Let me correct that then. I agree with the point aussie_a has made so far, which I think is this: You should avoid speaking in absolutes, except when absolutes are warrented. An example of an ok absolute is "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light". It means what it says.
Saying "no one who hasn't payed for a mmorpg is worth listening to" is far too strong a statement. Saying "It's often the case that one has to pay MMORPG's longer than the free trials to decide it's merits" is far more acceptable, and more difficult to disprove.
If someone who's tastes in mmorpgs is similar to mine spends a hundred hours evaluating a game, and expresses their opinions well, I'm going to find their opinion worth listening to.
I have 5 moderator points, and I was almost going to mod you up as insightful, since you are mostly correct. But I'm giving up my ability to mod this thread just to disagree with you on one point:
Consider this story another sad footnote in the history of your rights being taken away.
Look man, defeatism helps not at all. Cynicism is okay, but rally people to be active about something. Defeatism just helps the enemy.
I know, there's a hell of a lot of bad news out there, and it gets discouraging. But think for a moment about all of the positive social and economic changes that have occured in the U.S. within one human lifetime (let's say the last 75 years: there's people alive who remember that far back). If you're black your life is better than it would have been 1930-1960. if you're gay your life is better than it would have been pre 1990. If you're a single woman or a single mother, same thing goes. I can go on, but I hope you get my point.
All of these positive changes are the result of people working towards a goal in a determined way. Martin Luther King may be the guy we remembered, but all those faceless nobody's toiling in futility had just as much of an impact.
So don't consider them a sad footnote. Do what you can to make sure they don't become a sad footnote. Support them however you can!
Probably wasting my time here, since you give me the impression that you just like to bitch at anyone who criticises the status quo, or america, or whatever... But I could be wrong, so I'm going to reply anyway.
The DMCA: I'm afraid I no longer have my bookmarks of instances where the DMCA has negatively affected research, so I typed "negative impact of DMCA on research" into google, and came up with a few examples. Breaking these examples down into research categories, it looks like cryptography, computer science and especially computer security are negatively affected. The search " "negative impact on research" dmca " generates somewhat better results, including this pretty good one: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/occ/dmca/dmca_acm.htm. I could go on, but I think it would be more meaningful for you to do some research yourself.
These are the areas where the DMCA has a direct impact on research, but it has a pretty strong ripple effect. Several months ago I was trying to automate incormporating some binary data measured using some SEM or something like that. I thought "maybe there's a library on the web I can use to read these files". I found such a library, but the site was removed with an apology that it had be taken down thanks to a DMCA complaint. We had to spend few days copying the data by hand. So there's an example of how the DMCA made my research more difficult, and I study Photonics.
What annoys me here is this: I was able to answer your question with just 15 seconds of effort. Why didn't you use google to search for the effect of the DMCA on research before posting this rather ignorant response? One gets the impression your goal is to be polemic, not to pursue the truth.
"It seems like you've just taken the standard set of Slashdot complaints about everything and translated it into this article on education/science without really thinking it through."
How unfortunate that it seems that way, since it's certainly not what I did. Perhaps these complaints crop up on Slashdot often. I certainly use Slashdot as a forum to complain about them. But the observations I made are first hand, not taken from Slashdot, as you should have noticed. I also think I communicated them in a way that was well thought through, but it's just a slashdot post, not a paper or book. Frankly I think only a brief and unbiased comparison of our posts would conclude that in fact yours is the poorly thought out post.
Bias is a difficult problem in science, but I was specifically talking about the well known attempts of the current administration to bias resarch results. Such deliberate and systematic efforts to bias science (motivated by policy and sometimes religious goals) are quite easy to get rid of, as opposed to difficult bias stemming from funding problems, and the peer review inertia effect.
I'm going to elaborate on that last point a little, because it seems that many slashdot readers don't understand scientific bias very well. Bias is very difficult to eliminate altogether, since a little apriori knowledge about the results one expects to get in an experiment can be either helpful or necessary. Bias is also introduced by the peer review process, since there is a natural predjudice towards current scientific canon. A result that strongly contradicts current scientific consensus needs to be more well grounded, more reproducible, and more thorough than one that fits well into current scientific thinking, for what I hope are obvious reasons. If they aren't obvious, I'll have to work a little bit on explaining them. A certain amount of bias is also introduced by funding, since one (be it a company, state or individual) funds only subjects one is interested in. So funding biases research in that it biases the direction of research. These types of bias probably can't be completely avoided, as they are an unfortunate
It doesn't take a damned expert to figure out what's wrong, ask any geek that's in high school or recently graduated. Our problem is cultural, there's such an anti-intellectual problem in schools and the rest of society, actively encourage exploration (you know, the heart of science) throughout the development of today's youth, and within one generation we'll be sorted.
You aren't wrong. But I think more can be said on the subject. As a physicist currently working at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (it's where Einstein went to school), I would like to offer my perspective.
What the united states government should do, in order to preserve it's dominance in research and development is to STOP ACTIVELY HARMING RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. What are we actively doing to harm research and development? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here are some of the things that I see screwing the U.S. research community:
The Patriot Act(s): The horrible progression towards a totalitarian police state. No I'm not exagerating, flamebaiting or fudding here. The fact that America no longer has habeus corpus, that America has now adopted the military strategies/justifications of imperial japan and nazi germany (pre-emptive war), the numerous videos of excessive violency by U.S. cops, the onerous security conditions international travelers into the U.S. are subject to... All of this stuff gets a lot attention in the civilized world, and has a harmful effect on research in the U.S. Of my colleagues about 5% categorically refuse to travel to the U.S. for conferences or employment. About 50% would never take a position in the U.S. regardless of the pay on moral or safety grounds, and virtually everyone, when looking around for conferences to attend, will, all other things being equal, pick the conference that is NOT in the scary police state. Just to give you an example, most of my colleagues would feel safer going to a conference in Singapore than anywhere in the states.
Stop trying to introduce political and economic bias into research. If you think censoring NASA's JPL and the so-called 'intelligent design' movments don't screw up both our reputation (which is important in getting the best people to come and do research in the U.S.) and don't screw up the research climate in the states, well, you need to rethink the issue. What are some issues that can't be studied without undue pressure in the U.S.? It seems to me that biology, atmospheric physics, and medicine have all suffer here, but I'd like to hear from colleagues in those fields how strong that effect is. One area where one hasn't been able to do good research in the United States is drug use and abuse. See http://www.biopsychiatry.com/ for an excellent, if not entirely accessible discussion. Alternative energy and environmental research seems to be another victim. We need a government for whom science and facts are more important than faith.
The DMCA
Software and applied mathematics patents
I'm sure other points can be raised as well, but these are the ones I see most obviously damaging U.S. research. I would like to mention one more point which is less defensible. I believe the U.S. would benefit from more funding for basic research, outside of DARPA and war justifications. DARPA has been responsible for wonderful things, I just don't like how seemingly everything (in physics anyway) has to be linked somehow peripherally to war applications to get any funding in the states.
Besides the significant, immediate, direct, and observable impact these things have on U.S. science, they further reinforce the anti-intellectual climate you have complained about. Don't forget that one reason the U.S. enjoyed such a period of scientific dominance post WWII is we got all the great scientists the nazi's chased out of europe to come here. Now we're chasing away our best scientists.
Closing point, this line of thinking applies to many aspects of U.S. government. Before doing something to fix a problem, think a bit about what we are doing to create a problem, and see what we can do to address that.
Re:The rest of the launch lineup can go to hell...
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Two Weeks with the Wii
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Find yourself a country with decent consumer protection laws. I'd be able to return it for a refurb for at least 2 years (maybe 5, depends on product) if it's due to manufacturing error. Of course it doesn't count if you broke it yourself but if it just stopped working for no good reason, it counts.
right, because I can shop for a country like I can for a tube of toothpase.
better advice would be to lobby your government for better consumer protection laws.
Re:The rest of the launch lineup can go to hell...
on
Two Weeks with the Wii
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AT&T was given a monopoly but state and federal politicians desperate to avoid the "duplication" that competition would bring. Microsoft was sued for eeking out their own.
Well, having a monopoly, or being given one by the gov't isn't criminal. Making one yourself by using an already existing dominance to crush the competition through underhanded bunsiness tactics (defined in anti trust laws) is criminal (and buying off the criminal justice system SHOULD be illegal, but unfortunately isn't during an election year). In this way one could claim that Microsoft has moral culpability for it's monopoly, having actively and criminally pursued it, while Bell does not have that culpability, having been given that monopoly, and not having to defend it.
Not saying the monopoly was a good idea, not claiming Bell is a good company, and not saying I know anything about Bell's history. Just saying that in the case of Bell, you can blame the gov't for making a monopoly. In the case of MS, it's MS who's to blame, so by your statemt, yeah Bell would be the good research monopoly.
+5 for informative? wow... if I had mod points that would get overrated.
sorry, that was pretty polemic. Your post and the rating it got show however, a lack of understanding of both physics, and the process of scientific discovery and eventual engineering.
A quick google search reveals tha the distance of pluto (presumably average distance) is 5.4 light hours. A light hour is the distance light can travel in an hour. It's also the shortest possible time anything can get from point a to point b as dictated by the fundamental limits of the universe as best we currently understand them. So travelling at the speed of light, which we are so very very far away from being able to achieve, we could get to pluto in 5.4 hours. For frame of reference, the fastest manned spacecraft to date is appolo 10 at 11000m/s (3.7e-5 c, a pretty impressive feat actually).
What are the issues facing high speed space travel?
First off you have the limitation of the speed of light. It might be there is some fancy sci-fi solution to this limit, but we don't even have a theoretical idea of how to approach the problem, so until there's a major revolution in physics (it could happen, it does from time to time) you're stuck with it.
A second issue is the problem of the energy required to accelerate a body to sufficiently fast speeds. This is the issue your Heim reference addresses. Well, another consequence of relativity is the mass of a body increases as you accelerate it. This means that the closer we get to light speed, the more force required to accelerate a given body by the same amount (f=ma, but a=a(v)!). Practically speaking this imposes another limitation on the speed we can accelerate to. To keep it simple, lets say we it really is possible to use this Heim stuff to overcome the limits of the rocket equation (extra mass for extra acceleration, yuck!). Well great. But we still don't even understand the theory properly, let alone have a working prototopy, so that's years and years away, and because of relativity we probably can't hope for better than ~.001c as maximum speed. That means 5000 hours at max speed to pluto.
But we haven't addressed acceleration yet, which is my point 3: The human body can only withstand so many G's (1g = earth's gravity, a unit of acceleration, 9.8m/s^2). the space shuttle accelerates at 3G which uncomfortable but doable (note that special materials were developed as part of the space program to reduce the impact of acceleration, for example tempur. These materials now have civilian applicatons). The detonator at thorpe park goes to -5.5g. Wikipedia says the highest g force sustained by humans were (voluntary 46.2g astronaut john stapp, involuntary 180g F1 driver David Purley in an accident). But surviving high g's for a short time and for a long time are different things. We'll take a n aggressive estimate and say we could accelerate at 5g's sustainably. To reach.001c with 50g's would take.003e8 m/s / (5 * 9.8m/s^2) ) ~= 8 hours (neglecting relativistic effects, real time would be longer... lets say we can increase the force arbitrarily to compensate for relativity, again more new physics needed). So we need 16 hours to reach that speed, and another 16 hours to decelerate at the other side, means 16 hours accelerating and decelerating, and I'm neglecting more relativity here, but again on the aggressive side.
My next point is often neglected. What happens if you hit a little meteorite (It could be the size of a pebble, or even just a little cloud of dust). If that smacks into you at.001c relative velocity, you can bet it's going to do a lot of damage, even without considering relativistic mass. Think about how much damage small meteors do impacting earth at terminal velocity, which is probably at.00001 c or something... So we need shielding technology. Think about how much trouble the shuttle has with it's shielding tiles...
Well, you're right, but in an incredibly stupid and poorly thought out way. There are two points which are gleefully ignoring. First, the evidence is compelling that if we use said resources as quickly as possible we will make our planet unlivable, or introduce catastrophic consequences which cause massive human and suffering in death. The second point is, it is possible to introduce a catastrophic shortage which causes huge amounts of human suffering, not only through freezing , heat exhaustion, and starvation, but through wars for resources.
We have a capacity for reason which grants us a certain capacity for prediction and forethought. Why not use it to avoid such catastrophies? The best arguments I can come up with are "to teach ourselves a lesson", and "to reduce the population". Well, we can learn the lesson earlier, and while I agree a drop in the population would be a good thing, I just prefer it to be a gentler process than war and starvation. For example free suicide booths.
What you seem to be missing, or perhaps deliberately avoiding, is the fact that there is a "smoking gun". Your previous post implied you did not believe global warming theory and predictions to be accurate. This post seems to indicate that you accept the accuracy of the predictions, you just think we should give up about it because the problem is too big to handle, and everyone with money and authority is against you. Neither of those perspectives is at all helpful, and to some extent they are contradictory. The one point that both posts seem to have in common is the message "don't do anything about global warming".
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt regarding your motivation, and just say that if you believe what you say in this last post, your task is to learn the facts, learn about the smoking gun, and work against the forces that are trying to make us believe a lie.
Just as the lies of the smoking industry were eventually discredited, so too will the lies of the energy concerns be discredited. The question is how many people have to die, and what the cost to our country and the planet has to be. Are you aware that the US is virtually alone in it's dismissal of global warming? Even US client states like Britain have begun to realize that the issue should no longer be avoided. We live in at least a somewhat democratic society, and thus it is our duty to wrest control of the state away from those that steer it in a harmful and threatening direction. It not only can be done successfully, but it has been done succesfully, and in your lifetime (assuming you are older than the bush II administration). So face facts: you have a voice. It's small, but it counts. So you can try to help, you can ignore the problem, or you can actively contribute to the problem. It's your choice. You affect whehter it's about the facts or about the marketing dollars.
Personally, I understand the science fairly well. But it's hard to convince those who don't understand it without pointing out to them why some scientists might be deceiving them (either deliberately or otherwise).
I'm a computational physicist, so I have middling understanding of the science. But I understand the scientific process and politics of science pretty well. I'm always floored by the number of "global warming is a conspiracy invented by scientists to get more funding" posts that show up whenever there's an article on global warming. Knowing what I know about industry funding, if a scientist could come up with valid research that contra-indicated the current consensus regarding global warming, they'd have a pretty easy time getting funding from large oil concerns. In fact it's the deep pockets of the oil industries that are responsible for what little quasi-scientific publications are available.
My colleagues in atmospheric science know of NO peer revied publications in the last 20 years that indicate global warming is not a threat. There is plenty of disagreement on the details, but no one seems to be disputing the existence or danger of the phenomenon. Can anyone provide a link to any such research?
To the non-scientists out there, it's true that the peer-review process can lend a certain inertia to scientific biases. The convergence pattern on the charge of electron is pretty canonical example. Rather than approaching the current level of accuracy from both above an below, it approached routinely from above. Scientists tended to introduce a bias towards the initially (too high) measured value. It's not dishonesty... it's a fact that scientists have to discard bad data sometimes, and sometimes it becomes questionable whether you are discarding bad data or introducing bias to get publishable results. That said, well documented, well researched science will get published even if it violates the existing consensus. That's how we get scientific progress. So while the system has flaws, it works pretty well, and I certainly can't come up with a better idea. As another point, in any active area of research, it's unusual to get the kind of consensus one sees in global warming research. Scientists are a contentious lot, and our jobs boil down to questioning assumptions. So the fact that such a strong agreement exists should tell you something.
Beyond scientific consensus, which is of course often wrong (that's why we get scientific progress), there exist other criteria to evaluate a theory's merit: prediction. A good theory predicts verifiable events or behaviors. I first started reading predictions coming from global warming theory back in the early eighties. Every year now I read about events verifying these predictions. So far, fortunately, only the non-cataclysmic predictions have been verified. This indicates that the theory is not too bad, as many predictions have been successfully verified. It is of course true that the environment is a hugely complex system, and it's possible that important factors were neglected when making relevant simulations and predictions. The question we need to ask ourselves is: do we really want to keep testing the theory to see if the catastrophic ones are also true? I for one vote no.
There is no downside to researching, studying and working to counter global warming. There are many common sense steps that can be taken to mitigate the problem that will in the end improve our quality of life, even if the catastrophic predictions are false (something I again don't care to verify except in simulation). Reducing emissions is a wonderful idea. Do we need hummers? Lets make smaller, quieter, more efficient vehicles. When we can let's cycle and walk or use trains. Replace all of your light bulbs with energy saving bulbs. Raise awareness. Give gifts of energy saving bulbs to your reticent friends, colleagues, family. If it's practical for you, install a solar water heater in your
I have played a few mmorpg's. I only stuck with WoW for a couple months. I enjoyed City of Heroes for several months, largely because I'm a bit of a comic geek, but eventually I got tired of the grind.
What I did enjoy quite a lot was Guild Wars, largely due to the strong story, and the cinematic cut scenes, but I haven't played either of the 2 follow up games yet (bough factions, but haven't played it so much).
Maybe there's the right game out there for me somewhere, and I'm happy to hear people's suggestions. I think one problem I've had is having a hard time finding a good group of online friends to play with. I did have a nice group of friends on Guild Wars, but once the campaign was finished we all just drifted. With CoH they all drifted away eventually to WoW. I mention this to provide a little background for the suggestions I am about to make:
1) CoH did a fantastic job on the team finding interface, and I wish other developers would look to if for inspiration. Being able to click "looking for a team", and search lists of people by class, rank, etc. is just so much more convenient that global chat spamming.
2) Too often (and CoH is guilty of this) the admins try to stop people from grinding or power leveling. I think this is an overly negative approach. If people want to do the grind, screw it: let them play how they enjoy playing. Instead of punishing people for power leveling, encourage people to play for the story. Do this by making the rest of the gameplay experience, and especially the story and role playing elements more rewarding. CoH annoyed me because it tried to keep people playing with badges, costume rewards, other stuff I don't care about at all, and all of which are essential grind rewarders. I want stories! They can even be mediocre. Give me a comic book showing the highlights of a particular battle (just some screenshot of a characters dying, decisive battle moments, etc. plus some cheesy text. Even done badly this would be fun). Let me share those with people instead of stupid badges, which are just another kind of XP.
The power levelers and grinders are only annoying when you get in a team with them. The problem isn't grinders though, it's a problem of forming good and compatible teams. Look at CoH's team forming tools. Maybe try adding some personality modifiers like "choose one of the following: a) I just wanna level, b) I wanna role play, c)want a friendly chatty team".
What about a rating system, for after you team with someone. I think two ratings would be useful: 1) Is a team player (0-100), 2) Is competent. Granted that's open to abuse and problems... What I'm really trying to say TRY SOME NEW IDEAS FOR CHRISSAKES.
One final point in this vein: If the missions are story oriented and interesting enough, there's a strong motivation (except for the total grinder geeks, and let them do what they like) not to just grind or do power levelling, for if you do you just miss interesting content.
3) The cut scenes in Guild Wars are a great idea. They make the gaming much more story oriented. They don't all have to be pre-rendered. I think coh would have (and could still be) greatly improved by having a short cut scene to wrap up major story arcs, task forces, etc (not every small mission, but whenever doing a larger story). I think a approach might be to have the camera zoom in to the character (villain or npc) doing the talking, but allow players to zoom back out or wander off and ignore the guy if they want.
4) Good admins are really important, and they should have a number of tools at their disposal to keep the community running well. Keeping your admins in line is also important so there has to be an appeal process. But admins should be active (but judicious) in keeping the community smoothly running. For example, forcing people to use the trade chat channel when trading, and not using the global chat. Get good admins, and reward them appropriately. Consider it an expense of running a good game
Either you are OK with being a contributor to the work product that you find distasteful or not. You can quit, or you could do a wholly different task within the company (like move from developer to marketing) so that you don't 'free up' someone else to do the work. But otherwise, you might as well just do it yourself and see if you might be able to influence it to be less distasteful than originally planned.
Boy, I just want to say, and I suppose this is opinion, that there just isn't a less ethically sound job than marketing. Marketing is really the root of all evil. If all the marketers in the world commited mass suicide, the world would be a much better place.
I'm not exagerating my views here. What do marketers do? They convince people to want or need things that they otherwise don't want or need. It's one of the roots of the wasteful consumer culture that's consuming the planet and our souls. Thanks to the constant bombardment of advertising (in obvious and hidden forms) it takes tremendous amounts of effort not to get sucked into the "if I can just have that, or if I can just make that much more money... then I'll be happy". Wealth wealth above all else!
Not only that, but marketing is the fly in the free market theory ointment. Free market theory, which so many people in Slashdot like to comment on off-topic and ad nauseum, relies on the assumption of a well informed marketplace, where the market purchases the best products based on complete information. But marketing is exactly the opposite of informing your consumer. Marketing is the art of lying to the consumer, of illiciting a non rational emotional response from the consumer in order to override the consumers rational thought and purchase a certain product, regardless of pre-existing need, use, desire, or the existance of a better solution. Pick the first ad you see... how much real information is in there, and how much exploitation of human foibles? Marketing is one of the primary forces keeping us from evolving as a society.
Porn on the other hand helps deal with sexual frustration, is fun, and can (when done well) be a positive celebration of human sexuality. Really great porn can give you and your sexual partner(s) fun ideas. Ok, I agree, a good chunk of porn is kinda creepy, but the solution is to try to buy and make good fun porn. So if you want to make the world a better place, quit your marketing job and get into porn! Chant the mantra: "porn good, marketing bad. porn good, marketing bad... "
Who wants to sit around in a space station for a year, with little entertainment and 24x7 responsibility, to conduct experiments? Astronauts used to have the prestige of being explorers, today they are viewed as scientists that must work more hours, for less pay, little prestige, all while putting their bodies through unbelievable stresses, and risking their lives in the process.
Well, I would do it, particularly if I was interested in the research being conducted. But I've never seen any scientific results published from all these zero G experiments (other than the effects of long periods of weightlessness on the human body). Can anyone post some links to some meaningful research that's come out of the ISS?
arg, hit submit by accident. Wanted to say it reminds me of the trilateral commission's "The Crisis of Democracy", whos thesis was basically 'we have a crisis: too much democracy'. All these previously obediant masses, like women and blacks, are demanding things like equal rights and better government representation.
irst it is necessary to explain why the new passports were introduced, and how they work.After the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Centre, in which fake passports were used, the US decided it wanted foreign citizens who presented themselves
Is this true? I had the impression that the 911 terrorists had valid ID, but I haven't read the 911 commssion report...
Can somone point me to some information confirming or disproving this assertion?
I'm a little afraid of dragging a pointles discussion on and on here, but I'll give it a shot.
Again, I dont know or understand how this process works. If the tech works like the article describes (which shouldn't be assumed since the mass media does a crap job of representing scientific research since they don't employ enough people with science backgrounds)... but anyway, if it works as described, there would be no radiation, or at least no significant radiation (remember we're talking about whether or not you would absorb radiation on the level being transferred for power, not radiation on the level of your cell phone). Through a process I don't understand they are relying on coupled radiator and transmitter. So as soon as you step in between the source and receiver, no more radiation.
Now, there may be a limit on how instantaneous that process is, governed by the speed of light (not necesarily though, I'd really have to know more about the physics involved), but that's anyway pretty irrelevant, since the speed of light is goddamn fast at human scales. If the process is instantaneous to about the order of the speed of light, which would be a likely assumption based on the claims of the article, you woudn't absorb squat. Maybe the same amout of radiation you get just by being alive for a couple of seconds. Depending on how the coupling works, and the wavelength of the radiation, might be effectively zero.
co-resonate was my word, not theirs, which leads me to believe you didn't bother reading the article. So you didn't even bother to read popularized BBC description of what's happening. From the article
"If you bring another resonant object with the same frequency close enough to these tails then it turns out that the energy can tunnel from one object to another," said Professor Soljacic....
Any energy not diverted into a gadget or appliance is simply reabsorbed....
"This would work in a room let's say but you could adapt it to work in a factory," he said.
"You could also scale it down to the microscopic or nanoscopic world."
Without doing some real work I can't explain the process better, because I don't understand the process well enough. I work in a very closely related field, but I'd still have to spend a few hours reading to understand. So it's entirely forgiveable that you don't understand how it works or how it can be safe. I don't either. But I apparently have a lot better idea of how much I don't understand than you do. Not surprising, since understanding the limits of ones knowledge is vital to conducting research.
So briefly, no, the artile would give the impression that absorbtion, particularly by humans, wouldn't be a problem. How accurate that impression is would have to be tested of course, but labs and software exist for that kind of thing.
The vaporware tag is bogus because this is basic research and no one is claiming that it is more than that. Scientists always describe potential applications for their research subjects because this is 1) interesting and 2) necessary for getting funding. At the moment they are just running simulations to show the feasibility. It's nonsense to claim research is vaporware. Research increases our understanding of the universe, and often leads to useful products. In this case the chance that it leads to a useful product seems to me very high, although it might only be in the form of providing power to, for example, microchips...
Well, it's still at the basic research stage, and you can bet a good deal of testing, both theoretical and practical, will take place before this ever reaches the market (oh, and I do research at a publicly funded institute which does risk assesment of radiative household products like cell phones, for what that's worth). But from what I read, and I'm not pretending to understand the physics just from reading the BBC article, the point is the power would not be radiating, unless it was absorbed by a co-resonating antenna.
Without more research, I can't say how well that works, but if it does what the article says it does, the power would not be radiating unless it was coupled with the receiver. This would mean that should you absorbe the radiation, there would be no more radiation. It might sound like voodoo physics, but not necessarily. Again, I'd have to look at something more technical before making comment. But the guys at MIT rarely publish bullshit.
Speaking of which, what moron tagged this 'vaporware'? It's basic research from MIT for chrissakes. That has nothing to do with vaporware.
Wow, the discourse on this topic is always so painfully stupid and emtional. None of this anything to do with Microsoft vs Linux. It has to do with monopoly abuse, which is always harmful. Having a defacto standard is a good thing. Things like vendor lock in are obnoxious, but less harmful when there exists a viable competition. GM doesn't have a monopoly on automobiles, so there's no real point in levying anti trust suits against them. If GM, Honda, Daimler Chrysler and Volkswagen and whatever other major manufacturers out ther get together and do price fixing, this fucks up what little pretense of a free market we have, and screws everyone over. So we've made laws against that kind of behavior, because experience has taught us that this kind of this is just so goddamn bad for our economy. That's all.
Even if it had happened by accident, which it didn't, the monopoly would be harmful. Microsoft could have attempted to be a benign monopoly, and set things up so that other people could at least compete with them on NEW APPLICATIONS, but they don't even do that. They set things up so whatever becomes the next big thing, they are in a position to dominate it, because it's so damn hard to get interoperability information from them. And it's getting worse with Vista. It's not enough that they have the incredibly huge advantage of their monstrous cash flow and brand recognition, not to mention the expertise of the programmers who developed their software in the first place. No, they have to result to tactics which are plainly and openly illegal, preferring instead to subvert democratic processes. It blows my mind that people defend them.
I want to propose a new figure of speech, and I want credit for it: The "Microsoft Syndrome". Like the Stockholm syndrome, where victims of a kidnapping begin to sympathize with their kidnappers, the Microsoft Syndrome describes that process where victims of a corporate monopoly are so brainwased by that monopoly's marketing they sympathise with and defend them.
You're confusing two issues here, that of excessive state power, and that of Microsoft's monopoly.
I consider it a truism that "that government governs best which governs least", and I suspect we are in agreement on that. However this is not the same thing as "... which governs not at all". Government, and in particular democratic institutions, are vital tools in protecting the public from the ravishes of private power. Of course if a government takes too much power for itself, and in particular if a government becomes too unanswerable to its people, this is harmful. But if you think about it, it's the same thing as public power being usurped by, or transformed into, private power. It's also true that on occasion the masses can behave very badly indeed, leading to abuses of public power, but let's face it, these are far less common than abuses of private power.
But, NONE of that applies in this case. In this case Microsoft is incredibly harmful and belligerent monopoly which has been egriously and criminally abusing it's monopoly powers. It has been convicted of monopoly abuse in the united states, but took advantage of our unfortunately weakened and corrupt democracy (c'mon guys, lets try to make it better! no I'm not being facetious!), and had the charges dropped by donating vast sums of money to the most corrupt presidential campaign ever. Their practices are bad for IT, they are bad for the consumer, and they are bad for the EU, and through some mechanism I don't understand, they were unable to buy off the EU. Go figure.
In short, this is a case of public power acting to keep private power in check. In other words, it is one of those rare and beautiful cases of democracy doing what it should do. I have no doubt that there are a bunch of corrupt bastards involved in the process who are motivated by greed, but it doesn't change the fact that what they are doing is good. It's good in many ways. They wan't Microsoft to open their API's. This wouldn't hurt Microsoft's OS business at all, and probably won't hamper their Office suite business at all. It will however weaken their ability to abuse their monopoly. Great! Perfect! It also will make it easier for open source developer and small business to do innovative things. Wonderful! Finally, they are saying to Microsoft "look, we're a bunch of old Europeans, and we are used to dealing with abuses of power. But you have to exersize a modicum of discretion in these things". About time!
I always worry when seriously responding to these kinds of posts is the poster is just astroturfing. But I suppose it's most necessary in thos cases to resond...
The original push for a lot of things came from the defense industry. That doesn't mean they are bad ideas or that we dismiss them.
Of course you are correct, and I apologize if I gave the impression this is what I was saying. Hell, I'm using the internet aren't I? As a researcher myself, I'm perfectly aware how much great research and development comes out of defense spending. It's an issue I do find lamentable, leaving physicists across their country scratching their heads and thinking "now how can I sell this idea as having defense applications?" while writing grant applications. It's why practically all the papers I read say 'has applications towards quantum computing and quantum cryptography'. My point it there's a huge financial and PR incentive to finding ways to sell nuclear power, which then has benefits for the nuclear defense industry. And at that point it becomes all about money and influence, not about research or what's good for the american people or the environment. In other words, I mentioned it to call into question the reliabilty of the 'standard line' on the subject.
As to your comment addressing the issues of uranium mining, of course techniques can be used to clean up the process. But how energy and (more importantly) cost effecient is that? And how tightly is it regulated. Ten years ago when I researched the subject for my own interest, I found that most Uranium mining was being done in poor brown skinned countries, because there you didn't have to give a shit who you poisoned downstream. I might be in the minority, but I find this unnaceptable. Whether it's a deal breaker for me depends, much as with the waste issue, on how well regulated the industry is. I can certainly say with the current administration in power, I feel uncomfortable with all aspects of nuclear power production. I would want environmental and work safety standards stiffened, and applied to all areas in the chain of production, even to poor brown skinned parts.
I wasn't trying to make a hardline against nuclear power. I just think it bears more scrutiny than most proponent choose to exercise. And I don't trust the institutions which govern the process. Especially in American, I'd like to see the whole system overhauled.
I'd rather see a technological solution to the problem. Not because I'm advocating a wasteful lifestyle in which you wear sweaters indoors during the summer and shorts during the winter. But because I'd rather see technology solve the problem then people accept a reduction in the standard of living. Solve the energy problem and everybody can be as wasteful as Americans -- with no impact on the environment.
Well this is a philosophical difference, and probably impossible for us to resolve in this forum. I'm a scientist (I am doing my phd on FDTD simulation of optical systems, concentrating on optical computing), so I'm not anti technology. But I read a lot of history, and I don't like modern culture. I very much dislike modern American culture, which is overly influenced by PR firms and madison avenue. The wasteful american lifestyle serves them very well, so the cultural feedback we receive tends to reinforce this lifestyle. We consider it somehow sacrelidgous to fight against the overwhelming spirit of the age, which is "wealth, wealth, above all else". So naturally my feelings influence my interpretation of things.
My vew is that technological development has outpaced cultural development, and this has lead to severe problems. For example, we have plenty of food, but we have one section of the globe is dying from obesity, while another section starves. This isn't a technological problem. I don't think the damage to the environment is a technological problem either. As technology advances, so to does the degree to which we can affect our environment. I think we can agree on that: technology gives us power over nature. We can use this power drunkly, and ignore the har
vi, emacs, ls, grep, yacc, lex, tex... hella lot of the code is ancient.
Maybe you mean a 27 year old binary? It would be pretty difficult to find a 27 year old binary in the Gnu world, since it's easier to just recompile the binary for whatever system the binary is supposed to run on. Before decrying 'but that's too much hassle for a user' remember: This doesn't have to be done by an end user. I use a all of the above software, and whole lot more, without ever having recompiled the stuff. I installed it all in an automated installation procedure that was easily as comfortable as any Microsoft has ever given me. At the moment this work is being done by dedicated volunteers and a few professionals, but the results are as reliable as those in the windows world, and it's likely that this will change as free software gains more commercial acceptance and investment. It's pretty rare in the free software world for a project of any size to completely stop being maintained. As long as someone is willing to pay a little for support, or (more often the case) if one or more of the users is an enthusiast, the project will continue.
In the commercial software world, it becomes very important that a binary continue to run becuase the source is not available. It can and does happen that some wonderful piece of software gets completely orphaned, becuase the company went out of business (often becuase it could not compete with Microsoft). The users of that application better hope that their binary continues to run on whatever machines they get in the future, because they simply have no alternative. If it stops running, they have to switch to some new software. If the software they are replacing involves story any large amounts of data in some proprietary format, they're in for a tough job... in the worst case paying people for manual data entry. In fact I watched precisely that happen a couple of times while working as a DBA for Reuters. In both those cases, has the software, or at least the data storage format, been free and open, it would have been much cheaper and less effort to pay a programmer to make the necessary changes and recompile.
There are a few lessons to be learned for library writers: Whenever possible write backwards compatible library interfaces. But for the most part this is done pretty well. People rarely change library interfaces without good reason, the code maintainers of reliant projects are responsible to either maintaining access to old libraries, or updating their calls.
I have serious problems with nuclear power, but I'd be interested in any real facts that might address my problems. It's been ten years since I investigated the issue, so maybe some advances have been made.
I don't consider nuclear reactors terribly risky, my main problem comes from pollution. I'm also not particularly worried about a nuclear plant being in my backyard.
The original push for nuclear power was mostly motivated by the defense industry. It provided a good smokescreen and a friendly motivation with which to spin all of the research and development into nuclear fuels, most of which was of interest to the so called defense department. Because of this, I have a hard time believing the official line on nuclear power, which isn't really motivated by power concerns.
From what I understand, obtaining the fuel for nuclear reactors involves a lot of mining and purifying of uranium ore. Ten years ago this process was causing a lot of low grade radioactive waste to be washing down river into people's drinking water. Since this was occuring mostly in undeveloped countries full of brown skinned people, it didn't register much in the mainstream media. Can this process be done cleanly and harmlessly?
I also find the long term pollutants generated by nuclear fission quite threatening. It seems to me we are essentially screwing future generation, taking our environmental problems and foisting them on them, plus interest. Of course, if this is the only alternative to killing us all off now, well, maybe that's preferable. But it isn't the only alternative. It might be that it's the only alternative which allows us to keep our current lifestyles, economic models, and power structure. God forbid anything threaten those!
I talked to some knowledgeable and rational people about clean coal. I didn't take technical notes, but the consensus was it's not really clean yet. It may indeed be worth investigating further, but yes, it doesn't address the carbon problem.
Me, I don't think the issue is that hard to solve. My impression is the problem is essentially a product of a bunch of short sighted, lazy and greedy consumers, greedy and powerful energy lobbies, and corrupt politicians. By combining some sane energy reduction techniques, reducing population (in fact, I think we should be globally pursuing negative population growth), and using carbon neutral energy sources, the problems can be solved. In the last twenty years tremendous advances have been made in producing clean energy, and this despite very poor investment in research. If we were spending as much money on research of alternative energy sources and efficiency technologies as we spend on violence to secure oil sources (or even as much as the energy companies spend on lobbying and public relations to keep the current power structure), we could expect much more.
In fact I've been doing some research on this recently. It seems that solar has finally reached the point where it's net energy positive, and seems to be reaching the point where it's even economically benevolent for the user. My girlfriend's small swiss farm, which is currently an energy consumer, could, using a combination of solar heating for the water and biomass fuel, become an energy producer. All using current technology and with less than 30,000 swiss franks investment. I'm looking into the practicality of a windmill or two as well.
Ideally I'd like to see a more decentralized power scheme. Everyone should have solar cells (either for heat via water, or to produce electricy, or both) on the roofs. As more people purchase, economics of scale will kick in and it will become cheaper and more efficient, thanks the additional research capitol. Farmers can produce biomass fuel. Corn for ethanol and wood for heating are popular, but hemp should be more efficient. Homes need to be well insulated, and tax incentives applied to encourage people to make their homes more efficient. Stop air conditioning buildings to the poi
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Let me correct that then. I agree with the point aussie_a has made so far, which I think is this: You should avoid speaking in absolutes, except when absolutes are warrented. An example of an ok absolute is "Nothing can travel faster than the speed of light". It means what it says.
Saying "no one who hasn't payed for a mmorpg is worth listening to" is far too strong a statement. Saying "It's often the case that one has to pay MMORPG's longer than the free trials to decide it's merits" is far more acceptable, and more difficult to disprove.
If someone who's tastes in mmorpgs is similar to mine spends a hundred hours evaluating a game, and expresses their opinions well, I'm going to find their opinion worth listening to.
I have 5 moderator points, and I was almost going to mod you up as insightful, since you are mostly correct. But I'm giving up my ability to mod this thread just to disagree with you on one point:
Look man, defeatism helps not at all. Cynicism is okay, but rally people to be active about something. Defeatism just helps the enemy.
I know, there's a hell of a lot of bad news out there, and it gets discouraging. But think for a moment about all of the positive social and economic changes that have occured in the U.S. within one human lifetime (let's say the last 75 years: there's people alive who remember that far back). If you're black your life is better than it would have been 1930-1960. if you're gay your life is better than it would have been pre 1990. If you're a single woman or a single mother, same thing goes. I can go on, but I hope you get my point.
All of these positive changes are the result of people working towards a goal in a determined way. Martin Luther King may be the guy we remembered, but all those faceless nobody's toiling in futility had just as much of an impact.
So don't consider them a sad footnote. Do what you can to make sure they don't become a sad footnote. Support them however you can!
Probably wasting my time here, since you give me the impression that you just like to bitch at anyone who criticises the status quo, or america, or whatever... But I could be wrong, so I'm going to reply anyway.
The DMCA: I'm afraid I no longer have my bookmarks of instances where the DMCA has negatively affected research, so I typed "negative impact of DMCA on research" into google, and came up with a few examples. Breaking these examples down into research categories, it looks like cryptography, computer science and especially computer security are negatively affected. The search " "negative impact on research" dmca " generates somewhat better results, including this pretty good one: http://www.ntia.doc.gov/ntiahome/occ/dmca/dmca_acm .htm. I could go on, but I think it would be more meaningful for you to do some research yourself.
These are the areas where the DMCA has a direct impact on research, but it has a pretty strong ripple effect. Several months ago I was trying to automate incormporating some binary data measured using some SEM or something like that. I thought "maybe there's a library on the web I can use to read these files". I found such a library, but the site was removed with an apology that it had be taken down thanks to a DMCA complaint. We had to spend few days copying the data by hand. So there's an example of how the DMCA made my research more difficult, and I study Photonics.
What annoys me here is this: I was able to answer your question with just 15 seconds of effort. Why didn't you use google to search for the effect of the DMCA on research before posting this rather ignorant response? One gets the impression your goal is to be polemic, not to pursue the truth.
How unfortunate that it seems that way, since it's certainly not what I did. Perhaps these complaints crop up on Slashdot often. I certainly use Slashdot as a forum to complain about them. But the observations I made are first hand, not taken from Slashdot, as you should have noticed. I also think I communicated them in a way that was well thought through, but it's just a slashdot post, not a paper or book. Frankly I think only a brief and unbiased comparison of our posts would conclude that in fact yours is the poorly thought out post.
Bias is a difficult problem in science, but I was specifically talking about the well known attempts of the current administration to bias resarch results. Such deliberate and systematic efforts to bias science (motivated by policy and sometimes religious goals) are quite easy to get rid of, as opposed to difficult bias stemming from funding problems, and the peer review inertia effect.
I'm going to elaborate on that last point a little, because it seems that many slashdot readers don't understand scientific bias very well. Bias is very difficult to eliminate altogether, since a little apriori knowledge about the results one expects to get in an experiment can be either helpful or necessary. Bias is also introduced by the peer review process, since there is a natural predjudice towards current scientific canon. A result that strongly contradicts current scientific consensus needs to be more well grounded, more reproducible, and more thorough than one that fits well into current scientific thinking, for what I hope are obvious reasons. If they aren't obvious, I'll have to work a little bit on explaining them. A certain amount of bias is also introduced by funding, since one (be it a company, state or individual) funds only subjects one is interested in. So funding biases research in that it biases the direction of research. These types of bias probably can't be completely avoided, as they are an unfortunate
You aren't wrong. But I think more can be said on the subject. As a physicist currently working at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (it's where Einstein went to school), I would like to offer my perspective.
What the united states government should do, in order to preserve it's dominance in research and development is to STOP ACTIVELY HARMING RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT. What are we actively doing to harm research and development? Well, I'm glad you asked. Here are some of the things that I see screwing the U.S. research community:
I'm sure other points can be raised as well, but these are the ones I see most obviously damaging U.S. research. I would like to mention one more point which is less defensible. I believe the U.S. would benefit from more funding for basic research, outside of DARPA and war justifications. DARPA has been responsible for wonderful things, I just don't like how seemingly everything (in physics anyway) has to be linked somehow peripherally to war applications to get any funding in the states.
Besides the significant, immediate, direct, and observable impact these things have on U.S. science, they further reinforce the anti-intellectual climate you have complained about. Don't forget that one reason the U.S. enjoyed such a period of scientific dominance post WWII is we got all the great scientists the nazi's chased out of europe to come here. Now we're chasing away our best scientists.
Closing point, this line of thinking applies to many aspects of U.S. government. Before doing something to fix a problem, think a bit about what we are doing to create a problem, and see what we can do to address that.
right, because I can shop for a country like I can for a tube of toothpase.
better advice would be to lobby your government for better consumer protection laws.
I got the buffy ref...
Not saying the monopoly was a good idea, not claiming Bell is a good company, and not saying I know anything about Bell's history. Just saying that in the case of Bell, you can blame the gov't for making a monopoly. In the case of MS, it's MS who's to blame, so by your statemt, yeah Bell would be the good research monopoly.
+5 for informative? wow... if I had mod points that would get overrated.
sorry, that was pretty polemic. Your post and the rating it got show however, a lack of understanding of both physics, and the process of scientific discovery and eventual engineering.
A quick google search reveals tha the distance of pluto (presumably average distance) is 5.4 light hours. A light hour is the distance light can travel in an hour. It's also the shortest possible time anything can get from point a to point b as dictated by the fundamental limits of the universe as best we currently understand them. So travelling at the speed of light, which we are so very very far away from being able to achieve, we could get to pluto in 5.4 hours. For frame of reference, the fastest manned spacecraft to date is appolo 10 at 11000m/s (3.7e-5 c, a pretty impressive feat actually).
What are the issues facing high speed space travel?
First off you have the limitation of the speed of light. It might be there is some fancy sci-fi solution to this limit, but we don't even have a theoretical idea of how to approach the problem, so until there's a major revolution in physics (it could happen, it does from time to time) you're stuck with it.
A second issue is the problem of the energy required to accelerate a body to sufficiently fast speeds. This is the issue your Heim reference addresses. Well, another consequence of relativity is the mass of a body increases as you accelerate it. This means that the closer we get to light speed, the more force required to accelerate a given body by the same amount (f=ma, but a=a(v)!). Practically speaking this imposes another limitation on the speed we can accelerate to. To keep it simple, lets say we it really is possible to use this Heim stuff to overcome the limits of the rocket equation (extra mass for extra acceleration, yuck!). Well great. But we still don't even understand the theory properly, let alone have a working prototopy, so that's years and years away, and because of relativity we probably can't hope for better than ~.001c as maximum speed. That means 5000 hours at max speed to pluto.
But we haven't addressed acceleration yet, which is my point 3: The human body can only withstand so many G's (1g = earth's gravity, a unit of acceleration, 9.8m/s^2). the space shuttle accelerates at 3G which uncomfortable but doable (note that special materials were developed as part of the space program to reduce the impact of acceleration, for example tempur. These materials now have civilian applicatons). The detonator at thorpe park goes to -5.5g. Wikipedia says the highest g force sustained by humans were (voluntary 46.2g astronaut john stapp, involuntary 180g F1 driver David Purley in an accident). But surviving high g's for a short time and for a long time are different things. We'll take a n aggressive estimate and say we could accelerate at 5g's sustainably. To reach .001c with 50g's would take .003e8 m/s / (5 * 9.8m/s^2) ) ~= 8 hours (neglecting relativistic effects, real time would be longer... lets say we can increase the force arbitrarily to compensate for relativity, again more new physics needed). So we need 16 hours to reach that speed, and another 16 hours to decelerate at the other side, means 16 hours accelerating and decelerating, and I'm neglecting more relativity here, but again on the aggressive side.
My next point is often neglected. What happens if you hit a little meteorite (It could be the size of a pebble, or even just a little cloud of dust). If that smacks into you at .001c relative velocity, you can bet it's going to do a lot of damage, even without considering relativistic mass. Think about how much damage small meteors do impacting earth at terminal velocity, which is probably at .00001 c or something... So we need shielding technology. Think about how much trouble the shuttle has with it's shielding tiles...
The up
Well, you're right, but in an incredibly stupid and poorly thought out way. There are two points which are gleefully ignoring. First, the evidence is compelling that if we use said resources as quickly as possible we will make our planet unlivable, or introduce catastrophic consequences which cause massive human and suffering in death. The second point is, it is possible to introduce a catastrophic shortage which causes huge amounts of human suffering, not only through freezing , heat exhaustion, and starvation, but through wars for resources.
We have a capacity for reason which grants us a certain capacity for prediction and forethought. Why not use it to avoid such catastrophies? The best arguments I can come up with are "to teach ourselves a lesson", and "to reduce the population". Well, we can learn the lesson earlier, and while I agree a drop in the population would be a good thing, I just prefer it to be a gentler process than war and starvation. For example free suicide booths.
What you seem to be missing, or perhaps deliberately avoiding, is the fact that there is a "smoking gun". Your previous post implied you did not believe global warming theory and predictions to be accurate. This post seems to indicate that you accept the accuracy of the predictions, you just think we should give up about it because the problem is too big to handle, and everyone with money and authority is against you. Neither of those perspectives is at all helpful, and to some extent they are contradictory. The one point that both posts seem to have in common is the message "don't do anything about global warming".
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt regarding your motivation, and just say that if you believe what you say in this last post, your task is to learn the facts, learn about the smoking gun, and work against the forces that are trying to make us believe a lie.
Just as the lies of the smoking industry were eventually discredited, so too will the lies of the energy concerns be discredited. The question is how many people have to die, and what the cost to our country and the planet has to be. Are you aware that the US is virtually alone in it's dismissal of global warming? Even US client states like Britain have begun to realize that the issue should no longer be avoided. We live in at least a somewhat democratic society, and thus it is our duty to wrest control of the state away from those that steer it in a harmful and threatening direction. It not only can be done successfully, but it has been done succesfully, and in your lifetime (assuming you are older than the bush II administration). So face facts: you have a voice. It's small, but it counts. So you can try to help, you can ignore the problem, or you can actively contribute to the problem. It's your choice. You affect whehter it's about the facts or about the marketing dollars.
I'm a computational physicist, so I have middling understanding of the science. But I understand the scientific process and politics of science pretty well. I'm always floored by the number of "global warming is a conspiracy invented by scientists to get more funding" posts that show up whenever there's an article on global warming. Knowing what I know about industry funding, if a scientist could come up with valid research that contra-indicated the current consensus regarding global warming, they'd have a pretty easy time getting funding from large oil concerns. In fact it's the deep pockets of the oil industries that are responsible for what little quasi-scientific publications are available.
My colleagues in atmospheric science know of NO peer revied publications in the last 20 years that indicate global warming is not a threat. There is plenty of disagreement on the details, but no one seems to be disputing the existence or danger of the phenomenon. Can anyone provide a link to any such research?
To the non-scientists out there, it's true that the peer-review process can lend a certain inertia to scientific biases. The convergence pattern on the charge of electron is pretty canonical example. Rather than approaching the current level of accuracy from both above an below, it approached routinely from above. Scientists tended to introduce a bias towards the initially (too high) measured value. It's not dishonesty... it's a fact that scientists have to discard bad data sometimes, and sometimes it becomes questionable whether you are discarding bad data or introducing bias to get publishable results. That said, well documented, well researched science will get published even if it violates the existing consensus. That's how we get scientific progress. So while the system has flaws, it works pretty well, and I certainly can't come up with a better idea. As another point, in any active area of research, it's unusual to get the kind of consensus one sees in global warming research. Scientists are a contentious lot, and our jobs boil down to questioning assumptions. So the fact that such a strong agreement exists should tell you something.
Beyond scientific consensus, which is of course often wrong (that's why we get scientific progress), there exist other criteria to evaluate a theory's merit: prediction. A good theory predicts verifiable events or behaviors. I first started reading predictions coming from global warming theory back in the early eighties. Every year now I read about events verifying these predictions. So far, fortunately, only the non-cataclysmic predictions have been verified. This indicates that the theory is not too bad, as many predictions have been successfully verified. It is of course true that the environment is a hugely complex system, and it's possible that important factors were neglected when making relevant simulations and predictions. The question we need to ask ourselves is: do we really want to keep testing the theory to see if the catastrophic ones are also true? I for one vote no.
There is no downside to researching, studying and working to counter global warming. There are many common sense steps that can be taken to mitigate the problem that will in the end improve our quality of life, even if the catastrophic predictions are false (something I again don't care to verify except in simulation). Reducing emissions is a wonderful idea. Do we need hummers? Lets make smaller, quieter, more efficient vehicles. When we can let's cycle and walk or use trains. Replace all of your light bulbs with energy saving bulbs. Raise awareness. Give gifts of energy saving bulbs to your reticent friends, colleagues, family. If it's practical for you, install a solar water heater in your
I have played a few mmorpg's. I only stuck with WoW for a couple months. I enjoyed City of Heroes for several months, largely because I'm a bit of a comic geek, but eventually I got tired of the grind.
What I did enjoy quite a lot was Guild Wars, largely due to the strong story, and the cinematic cut scenes, but I haven't played either of the 2 follow up games yet (bough factions, but haven't played it so much).
Maybe there's the right game out there for me somewhere, and I'm happy to hear people's suggestions. I think one problem I've had is having a hard time finding a good group of online friends to play with. I did have a nice group of friends on Guild Wars, but once the campaign was finished we all just drifted. With CoH they all drifted away eventually to WoW. I mention this to provide a little background for the suggestions I am about to make:
1) CoH did a fantastic job on the team finding interface, and I wish other developers would look to if for inspiration. Being able to click "looking for a team", and search lists of people by class, rank, etc. is just so much more convenient that global chat spamming.
2) Too often (and CoH is guilty of this) the admins try to stop people from grinding or power leveling. I think this is an overly negative approach. If people want to do the grind, screw it: let them play how they enjoy playing. Instead of punishing people for power leveling, encourage people to play for the story. Do this by making the rest of the gameplay experience, and especially the story and role playing elements more rewarding. CoH annoyed me because it tried to keep people playing with badges, costume rewards, other stuff I don't care about at all, and all of which are essential grind rewarders. I want stories! They can even be mediocre. Give me a comic book showing the highlights of a particular battle (just some screenshot of a characters dying, decisive battle moments, etc. plus some cheesy text. Even done badly this would be fun). Let me share those with people instead of stupid badges, which are just another kind of XP.
The power levelers and grinders are only annoying when you get in a team with them. The problem isn't grinders though, it's a problem of forming good and compatible teams. Look at CoH's team forming tools. Maybe try adding some personality modifiers like "choose one of the following: a) I just wanna level, b) I wanna role play, c)want a friendly chatty team".
What about a rating system, for after you team with someone. I think two ratings would be useful: 1) Is a team player (0-100), 2) Is competent. Granted that's open to abuse and problems... What I'm really trying to say TRY SOME NEW IDEAS FOR CHRISSAKES.
One final point in this vein: If the missions are story oriented and interesting enough, there's a strong motivation (except for the total grinder geeks, and let them do what they like) not to just grind or do power levelling, for if you do you just miss interesting content. 3) The cut scenes in Guild Wars are a great idea. They make the gaming much more story oriented. They don't all have to be pre-rendered. I think coh would have (and could still be) greatly improved by having a short cut scene to wrap up major story arcs, task forces, etc (not every small mission, but whenever doing a larger story). I think a approach might be to have the camera zoom in to the character (villain or npc) doing the talking, but allow players to zoom back out or wander off and ignore the guy if they want.
4) Good admins are really important, and they should have a number of tools at their disposal to keep the community running well. Keeping your admins in line is also important so there has to be an appeal process. But admins should be active (but judicious) in keeping the community smoothly running. For example, forcing people to use the trade chat channel when trading, and not using the global chat. Get good admins, and reward them appropriately. Consider it an expense of running a good game
Boy, I just want to say, and I suppose this is opinion, that there just isn't a less ethically sound job than marketing. Marketing is really the root of all evil. If all the marketers in the world commited mass suicide, the world would be a much better place.
I'm not exagerating my views here. What do marketers do? They convince people to want or need things that they otherwise don't want or need. It's one of the roots of the wasteful consumer culture that's consuming the planet and our souls. Thanks to the constant bombardment of advertising (in obvious and hidden forms) it takes tremendous amounts of effort not to get sucked into the "if I can just have that, or if I can just make that much more money... then I'll be happy". Wealth wealth above all else!
Not only that, but marketing is the fly in the free market theory ointment. Free market theory, which so many people in Slashdot like to comment on off-topic and ad nauseum, relies on the assumption of a well informed marketplace, where the market purchases the best products based on complete information. But marketing is exactly the opposite of informing your consumer. Marketing is the art of lying to the consumer, of illiciting a non rational emotional response from the consumer in order to override the consumers rational thought and purchase a certain product, regardless of pre-existing need, use, desire, or the existance of a better solution. Pick the first ad you see... how much real information is in there, and how much exploitation of human foibles? Marketing is one of the primary forces keeping us from evolving as a society.
Porn on the other hand helps deal with sexual frustration, is fun, and can (when done well) be a positive celebration of human sexuality. Really great porn can give you and your sexual partner(s) fun ideas. Ok, I agree, a good chunk of porn is kinda creepy, but the solution is to try to buy and make good fun porn. So if you want to make the world a better place, quit your marketing job and get into porn! Chant the mantra: "porn good, marketing bad. porn good, marketing bad... "
Marketing porn is also evil.
arg, hit submit by accident. Wanted to say it reminds me of the trilateral commission's "The Crisis of Democracy", whos thesis was basically 'we have a crisis: too much democracy'. All these previously obediant masses, like women and blacks, are demanding things like equal rights and better government representation.
remind's me of the report by the trilateral commission http://www.trilateral.org/projwork/tfrsums/tfr08.h tmThe Crisis of Democracy"
Is this true? I had the impression that the 911 terrorists had valid ID, but I haven't read the 911 commssion report...
Can somone point me to some information confirming or disproving this assertion?
Again, I dont know or understand how this process works. If the tech works like the article describes (which shouldn't be assumed since the mass media does a crap job of representing scientific research since they don't employ enough people with science backgrounds)... but anyway, if it works as described, there would be no radiation, or at least no significant radiation (remember we're talking about whether or not you would absorb radiation on the level being transferred for power, not radiation on the level of your cell phone). Through a process I don't understand they are relying on coupled radiator and transmitter. So as soon as you step in between the source and receiver, no more radiation.
Now, there may be a limit on how instantaneous that process is, governed by the speed of light (not necesarily though, I'd really have to know more about the physics involved), but that's anyway pretty irrelevant, since the speed of light is goddamn fast at human scales. If the process is instantaneous to about the order of the speed of light, which would be a likely assumption based on the claims of the article, you woudn't absorb squat. Maybe the same amout of radiation you get just by being alive for a couple of seconds. Depending on how the coupling works, and the wavelength of the radiation, might be effectively zero.
co-resonate was my word, not theirs, which leads me to believe you didn't bother reading the article. So you didn't even bother to read popularized BBC description of what's happening. From the article
Without doing some real work I can't explain the process better, because I don't understand the process well enough. I work in a very closely related field, but I'd still have to spend a few hours reading to understand. So it's entirely forgiveable that you don't understand how it works or how it can be safe. I don't either. But I apparently have a lot better idea of how much I don't understand than you do. Not surprising, since understanding the limits of ones knowledge is vital to conducting research.So briefly, no, the artile would give the impression that absorbtion, particularly by humans, wouldn't be a problem. How accurate that impression is would have to be tested of course, but labs and software exist for that kind of thing.
The vaporware tag is bogus because this is basic research and no one is claiming that it is more than that. Scientists always describe potential applications for their research subjects because this is 1) interesting and 2) necessary for getting funding. At the moment they are just running simulations to show the feasibility. It's nonsense to claim research is vaporware. Research increases our understanding of the universe, and often leads to useful products. In this case the chance that it leads to a useful product seems to me very high, although it might only be in the form of providing power to, for example, microchips...
If I had mod points, I'd mod you up.
Without more research, I can't say how well that works, but if it does what the article says it does, the power would not be radiating unless it was coupled with the receiver. This would mean that should you absorbe the radiation, there would be no more radiation. It might sound like voodoo physics, but not necessarily. Again, I'd have to look at something more technical before making comment. But the guys at MIT rarely publish bullshit.
Speaking of which, what moron tagged this 'vaporware'? It's basic research from MIT for chrissakes. That has nothing to do with vaporware.
Even if it had happened by accident, which it didn't, the monopoly would be harmful. Microsoft could have attempted to be a benign monopoly, and set things up so that other people could at least compete with them on NEW APPLICATIONS, but they don't even do that. They set things up so whatever becomes the next big thing, they are in a position to dominate it, because it's so damn hard to get interoperability information from them. And it's getting worse with Vista. It's not enough that they have the incredibly huge advantage of their monstrous cash flow and brand recognition, not to mention the expertise of the programmers who developed their software in the first place. No, they have to result to tactics which are plainly and openly illegal, preferring instead to subvert democratic processes. It blows my mind that people defend them.
I want to propose a new figure of speech, and I want credit for it: The "Microsoft Syndrome". Like the Stockholm syndrome, where victims of a kidnapping begin to sympathize with their kidnappers, the Microsoft Syndrome describes that process where victims of a corporate monopoly are so brainwased by that monopoly's marketing they sympathise with and defend them.
You're confusing two issues here, that of excessive state power, and that of Microsoft's monopoly.
I consider it a truism that "that government governs best which governs least", and I suspect we are in agreement on that. However this is not the same thing as "... which governs not at all". Government, and in particular democratic institutions, are vital tools in protecting the public from the ravishes of private power. Of course if a government takes too much power for itself, and in particular if a government becomes too unanswerable to its people, this is harmful. But if you think about it, it's the same thing as public power being usurped by, or transformed into, private power. It's also true that on occasion the masses can behave very badly indeed, leading to abuses of public power, but let's face it, these are far less common than abuses of private power.
But, NONE of that applies in this case. In this case Microsoft is incredibly harmful and belligerent monopoly which has been egriously and criminally abusing it's monopoly powers. It has been convicted of monopoly abuse in the united states, but took advantage of our unfortunately weakened and corrupt democracy (c'mon guys, lets try to make it better! no I'm not being facetious!), and had the charges dropped by donating vast sums of money to the most corrupt presidential campaign ever. Their practices are bad for IT, they are bad for the consumer, and they are bad for the EU, and through some mechanism I don't understand, they were unable to buy off the EU. Go figure.
In short, this is a case of public power acting to keep private power in check. In other words, it is one of those rare and beautiful cases of democracy doing what it should do. I have no doubt that there are a bunch of corrupt bastards involved in the process who are motivated by greed, but it doesn't change the fact that what they are doing is good. It's good in many ways. They wan't Microsoft to open their API's. This wouldn't hurt Microsoft's OS business at all, and probably won't hamper their Office suite business at all. It will however weaken their ability to abuse their monopoly. Great! Perfect! It also will make it easier for open source developer and small business to do innovative things. Wonderful! Finally, they are saying to Microsoft "look, we're a bunch of old Europeans, and we are used to dealing with abuses of power. But you have to exersize a modicum of discretion in these things". About time!
I always worry when seriously responding to these kinds of posts is the poster is just astroturfing. But I suppose it's most necessary in thos cases to resond...
Of course you are correct, and I apologize if I gave the impression this is what I was saying. Hell, I'm using the internet aren't I? As a researcher myself, I'm perfectly aware how much great research and development comes out of defense spending. It's an issue I do find lamentable, leaving physicists across their country scratching their heads and thinking "now how can I sell this idea as having defense applications?" while writing grant applications. It's why practically all the papers I read say 'has applications towards quantum computing and quantum cryptography'. My point it there's a huge financial and PR incentive to finding ways to sell nuclear power, which then has benefits for the nuclear defense industry. And at that point it becomes all about money and influence, not about research or what's good for the american people or the environment. In other words, I mentioned it to call into question the reliabilty of the 'standard line' on the subject.
As to your comment addressing the issues of uranium mining, of course techniques can be used to clean up the process. But how energy and (more importantly) cost effecient is that? And how tightly is it regulated. Ten years ago when I researched the subject for my own interest, I found that most Uranium mining was being done in poor brown skinned countries, because there you didn't have to give a shit who you poisoned downstream. I might be in the minority, but I find this unnaceptable. Whether it's a deal breaker for me depends, much as with the waste issue, on how well regulated the industry is. I can certainly say with the current administration in power, I feel uncomfortable with all aspects of nuclear power production. I would want environmental and work safety standards stiffened, and applied to all areas in the chain of production, even to poor brown skinned parts.
I wasn't trying to make a hardline against nuclear power. I just think it bears more scrutiny than most proponent choose to exercise. And I don't trust the institutions which govern the process. Especially in American, I'd like to see the whole system overhauled.
Well this is a philosophical difference, and probably impossible for us to resolve in this forum. I'm a scientist (I am doing my phd on FDTD simulation of optical systems, concentrating on optical computing), so I'm not anti technology. But I read a lot of history, and I don't like modern culture. I very much dislike modern American culture, which is overly influenced by PR firms and madison avenue. The wasteful american lifestyle serves them very well, so the cultural feedback we receive tends to reinforce this lifestyle. We consider it somehow sacrelidgous to fight against the overwhelming spirit of the age, which is "wealth, wealth, above all else". So naturally my feelings influence my interpretation of things.
My vew is that technological development has outpaced cultural development, and this has lead to severe problems. For example, we have plenty of food, but we have one section of the globe is dying from obesity, while another section starves. This isn't a technological problem. I don't think the damage to the environment is a technological problem either. As technology advances, so to does the degree to which we can affect our environment. I think we can agree on that: technology gives us power over nature. We can use this power drunkly, and ignore the har
vi, emacs, ls, grep, yacc, lex, tex... hella lot of the code is ancient.
Maybe you mean a 27 year old binary? It would be pretty difficult to find a 27 year old binary in the Gnu world, since it's easier to just recompile the binary for whatever system the binary is supposed to run on. Before decrying 'but that's too much hassle for a user' remember: This doesn't have to be done by an end user. I use a all of the above software, and whole lot more, without ever having recompiled the stuff. I installed it all in an automated installation procedure that was easily as comfortable as any Microsoft has ever given me. At the moment this work is being done by dedicated volunteers and a few professionals, but the results are as reliable as those in the windows world, and it's likely that this will change as free software gains more commercial acceptance and investment. It's pretty rare in the free software world for a project of any size to completely stop being maintained. As long as someone is willing to pay a little for support, or (more often the case) if one or more of the users is an enthusiast, the project will continue.
In the commercial software world, it becomes very important that a binary continue to run becuase the source is not available. It can and does happen that some wonderful piece of software gets completely orphaned, becuase the company went out of business (often becuase it could not compete with Microsoft). The users of that application better hope that their binary continues to run on whatever machines they get in the future, because they simply have no alternative. If it stops running, they have to switch to some new software. If the software they are replacing involves story any large amounts of data in some proprietary format, they're in for a tough job... in the worst case paying people for manual data entry. In fact I watched precisely that happen a couple of times while working as a DBA for Reuters. In both those cases, has the software, or at least the data storage format, been free and open, it would have been much cheaper and less effort to pay a programmer to make the necessary changes and recompile.
There are a few lessons to be learned for library writers: Whenever possible write backwards compatible library interfaces. But for the most part this is done pretty well. People rarely change library interfaces without good reason, the code maintainers of reliant projects are responsible to either maintaining access to old libraries, or updating their calls.
I have serious problems with nuclear power, but I'd be interested in any real facts that might address my problems. It's been ten years since I investigated the issue, so maybe some advances have been made.
I don't consider nuclear reactors terribly risky, my main problem comes from pollution. I'm also not particularly worried about a nuclear plant being in my backyard.
The original push for nuclear power was mostly motivated by the defense industry. It provided a good smokescreen and a friendly motivation with which to spin all of the research and development into nuclear fuels, most of which was of interest to the so called defense department. Because of this, I have a hard time believing the official line on nuclear power, which isn't really motivated by power concerns.
From what I understand, obtaining the fuel for nuclear reactors involves a lot of mining and purifying of uranium ore. Ten years ago this process was causing a lot of low grade radioactive waste to be washing down river into people's drinking water. Since this was occuring mostly in undeveloped countries full of brown skinned people, it didn't register much in the mainstream media. Can this process be done cleanly and harmlessly?
I also find the long term pollutants generated by nuclear fission quite threatening. It seems to me we are essentially screwing future generation, taking our environmental problems and foisting them on them, plus interest. Of course, if this is the only alternative to killing us all off now, well, maybe that's preferable. But it isn't the only alternative. It might be that it's the only alternative which allows us to keep our current lifestyles, economic models, and power structure. God forbid anything threaten those!
I talked to some knowledgeable and rational people about clean coal. I didn't take technical notes, but the consensus was it's not really clean yet. It may indeed be worth investigating further, but yes, it doesn't address the carbon problem.
Me, I don't think the issue is that hard to solve. My impression is the problem is essentially a product of a bunch of short sighted, lazy and greedy consumers, greedy and powerful energy lobbies, and corrupt politicians. By combining some sane energy reduction techniques, reducing population (in fact, I think we should be globally pursuing negative population growth), and using carbon neutral energy sources, the problems can be solved. In the last twenty years tremendous advances have been made in producing clean energy, and this despite very poor investment in research. If we were spending as much money on research of alternative energy sources and efficiency technologies as we spend on violence to secure oil sources (or even as much as the energy companies spend on lobbying and public relations to keep the current power structure), we could expect much more.
In fact I've been doing some research on this recently. It seems that solar has finally reached the point where it's net energy positive, and seems to be reaching the point where it's even economically benevolent for the user. My girlfriend's small swiss farm, which is currently an energy consumer, could, using a combination of solar heating for the water and biomass fuel, become an energy producer. All using current technology and with less than 30,000 swiss franks investment. I'm looking into the practicality of a windmill or two as well.
Ideally I'd like to see a more decentralized power scheme. Everyone should have solar cells (either for heat via water, or to produce electricy, or both) on the roofs. As more people purchase, economics of scale will kick in and it will become cheaper and more efficient, thanks the additional research capitol. Farmers can produce biomass fuel. Corn for ethanol and wood for heating are popular, but hemp should be more efficient. Homes need to be well insulated, and tax incentives applied to encourage people to make their homes more efficient. Stop air conditioning buildings to the poi