Don't worry, it will be expensive enough:) The goal here is not to reduce cost, but to reduce carbon emissions as well as dependence on oil and, possibly, nuclear energy.
This comes a lot to the way news reports work. "Environmentalist" is such a wide label that you will find people wearing it opposed to almost any possible action. So when a tech news happen, it has become a duty for journalists to find a "silly environmentalist" who opposes it. Too bad they don't mention the legion of environmentalists who give a big thumbs up to such a program. I mean, there are green political parties (which are a political force in Europe) who applaud that. But nevermind. Environmentalists have to be equalled to "silly anti-tech people" in tech news. That's ridiculous to create imaginary adversity like that.
More to the point, is there an advantage in using solar panels over having the sunlight heat water (which is vastly more efficient) and then use the steam to generate electricity?
None at all. This proposal calls "solar panel" parabolic reflectors used to boil water in a tube and feed it to a turbine. They don't plan on using photovoltaics on this one.
Cooling a small part of Sahara may have a local effect indeed, which I can't see as a bad thing. I doubt however that it can have an impact on the global scale however.
I read slashdot to also have prospective news. Granted, half of them are hogwash and that is for them that the comments system is so precious, but I don't want Slashdot to just give me news about released products, I want info about what's in the lab as well ! Sure, it means you'll get a lot of vaporware, but that is news for nerds also. I'm a bit tired of the nanotube batteries thing, there must have been 5 or so articles on that already and I just can't force myself to get excited anymore. But I prefer to see a few dupes than to miss a real breakthrough.
Well, some companies and employees value the fact that in USA you are confident that you won't wake up one day to see Russian tanks on the parking lot and your daughter raped by soldiers. There is an ongoing conflict with Russia since 2008 and depending on whose definition you use, Russia can be seen as occupying a part of it:
As soon as the information is set to circulate (and an execution order is known by many people before the press conference) I don't see why not tweet it. What I feel icky is that USA still has death sentences, not that someone uses modern ways to convey the info. I suspect a lot of reactions are similar.
Except... not : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
The video is good but the tl;dr is : give monetary incentive for an intellectual work, the more you pay people the LESS they work. That is the result of a few sociological studies. Give programmers a good enough pay so that he doesn't worry about money, give him autonomy and challenging objectives and you'll get better result than with a promise of a 20k$ bonus.
Medical expert on internet is usually of the kind "Hey! it looks like what I had! You should try [random cure]". The proposal is for a system expert that would have an exhaustive medical knowledge of the possible causes and proposing probable cures. It could actually beat some human doctors. Remember the game of 20 questions ? Computers are stupidly good at that. Recognizing symptoms of a disease is the same kind of game.
"-I have a red harsh on my leg"
"-Do you have some on both legs ? Y/N"
"-Did you get in contact to grass recently ? Y/N"
"-Do you have a known allergy to sleptigiornocius ? Y/N"
"-Do you have a known allergy to synthetic clothes ? Y/N"
"-Are you currently on Cyclomosil treatment ? Y/N"
Most probable cause : Cyclomosil allergy.
Second probable cause : Eczema.
Unfortunately, as Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea have demonstrated, they ARE stupid enough, and really don't care if they die for Allah or Kim or whoever.
Actually, I am wondering... A corollary of MAD is that your nukes are useless unless you manage to make your enemies think that you are crazy enough to use them. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Giant_Lance
MAD kept us safe during the 20th century. This was still a complicated game to play even with only 3 or 4 players and pretty scary too. Now we approach the dozen of nuclear nations. MAD is a fine theory but it shouldn't be taken for granted. The possibilities of nuclear war are very real and there would be a lot of military interest in, for example, a nuclear reaction inhibitor, a mean of detecting enrichment process at a distance or a way to miniaturize nukes even more.
It is also worth noting that so far NASA's prevision on solar activity evolution have been pretty bad (hey, this is a young science !). Take this more as a bet than an assured prevision. Discoveries are made every month in the field of solar climatology.
I think he is well-intentioned and that alternative energies and electric cars need to be heavily helped by governments. I still think that comparing this to Einstein's letter is very far-fetched. Einstein was a physicist using his credibility to convince that an idea seemingly coming from a science fiction story could be the superweapon that would end WWII. His opinion hold a lot of weight.
Here, Bill Gates says that we need to cut down dependency on oil. It is more a "Duh !". He has neither expertise nor proofs about what he says and he preaches to people who are already convinced.
But what is strange in that situation is that the better your engineers, the easiest the job of the salesman and the highest his pay. You can potentially get pretty bad salesmen if your engineering is good. What justifies the 8x ratio then ?
Yes, but people who still base their business model on the control of copies have misunderstood something about the technological developments of the last (at least) 20 years.
Actually the source I first learned about it this morning (in French sorry) is this article and it states that the geologists used hints from a USSR survey in the 1980s that they kept secret during the Taleban government. So, yeah, some conspiracies are plausible here.
Estimations are that USA has spent about 25 billions in the ISS so far, Europe about 10 billions, Japan 3 billions. The Russian part seems difficult to estimate, because the costs of a soyouz mission seems to be a bit opaque but it is probably comparable to USA's part. This IS an international effort, but USA is probably the biggest spender in this. If it was to retire from the program, it would certainly jeopardize its continuation.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is not the media used, the problem is to get access to all the proprietary informations needed to access and execute the game.
Don't worry, it will be expensive enough :) The goal here is not to reduce cost, but to reduce carbon emissions as well as dependence on oil and, possibly, nuclear energy.
This comes a lot to the way news reports work. "Environmentalist" is such a wide label that you will find people wearing it opposed to almost any possible action. So when a tech news happen, it has become a duty for journalists to find a "silly environmentalist" who opposes it. Too bad they don't mention the legion of environmentalists who give a big thumbs up to such a program. I mean, there are green political parties (which are a political force in Europe) who applaud that. But nevermind. Environmentalists have to be equalled to "silly anti-tech people" in tech news. That's ridiculous to create imaginary adversity like that.
More to the point, is there an advantage in using solar panels over having the sunlight heat water (which is vastly more efficient) and then use the steam to generate electricity?
None at all. This proposal calls "solar panel" parabolic reflectors used to boil water in a tube and feed it to a turbine. They don't plan on using photovoltaics on this one.
Cooling a small part of Sahara may have a local effect indeed, which I can't see as a bad thing. I doubt however that it can have an impact on the global scale however.
I read slashdot to also have prospective news. Granted, half of them are hogwash and that is for them that the comments system is so precious, but I don't want Slashdot to just give me news about released products, I want info about what's in the lab as well ! Sure, it means you'll get a lot of vaporware, but that is news for nerds also. I'm a bit tired of the nanotube batteries thing, there must have been 5 or so articles on that already and I just can't force myself to get excited anymore. But I prefer to see a few dupes than to miss a real breakthrough.
Well, the interface sucks and this jeopardize the spread of Wave as a protocol. That is sad because the idea is certainly worthwhile.
That's ok that they do that mistake. They'll learn...
Well, some companies and employees value the fact that in USA you are confident that you won't wake up one day to see Russian tanks on the parking lot and your daughter raped by soldiers. There is an ongoing conflict with Russia since 2008 and depending on whose definition you use, Russia can be seen as occupying a part of it :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georgia_(country)#2008_military_conflict_with_Russia
But people who want to trade peace to save tax money are free to go there, sure...
The informativeness of this post almost made me cry. Congratulations sir, these posts are why I continue to read Slashdot.
That is not uncommon in the profession. Working in the pilot of a serie for free is a bet that many new actors are willing to take.
As soon as the information is set to circulate (and an execution order is known by many people before the press conference) I don't see why not tweet it. What I feel icky is that USA still has death sentences, not that someone uses modern ways to convey the info. I suspect a lot of reactions are similar.
Except... not : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc
The video is good but the tl;dr is : give monetary incentive for an intellectual work, the more you pay people the LESS they work. That is the result of a few sociological studies. Give programmers a good enough pay so that he doesn't worry about money, give him autonomy and challenging objectives and you'll get better result than with a promise of a 20k$ bonus.
So you mean it require people to not think monolithicly as a party and required voters to thik a bit more ? These are advantages if you ask me.
You may not hit the home of the attacker but neutralizing his/her botnet or relay is a good start.
To be honest I didn't even realize that GPS was a science...
Medical expert on internet is usually of the kind "Hey! it looks like what I had! You should try [random cure]". The proposal is for a system expert that would have an exhaustive medical knowledge of the possible causes and proposing probable cures. It could actually beat some human doctors. Remember the game of 20 questions ? Computers are stupidly good at that. Recognizing symptoms of a disease is the same kind of game.
"-I have a red harsh on my leg"
"-Do you have some on both legs ? Y/N"
"-Did you get in contact to grass recently ? Y/N"
"-Do you have a known allergy to sleptigiornocius ? Y/N"
"-Do you have a known allergy to synthetic clothes ? Y/N"
"-Are you currently on Cyclomosil treatment ? Y/N"
Most probable cause : Cyclomosil allergy.
Second probable cause : Eczema.
Why couldn't it work ?
Unfortunately, as Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea have demonstrated, they ARE stupid enough, and really don't care if they die for Allah or Kim or whoever.
Actually, I am wondering... A corollary of MAD is that your nukes are useless unless you manage to make your enemies think that you are crazy enough to use them.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Giant_Lance
MAD kept us safe during the 20th century. This was still a complicated game to play even with only 3 or 4 players and pretty scary too. Now we approach the dozen of nuclear nations. MAD is a fine theory but it shouldn't be taken for granted. The possibilities of nuclear war are very real and there would be a lot of military interest in, for example, a nuclear reaction inhibitor, a mean of detecting enrichment process at a distance or a way to miniaturize nukes even more.
This had the desired result: it forced Microsoft to step up and fix the problem.
Has it ? I am not sure a patch is available yet.
It is also worth noting that so far NASA's prevision on solar activity evolution have been pretty bad (hey, this is a young science !). Take this more as a bet than an assured prevision. Discoveries are made every month in the field of solar climatology.
I think he is well-intentioned and that alternative energies and electric cars need to be heavily helped by governments. I still think that comparing this to Einstein's letter is very far-fetched. Einstein was a physicist using his credibility to convince that an idea seemingly coming from a science fiction story could be the superweapon that would end WWII. His opinion hold a lot of weight.
Here, Bill Gates says that we need to cut down dependency on oil. It is more a "Duh !". He has neither expertise nor proofs about what he says and he preaches to people who are already convinced.
But what is strange in that situation is that the better your engineers, the easiest the job of the salesman and the highest his pay. You can potentially get pretty bad salesmen if your engineering is good. What justifies the 8x ratio then ?
Yes, but people who still base their business model on the control of copies have misunderstood something about the technological developments of the last (at least) 20 years.
Actually the source I first learned about it this morning (in French sorry) is this article and it states that the geologists used hints from a USSR survey in the 1980s that they kept secret during the Taleban government. So, yeah, some conspiracies are plausible here.
Estimations are that USA has spent about 25 billions in the ISS so far, Europe about 10 billions, Japan 3 billions. The Russian part seems difficult to estimate, because the costs of a soyouz mission seems to be a bit opaque but it is probably comparable to USA's part. This IS an international effort, but USA is probably the biggest spender in this. If it was to retire from the program, it would certainly jeopardize its continuation.