You don't, even though the U.S. population is almost ten times larger. I think a machine might be better if it were a simple, almost mechanical device that just ticked up counts. People do get tired, and make mistakes. A well-built, well-understood, and well-audited machine is likely more reliable. But under no circumstances do you want a general-purpose microprocessor (which can be reprogrammed) anywhere near the counting process....
Every software in government, which is paid for from citizens taxes, should be open source.
Whether or not some people care to admit it (and there are pleny who still don't), sometimes the only/best tool for the job is closed-source commercial software.
But let's stay on the topic of elections. Perhaps here the best tool is a paper ballot (gasp)? Of course you'll need machines to count the millions of ballots, and that should probably be open-source software (how can you build public trust in the process unless the public has insight into the process?); but in any case, you need a macroscopic audit trail.
In the absence of other factors that may even be true but in the presence of factors like the percentage of reradiated wavelengths being absorbed by atmosphere being already at 100% for the wavelengths absorbable by CO2 mean that CO2 as cause is a poor explainer at best
Not true. Look up the term curve of growth in an astronomy textbook. At the edges of the absorbtion bands additional CO2 still has an effect. Radiative transfer is not an on/off thing.
Coincidence.
There are a lot of other graphs that show similar growth rates.
There are a lot of temperature graphs that show increases in the last 100 years. There is also a nice graph showing an increase in CO2 levels from coal and oil burning. That's not just a coincidence, given that the physics behind the temperature increase is pretty straightforward (greenhouse effect). in fact, in order for surface tempertures not to rise with increasing CO2 levels requires some rather fancy footwork; you have to invoke the existence of various negatiuve feedback cycles, like increased cloudiness (which may actually have a net warming effect after all) etc. The radiative-tranfer physics behind the greenhouse effect is a lot more solid than our understanding of cloud formation.
To state that the increase in CO2 is undeniably causing the increase in temperature is just bad science.
In science nothing is "undeniable". However, some things are more or less plausible, likely, belivable etc. A good scientist working on something realitively new will always hedge. But sooner or later the evidence starts to build up to the point where only cranks deny it. Hence most scientists think e.g. evolution is pretty solid. The same goes for general relativity, QED, etc. Climate change due to increased CO2 levels is getting to be such a strong theory (or so says the NAS here and here, and the IPCC).
There's no evidence to back it up.
That is simply hogwash. There is a lot of evidence for a coupling between CO2 and temperature rise. It may be challenging to directly link CO2 to this particular ice shelf, but I ask you this: if global and regional temperatures are rising due to increasing CO2 levels, are you surprised that we are seeing more ice melt?
We need experiments and more data before any sound scientific conclusion like that can be made.
We always need more data (I'm a scientist after all), but we have the basis to act now, and the longer we wait the harder the problem will be.
In my list I mentioned at least four very plausible reasons for global temperature rise that do not depend on an increase in CO2.
I'm going to hope it is the "alien death ray", personally. Seriously, though, greenhouse gases are about the only plausible ones in your list. The Earths core is pretty stable in it's heat output, not to mention that it's about a factor of 100 lower than the heat input from the Sun. To raise temperatures by the observed amount you'd have to increase the core heat output by a factor of about 4. Not likely.
Is the Sun putting out more energy on some long period that we don't yet know about?
First of all, there is not a lot of evidence for such a change (we can measure the solar constant afetr all). Second, you'd then have to explain how the increasing CO2 wasn't causing a rise, while at the same time the Sun caused a rise that coincides very nicely with the CO2 increase.
No comet fragment can reach Jupiter's core. The only way to reach the core is by sinking slowly, but then by definition you don't have kinetic energy. If the plutonium inside Galileo explodes, it won't compare with SL9 in terms of megatons, but it will be the first time an explosion occurs so deep inside Jupiter. I hope you can see the qualitative difference.
Bzzt. You fail physics. 1) the probe will likely be vaporized into a 1000-km trail of dust by the impact with the atmosphere at 48 km/s. It won't slow down intact and then sink into the core of Jupiter. 2) The temperature reaches the melting point of metal a few thousand kms down into Jupiter. Even if the probe was intact by the time it sank that far, it would melt/dissolve long before it reached the core. 3) The RTG's contain Pu-238, which as has been stated repeatedly, is not suitable as a nuclear explosive. 4) Even if there was an explosion, it is so incredibly miniscule compared to the mass/size of Jupiter that it simply would not matter. 5) Jupiter CANNOT sustain nuclear fusion - it simply lacks the mass. The pressure in the core is far too low to overcome Coulomb repulsion between protons so that they can fuse. The minimum mass of a star that can sustain fusion is approximately 75 Jupiter masses. That is very, very well-understood physics (look up the astronomical tem "brown dwarf").
This is the fourth similar story in the past month or so: first it was electronic voting machines based on Windows, then a nuclear power plant monitoring system, then the possibility that the big blackout was partially caused by the Blaster worm interfering with control computers, and now ATMs. In each case you have techies saying "this Windows thing is a baaad idea". However, they seem to be ignored - the suits, as well as a small number of Microsoft apologists - run blindly ahead thinking it's just a great idea.
No-one in charge ever seems to take a second look and ask "do we really need a multi-GHz processor and OS just to decode a PIN and dispense cash?".
I know Windows is ubiquitous, and seems like the safe option. But it's overkill, and any time you install way more computing power than you need, you're being wasteful, as well as taking a risk. Of course it has been amply demonstrated that Windows is NOT SECURE no matter how much the Microsoft salespeople claim otherwise. Note, I'm not saying Linux is necessarily better. I'm questioning the need for a full-blown OS at all, in these applications. Hell, I could build a simple ATM using hardwired logic gates. Installing a known-insecure consumer OS in a mission-critical application is fscking stupid, and it will cause problems. The people that make these decisions are simply hoping that they'll be promoted far enough up the ladder before it happens that someone else takes the blame.
I know the reason this happens is that by using a standard system it's much cheaper; you just have to find some VisualBasic code-monkey and whip up an application. Fundamentally, the problem is that the cost of this kind of insecurity is a) not immediately apparent and b) not born by the company. The costs associated with a cracked ATM will just be passed on to the consumer. The cost of the blackout will similarly not hurt the stockholders of FirstEnergy.
The simple truth is that sometimes you need regulation and enforcement; if there wasn't an FAA you can bet your life that 777's would run on Windows XP by now, with a literal BSOD on a weekly basis. OK, that's a bit extreme. But let's look at that situation as an example... I know reliable flight-control software is expensive, so let's assume that if allowed, some company would be tempted to use cheap off-the shelf equipment and software, thus making a cheaper plane. Pretty soon they would outcompete other builders (the margins are pretty thin on those things). Remember, if the only planes available were ones that ran XP, you as a consumer would have no choice as to what you flew. If every airline had a crash that often, there would be no competive pressure to improve (that's "just a cost of doing business"). The point I'm trying to make is that sometimes competive price pressure results in a "race to the bottom" in terms of safety, quality, or reliability. I suspect that's what we're seeing here.
any substance that is designed or has the capability to cause death or serious injury" and contains toxic chemicals.
This is insane. A tank of gasoline has the capacity to cause death or serious injury, and contains toxic chemicals. So does a bottle of vodka or a glass of L.A. drinking water. And as you point out, cigarettes.
If the wording were "designed or intended to cause death or serious injury" then perhaps the law would be acceptable. As it stands now it is just an invitation for prosecutorial abuse.
Venus is virtually the same size as Earth and, on average, is our nearest neighbour. Today, its atmospheric temperatures are hot enough to melt lead and concentrated sulfuric acid continuously drizzles down from thick sulphurous clouds that completely block out the Sun.
Another poster:
And you don't think the fact that Venus is MUCH closer to the Sun has anything to do with its hotter temperatures? If the distance from the Sun to the Earth were to change by only a few percent either way we'd become a desert planet or we'd be an ice ball, and the activities of Man would have nothing to do with the outcome.
Not as much effect as you think. As you can see here, Venus is 30% closer to the Sun than the Earth is. A simple application of the blackbody equation to calculate the surface temperature of a planet shows that one would expect Venus to have a surface temperature of about 22 deg C. In fact it has a temperature of 464 deg C. The difference is entirely due to the greenhouse effect. So yes, the greenhouse effect is very real and can have tremendous impact on the surface temperature of a planet. I should also point out that without the greenhouse effect, the Earth itself would be rather cold: about -22 deg C. Given that the presence of a tiny amount of CO2 and water vapor is enough to change the mean surface temperature of the Earth by 40 deg C, it is not unreasonable to think that an increase in the CO2 concentration by 50-100% might raise surface temperatures.
So it's not power or space, or social security or running water. But it is more like, let's build an infrastructure to support future growth and then grow.
So we should stop all space exploration until we've solved every single problem here on Earth first? The problem is that it is very hard to predict what investment where will provide payoff in any particular field. It may be that technology developed for space may prove unexpectedly useful here on Earth. Or vice versa. The point being that you should invest evenly across sectors, not concentrate on one single goal at the expense of everything else.
By the way, that six sigma stuff is BS. I've worked with that sort, and much like every other management fad that comes along every few years (ISO9000, TQM) it's basically a fancy-sounding word to try and make your people do their jobs right. It's not magic, but applied common sense.
Offtopic, I know.
One of the most popular is the salt chamber conversion method which delivers considerably more efficency than panels and provides for a storage mechanism.
I've not been able to find a reference for the conversion and storage efficiency of such a method, but I doubt you'd get more than 40-50%. Recall that you are using sunlight to heat a medium, then run it through a standard turbine like any other plant. The thermal efficiencies in that process are always fairly low. But we're arguing over a factor of two, which isn't that much in the big scheme of things.
I would point out that energy storage is and has always been very difficult to do, particularly at any level of efficiency (certainly not at 50%). You are talking about storage capacity to power a nation for days/weeks. That's a very tall order, and many orders of magnitude beyond what has ever been done.
Are you questioning the merit of the principle of putting money into our infrastructure or are you questioning the implementation I prosposed?
I am questioning your implementation, primarily;
I am not convinced that a massive investment in a limited, unproven technology is the way to go. It might be better to work several areas, including nuclear (fission and fusion), solar, wind, improving efficiencies etc etc.
Obviously our infrastructure needs investment. But you are making a false dichotomy: it's not "power or space", just like it's not a choice between "social security or running water". We have the resources to do more than one thing at a time. You may argue the relative spending levels, but right now we are doing very little in the way of space exploriation; it might serve us well to do more. Space, like infrastructure, is a long-term investment with a high payoff.
If we can go to Mars - we can find a way to dramatically lower our costs here. Which one is worth more to our future?
That depends. In the medium to very long term, colonization of Mars will have benefits (stimulating investment in high tech, opens up new resources, provides safeguards against planetary-level disaters). And it is not clear that solar is that much cheaper than the alternatives; investing in solar is not to lower costs but to avoid dependence on oil/coal with their attendant problems.
What if we spent a couple of billion to create an updated and efficient (and redundant) power grid for the nation, and built a solar field in Nevada to power the entire nation (I believe the figure is currently that a 5x5 mile field could literally power the entire nation)?
Got anyone who can do math on that statement?
Lets see. A 5x5 mile field is a surface area of 64 million square meters. The solar output is 1300 W/sq. meter, but there are efficiency factors to take into account: 0.25 for day/night and geometry (the sun isn't always overhead), 0.4 for conversion efficiecy (wildly optimistic), and probably 0.7-0.8 for weather and clouds. So, 64,000,000*0.25*0.4*0.7*1300= 5.8e9 Watts = 5.8 GW (about equal to 5 nuclear power plants). Given that the current U.S. electricity production is about 433 GW this link I would say that the statement is a bit cracked.
Powering the nation with solar power only is a fantasy; there is currently no good solution to a) storage (weather and night time), b) transmission over the long distances required (it's a long way to go from Nevada to New England) c) cost (panels are basically silicon wafers made with processes similar to that of computer chips. Not cheap to cover the 5x5 mile area.
You should be fired.
In fact, you and all your buddies at JPL should be fired.
What a troll... I've worked with several people at JPL and many of them are among the most dedicated, intelligent, hardworking and clever people I've known. And I was a grad student at Caltech, which has it's share of intelligent people. Sure, like any large organization, there are duds. In my experience the duds at JPL were mostly sysadmins (i.e. the slashdot-reading types), for some odd reason. So in my opinion, Mr. McGibbys post reveals that he suffers from a serious case of rectoencephaly
You've had decades since Apollo to actually make some serious accomplishments and you haven't accomplished much of anything. JPL hasn't produced anything really innovative in years.
Oh really? How about Voyager (Far cooler than even Apollo in my mind), Galileo(Really cool, despite problems), Cassini,Mars Odyssey, the Mars Missions in general, and a huge number of various Earth-orbiting missions? Go to the JPL Missions page for a list. As a scientist (Astronomy and Planetary Science) I would say that the JPL missions comprise the largest, most significant set of scientific missions done by anyone on this planet. And they are still working on a good list of new missions and proposed missions; certainly a far better set than anyone else.
How you you rather land back on Earth: parachuting into the ocean or landing smoothly like an airplane?
Those aren't the only two options. Russian and Chinese spacecraft parachute onto land. One could land smoothly like an airplane, without the ridiculous wings, by using a parafoil (indeed, such was seriously studied -- well, a similar idea Rogallo wing -- for the Gemini program). Or one could land smoothly yet vertically like a helicopter, Harrier jet, or Bell rocket pack.
The real issue is not capsule vs. winged, the issue is whether or not you want to be able to accomplish a controlled, low-impact landing at a precise location. If you want to be able to re-use your spacecraft you pretty much have to be able to avoid bodies of water, large boulders, cliffs etc etc. A low-impact landing is important so that you don't break things when you land. As shown by the Shuttle, extensive refurbishment before every flight is a good way to make this too expensive.
Almost as importantly, you want to be able to put down close to recovery facilities so you can get back to flying again quickly.
Now, to get such a precise landing requires mass. If you use wings, they are heavy. If you insist on a capsule then you'll either have to have a big para-wing (heavy, complex to deploy, perhaps not so reliable), or landing rockets (heavy, and definitiely complex). Either way, you pay a mass penalty.
The point I want to make is that you shouldn't be arguing over wings (at this point in the deisgn process), you should be deicing whether or not you need controlled landings.
Part of the problem is that by putting passwords on too many things you are requiring people to do something that most people simply can't do. Think about it, a good password has to be essentially random, at least eight characters long, and only used once. And then the passwords should be changed monthly. Seriously, how many of you can remeber %Fhe#jhx*, $%SDh!@l, (*^GKk32vc and sd)hdf@m? Studies done by various phone companies show that people tend to only be able to memorize about seven numbers at a time..
And think how many passwords you end up using: your account password on 3-4 computers, various root passwords, passwords to hotmail, your Amazon.com and eBay accounts, your ATM PINs, your credit card PINs, the access to your wireless router at home, and all the access codes to various subscription websites (hot asian teens and whatnot:) )?
Faced with this deluge of things to remember (which most people simply do not have the neurons to do), what do we do? Either use only one password, use something easy to remember, or write it down on a piece of paper kept in ones wallet. All of which are security no-nos. But security people have to face reality - passwords are only good security when used judiciously!
I don't understand why a cryptographic protocol using a blind signature can't be used to make an auditable voting system.
That's because you're stupid.:)
Seriously though - it's simply because most people can't see and count electrons. Therefore they cannot participate in the verification process (i.e. recount). This puts the entire election in the hands of a select few computer programmers.
Why do people like you let yourselves get blinded by all this shiny new technology to the point where you forget about things like reliability and security?
Any other requirements, like reusability to reduce costs, the ability to also carry cargo, or additional functions besides crew transport, would eat into the vehicle's safety margin.
Actually, that point is wrong on a couple of levels.
First, re-usability and safety go hand-in-hand. You can't reuse a crashed vehicle after all. Second,
you can overdo safety: the safest vehicle is one that never flies.
I know it's tempting to put safety on a pedestal - but we're talking about spaceflight, which involves accelerating people to speeds of 25,000 mph. That is inherently unsafe...
One key issue that seems to be on everyone's mind is the latest MS Blaster virus, could it have caused the outage? Not likely.
This story would tend to indicate the opposite (i.e. that it may well be possible). While the disabled system in question (the monitoring system of the Davis-Besse nuke plant) was not directly related to control, it's fair to say that a worm that crashes process monitoring systems is a serious security problem. How are you supposed to control a system that you can't monitor? (sure, you can run to manual or analog backups, but that takes time, causes operator confusion, and is just not a great solution to the fundamental problem.)
In addition, a recent Wired story ( here) talks about how in the minutes before the power outage, engineers were having computer problems. At the very least it appears that these computer issues were preventing or slowing down operator responses to the developing problem.
As stated above our protection and control systems send data via leased phone lines and/or private fiber and do not have any connection to the Internet. Thus no possible way of receiving a virus.
As stated in the story about Davis-Besse, the work came in through a T1 line put in place by a contractor (between the plant and the home office), neatly circumventing the firewall.
In other words, there was a connection to the internet. How could this be allowed to happen? Are these people stupid, lazy, or just incompetent? it also shows that you may think there is no internet connection, but you can't always be sure (unless you use a totally different protocol).
By the way, a leased phone line presumably goes through a phone switch; these tend to be computer controlled and sometimes open to compromise. A determined intruder could use this to hijack the leased line and inject spurious control commands.
And regarding viruses, a direct internet connection is not the only possible route of infection. A virus could also ride in on a disk (intentionally or unintentionally), or be injected in a microwave link (that's what we did to Serbian air defence networks a while back).
Part of my job is to study disturbances on the grid (ie why did the lights go out?). The studies take anywhere from a day to months to explain what happened. And remember the 1965 blackout study took over a year to finish.
The problem is that First Energy is publicly dissembling ("It's sooo complicated. Zillions of things going on all over the place. It can't all be our fault."), and this does not inspire confidence in them, or in the process
of figuring out what happened. Basically, the public is going to get to watch as our power infrastructure is sold to a few private interests, while things like reliability go down the toilet.
And we'll be mushroomed (kept in the dark and fed bullshit) when things go wrong. We were lucky that it was just a blackout, rather than, say, a nuke plant meltdown. (That would among other things finally kill nuke power, which would be a damned shame).
The comment above is not insightful. The only way to avoid fraud in the voting process is to have it as open and transparent as possible. Who do you want counting your votes, some judge who you can sit and watch, or some black box that was programmed in secret by some guy, and who won't show the source code (and even if he did, how do you ensure that was the code run on the machine)? Paper ballots may have issues, but the one advantage of the pen-and-paper approach is that any reasonable person can look at the ballot and form an opinion as to what the vote said. That builds trust in the process, which is the bedrock of democracy. A black-box that only some qualified engineer can even read is not a system that builds trust.
This blind trust in "digital" systems is simply idiotic. In fact, it's so stupid that I doubt any honest person would have such trust. Simply put, I think those who argue in favor of these secret, non-transparent voting machines are deliberately trying to corrupt the voting process.
As a famous dictator (Joe Stalin) one said: "Those who vote control nothing. Those who count the votes control everything."
a boiling water reactor's operational state can be deduced with with just 3 - power, pressure, and level.
Perhaps. If you trust your sensors. As TMI showed (a PWR, mind you) there are situations where you can get misled. In situations where you have multiple conflicting indications, operators can have a tendency to fixate on the wrong sensor reading (same thing happens to pilots). A related point is that analysis of operator-error-induced accidents in many situations shows that the operators were acting on the basis of faulty information, rather than simply not following procedure.
You are right in that these plants can be safely operated on very simple anaglog backups, but that's not really the problem. The issue is that you are presenting operators with two sets of information (analog backup, and the nice new computer interface). These systems clearly have different levels of security and reliability. You are hoping that if these systems start to disagree that the operator will do the right thing and trust the backup. But that is not always the case (and in any event his thinking may be influenced by the faulty indicator).
This is not a safe practice. Backups and redundancies are nice, but all the systems have to operate at something like the same level of reliability and security. Otherwise the less reliable system is worse than useless; bad data is worse than no data.
That someone would even think of bringing a Windows box anywhere near a nuke control room, let along connect it to the freaking net, however indirectly, gives me nightsweats. And I've worked in nuke control rooms.
Little chunks of gamma emitters with a 31 year half life lying all over the place means whoever is left around has to deal with the consequences of a fight they may have had no part in, or may not even remember what the conflict was all about to begin with.
Keep in mind that you could go around an decontaminate the area by irradiating it with X-rays, the same way that you got the hafnium to decay originally.
Believe it or not, there is a large (6.5 meter primary mirror), newly commisioned telescope ( Magellan ) that uses DOS computers in the telescope control system. It was apparently cheaper than VxWorks, and supposedly easier to maintain in 20 years (i.e. easier to find Intel motherboards and ISA cards than VxWorks/VME).
The Delta Clipper was not capable of orbit; not even close. It only looked good because it wasn't attempting the really hard part. ANY single-stage to orbit vehicle requires very advanced technology - there is no "off-the-shelf" engine with the specific impulse, and no "off-the-shelf" material with the strength/mass ratio, required. It's a simple matter of physics. The rocket equation tells us that getting into orbit using currently available rockets will,for a single-stage vehicle, require that about 90% of the liftoff mass be fuel. You have to fit the engines, fuel tank, payload etc into the remaining 10%. The Delta Clipper only had a fuel fraction of about 50%.
The Lockheed X-33 tried to get around this in two ways: use a higher efficiency rocket engine (the aerospike) and light-weight composite structure, allowing a greater portion of the remaining mass to be used as payload. It's the only possible approach if you are limited to single-stage to orbit. Don't kid yourself, the other X-33 proposals were just as risky. It says a lot about the ignorance of the author that he even used this argument; it doesn't hold up to closer inspection.
Regardless of how important you happen to think space travel is (and I think it's nothing less than the key to the future of the human race, ultimately), there are a few really big problems with the future of space travel: physics (we have to find a more efficent engine), investment (we have to convince people that space is worth the real investment required) and "religion" (it seems like every person involved has an absolutely unwavering opinion of the ONE TRUE WAY to get into space, and they simply will not engage in a rational debate).
The last point is actually important, and well illustrated by the article; the author clearly belongs to the "ballistic re-entry" sub-sect of the "expendible launch vehicle" religion. He spends many more words attacking the "winged, reuseable" approach than explaining why his particular approach is so much better. Which of course it isn't - all designs have drawbacks. Trust me, the designs that are built are chosen on more than just the basis of the oft-repeated "pilots want to fly something with wings".
To illustrate the situation, consider the choice between Russian-style expendible capsules and what the Shuttle should (would) have been given proper development funding (the cuts by the Nixon administration forced the use of solids; as any good engineer understands, this one bad choice forced a cascading series of ever more disastrous adjustments, ultimately killing the concept). Anyway, the Russian capsules work rather well, and are moderately reliable. However, they cost on the order of $20 million per launch (at Russian wages). This cost can likely not be further reduced, since you can't amortize the construction cost of the vehicle and booster over several flights. A truly reuseable Shuttle (say, an X-33 derivative launched off the back of a 747 or something), while considerably more expensive to build, can fly 100 times. That's the only reasonable way to get launch costs below something like $1000 pound (where according to some analysts it becomes economically feasible to develop space in a big way).
To make a long story short you have a choice: a) pick the initially cheaper option of expendible capsules, and be forever stuck at relatively high launch costs, or b) pay the steep development cost of a truly re-useable vehicle, and in the long term you'll have a cheaper way of getting to space. NASA started with option b, spent most of the money, then was forced to adopt some aspects of option a, ending up with the worst of both worlds.
Of course, now I've revealed my own religion. I'll probably be tied to a launch tower and burnt by the flames of an expendible (solid) booster for it...
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You don't, even though the U.S. population is almost ten times larger. I think a machine might be better if it were a simple, almost mechanical device that just ticked up counts. People do get tired, and make mistakes. A well-built, well-understood, and well-audited machine is likely more reliable. But under no circumstances do you want a general-purpose microprocessor (which can be reprogrammed) anywhere near the counting process....
Whether or not some people care to admit it (and there are pleny who still don't), sometimes the only/best tool for the job is closed-source commercial software.
But let's stay on the topic of elections. Perhaps here the best tool is a paper ballot (gasp)? Of course you'll need machines to count the millions of ballots, and that should probably be open-source software (how can you build public trust in the process unless the public has insight into the process?); but in any case, you need a macroscopic audit trail.
Not true. Look up the term curve of growth in an astronomy textbook. At the edges of the absorbtion bands additional CO2 still has an effect. Radiative transfer is not an on/off thing.
There are a lot of temperature graphs that show increases in the last 100 years. There is also a nice graph showing an increase in CO2 levels from coal and oil burning. That's not just a coincidence, given that the physics behind the temperature increase is pretty straightforward (greenhouse effect). in fact, in order for surface tempertures not to rise with increasing CO2 levels requires some rather fancy footwork; you have to invoke the existence of various negatiuve feedback cycles, like increased cloudiness (which may actually have a net warming effect after all) etc. The radiative-tranfer physics behind the greenhouse effect is a lot more solid than our understanding of cloud formation.
To state that the increase in CO2 is undeniably causing the increase in temperature is just bad science.
In science nothing is "undeniable". However, some things are more or less plausible, likely, belivable etc. A good scientist working on something realitively new will always hedge. But sooner or later the evidence starts to build up to the point where only cranks deny it. Hence most scientists think e.g. evolution is pretty solid. The same goes for general relativity, QED, etc. Climate change due to increased CO2 levels is getting to be such a strong theory (or so says the NAS here and here, and the IPCC).
There's no evidence to back it up.
That is simply hogwash. There is a lot of evidence for a coupling between CO2 and temperature rise. It may be challenging to directly link CO2 to this particular ice shelf, but I ask you this: if global and regional temperatures are rising due to increasing CO2 levels, are you surprised that we are seeing more ice melt?
We need experiments and more data before any sound scientific conclusion like that can be made.
We always need more data (I'm a scientist after all), but we have the basis to act now, and the longer we wait the harder the problem will be.
In my list I mentioned at least four very plausible reasons for global temperature rise that do not depend on an increase in CO2.
I'm going to hope it is the "alien death ray", personally. Seriously, though, greenhouse gases are about the only plausible ones in your list. The Earths core is pretty stable in it's heat output, not to mention that it's about a factor of 100 lower than the heat input from the Sun. To raise temperatures by the observed amount you'd have to increase the core heat output by a factor of about 4. Not likely.
Is the Sun putting out more energy on some long period that we don't yet know about?
First of all, there is not a lot of evidence for such a change (we can measure the solar constant afetr all). Second, you'd then have to explain how the increasing CO2 wasn't causing a rise, while at the same time the Sun caused a rise that coincides very nicely with the CO2 increase.
The rest of the list is just silly.
Bzzt. You fail physics. 1) the probe will likely be vaporized into a 1000-km trail of dust by the impact with the atmosphere at 48 km/s. It won't slow down intact and then sink into the core of Jupiter. 2) The temperature reaches the melting point of metal a few thousand kms down into Jupiter. Even if the probe was intact by the time it sank that far, it would melt/dissolve long before it reached the core. 3) The RTG's contain Pu-238, which as has been stated repeatedly, is not suitable as a nuclear explosive. 4) Even if there was an explosion, it is so incredibly miniscule compared to the mass/size of Jupiter that it simply would not matter. 5) Jupiter CANNOT sustain nuclear fusion - it simply lacks the mass. The pressure in the core is far too low to overcome Coulomb repulsion between protons so that they can fuse. The minimum mass of a star that can sustain fusion is approximately 75 Jupiter masses. That is very, very well-understood physics (look up the astronomical tem "brown dwarf").
No-one in charge ever seems to take a second look and ask "do we really need a multi-GHz processor and OS just to decode a PIN and dispense cash?". I know Windows is ubiquitous, and seems like the safe option. But it's overkill, and any time you install way more computing power than you need, you're being wasteful, as well as taking a risk. Of course it has been amply demonstrated that Windows is NOT SECURE no matter how much the Microsoft salespeople claim otherwise. Note, I'm not saying Linux is necessarily better. I'm questioning the need for a full-blown OS at all, in these applications. Hell, I could build a simple ATM using hardwired logic gates. Installing a known-insecure consumer OS in a mission-critical application is fscking stupid, and it will cause problems. The people that make these decisions are simply hoping that they'll be promoted far enough up the ladder before it happens that someone else takes the blame.
I know the reason this happens is that by using a standard system it's much cheaper; you just have to find some VisualBasic code-monkey and whip up an application. Fundamentally, the problem is that the cost of this kind of insecurity is a) not immediately apparent and b) not born by the company. The costs associated with a cracked ATM will just be passed on to the consumer. The cost of the blackout will similarly not hurt the stockholders of FirstEnergy.
The simple truth is that sometimes you need regulation and enforcement; if there wasn't an FAA you can bet your life that 777's would run on Windows XP by now, with a literal BSOD on a weekly basis. OK, that's a bit extreme. But let's look at that situation as an example... I know reliable flight-control software is expensive, so let's assume that if allowed, some company would be tempted to use cheap off-the shelf equipment and software, thus making a cheaper plane. Pretty soon they would outcompete other builders (the margins are pretty thin on those things). Remember, if the only planes available were ones that ran XP, you as a consumer would have no choice as to what you flew. If every airline had a crash that often, there would be no competive pressure to improve (that's "just a cost of doing business"). The point I'm trying to make is that sometimes competive price pressure results in a "race to the bottom" in terms of safety, quality, or reliability. I suspect that's what we're seeing here.
This is insane. A tank of gasoline has the capacity to cause death or serious injury, and contains toxic chemicals. So does a bottle of vodka or a glass of L.A. drinking water. And as you point out, cigarettes.
If the wording were "designed or intended to cause death or serious injury" then perhaps the law would be acceptable. As it stands now it is just an invitation for prosecutorial abuse.
Another poster: And you don't think the fact that Venus is MUCH closer to the Sun has anything to do with its hotter temperatures? If the distance from the Sun to the Earth were to change by only a few percent either way we'd become a desert planet or we'd be an ice ball, and the activities of Man would have nothing to do with the outcome.
Not as much effect as you think. As you can see here, Venus is 30% closer to the Sun than the Earth is. A simple application of the blackbody equation to calculate the surface temperature of a planet shows that one would expect Venus to have a surface temperature of about 22 deg C. In fact it has a temperature of 464 deg C. The difference is entirely due to the greenhouse effect. So yes, the greenhouse effect is very real and can have tremendous impact on the surface temperature of a planet. I should also point out that without the greenhouse effect, the Earth itself would be rather cold: about -22 deg C. Given that the presence of a tiny amount of CO2 and water vapor is enough to change the mean surface temperature of the Earth by 40 deg C, it is not unreasonable to think that an increase in the CO2 concentration by 50-100% might raise surface temperatures.
So we should stop all space exploration until we've solved every single problem here on Earth first? The problem is that it is very hard to predict what investment where will provide payoff in any particular field. It may be that technology developed for space may prove unexpectedly useful here on Earth. Or vice versa. The point being that you should invest evenly across sectors, not concentrate on one single goal at the expense of everything else.
By the way, that six sigma stuff is BS. I've worked with that sort, and much like every other management fad that comes along every few years (ISO9000, TQM) it's basically a fancy-sounding word to try and make your people do their jobs right. It's not magic, but applied common sense. Offtopic, I know.
One of the most popular is the salt chamber conversion method which delivers considerably more efficency than panels and provides for a storage mechanism.
I've not been able to find a reference for the conversion and storage efficiency of such a method, but I doubt you'd get more than 40-50%. Recall that you are using sunlight to heat a medium, then run it through a standard turbine like any other plant. The thermal efficiencies in that process are always fairly low. But we're arguing over a factor of two, which isn't that much in the big scheme of things.
I would point out that energy storage is and has always been very difficult to do, particularly at any level of efficiency (certainly not at 50%). You are talking about storage capacity to power a nation for days/weeks. That's a very tall order, and many orders of magnitude beyond what has ever been done.
Are you questioning the merit of the principle of putting money into our infrastructure or are you questioning the implementation I prosposed?
I am questioning your implementation, primarily; I am not convinced that a massive investment in a limited, unproven technology is the way to go. It might be better to work several areas, including nuclear (fission and fusion), solar, wind, improving efficiencies etc etc.
Obviously our infrastructure needs investment. But you are making a false dichotomy: it's not "power or space", just like it's not a choice between "social security or running water". We have the resources to do more than one thing at a time. You may argue the relative spending levels, but right now we are doing very little in the way of space exploriation; it might serve us well to do more. Space, like infrastructure, is a long-term investment with a high payoff.
If we can go to Mars - we can find a way to dramatically lower our costs here. Which one is worth more to our future?
That depends. In the medium to very long term, colonization of Mars will have benefits (stimulating investment in high tech, opens up new resources, provides safeguards against planetary-level disaters). And it is not clear that solar is that much cheaper than the alternatives; investing in solar is not to lower costs but to avoid dependence on oil/coal with their attendant problems.
Got anyone who can do math on that statement?
Lets see. A 5x5 mile field is a surface area of 64 million square meters. The solar output is 1300 W/sq. meter, but there are efficiency factors to take into account: 0.25 for day/night and geometry (the sun isn't always overhead), 0.4 for conversion efficiecy (wildly optimistic), and probably 0.7-0.8 for weather and clouds. So, 64,000,000*0.25*0.4*0.7*1300= 5.8e9 Watts = 5.8 GW (about equal to 5 nuclear power plants). Given that the current U.S. electricity production is about 433 GW this link I would say that the statement is a bit cracked.
Powering the nation with solar power only is a fantasy; there is currently no good solution to a) storage (weather and night time), b) transmission over the long distances required (it's a long way to go from Nevada to New England) c) cost (panels are basically silicon wafers made with processes similar to that of computer chips. Not cheap to cover the 5x5 mile area.
What a troll... I've worked with several people at JPL and many of them are among the most dedicated, intelligent, hardworking and clever people I've known. And I was a grad student at Caltech, which has it's share of intelligent people. Sure, like any large organization, there are duds. In my experience the duds at JPL were mostly sysadmins (i.e. the slashdot-reading types), for some odd reason. So in my opinion, Mr. McGibbys post reveals that he suffers from a serious case of rectoencephaly
You've had decades since Apollo to actually make some serious accomplishments and you haven't accomplished much of anything. JPL hasn't produced anything really innovative in years.
Oh really? How about Voyager (Far cooler than even Apollo in my mind), Galileo(Really cool, despite problems), Cassini,Mars Odyssey, the Mars Missions in general, and a huge number of various Earth-orbiting missions? Go to the JPL Missions page for a list. As a scientist (Astronomy and Planetary Science) I would say that the JPL missions comprise the largest, most significant set of scientific missions done by anyone on this planet. And they are still working on a good list of new missions and proposed missions; certainly a far better set than anyone else.
The real issue is not capsule vs. winged, the issue is whether or not you want to be able to accomplish a controlled, low-impact landing at a precise location. If you want to be able to re-use your spacecraft you pretty much have to be able to avoid bodies of water, large boulders, cliffs etc etc. A low-impact landing is important so that you don't break things when you land. As shown by the Shuttle, extensive refurbishment before every flight is a good way to make this too expensive. Almost as importantly, you want to be able to put down close to recovery facilities so you can get back to flying again quickly.
Now, to get such a precise landing requires mass. If you use wings, they are heavy. If you insist on a capsule then you'll either have to have a big para-wing (heavy, complex to deploy, perhaps not so reliable), or landing rockets (heavy, and definitiely complex). Either way, you pay a mass penalty.
The point I want to make is that you shouldn't be arguing over wings (at this point in the deisgn process), you should be deicing whether or not you need controlled landings.
Part of the problem is that by putting passwords on too many things you are requiring people to do something that most people simply can't do. Think about it, a good password has to be essentially random, at least eight characters long, and only used once. And then the passwords should be changed monthly. Seriously, how many of you can remeber %Fhe#jhx*, $%SDh!@l, (*^GKk32vc and sd)hdf@m? Studies done by various phone companies show that people tend to only be able to memorize about seven numbers at a time..
And think how many passwords you end up using: your account password on 3-4 computers, various root passwords, passwords to hotmail, your Amazon.com and eBay accounts, your ATM PINs, your credit card PINs, the access to your wireless router at home, and all the access codes to various subscription websites (hot asian teens and whatnot :) )?
Faced with this deluge of things to remember (which most people simply do not have the neurons to do), what do we do? Either use only one password, use something easy to remember, or write it down on a piece of paper kept in ones wallet. All of which are security no-nos. But security people have to face reality - passwords are only good security when used judiciously!
That's because you're stupid. :)
Seriously though - it's simply because most people can't see and count electrons. Therefore they cannot participate in the verification process (i.e. recount). This puts the entire election in the hands of a select few computer programmers.
Why do people like you let yourselves get blinded by all this shiny new technology to the point where you forget about things like reliability and security?
Actually, that point is wrong on a couple of levels. First, re-usability and safety go hand-in-hand. You can't reuse a crashed vehicle after all. Second, you can overdo safety: the safest vehicle is one that never flies.
I know it's tempting to put safety on a pedestal - but we're talking about spaceflight, which involves accelerating people to speeds of 25,000 mph. That is inherently unsafe...
This story would tend to indicate the opposite (i.e. that it may well be possible). While the disabled system in question (the monitoring system of the Davis-Besse nuke plant) was not directly related to control, it's fair to say that a worm that crashes process monitoring systems is a serious security problem. How are you supposed to control a system that you can't monitor? (sure, you can run to manual or analog backups, but that takes time, causes operator confusion, and is just not a great solution to the fundamental problem.)
In addition, a recent Wired story ( here) talks about how in the minutes before the power outage, engineers were having computer problems. At the very least it appears that these computer issues were preventing or slowing down operator responses to the developing problem.
As stated above our protection and control systems send data via leased phone lines and/or private fiber and do not have any connection to the Internet. Thus no possible way of receiving a virus.
As stated in the story about Davis-Besse, the work came in through a T1 line put in place by a contractor (between the plant and the home office), neatly circumventing the firewall. In other words, there was a connection to the internet. How could this be allowed to happen? Are these people stupid, lazy, or just incompetent? it also shows that you may think there is no internet connection, but you can't always be sure (unless you use a totally different protocol).
By the way, a leased phone line presumably goes through a phone switch; these tend to be computer controlled and sometimes open to compromise. A determined intruder could use this to hijack the leased line and inject spurious control commands.
And regarding viruses, a direct internet connection is not the only possible route of infection. A virus could also ride in on a disk (intentionally or unintentionally), or be injected in a microwave link (that's what we did to Serbian air defence networks a while back).
Part of my job is to study disturbances on the grid (ie why did the lights go out?). The studies take anywhere from a day to months to explain what happened. And remember the 1965 blackout study took over a year to finish.
The problem is that First Energy is publicly dissembling ("It's sooo complicated. Zillions of things going on all over the place. It can't all be our fault."), and this does not inspire confidence in them, or in the process of figuring out what happened. Basically, the public is going to get to watch as our power infrastructure is sold to a few private interests, while things like reliability go down the toilet. And we'll be mushroomed (kept in the dark and fed bullshit) when things go wrong. We were lucky that it was just a blackout, rather than, say, a nuke plant meltdown. (That would among other things finally kill nuke power, which would be a damned shame).
It could best be summarized as: "You can't get to orbit by climbing successively taller trees."
This blind trust in "digital" systems is simply idiotic. In fact, it's so stupid that I doubt any honest person would have such trust. Simply put, I think those who argue in favor of these secret, non-transparent voting machines are deliberately trying to corrupt the voting process.
As a famous dictator (Joe Stalin) one said: "Those who vote control nothing. Those who count the votes control everything."
Perhaps. If you trust your sensors. As TMI showed (a PWR, mind you) there are situations where you can get misled. In situations where you have multiple conflicting indications, operators can have a tendency to fixate on the wrong sensor reading (same thing happens to pilots). A related point is that analysis of operator-error-induced accidents in many situations shows that the operators were acting on the basis of faulty information, rather than simply not following procedure.
You are right in that these plants can be safely operated on very simple anaglog backups, but that's not really the problem. The issue is that you are presenting operators with two sets of information (analog backup, and the nice new computer interface). These systems clearly have different levels of security and reliability. You are hoping that if these systems start to disagree that the operator will do the right thing and trust the backup. But that is not always the case (and in any event his thinking may be influenced by the faulty indicator).
This is not a safe practice. Backups and redundancies are nice, but all the systems have to operate at something like the same level of reliability and security. Otherwise the less reliable system is worse than useless; bad data is worse than no data.
That someone would even think of bringing a Windows box anywhere near a nuke control room, let along connect it to the freaking net, however indirectly, gives me nightsweats. And I've worked in nuke control rooms.
Little chunks of gamma emitters with a 31 year half life lying all over the place means whoever is left around has to deal with the consequences of a fight they may have had no part in, or may not even remember what the conflict was all about to begin with.
Keep in mind that you could go around an decontaminate the area by irradiating it with X-rays, the same way that you got the hafnium to decay originally.
However, after searching around I found that the experiment could not be repeated by others. So I guess this idea needs to go back to the drawing board. Bummer.
After all, DOS is a realtime system.
I have to say, though, I'm not sure I'd want to hand the controls over any plane I'm in to any electorate.
The Delta Clipper was not capable of orbit; not even close. It only looked good because it wasn't attempting the really hard part. ANY single-stage to orbit vehicle requires very advanced technology - there is no "off-the-shelf" engine with the specific impulse, and no "off-the-shelf" material with the strength/mass ratio, required. It's a simple matter of physics. The rocket equation tells us that getting into orbit using currently available rockets will ,for a single-stage vehicle, require that about 90% of the liftoff mass be fuel. You have to fit the engines, fuel tank, payload etc into the remaining 10%. The Delta Clipper only had a fuel fraction of about 50%.
The Lockheed X-33 tried to get around this in two ways: use a higher efficiency rocket engine (the aerospike) and light-weight composite structure, allowing a greater portion of the remaining mass to be used as payload. It's the only possible approach if you are limited to single-stage to orbit. Don't kid yourself, the other X-33 proposals were just as risky. It says a lot about the ignorance of the author that he even used this argument; it doesn't hold up to closer inspection.
Regardless of how important you happen to think space travel is (and I think it's nothing less than the key to the future of the human race, ultimately), there are a few really big problems with the future of space travel: physics (we have to find a more efficent engine), investment (we have to convince people that space is worth the real investment required) and "religion" (it seems like every person involved has an absolutely unwavering opinion of the ONE TRUE WAY to get into space, and they simply will not engage in a rational debate).
The last point is actually important, and well illustrated by the article; the author clearly belongs to the "ballistic re-entry" sub-sect of the "expendible launch vehicle" religion. He spends many more words attacking the "winged, reuseable" approach than explaining why his particular approach is so much better. Which of course it isn't - all designs have drawbacks. Trust me, the designs that are built are chosen on more than just the basis of the oft-repeated "pilots want to fly something with wings".
To illustrate the situation, consider the choice between Russian-style expendible capsules and what the Shuttle should (would) have been given proper development funding (the cuts by the Nixon administration forced the use of solids; as any good engineer understands, this one bad choice forced a cascading series of ever more disastrous adjustments, ultimately killing the concept).
Anyway, the Russian capsules work rather well, and are moderately reliable. However, they cost on the order of $20 million per launch (at Russian wages). This cost can likely not be further reduced, since you can't amortize the construction cost of the vehicle and booster over several flights. A truly reuseable Shuttle (say, an X-33 derivative launched off the back of a 747 or something), while considerably more expensive to build, can fly 100 times. That's the only reasonable way to get launch costs below something like $1000 pound (where according to some analysts it becomes economically feasible to develop space in a big way).
To make a long story short you have a choice: a) pick the initially cheaper option of expendible capsules, and be forever stuck at relatively high launch costs, or b) pay the steep development cost of a truly re-useable vehicle, and in the long term you'll have a cheaper way of getting to space. NASA started with option b, spent most of the money, then was forced to adopt some aspects of option a, ending up with the worst of both worlds.
Of course, now I've revealed my own religion.
I'll probably be tied to a launch tower and burnt by the flames of an expendible (solid) booster for it...