will not be voluntary but it will happen.
Yeah, better to stick your head in the sand and pretend that reality and arithmetic is not real, right?
Not currently, but they will when they no longer have a choice.
I know the latter will eventually happen by burning fossil fuels, too.
No it won't. If we burn fossil fuels at today's rate, there are only 30-odd years of fossil fuels left. Even less if our energy needs keep expanding. What you expected it to last forever?
I go one better - I give them FALSE info. There's nothing like data corruption to come and bite you in the ass in 15 years.
why not do it immediately for humanity and the planet's survival?
Increasing our available sources of energy and thus allowing for even more uncontrolled growth and overpopulation is not ensuring the planet's survival but rather its destruction.
Wheee, they are looking for pot.
As for Latin America, Africa, I'm not sure of the data network coverage.
It sucks in the countryside, but it's adequate near population centers. Guess where most of the customers are? Population centers (shocker!). I live in latin America and my maid, who earns $20 a day, has a smart phone.