Wow.. that was a horrible documentary. Was there some patent preventing them from putting music in it? The minute long "read this slide in silence" between the generic interview snippets was horrible. You can tell that it could be a good film if they got someone with film school experience to follow at least the basic elements of documentary grammar.
Statistically, we've probably discovered 1% of the potentially hazardous asteroids. Now we have a data point for an interesting occurrence: one of the ones we know about has a good chance of hitting us. What about the rest of them?
In order to have a worthwhile debate you need to have a host who is interesting in the truth and has control over the microphones. The host asks each guest to state their overall position, with limited time. Then the host identifies and lists where each of the guests appear to be *agree*. The guests are given the opportunity to make objections to the host's interpretation of what the guests agree on, but he must cut off either guest if they go off-track and start talking about disagreement. Once agreement has been established, *then* the host can turn to disagreement. The host identifies the disagreement and presents the objection of one guest to the other, who is given an opportunity to respond to the objection, the other guest may then get an opportunity to rescind or defend their position, *then the host moves on* to the next objection. Some time later the host asks the guests if he missed anything, and they are each given a timed period to present any objections that have been missed. Perhaps another round of discussion on the missed objections occurs. Finally, the host offers a summary on what was discussed, what was agreed on, which positions were settled as misunderstandings or whatever, and finally the host makes a determination of which guest presented the best argument, scored the most points or persuaded the host the best.
But any rational observer has to see that the Left and Right in America are screaming the most vile accusations at each other all the time. We are fully polarized -- if you accept one idea that sounds like it belongs to either the blue or the red, you are assumed -- nay, required -- to espouse the entire rest of the package, even though there is no reason why supporting the war against terrorism should imply you're in favor of banning all abortions and against restricting the availability of firearms; no reason why being in favor of keeping government-imposed limits on the free market should imply you also are in favor of giving legal status to homosexual couples and against building nuclear reactors. These issues are not remotely related, and yet if you hold any of one group's views, you are hated by the other group as if you believed them all; and if you hold most of one group's views, but not all, you are treated as if you were a traitor for deviating even slightly from the party line.
- Orson Scott Card.
Seeing as no-one has replied to you (yet), I'll take it as my opportunity to tell you my opinion.
Afghanistan is a hard country to rule, due to the geography. Back when the US was aiding the rebels to fight the Soviet Union some of the best work they did was making roads. It allowed a government to form. However the roads didn't go everywhere and there's plenty of pockets of peoples who are officially part of Afghanistan but simply don't want to be ruled, and when you consider that the last government was the Taliban, who can blame them?
So what is the US doing there? They're helping the government gain complete dominance over the populous. Why? That one is beyond me I'm afraid.. I'm Australian and we're in-country too. My honest opinion is that it gives our forces something to do - it's the most effective training for some theoretical future war.
Words like "insurgents" and euphemisms like "bringing stability to the region" are the kind of talk that pisses me off the most. Just talk like a rational human being so that someone who isn't indoctrinated in your culture can understand your motivations and you'll do a lot better at gaining support.. assuming you even understand why you're shooting at people.
Most American nuclear engineers have a low opinion of nuclear because of the once-through policy. Everyone else in the world uses their nuclear material up a lot more and store just the waste, the US stores perfectly good fuel because it might be a "strategic asset" one day. As such, nuclear in the US is legally required to be inefficient by the highest law in the land. Which is amazing, when you consider how much it still kicks butt.
The $4-6 includes waste disposal. Actually what I'm ignoring is the cost of decommissioning the plant and that's because I have no way of estimating how much this mirror farm will cost to decommission.
At 10c/kWh it can earn $500/hr. So it'll only take ~13.7 years to pay it off.. oh it's solar, right, well, with the seasons and everything I guess it's more like double that. Let's say ~27 years. How much is maintenance? Oh yeah, and the time value of money.
Another way of looking at it: it's $12B/GW + operations. Nuclear power plants take 5-10 years and cost $4-10 billion to build, and $4-6 billion for fuel and operation over their lifetime, so $8B/GW to $16B/GW. So the cheapest nuclear reactor beats this by at least 35% and the most expensive nuclear reactor probably beats it also.
But that fact that they've even made it into the right ballpark is impressive and perhaps once they scale it up to somewhere that is actually useful we'll have some idea how competitive it can be.
However much a reasonable person agrees should be. Note that most reasonable people don't consider RMS a reasonable person, so it's somewhere between pacemakers and text editors.
They'd tell you numbers which you wouldn't understand. Then the pundits would turn those numbers into something they can scare you with, probably overblowing the threat while they do so, and Concerned Citizens would go to their Congressmen demanding answers. NASA would provide those answers.. in a completely unintelligible way, and someone would interpret those answers as dismissing the threat. Then there'd be a big argument over whether it's a threat or isn't it. Eventually one of the egg heads with a wife will get a lecture about talking like a normal person once in a while and a press statement would be released saying exactly how likely and excessive the threat is (after it went through a few committees to ensure it was easy enough to understand, and defend). By this time the media will be completely bored with the story and the press release will be ignored by everyone, except for the next committee which is tasked with finding a solution. Having found the solution the funding will not be forthcoming as the whole thing has already been written off as a hoax. A few years of fighting for funding and being rebuffed later, the media will pick up on the story again.. perhaps after the threat has been renamed. This time a-solution-the-authorities-have-been-ignoring will be available and someone-better-lose-his-job-over-this. Of course, the solution that came out of that committee was for a situation that hasn't been true for years now, so we need a new committee.. this time with the President's appointment. They'll listen to a dozen different proposals, some of which have already been discarded as worthless, and choose the one that has the best political chance of being enacted quickly. Eventually it'll get funding but the project will stall after 2 years of development, but thankfully some of the runner up concepts also got a trickle of funding. There will be a political fight to fund the more successful project over the stalled project, but that will fail, instead more money will be directed towards the hopeless project, until finally the egos on both sides subside and come up with some "compromise" solution that will half work, averting the complete extinction of human kind but still killing a few million people in a far-off-land. Everyone will swear that next-time-we'll-be-ready but not actually do anything to ensure that's the case.. a few years later researchers will complain that their funding for early warning systems is being cut, and the general public will not care because, hey, it didn't turn out to be as big a deal as they said it was going to be anyway.
I can't help but feel that the reason why the "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" debate has continued to rage, outside Texas and the other retarded US states which deny Darwin, has a lot to do with arguments like this one. Maybe everyone who can tell the difference between a-protein-now-found-in-chickens and a chicken has long ago come to the conclusion that what came first was some animal different enough from a chicken that we wouldn't call it that, which laid an egg that contained an animal similar enough to a chicken that we would call it a chicken. And only the logic deficient and the religious crazies are left arguing the options.
Slashdot Mirror
Aesthetics are universal. If just delivering the message was the goal, why not just write it down?
I watched it through to the end, that's more than most people would have done.
Wow.. that was a horrible documentary. Was there some patent preventing them from putting music in it? The minute long "read this slide in silence" between the generic interview snippets was horrible. You can tell that it could be a good film if they got someone with film school experience to follow at least the basic elements of documentary grammar.
If you're in QLD, vote for the Greens above the line: https://www.belowtheline.org.au/qld/group_r.html
Here's why:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hhd1I7adhzM
I expect this will be the best year for the Greens in a long time.
Maybe there's a link in the summary that goes somewhere where all these questions and more are answered.. just an idea, not sure I could patent it.
no editors.
Statistically, we've probably discovered 1% of the potentially hazardous asteroids. Now we have a data point for an interesting occurrence: one of the ones we know about has a good chance of hitting us. What about the rest of them?
In order to have a worthwhile debate you need to have a host who is interesting in the truth and has control over the microphones. The host asks each guest to state their overall position, with limited time. Then the host identifies and lists where each of the guests appear to be *agree*. The guests are given the opportunity to make objections to the host's interpretation of what the guests agree on, but he must cut off either guest if they go off-track and start talking about disagreement. Once agreement has been established, *then* the host can turn to disagreement. The host identifies the disagreement and presents the objection of one guest to the other, who is given an opportunity to respond to the objection, the other guest may then get an opportunity to rescind or defend their position, *then the host moves on* to the next objection. Some time later the host asks the guests if he missed anything, and they are each given a timed period to present any objections that have been missed. Perhaps another round of discussion on the missed objections occurs. Finally, the host offers a summary on what was discussed, what was agreed on, which positions were settled as misunderstandings or whatever, and finally the host makes a determination of which guest presented the best argument, scored the most points or persuaded the host the best.
Call me crazy, but I prefer the "I can record anything I want but the government needs a warrant".
In regards to polarization..
http://www.politicalforum.com/political-opinions-beliefs/22519-most-profound-thing-ive-ever-read.html
Seeing as no-one has replied to you (yet), I'll take it as my opportunity to tell you my opinion.
Afghanistan is a hard country to rule, due to the geography. Back when the US was aiding the rebels to fight the Soviet Union some of the best work they did was making roads. It allowed a government to form. However the roads didn't go everywhere and there's plenty of pockets of peoples who are officially part of Afghanistan but simply don't want to be ruled, and when you consider that the last government was the Taliban, who can blame them?
So what is the US doing there? They're helping the government gain complete dominance over the populous. Why? That one is beyond me I'm afraid.. I'm Australian and we're in-country too. My honest opinion is that it gives our forces something to do - it's the most effective training for some theoretical future war.
Words like "insurgents" and euphemisms like "bringing stability to the region" are the kind of talk that pisses me off the most. Just talk like a rational human being so that someone who isn't indoctrinated in your culture can understand your motivations and you'll do a lot better at gaining support.. assuming you even understand why you're shooting at people.
Some people are so far away from the issues that they can't even participate in the debate.
Please at least try to understand what we're talking about before opening your mouth.
Thanks for trying though.
Yes, because without secrets the populous might have to face up to the mayhem their elected officials cause.
I consider myself a Christian in the sense that I've read the Bible and believe Jesus taught the right lessons in ethics.
By that logic I'm a christian. Personally I think this is the worst case of selective doctrine I've ever seen.
The numbers are normalized to a GW, I said that.
Read next time.
Yep, and to make mirrors you need........
Most American nuclear engineers have a low opinion of nuclear because of the once-through policy. Everyone else in the world uses their nuclear material up a lot more and store just the waste, the US stores perfectly good fuel because it might be a "strategic asset" one day. As such, nuclear in the US is legally required to be inefficient by the highest law in the land. Which is amazing, when you consider how much it still kicks butt.
The $4-6 includes waste disposal. Actually what I'm ignoring is the cost of decommissioning the plant and that's because I have no way of estimating how much this mirror farm will cost to decommission.
5MW for $60M (euro).. really?
At 10c/kWh it can earn $500/hr. So it'll only take ~13.7 years to pay it off.. oh it's solar, right, well, with the seasons and everything I guess it's more like double that. Let's say ~27 years. How much is maintenance? Oh yeah, and the time value of money.
Another way of looking at it: it's $12B/GW + operations. Nuclear power plants take 5-10 years and cost $4-10 billion to build, and $4-6 billion for fuel and operation over their lifetime, so $8B/GW to $16B/GW. So the cheapest nuclear reactor beats this by at least 35% and the most expensive nuclear reactor probably beats it also.
But that fact that they've even made it into the right ballpark is impressive and perhaps once they scale it up to somewhere that is actually useful we'll have some idea how competitive it can be.
However much a reasonable person agrees should be. Note that most reasonable people don't consider RMS a reasonable person, so it's somewhere between pacemakers and text editors.
I think you miss the point. You should be able to examine the code in the pacemaker inside you - or hire an expert to do so.
XONG is pronounced "zong" and programmed entirely in Common Lisp.
I pronounce it "wrong".
They'd tell you numbers which you wouldn't understand. Then the pundits would turn those numbers into something they can scare you with, probably overblowing the threat while they do so, and Concerned Citizens would go to their Congressmen demanding answers. NASA would provide those answers.. in a completely unintelligible way, and someone would interpret those answers as dismissing the threat. Then there'd be a big argument over whether it's a threat or isn't it. Eventually one of the egg heads with a wife will get a lecture about talking like a normal person once in a while and a press statement would be released saying exactly how likely and excessive the threat is (after it went through a few committees to ensure it was easy enough to understand, and defend). By this time the media will be completely bored with the story and the press release will be ignored by everyone, except for the next committee which is tasked with finding a solution. Having found the solution the funding will not be forthcoming as the whole thing has already been written off as a hoax. A few years of fighting for funding and being rebuffed later, the media will pick up on the story again.. perhaps after the threat has been renamed. This time a-solution-the-authorities-have-been-ignoring will be available and someone-better-lose-his-job-over-this. Of course, the solution that came out of that committee was for a situation that hasn't been true for years now, so we need a new committee.. this time with the President's appointment. They'll listen to a dozen different proposals, some of which have already been discarded as worthless, and choose the one that has the best political chance of being enacted quickly. Eventually it'll get funding but the project will stall after 2 years of development, but thankfully some of the runner up concepts also got a trickle of funding. There will be a political fight to fund the more successful project over the stalled project, but that will fail, instead more money will be directed towards the hopeless project, until finally the egos on both sides subside and come up with some "compromise" solution that will half work, averting the complete extinction of human kind but still killing a few million people in a far-off-land. Everyone will swear that next-time-we'll-be-ready but not actually do anything to ensure that's the case.. a few years later researchers will complain that their funding for early warning systems is being cut, and the general public will not care because, hey, it didn't turn out to be as big a deal as they said it was going to be anyway.
Sigh.. Another way to phrase it would be "what's the origin of species?"
I can't help but feel that the reason why the "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" debate has continued to rage, outside Texas and the other retarded US states which deny Darwin, has a lot to do with arguments like this one. Maybe everyone who can tell the difference between a-protein-now-found-in-chickens and a chicken has long ago come to the conclusion that what came first was some animal different enough from a chicken that we wouldn't call it that, which laid an egg that contained an animal similar enough to a chicken that we would call it a chicken. And only the logic deficient and the religious crazies are left arguing the options.
I'm sure the complete lack of a decent development environment has something to do with it too.