I think we agree about nearly everything. Certainly Davis didn't cause the energy crisis. And certainly, anyone with connections to a Texas energy company should be investigated for criminal charges for what happened.
I think I just place more blame on Davis for this. I feel that it could have been managed better. There were a number of weeks that it appeared he was doing nothing but whine about it. He might have been doing more, but it would have been nice to know that then. It really didn't help that he played the same role Bush did when we were having troubles in San Diego a year earlier. We were getting raped by the rest of the state, and his first response was to tell us to wait it out.
It might simply be personal bias, but then I really didn't like Wilson either, and I'm too young to really have any opinions on earlier governers. I think I have extremely high expectations for our Governer, perhaps too high. I can't think of anyone right now I would like to see as governer.
I'll try to remember, like you point out, that it wasn't his fault, and that he did ultimately take care of both the crisis and this Oracle thing.
I'm more interested in that galvanic skin response machine. A few of my classmates in the UCSD physics department tried to build one of these, and found it not only to be messy, but very difficult. While I have no doubt that an engineer could build better circuits than they did, I'm really curious as to how they measure the skin resistivity *accurately* without any conducting gel. It was my assumption that this was needed to get a good connection. Perhaps it has to do with all of us having dry skin out here in semi-arid southern California.
When you're talking about a 95 million dollar deal, Davis had better know what's going on. It is utterly rediculous to claim Davis is innocent of anything after he obviously paid no attention to what was going on in HIS administration. HE is ultimately responsible for what happens. If we're talking a minor software deal, I agree, he really has nothing to do with it. But if he wasn't invloved in a 95 million dollar deal, at least at the oversight level, then he is to blame. He did do the right thing when he found out what had happened, but it never should have happened in the first place.
This, combined with the way he mis-managed the energy crisis does not make me feel comfortable with him as governor of my state. After the year we had in San Diego before the rest of the state was de-regulated, Sacromento should have known what was coming. What happened to California, where have all the "good" politicians gone?
My problem with Simon is that he's never held office before, and I'm afraid that he just wouldn't be able to handle the politics of Sacromento, even without his policies. Simon isn't naturally incompetent, like Davis is, but he does have some unusual ideas that most people can't understand. He doesn't know politics very well and he shouldn't be running for governor before he starts somewhere else. That and he's far too conservative to be elected in California (I think that goes without saying).
A few weeks before the judicial decision was made that you are talking about the cameras were already being shut down due to a different lawsuit (one, which I might add, did not cost taxpayers a ton of money and actually was reached in a timely fashion).
You see, as is the case with many of these camera systems, the company owning and operating the cameras was making money based on how many tickets were brought in. Based on the complete monolpoly of control over the cameras that the company had (as you point out, even the government couldn't look at how they worked), and the conflict of interest generated by increased revenue coming in only with increased infractions, the contract that LM had with the city of San Diego was ruled illegal.
The real crime was committed by the city government, who decided that all tickets which had already been issued were to be paid, EVEN THOUGH they were legally deemed illegal in TWO seperate suits.
In 1911, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes brought Mercury down to 4 Kelvin and witnessed a pure flow of un-resisted electricity.
As an undergraduate, I had a chance to perform this numerous times with various substances in my senior lab at UCSD. There is nothing more beautiful in physics than watching the resistance of your sample suddenly plummet to zero. It's a simple experiment that dramatically prooves a surprising, and still largely unexplained phenomenon.
I've been trying to think of what possible additions to the law could be made simply to satisfy this appitite for legilation congressmen apparently have, and I can think of none.
It is already against to law to do what is being done. It would be unfeasable and a terrible waste of money to set up an online police force. Stress that the people that would be doing this would be highly trained and skilled, and the equipment, salaries, paperwork and additional drain on the legal system would amount to a serious wad of cash for the government to fork over.
Point out the numerous clashes the government has had with the entertainment industry and thier unwillingness to combat youth violence and drug use (as opposed to say, the NFL). Point out that rather than supporting this de facto monopoly, more political gain is to be had in trying to "fight for the little guy". What is really happening here is Hollywood and the Music industry feel threatened by the increased exposure of independant artists, and fear they may loose control of thier media. The online trading has spawned a culture with far more artistic flair and talent than is evidenced in the controlled works put out by the big boys. What they are really trying to accomplish here is a freeze on that culture. They want to prevent all unobserved and free trading, and that is unacceptable.
A lot of people in the IT industry have this problem you describe. It comes from being an expert at something most people don't know a thing about. One of the responses to your comment claims "I'm not a burger flipper".
Well, sorry, you are. Stupid people are stupid people. I HAVE worked in both fast food and IT, and let me tell you, they have the same problems!
IT people call them "end users", fast food calls them "customers". They are the reason you have a job, and thier job is to try to get every advantage out of you that they can. After cleaning up a virus infestation a few times, they learn that it's your job, and your problem. They treat it that way.
I'm sorry that the world isn't perfect for you and that even in your nice "computers" job you have to deal with customers. The rest of the world deals with these same people doing similar stuff and doesn't whine about it nearly as much.
What I found REALLY fascinating is that the author is so strongly defending science fiction as a sub-culture. Absolutely refusing to admit that science fiction has any foothold in mainstream media.
Have geeks really fallen this far that we have to DENY mainstream media the RIGHT to include science fiction just so we can feel good with our own special sub-culture?
Look at how recent books and movies have done, it's time to admit that sci-fi and fantasy ARE mainstream now.
There are many different types of fusion being researched right now that are given a fairly good chance of success eventually. The only requrement is a demonstration that shows, under scrutiny, that a positive output can be obtained. This has been obviously seen in stars and nuclear bombs, hence the two main thrusts of research are with hot plasmas and explosions.
The problem is, due to their release of bad data through public media, all of this research is tainted, inside and outside the scientific community. This has hurt the funding of all types of fusion research.
It might turn out that cold fusion is profitable sooner than any other type. The paper on sono-fusion certainly suggests that. But until those research kits are delivered, the effects you mentioned will remain laboratory anomalies, unable to disproove the statistical calculations showing the improbability of a positive energy gain (which is highly improbable!).
On the other hand, the mechanics of these collisions are not well understood. It's possible, as the first paper suggests, that other processes are at work here which allow a positive energy gain. These are similar effects to what is already accepted for certain types of fusion in stars.
In either case, it's important for the scientific community to support at least the understanding of these anomalous processes... it might not lead to fusion, but it could lead to something else.
The 50% effort thing didn't apply to just geeks, it applied to people in general, and he's right. Think about it.
The point is that most people, even if they work 200 times harder than your average person, are not working at their full capacity. It's probably not a good idea to work yourself that hard all the time, but life should be about challenging yourself like this.
As for what the good this is doing... isn't it blindinly obvious to you what this drill instructor is doing? He's inspiring people. He's letting people realize how much they can do.
I'm currently working on a final for a computer music class using Max/MSP. There's a fairly large research group at UCSD involved in computer music, and lots of other computer arts things.
You're assuming that deleting a file is the same thing thermodynamically as removing information. This might work for some mathmatical models, but I know of no disk structure that allows it's magnetic domains to return to thermal equilibrium for every bit of encoded data.
On top of this assumption, you are assuming that the computer acts as a better-than-ideal engine. The amount of heat put off, even if deleting a file did cool a computer, would still be extreme because work is done by the computer, and I'm sure that code optimization does not mean thermodynamic optimization.
There are many more problems with this argument, even the internal clock in the computer is going to create this type of entropy generated heat.
What you absolutely cannot get around is the heat generated by the current in the wires. Even in superconducting wires, current generates heat. Factor in resistance and you have a source of heat far greater than any heat generated by entropy reversal.
These are fine theoretical assumptions, but in practice, computers generate a lot of heat.
Keep in mind, all of these private ventures into space are ONLY possible due to the "wonderous big budgets" which NASA has enjoyed in the past.
I agree that NASA needs to get it's act together fiscally, but don't sing the praises of other groups who come in after the basic (expensive) science and engineering are worked out. Those groups are cool in a different way; we still need someone to do the basic research.
Perhaps NASA would be better suited as an organization that coordinated and contributed to University research on basic space science and engineering only, letting private groups, China and Europe do that actual flying? The shuttles are getting quite old now. Of course it would help if corporations could figure out a way to make money off of space other than communications satellites.
It was submitted for review to Science. Science is, after all, a scientific journal. It was submitted by Science for review to a number of scientests. They looked at the results and recommended against publishing it.
Let's go over that again. Paper submitted for review. Paper reviewed. Paper rejected.
Now, move foward to the present, and the paper not only is getting published, it is going on the front page of the magazine.
It would be one thing to just present theoretical data that might need work, this IS done all the time. But they are presenting experimental data which absolutely should be reproducable. There is no way around it. Thier data FAILED initial review. It will get many more chances to be reviewed, and perhaps they will get together and calibrate the instruments properly and get this all sorted out.
Right now it is not fit for publication, except as a theory.
Park was more critical of Science in his little blurb than the actual study, and rightly so.
And by what I can tell, what MS has done is unethical, and illegal. At the same time, Hollywood, MLB, the Federal Government and my University have all done similar things, if not worse, but I still support them, and given a chance would work for them.
If you automatically write off every organization and person in the world which has done something unethical, you'll be very lonely in a short amount of time.
Yes, and becoming a US citizen when the NSA wants you to work for them would be very difficult.
It makes sense that you should be a citizen of a country (any country) if you are working for that countries "Security Agency".
Of course, a German crypto expert who wants to work in Germany won't apply to work for the US NSA, but it doesn't mean the NSA can't (or won't) try to recruit him.
Slashdot Mirror
I think we agree about nearly everything. Certainly Davis didn't cause the energy crisis. And certainly, anyone with connections to a Texas energy company should be investigated for criminal charges for what happened.
I think I just place more blame on Davis for this. I feel that it could have been managed better. There were a number of weeks that it appeared he was doing nothing but whine about it. He might have been doing more, but it would have been nice to know that then. It really didn't help that he played the same role Bush did when we were having troubles in San Diego a year earlier. We were getting raped by the rest of the state, and his first response was to tell us to wait it out.
It might simply be personal bias, but then I really didn't like Wilson either, and I'm too young to really have any opinions on earlier governers. I think I have extremely high expectations for our Governer, perhaps too high. I can't think of anyone right now I would like to see as governer.
I'll try to remember, like you point out, that it wasn't his fault, and that he did ultimately take care of both the crisis and this Oracle thing.
I'm more interested in that galvanic skin response machine. A few of my classmates in the UCSD physics department tried to build one of these, and found it not only to be messy, but very difficult. While I have no doubt that an engineer could build better circuits than they did, I'm really curious as to how they measure the skin resistivity *accurately* without any conducting gel. It was my assumption that this was needed to get a good connection. Perhaps it has to do with all of us having dry skin out here in semi-arid southern California.
When you're talking about a 95 million dollar deal, Davis had better know what's going on. It is utterly rediculous to claim Davis is innocent of anything after he obviously paid no attention to what was going on in HIS administration. HE is ultimately responsible for what happens. If we're talking a minor software deal, I agree, he really has nothing to do with it. But if he wasn't invloved in a 95 million dollar deal, at least at the oversight level, then he is to blame. He did do the right thing when he found out what had happened, but it never should have happened in the first place.
This, combined with the way he mis-managed the energy crisis does not make me feel comfortable with him as governor of my state. After the year we had in San Diego before the rest of the state was de-regulated, Sacromento should have known what was coming. What happened to California, where have all the "good" politicians gone?
My problem with Simon is that he's never held office before, and I'm afraid that he just wouldn't be able to handle the politics of Sacromento, even without his policies. Simon isn't naturally incompetent, like Davis is, but he does have some unusual ideas that most people can't understand. He doesn't know politics very well and he shouldn't be running for governor before he starts somewhere else. That and he's far too conservative to be elected in California (I think that goes without saying).
A few weeks before the judicial decision was made that you are talking about the cameras were already being shut down due to a different lawsuit (one, which I might add, did not cost taxpayers a ton of money and actually was reached in a timely fashion).
You see, as is the case with many of these camera systems, the company owning and operating the cameras was making money based on how many tickets were brought in. Based on the complete monolpoly of control over the cameras that the company had (as you point out, even the government couldn't look at how they worked), and the conflict of interest generated by increased revenue coming in only with increased infractions, the contract that LM had with the city of San Diego was ruled illegal.
The real crime was committed by the city government, who decided that all tickets which had already been issued were to be paid, EVEN THOUGH they were legally deemed illegal in TWO seperate suits.
In 1911, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes brought Mercury down to 4 Kelvin and witnessed a pure flow of un-resisted electricity.
As an undergraduate, I had a chance to perform this numerous times with various substances in my senior lab at UCSD. There is nothing more beautiful in physics than watching the resistance of your sample suddenly plummet to zero. It's a simple experiment that dramatically prooves a surprising, and still largely unexplained phenomenon.
I've been trying to think of what possible additions to the law could be made simply to satisfy this appitite for legilation congressmen apparently have, and I can think of none.
It is already against to law to do what is being done. It would be unfeasable and a terrible waste of money to set up an online police force. Stress that the people that would be doing this would be highly trained and skilled, and the equipment, salaries, paperwork and additional drain on the legal system would amount to a serious wad of cash for the government to fork over.
Point out the numerous clashes the government has had with the entertainment industry and thier unwillingness to combat youth violence and drug use (as opposed to say, the NFL). Point out that rather than supporting this de facto monopoly, more political gain is to be had in trying to "fight for the little guy". What is really happening here is Hollywood and the Music industry feel threatened by the increased exposure of independant artists, and fear they may loose control of thier media. The online trading has spawned a culture with far more artistic flair and talent than is evidenced in the controlled works put out by the big boys. What they are really trying to accomplish here is a freeze on that culture. They want to prevent all unobserved and free trading, and that is unacceptable.
A lot of people in the IT industry have this problem you describe. It comes from being an expert at something most people don't know a thing about. One of the responses to your comment claims "I'm not a burger flipper".
Well, sorry, you are. Stupid people are stupid people. I HAVE worked in both fast food and IT, and let me tell you, they have the same problems!
IT people call them "end users", fast food calls them "customers". They are the reason you have a job, and thier job is to try to get every advantage out of you that they can. After cleaning up a virus infestation a few times, they learn that it's your job, and your problem. They treat it that way.
I'm sorry that the world isn't perfect for you and that even in your nice "computers" job you have to deal with customers. The rest of the world deals with these same people doing similar stuff and doesn't whine about it nearly as much.
What I found REALLY fascinating is that the author is so strongly defending science fiction as a sub-culture. Absolutely refusing to admit that science fiction has any foothold in mainstream media.
Have geeks really fallen this far that we have to DENY mainstream media the RIGHT to include science fiction just so we can feel good with our own special sub-culture?
Look at how recent books and movies have done, it's time to admit that sci-fi and fantasy ARE mainstream now.
There are many different types of fusion being researched right now that are given a fairly good chance of success eventually. The only requrement is a demonstration that shows, under scrutiny, that a positive output can be obtained. This has been obviously seen in stars and nuclear bombs, hence the two main thrusts of research are with hot plasmas and explosions.
The problem is, due to their release of bad data through public media, all of this research is tainted, inside and outside the scientific community. This has hurt the funding of all types of fusion research.
It might turn out that cold fusion is profitable sooner than any other type. The paper on sono-fusion certainly suggests that. But until those research kits are delivered, the effects you mentioned will remain laboratory anomalies, unable to disproove the statistical calculations showing the improbability of a positive energy gain (which is highly improbable!).
On the other hand, the mechanics of these collisions are not well understood. It's possible, as the first paper suggests, that other processes are at work here which allow a positive energy gain. These are similar effects to what is already accepted for certain types of fusion in stars.
In either case, it's important for the scientific community to support at least the understanding of these anomalous processes... it might not lead to fusion, but it could lead to something else.
The 50% effort thing didn't apply to just geeks, it applied to people in general, and he's right. Think about it.
The point is that most people, even if they work 200 times harder than your average person, are not working at their full capacity. It's probably not a good idea to work yourself that hard all the time, but life should be about challenging yourself like this.
As for what the good this is doing... isn't it blindinly obvious to you what this drill instructor is doing? He's inspiring people. He's letting people realize how much they can do.
Not everyone knows their limits.
I'm currently working on a final for a computer music class using Max/MSP. There's a fairly large research group at UCSD involved in computer music, and lots of other computer arts things.
http://www.crca.ucsd.edu/old/crca.html
You're assuming that deleting a file is the same thing thermodynamically as removing information. This might work for some mathmatical models, but I know of no disk structure that allows it's magnetic domains to return to thermal equilibrium for every bit of encoded data.
On top of this assumption, you are assuming that the computer acts as a better-than-ideal engine. The amount of heat put off, even if deleting a file did cool a computer, would still be extreme because work is done by the computer, and I'm sure that code optimization does not mean thermodynamic optimization.
There are many more problems with this argument, even the internal clock in the computer is going to create this type of entropy generated heat.
What you absolutely cannot get around is the heat generated by the current in the wires. Even in superconducting wires, current generates heat. Factor in resistance and you have a source of heat far greater than any heat generated by entropy reversal.
These are fine theoretical assumptions, but in practice, computers generate a lot of heat.
Read a book.
Hollywood isn't ready for that yet. Who knows why, I agree it would be cool, ideal and just all around nice if they did it.
I recommend the Hyperion series.
Keep in mind, all of these private ventures into space are ONLY possible due to the "wonderous big budgets" which NASA has enjoyed in the past.
I agree that NASA needs to get it's act together fiscally, but don't sing the praises of other groups who come in after the basic (expensive) science and engineering are worked out. Those groups are cool in a different way; we still need someone to do the basic research.
Perhaps NASA would be better suited as an organization that coordinated and contributed to University research on basic space science and engineering only, letting private groups, China and Europe do that actual flying? The shuttles are getting quite old now. Of course it would help if corporations could figure out a way to make money off of space other than communications satellites.
You're right! My assumptions were wrong. I think I can trust the editors of Science more about thier magazine than Dr. Park.
In that case... well, ignore everything I said before.
Thank you for correcting me (rather than simply flaming).
Of course not!
Refraining from violence is as much the responsibility of the police as is it the demonstrators, if not more.
You missed the point that Dr. Park made.
It was submitted for review to Science. Science is, after all, a scientific journal. It was submitted by Science for review to a number of scientests. They looked at the results and recommended against publishing it.
Let's go over that again. Paper submitted for review. Paper reviewed. Paper rejected.
Now, move foward to the present, and the paper not only is getting published, it is going on the front page of the magazine.
It would be one thing to just present theoretical data that might need work, this IS done all the time. But they are presenting experimental data which absolutely should be reproducable. There is no way around it. Thier data FAILED initial review. It will get many more chances to be reviewed, and perhaps they will get together and calibrate the instruments properly and get this all sorted out.
Right now it is not fit for publication, except as a theory.
Park was more critical of Science in his little blurb than the actual study, and rightly so.
Violent Demonstration is NEVER "right", on either side. Even if the Political motivation is.
I took an ethics course in college.
And by what I can tell, what MS has done is unethical, and illegal. At the same time, Hollywood, MLB, the Federal Government and my University have all done similar things, if not worse, but I still support them, and given a chance would work for them.
If you automatically write off every organization and person in the world which has done something unethical, you'll be very lonely in a short amount of time.
Yes, and becoming a US citizen when the NSA wants you to work for them would be very difficult.
It makes sense that you should be a citizen of a country (any country) if you are working for that countries "Security Agency".
Of course, a German crypto expert who wants to work in Germany won't apply to work for the US NSA, but it doesn't mean the NSA can't (or won't) try to recruit him.