I think terraforming is different, or at least terraforming of something close by. If we terraform Venus (say) and it needs more nematodes, well, Earth is not far away. If you are 30 light years away and your ecosystem crashes, you better have a plan B that doesn't involve getting stuff from Earth.
To me, the question is not really how many people, but how many earthworms, and in general plants, bugs, birds, animals, etc.? At present, we really have no idea what is needed, nor in how much variation within each species, but I suspect the real answer will always be "more that we think."
Well, if the universe can do it then a simulation must exists that can do it, it's just a question of efficiency.
Not true for chaotic systems, which are incredibly common in nature. The coffee and cream in your cup can be simulated, but not computed, and the situation is much, much, worse for (say) a Hurricane, or the Great Red Spot, or a Galaxy.
I do agree with you about the limitations of predictive models...
I have not had time to read the article, but the summary is either incoherent or wrong.
Here is an analog to illustrate why :
The basic equations for fluid dynamics are the Navier-Stokes equation. But the new idea is that this requires an additional assumption — that an efficient algorithm exists to solve the equation for complex macroscopic systems. But is this true?
In the case of the Navier-Stokes equation, almost certainly not. In fact, it is generally not even clear if solutions even exist, or if they are non-singular.
If this is right, then complex fluid motions cannot exist, which explains why we do not (and cannot) observe them in the real world. Voila!"
So, I guess we can cancel this years hurricane season.
In other words, there are many things in nature that are computationally hard, and yet happen any way. Using computational hardness as a reason why a physical theory cannot be right does not, to put it mildly, agree with past experience.
This might work fine, but if it didn't work you would probably get arrested, get put on a blacklist and, if it was really your day, get close attention from the likes of the French DGI. There is nothing like a week of interrogation to spice up your vacation.
Sorry, but this is BS. I have such an expectation of privacy. That you would deny it to me means that this is a political, not a legal, matter, and merely stating that an officer does not need a warrant does not cut it in political discourse. I would also note that there is nothing, not one syllable, in the 4th Amendment about expectations of privacy in limiting the search of your "effects" (i.e., your personal property, such as, e.g., your car). All of this is a later invention by the courts; being invented, it can be changed as conditions change, and they have indeed changed.
In the internet jargon, surveillance in a free society does not scale. It is one thing if a policeman walks down my street and happens to smell or see something. It is quite another if, say, I woke up to find that there are 20 policemen stationed just outside my curtilage, each trying to peer in my windows with binoculars, and they stayed in position all day, every day. To be blunt, one is reasonable, the other, tyranny. SImilarly, if every time I drove away from my house I was followed by a convoy of police cars tracking my every move, I would conclude that I was the victim of official harassment (or worse), and react accordingly (say, by going to a Judge and / or the newspapers with my complaints).
Now that is possible to obtain this level of surveillance without actually delegating 20 policemen to peer through my windows, or to follow me about, and without it being obvious to the victim, the legal system will simply have to expand the legal expectations of privacy, or we will find ourselves living in a Stasi-like tyranny.
This is a police force where the Chief of Police in the 1990's, Daryl F. Gates, said that casual drug users "ought to be taken out and shot," which prescription being specifically aimed at those "who blast some pot on a casual basis."
Mr. Gates is no long with us, but not because of any repudiation by the LAPD.
Actually, scratch the above. Reading their paper and the Dyson paper, the frequency limit is set by the seismometers, not by the normal modes of the Earth.
The crucial thing is that they improved the limits in the narrow frequency band where the Earth is a resonant detector:
in the frequency range 0.05 Hz – 1 Hz
This is very cool, but note that it is at a frequency where there are not a lot of expected sources (stellar-mass binary black hole coalescence is up in the kHz range).
The announcement on Monday about inflationary gravitational waves is likely to get a good deal more scientific attention.
Also can we please stop posting articles from itworld. They are all the same: tiny bits of content split over a ridiculous number of pages to maximize ad revenue.
Seriously, this is like 1990s levels of ad spamming. First you have the full window click through ad, then you have ads on every 10 word slide, a click through in the middle of the slides, and then just for good measure the last slide isn’t a content slide but yet another ad!
I feel like I need 10 levels of toolbars and bonzo-buddy running in the background to really appreciate the experience of this site.
This
I generally just don't click through anything that doesn't provide the article (picture, whatever) in the original link. When, for some reason (as with this article) I do, I generally feel (as with this article) cheated.
Punched paper tape does not age well - in a few years it starts to crack on characters that are mostly 1's, and then you have a mess.
(No joke - when I was in grad school they hired an undergrad for the summer to recover punched paper tape data. The tape, about 5 years old, had broken into ~4 foot long stretches, and he was paid to feed each stretch through a reader, figure out and type the character punched at each break, and do that full time for 3 months.)
Punched cards are much more robust (as long as you don't get them wet) and you can put 120 kB in a box not much larger than a shoe box. 20 Terabytes would only require 463,910 m^3 of cards! That's only 320 kilotons of cardboard.
Or the guy could just buy 20 TB of hard drive, and be done with it.
Slashdot Mirror
I think terraforming is different, or at least terraforming of something close by. If we terraform Venus (say) and it needs more nematodes, well, Earth is not far away. If you are 30 light years away and your ecosystem crashes, you better have a plan B that doesn't involve getting stuff from Earth.
To me, the question is not really how many people, but how many earthworms, and in general plants, bugs, birds, animals, etc.? At present, we really have no idea what is needed, nor in how much variation within each species, but I suspect the real answer will always be "more that we think."
Well, if the universe can do it then a simulation must exists that can do it, it's just a question of efficiency.
Not true for chaotic systems, which are incredibly common in nature. The coffee and cream in your cup can be simulated, but not computed, and the situation is much, much, worse for (say) a Hurricane, or the Great Red Spot, or a Galaxy.
I do agree with you about the limitations of predictive models...
And that is basically my response to the AI proponents who say "a computer can calculate anything a brain can think."
I have not had time to read the article, but the summary is either incoherent or wrong.
Here is an analog to illustrate why :
The basic equations for fluid dynamics are the Navier-Stokes equation. But the new idea is that this requires an additional assumption — that an efficient algorithm exists to solve the equation for complex macroscopic systems. But is this true?
In the case of the Navier-Stokes equation, almost certainly not. In fact, it is generally not even clear if solutions even exist, or if they are non-singular.
If this is right, then complex fluid motions cannot exist, which explains why we do not (and cannot) observe them in the real world. Voila!"
So, I guess we can cancel this years hurricane season.
In other words, there are many things in nature that are computationally hard, and yet happen any way. Using computational hardness as a reason why a physical theory cannot be right does not, to put it mildly, agree with past experience.
The Third Rule that you do not talk about the Second Rule.
Wrong.
The first rule of FLIGHT CLUB is...
You do not talk about how you got your tickets
This might work fine, but if it didn't work you would probably get arrested, get put on a blacklist and, if it was really your day, get close attention from the likes of the French DGI. There is nothing like a week of interrogation to spice up your vacation.
Sorry, but this is BS. I have such an expectation of privacy. That you would deny it to me means that this is a political, not a legal, matter, and merely stating that an officer does not need a warrant does not cut it in political discourse. I would also note that there is nothing, not one syllable, in the 4th Amendment about expectations of privacy in limiting the search of your "effects" (i.e., your personal property, such as, e.g., your car). All of this is a later invention by the courts; being invented, it can be changed as conditions change, and they have indeed changed.
In the internet jargon, surveillance in a free society does not scale. It is one thing if a policeman walks down my street and happens to smell or see something. It is quite another if, say, I woke up to find that there are 20 policemen stationed just outside my curtilage, each trying to peer in my windows with binoculars, and they stayed in position all day, every day. To be blunt, one is reasonable, the other, tyranny. SImilarly, if every time I drove away from my house I was followed by a convoy of police cars tracking my every move, I would conclude that I was the victim of official harassment (or worse), and react accordingly (say, by going to a Judge and / or the newspapers with my complaints).
Now that is possible to obtain this level of surveillance without actually delegating 20 policemen to peer through my windows, or to follow me about, and without it being obvious to the victim, the legal system will simply have to expand the legal expectations of privacy, or we will find ourselves living in a Stasi-like tyranny.
This is a police force where the Chief of Police in the 1990's, Daryl F. Gates, said that casual drug users "ought to be taken out and shot," which prescription being specifically aimed at those "who blast some pot on a casual basis."
Mr. Gates is no long with us, but not because of any repudiation by the LAPD.
Actually, scratch the above. Reading their paper and the Dyson paper, the frequency limit is set by the seismometers, not by the normal modes of the Earth.
The crucial thing is that they improved the limits in the narrow frequency band where the Earth is a resonant detector :
This is very cool, but note that it is at a frequency where there are not a lot of expected sources (stellar-mass binary black hole coalescence is up in the kHz range).
The announcement on Monday about inflationary gravitational waves is likely to get a good deal more scientific attention.
Also can we please stop posting articles from itworld. They are all the same: tiny bits of content split over a ridiculous number of pages to maximize ad revenue.
Seriously, this is like 1990s levels of ad spamming. First you have the full window click through ad, then you have ads on every 10 word slide, a click through in the middle of the slides, and then just for good measure the last slide isn’t a content slide but yet another ad!
I feel like I need 10 levels of toolbars and bonzo-buddy running in the background to really appreciate the experience of this site.
This
I generally just don't click through anything that doesn't provide the article (picture, whatever) in the original link. When, for some reason (as with this article) I do, I generally feel (as with this article) cheated.
I'll document this code once I'm done.
touche
I hate to be snarky, but did it ever wind up?
Punched paper tape does not age well - in a few years it starts to crack on characters that are mostly 1's, and then you have a mess.
(No joke - when I was in grad school they hired an undergrad for the summer to recover punched paper tape data. The tape, about 5 years old, had broken into ~4 foot long stretches, and he was paid to feed each stretch through a reader, figure out and type the character punched at each break, and do that full time for 3 months.)
Punched cards are much more robust (as long as you don't get them wet) and you can put 120 kB in a box not much larger than a shoe box.
20 Terabytes would only require 463,910 m^3 of cards! That's only 320 kilotons of cardboard.
Or the guy could just buy 20 TB of hard drive, and be done with it.
I do not like Feinstein much, but I do not think that people here are getting just what a big deal this is.
Senator Dianne Feinstein just went nuclear on the CIA.
Just savor that for a minute.
That is what I think every time I hear this idiot speak. 95% should do nicely.
The appropriate response is to tax them properly. I would recommend the 65% top bracket that JFK thought was "sensible."
Really ?
I thought Dark Matter existed as asteroids ? :-)
In asteroids. (Maybe.)
RTFA... it sounds plausible.
It may sound plausible, but it doesn't look plausible, at least to me.
If you believe Figure 5 in this paper, I have a bitcoin exchange I would like to sell you.
More pernicious BS I have never heard. By the same token, there is no reason to use either door-locks or condoms.
BTW, I do not have a Kinect and have covers on all web-enabled cameras, including the one in my laptop.
I really dislike both Whole Foods and the politics and pseudo-science of its founder, and basically avoid it entirely.
Besides, they don't call it "Whole Paycheck" for nothing.