However, in the tropics, you only get about 12 hours of daylight throughout the year. In the arctic, however, you get 24 hours of sunlight in the summer. So, if you are getting ~71% of the same energy on a patch of land in a 1 hour period in the arctic as you would get on the same sized patch of land in one hour in the tropics, but you are getting that energy for twice as long, then that patch of land in the arctic is getting 142% of the solar radiation as the tropics get, no?
You are mixing facts. ~71% is at 45 degrees latitude, about the middle of the united states. I would say 24 hours of sunlight in northern Iowa would be a bit hotter than the tropics. I found a table of hours of sunlight. You have to be above 70 degrees latitude to get any days where the sun is out for 24 hours, and the value is only 34% at that high a latitude. So over a 24 hour day that would still only be 68%. I don't have the skill to integrate over time for the rising and setting sun, but again, it's just common sense. It doesn't get as warm in the arctic because less solar energy reaches the ground.
Think of it this way: suppose you win the lottery. Do you get more dollars in your pocket if you take an immediate lump sum payment of one million dollars, or if you take one payment of one hundred thousand dollars every year for ten years (assuming that you ignore economic factors such as inflation, present value of money and taxes)? 1,000,000 = (10 x 100,000), so it's the same regardless, right?
Now it seems like you are only talking about the light for one day also. If you look at average throughout the year, you have the same 12 hours of sunlight every day on the equator and 6 months of zero sunlight near the north pole. That's like saying you make the same amount of money getting $60,000 for working a year and getting $30,000 for working six months and taking a six month vacation.
Whether you're in the tropics or the arctic, you get the same hours of daylight each year. The Earth's tilt means that the hours are spread out differently, the tropics get an even 12 hours each day every month and the poles get 24 hours of light for 6 months and 24 hours of darkness for 6 months. When the light is shining tough, it is stronger in the tropics. More solar energy reaches the ground there over the length of a year, there is no question.
, but the light that does shine down is stronger in the tropics and weaker in the arctic.
Nope. The arctic gets the same solar radiation as the tropics; it just doesn't get the same amount per hour. In the tropics, the solar radiation is concentrated between ~6:00am and ~6:00pm. In the arctic, you get the solar radiation 24 hours a day during the summer. I suspect there is a little loss due to absorption in the atmosphere, but not as much as you'd suspect.
Grab a flashlight and shine it straight down on a piece of paper. You should see a fairly circular area with a concentrated light. Now shine it from the same distance at a 45 degree angle. Now you get a larger area that is approximately an oval. So the same amount of light is spread over a greater distance, meaning each square centimeter of the paper is getting less light.
Let's look at the amount of sunlight per square kilometer at noon. Let the X axis run from West to East on an imaginary Earth and the Y axis run from South to North. The sun delivers about 1,366 watts per square meter at the average distance to the Earth (measured by satellites). That square meter assumes the angle is overhead. The amount of solar radiation approaches zero as the angle to the ground approaches 90 degrees to the edge of the sun. Let's treat the sun as a point source for simplicity's sake. Here is what we have (--> is solar radiation, . is space and | is the earth's surface):
-->..| -->..| -->..| -->..| -->..| -->..| -->..|
That gives us about 1.366 gigawatts per square kilometer of the earth's surface. Now let's look at a 45 degree angle:
We have the same amount of sunlight, but we have a larger surface area of the earth. You can figure out the surface area by saying that the North-South measurement is the hypotenuse. For the same Y value, we divide by the sin of 45 degrees (0.7071) to get the length of the hypotenuse. sin(theta) = opposite / hypotenuse where opposite is a vertical line perpendicular to the direction of the solar rays, going polar North-South in this case, and hypotenuse is the Earth's surface. That means that at a 45 degree angle, you only get about 71% of the same energy as you would if the sun were shining straight down.
I mean it's just common sense too. If this weren't the case, the day would keep getting warmer until the sun set below the horizon at night instead of cooling off in the afternoon and evening.
That's because Internet traffic is growing faster than capacity, but also because of the difficulty in upgrading the edges of the network, not just the center (where such upgrades are relatively simple).
The "internet" can handle it, the problem is with ISPs? Sounds like a good place for competition and innovation to work. If an ISP cannot handle the traffic they sell to their customers then they shouldn't be an ISP.
They should continue, "unfortunately, there are a fair amount of countries that don't have access to the sun. "
Really? There are places on earth that have no access to the sun? Where?
I think he was trying to be funny, but you have to look at how much sun you get. On cloudy days you produce less energy, so you want a place with lots of sunny days. Outside the tropics you never get the sun coming straight down, it's always at an angle. The straighter down the sun shines on you the more energy you get in the same land area. Places like the arctic would be horrible for this because the sun would barely shine on the ground for months of the year.
"and the gold plating actually decreases conductivity" no it doesn't. It doesn't add any either.
IN order to lower it, it would have to be worse then the actual connection loss.
It doesn't add conductivity naturally, but it also doesn't corrode like many metals do in an oxygen atmosphere.
I'm surprised they don't just shuffle money around. I mean what's the difference between paying $1 million to the camera company and getting $2 million in fines for schools and paying $1 million to the schools and getting $1 million from fines for schools and $1 million to the camera company from the fines. Surely the officers that write tickets don't work for free...
If you read on your taxes, you are supposed to declare your mail-order purchases. If you didn't pay a sales tax in another state, you have to pay it in your state of residence. I've always thought this silly myself, but this "Amazon tax" isn't new.
I don't know why people spend tons of money on a computer only to throw in a cheap sound card, or even worse - rely on onboard sound.
Really on-board sound has come a long way. You might as well be asking why people don't use portable CD players anymore. Unless you're willing to spend a great deal more on speakers than the $90 for the sound card, and you have room to setup surround sound, then the difference really isn't that big. I'm perfectly happy with my USB headset, but I'd hate to lose my 24" Dell monitor.
I was unaware that there were 'private roads' out there that you would be trespassing on if you drove on them. From looking at the existing pictures, you couldn't tell when driving down the road that it lead to a single house because there was too much flora in the way. Can the drivers turn off the camera sometimes? The private road didn't look big enough to turn around in, I don't see why they should have had to back out instead of turning around in the driveway.
Unfortunately it seems that hick jurors (which you tend to get in Federal Court) don't give a darn. Look at the $200,000+ that was awarded against that poor woman. So the RIAA just has to prove it to the satisfaction of some random people that don't have to even own a computer.
No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
This came about because the British would garrison troops in private homes because they couldn't make their own. Under Bush's rules, could citizens be forced to let soldiers stay in their houses? Well, Bush would say we're at war with "terror" and with his history, I wouldn't doubt that he could make a "signing statement" or executive order that would be enough for him to say it was legal.
What bothers me more, that this article brings to mind, is that he could let the soldiers stay in the homes of FBI agents and force us to let FBI agents in. After all, FBI agents aren't "soldiers" and the 3rd Amendment only says soliders, right?
Short of the CPR machine keeping me alive, I accept the possibility of failure.
Well designed and manufactured DSL routers will rarely fail. My Cisco 974 has been running without fail for three years at home. My Actiontec (and the initial replacement) had failed roughly once per week. Microsoft software has trained us that technology will fail and you need to reboot. If you accept this level of quality in your equipment then they will keep producing the same level. Maybe rebooting your router isn't a big deal for you, all you have to do is unplug it and plug it back in after all. Would you accept a car that you had to take into the shop once a week though? You shouldn't have to.
When my brother and I had constant problems with five different Actiontec routers, that's an issue. It's hard for me to believe that we were just 'unlucky'. Those problems ceased completely for all four DSL lines when we switched to Cisco DSL routers.
Both myself and my brother constantly had problems with our Actiontecs, both at our homes and at work. The routers would have to be restarted roughly once each week. We've switched all our DSL modems to old Ciscos we bought on EBay. In the last three years we've had to reset the ones at work a few times because they stopped accepting incoming TCP connections, but we've never had to reset our ones at home.
Thanks, I'll check that out. It doesn't seem right though that they should keep trying to force you to install new software until you find a specific option in the tools menu to stop it. Installing new software should be disabled by default, you should have to specifically select that you wish to install the new software.
Well, as everyone on Slashdot surely knows, E=MC^2. Therefore, since matter and energy cannot be created nor destroyed, merely changed in form, it follows that the letter "E" cannot be created or destroyed, merely changed in form. Which would probably Txplain this sTntTncT.
I don't undMC^2rstand what you'rMC^2 trying to say...
That is absolutely the most stunning example of false logic that I've seen in a long time.
I think you need to take a philosophy or logic class. You claimed there would be too many false positives to work. The system works, therefore your premise is wrong.
Situations like these are why these sorts of systems will never work. There are just far too many false positives. Not false positives in the sense that they detect radiation where there is none, but false positives in the sense that they detect legitimate and harmless sources of radiation but have to respond as if they found a dirty bomb.
It doesn't seem to me that they get too many false positives. There aren't that many legitimate and harmless sources of radiation to be detected. If this does get too many false positives, then they would stop doing it, wouldn't they? The fact that they are still doing it is irrefutable proof that they aren't getting too many false positives to handle.
But don't you find it odd that the only justification that the heightened surveillance post-9/11 works is based on two arrests that were made in 1997 and 1999, before the current surveillance was enacted?
Interestingly I don't think the article tried to show this justifying post-9/11 heightened security. In fact it says:
It's a good point. Yet even he, a federal agent for 35 years, is queasy about the snooping's reach. He said he opposes parts of the Patriot Act, namely the section that expands warrantless searches.
"I think we can do this without tossing out our checks and balances," he said.
I am opposed to many parts of the "Patriot Act" (should have been called the "King George Returns" act I think). Surveillance of radioactive sources in high-traffic points has been going on before 9/11 and I fully support it. For one thing you are emitting radiation outside your car. That type of surveillance doesn't invade your privacy. It also seems quite easy to explain legitimate sources of radiation such as the cat.
If you stipulate the existance of an all-powerful supernatural creator being then He could create our universe (and a bazillion parallel ones) while rolling over in His sleep, so that's not nearly as big a deal as a universe that can create itself where previously there was not only nothing but even the nothing wasn't there, so it's more miraculous.
The reason for the existance of that all-powerful supernatural creator being is a separate question and is left as an exercise for the reader.:-)
Of course if you stipulate that then the rest is easy. However there is no more reason to stipulate a creator being than to stipulate that the universe has always been here, or that a membrane in a parallel dimension bumped into ours causing the big bang, or that the universe just 'is' and that our experience of time is no more than an illusion (imagine a two-dimensional piece of paper representing our three-dimensional universe being extended to form a three dimensional cube, time could be that extra dimension and any point in time and space for one of us is just one spot in that four-dimensional cube).
Yes, stipulating an all-powerful supernatural creator does handle nicely the existence of the universe, but that leaves us with a bigger problem, what made the creator? Now that would be a miracle. I don't see how people fail to see that the same logic must be applied to the creator if they are doubting that the universe has always existed. The only reason people don't is because they are brainwashed as kids to believe that there is a creator. It does not follow from logic at all that there must be a creator. The same logic looking for a creator must be applied to the creator itself. The same logic must be applied to the creator's creator, and their creator and so on ad nauseum.
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You are mixing facts. ~71% is at 45 degrees latitude, about the middle of the united states. I would say 24 hours of sunlight in northern Iowa would be a bit hotter than the tropics. I found a table of hours of sunlight. You have to be above 70 degrees latitude to get any days where the sun is out for 24 hours, and the value is only 34% at that high a latitude. So over a 24 hour day that would still only be 68%. I don't have the skill to integrate over time for the rising and setting sun, but again, it's just common sense. It doesn't get as warm in the arctic because less solar energy reaches the ground.
Now it seems like you are only talking about the light for one day also. If you look at average throughout the year, you have the same 12 hours of sunlight every day on the equator and 6 months of zero sunlight near the north pole. That's like saying you make the same amount of money getting $60,000 for working a year and getting $30,000 for working six months and taking a six month vacation.
Whether you're in the tropics or the arctic, you get the same hours of daylight each year. The Earth's tilt means that the hours are spread out differently, the tropics get an even 12 hours each day every month and the poles get 24 hours of light for 6 months and 24 hours of darkness for 6 months. When the light is shining tough, it is stronger in the tropics. More solar energy reaches the ground there over the length of a year, there is no question. , but the light that does shine down is stronger in the tropics and weaker in the arctic.
No, they'd have to have it on a line.
Grab a flashlight and shine it straight down on a piece of paper. You should see a fairly circular area with a concentrated light. Now shine it from the same distance at a 45 degree angle. Now you get a larger area that is approximately an oval. So the same amount of light is spread over a greater distance, meaning each square centimeter of the paper is getting less light.
Let's look at the amount of sunlight per square kilometer at noon. Let the X axis run from West to East on an imaginary Earth and the Y axis run from South to North. The sun delivers about 1,366 watts per square meter at the average distance to the Earth (measured by satellites). That square meter assumes the angle is overhead. The amount of solar radiation approaches zero as the angle to the ground approaches 90 degrees to the edge of the sun. Let's treat the sun as a point source for simplicity's sake. Here is what we have (--> is solar radiation, . is space and | is the earth's surface):
That gives us about 1.366 gigawatts per square kilometer of the earth's surface. Now let's look at a 45 degree angle:
We have the same amount of sunlight, but we have a larger surface area of the earth. You can figure out the surface area by saying that the North-South measurement is the hypotenuse. For the same Y value, we divide by the sin of 45 degrees (0.7071) to get the length of the hypotenuse. sin(theta) = opposite / hypotenuse where opposite is a vertical line perpendicular to the direction of the solar rays, going polar North-South in this case, and hypotenuse is the Earth's surface. That means that at a 45 degree angle, you only get about 71% of the same energy as you would if the sun were shining straight down.I mean it's just common sense too. If this weren't the case, the day would keep getting warmer until the sun set below the horizon at night instead of cooling off in the afternoon and evening.
The "internet" can handle it, the problem is with ISPs? Sounds like a good place for competition and innovation to work. If an ISP cannot handle the traffic they sell to their customers then they shouldn't be an ISP.
I think he was trying to be funny, but you have to look at how much sun you get. On cloudy days you produce less energy, so you want a place with lots of sunny days. Outside the tropics you never get the sun coming straight down, it's always at an angle. The straighter down the sun shines on you the more energy you get in the same land area. Places like the arctic would be horrible for this because the sun would barely shine on the ground for months of the year.
I'm surprised they don't just shuffle money around. I mean what's the difference between paying $1 million to the camera company and getting $2 million in fines for schools and paying $1 million to the schools and getting $1 million from fines for schools and $1 million to the camera company from the fines. Surely the officers that write tickets don't work for free...
If you read on your taxes, you are supposed to declare your mail-order purchases. If you didn't pay a sales tax in another state, you have to pay it in your state of residence. I've always thought this silly myself, but this "Amazon tax" isn't new.
Really on-board sound has come a long way. You might as well be asking why people don't use portable CD players anymore. Unless you're willing to spend a great deal more on speakers than the $90 for the sound card, and you have room to setup surround sound, then the difference really isn't that big. I'm perfectly happy with my USB headset, but I'd hate to lose my 24" Dell monitor.
I was unaware that there were 'private roads' out there that you would be trespassing on if you drove on them. From looking at the existing pictures, you couldn't tell when driving down the road that it lead to a single house because there was too much flora in the way. Can the drivers turn off the camera sometimes? The private road didn't look big enough to turn around in, I don't see why they should have had to back out instead of turning around in the driveway.
Unfortunately it seems that hick jurors (which you tend to get in Federal Court) don't give a darn. Look at the $200,000+ that was awarded against that poor woman. So the RIAA just has to prove it to the satisfaction of some random people that don't have to even own a computer.
This came about because the British would garrison troops in private homes because they couldn't make their own. Under Bush's rules, could citizens be forced to let soldiers stay in their houses? Well, Bush would say we're at war with "terror" and with his history, I wouldn't doubt that he could make a "signing statement" or executive order that would be enough for him to say it was legal.
What bothers me more, that this article brings to mind, is that he could let the soldiers stay in the homes of FBI agents and force us to let FBI agents in. After all, FBI agents aren't "soldiers" and the 3rd Amendment only says soliders, right?
Uh, posting a story on slashdot?
If you have two of something, by definition it is no longer unique...
Well designed and manufactured DSL routers will rarely fail. My Cisco 974 has been running without fail for three years at home. My Actiontec (and the initial replacement) had failed roughly once per week. Microsoft software has trained us that technology will fail and you need to reboot. If you accept this level of quality in your equipment then they will keep producing the same level. Maybe rebooting your router isn't a big deal for you, all you have to do is unplug it and plug it back in after all. Would you accept a car that you had to take into the shop once a week though? You shouldn't have to.
When my brother and I had constant problems with five different Actiontec routers, that's an issue. It's hard for me to believe that we were just 'unlucky'. Those problems ceased completely for all four DSL lines when we switched to Cisco DSL routers.
Both myself and my brother constantly had problems with our Actiontecs, both at our homes and at work. The routers would have to be restarted roughly once each week. We've switched all our DSL modems to old Ciscos we bought on EBay. In the last three years we've had to reset the ones at work a few times because they stopped accepting incoming TCP connections, but we've never had to reset our ones at home.
What a bunch of jerks. I bet next year they'll tape over the IR port when the presentations are going...
Thanks, I'll check that out. It doesn't seem right though that they should keep trying to force you to install new software until you find a specific option in the tools menu to stop it. Installing new software should be disabled by default, you should have to specifically select that you wish to install the new software.
I don't undMC^2rstand what you'rMC^2 trying to say...
This is just insane. They are arresting people for possessing toys. My dorm played 'nerf wars' in the basement all the time, it was a blast.
This is the second time I've had to uncheck the update and click 'Quit' to avoid having this crap on my computer. No means "no"!
I think you need to take a philosophy or logic class. You claimed there would be too many false positives to work. The system works, therefore your premise is wrong.
It doesn't seem to me that they get too many false positives. There aren't that many legitimate and harmless sources of radiation to be detected. If this does get too many false positives, then they would stop doing it, wouldn't they? The fact that they are still doing it is irrefutable proof that they aren't getting too many false positives to handle.
Interestingly I don't think the article tried to show this justifying post-9/11 heightened security. In fact it says:
I am opposed to many parts of the "Patriot Act" (should have been called the "King George Returns" act I think). Surveillance of radioactive sources in high-traffic points has been going on before 9/11 and I fully support it. For one thing you are emitting radiation outside your car. That type of surveillance doesn't invade your privacy. It also seems quite easy to explain legitimate sources of radiation such as the cat.
Of course if you stipulate that then the rest is easy. However there is no more reason to stipulate a creator being than to stipulate that the universe has always been here, or that a membrane in a parallel dimension bumped into ours causing the big bang, or that the universe just 'is' and that our experience of time is no more than an illusion (imagine a two-dimensional piece of paper representing our three-dimensional universe being extended to form a three dimensional cube, time could be that extra dimension and any point in time and space for one of us is just one spot in that four-dimensional cube).
Yes, stipulating an all-powerful supernatural creator does handle nicely the existence of the universe, but that leaves us with a bigger problem, what made the creator? Now that would be a miracle. I don't see how people fail to see that the same logic must be applied to the creator if they are doubting that the universe has always existed. The only reason people don't is because they are brainwashed as kids to believe that there is a creator. It does not follow from logic at all that there must be a creator. The same logic looking for a creator must be applied to the creator itself. The same logic must be applied to the creator's creator, and their creator and so on ad nauseum.