step with up to the lever voting machine and my vote is recorded and verifiable.
How do you know your vote is "recorded and verifiable" with a lever voting machine? I thought that one of the problems with those units--as with the touchscreen systems--was the lack of any post-election paper trail.
I just happen to be messing with a plug-in electricity meter...
$1.19 =... 40 seconds
Admit it. You're just boasting. You wanted us to all know that you've got two big honking monitors, and you're getting paid $107 per hour to screw around with an electric meter.
Seriously... they get all the advantages of an orbital telescope like the hubble plus all the stability of a terrestrial platform.
Well, almost all. There are a couple of difficulties with respect to pointing. Even under a sixth of normal gravity, you still need a much beefier structure to rigidly support a telescope on the Moon, compared to the same object in space. Particularly when the direction of that gravitational force changes as you tilt the telescope to follow objects.
In principle, you could build a space telescope of hundreds of meters in diameter, and it wouldn't sag. You'd have to brace it a bit for aiming motions, but you can do those at a hundredth of a gee, not a sixth--and the stress is off again once you're aimed.
For a really big telescope, that's another advantage of being in space--you don't have to move it while imaging. Point it, and it keeps looking at the same object for as long as you want to integrate. On the Moon, you have to track objects across the sky.
The ESA's Darwin project proposes a free-flying array of six(!) 1.5 meter telescopes up to five hundred meters apart, with their relative positions controlled to within micrometers to do optical interferometry. They want to be able to do things like 40 day exposures to measure the spectra of extrasolar planets and possibly detect life. I don't mean to suggest that such a facility isn't possible on the Moon, but assembling and reconfiguring it (if necessary) is probably a lot easier in space where you don't have to pour concrete foundations.
Now I am going to get pummled by Mods I know:) I see my comments go up and down from +4 to +0 in the course of a single hour as Slashdot is overwhelminingly a left-wing Noam Chomsky echo chamber...
This may, possibly, have something to do with prefacing your remarks with a tacit invitation to flamewar?
Actually, this is rather the point Jon Stewart was trying to make. Modern news/talk/interview programs very seldom engage in the actual debate that is so important to a functional political process. Shows like Crossfire epitomize the problem. In lieu of debate, one sees screaming heads parroting party-line talking points and engaging in as much intellectual dishonesty and name-calling as they think they can get away with.
If you get past the fact that Jon Stewart leans to the left and actually listen to what he said, you might find that you agree with him--he genuinely seems to believe in vigorous, honest debate, and he rightly calls the partisan hacks on Crossfire on their own lack of depth, substance, or independent thought.
Off the top of my head, i'd say that once carbon-nanotube based materials are practical, the world will become pretty hungry for *any* source of carbon at a concentration higher than what's present in the atmosphere. The trick is taking something like CO2 and turning it into graphite or something else more readily useful for industry.
The problem is CO2 is a very stable molecule. We smack into a thermodynamic barrier pretty quickly. Why do we have carbon dioxide to dispose of? We burned carbon rich materials to release energy as heat.
How much energy will it take to turn that CO2 back into industrially useful things like pure carbon (coal), or hydrocarbons (oil), or some such? Just as much as we got out of burning it in the first place, plus a little more for inefficiencies in the process.
Carbon is not hard to get hold of. There's gobs of it on our planet, and its easier to get from a lot of other sources besides extraction from CO2.
If we have to keep burning liquid or solid fuels, use ones that are not long-term carbon sinks like fossil fuels. Switch to ethanol or other biomass-sourced fuels--the carbon they contain came out of the air already, and can be cycled indefinitely through plants and back to fuel. It's a solar-powered system.
Definitely! If you've ever been on a protest in the UK then see how you like it when a policeman starts jamming camcorders at you and efficiently recording everyone's faces. They especially zoom in on anyone who is particularly vocal. And they are conspicuously overt in doing so.
I thought that the whole point of a protest was to be seen. There's no point to protesting if the target doesn't notice you've done anything. My understanding is that most protesters are very keen to be seen, recorded, and rebroadcast by the mainstream media, bloggers, tourists, and whomever else happens to be about. Saying "I'm going to go out in a public place, make a lot of noice, march about, and wave signs--but I only want some people to videotape me doing it!" seems a tad disingenuous.
The police pay particular attention to the most "vocal" individuals? Well, no surprise there. That's who everyone else is paying attention to as well. People with megaphones tend to attract one's notice, whether you want them to or not. Indeed, that's presumably their goal.
Is it police intimidation to record a protest? It's an interesting question. There's an argument that having a record of attendees at a large gathering--and particularly of the most vocal leaders--is good police practice in the event that something untoward does happen.
If you're at a protest or rally, then you shouldn't be doing anything illegal that will be caught on tape. Chanting, speaking, and waving signs are all generally legitimate, legal practices. If you're leading a group and encouraging them all to do something illegal, you probably should be recorded and charged. Take your lumps like a man. Civil disobedience involves facing the risk of punishment. Gandhi did it.
Police bringing cameras to a protest "intimidates" protestors in the same way that a cop on the corner intimidates pedestrians. It inconveniences you if you want to smash a window; otherwise it is--or should be--moot.
Being on government subversive files can become a health hazard.
Historically and in some countries this has been the case. Is there evidence to support this statement now, in Britain?
For example, in the district I'm running in, there are 110,000 voters (plus who knows how many new ones?).
My website draws maybe 100 hits on a good day.
Even if I got that hit rate for an entire year, and even if we assumed they were all hits from people in my district, that would still leave over 95% of the voters who didn't bother to check it out.
(365 days) * (100 hits per day) = 36,500 hits = ~30% of the district.
Actually, you don't need very many people to read your site. You just need community opinion leaders (I use the term very loosely) to pick up the key points and spread them around at the water cooler. Honestly, a lot of people don't do any research into who they vote for beyond talking to their buddies. If you can get one in twenty people to start enthusiastically spreading around your talking points, then you're in really good shape.
You're also running Green in the right place--people aren't going to send Green politicians to Washington until they've had a chance to test them out at the state level, first. (Until then, federal Green candidates are just giving Republicans seats.)
A bit short-sighted though. What about on-call people: doctors, firemen, EMTs, network engineers, broadcast engineers, etc. We who carry cells and/or pagers for work nearly always remember to set them to vibrate... but they have to be on vibrate - they can't just "not get a call".
This is where common sense kicks in. Even live performers will tolerate a pager vibrating, as long as you're sitting near the back of the hall. Take a seat on the aisle, so you're not climbing over other people if you're called away. If at all possible, wait for a suitable break in the performance to leave.
There are very few jobs for which a person is required to be on-call 24/7 for the entire year. Physicians and EMTs often have at least some time (alternate weekends, or one weekend a month, or something similar) where they are not on call. Plan to attend live performances at these times. Network/broadcast engineer? Haven't you got an assistant? Somebody trained to fill in if you're deathly ill or on vacation? If not, your employer is being dreadfully negligent, wouldn't you say?
Attending a play, or the orchestra, or the opera isn't a right. If an individual can't attend without disturbing members of the audience or--worse--the performers, then perhaps he or she should find alternate entertainment. If you're on call for a job, that is an obligation for which you are being (or should be being) compensated--whether explicitly, or as part of your salary. In exchange for that, you do have to sacrifice some freedom. Remember, it could be worse. It wasn't so many years ago that on-call doctors had to leave a landline number where they could be reached at all times.
In light of the Leonard Law, though, this interpretation seems illegal. Students' right to gather in public areas off-campus to advocate for John Kerry is constitutionally protected, and the Leonard Law extends that right onto campus.
It could be argued that as soon as the University permitted a partisan group to use its phone lines, it was moving beyond merely allowing free expression. It could be construed as directly supporting a partisan cause, which is something they're forbidden to do under other California law. (As the editorial writer notes, they cannot support partisan activities and retain their 501c3 nonprofit status.)
The University wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they were to interfere with a public protest, or a political rally, or students distributing pamphlets on campus. Making facilities available for partisan telemarketing...it's a very interesting legal question. The school would definitely be on the wrong side of the law if they let pamphleteers photocopy campaign material for free--is giving free use of the phones in the same category? Where is the line drawn with respect to what constitutes 'support' for partisan activities?
The students here shouldn't be protesting the University's decision. They should be protesting the California tax code. Or, possibly, they should be using their own telephones. As has been said on Slashdot so many times before, the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech. It does not guarantee an audience, nor does it compel anyone else to pay for your soapbox.
The usual disclaimers apply to my post: I am not a lawyer; I am a Canadian; I have lived and worked in the United States (in Indiana--I was a Hoser Hoosier, if you will.)
The "other side" tends to be people like me - informed scientists...
Normally I leave alone the qualifications of individuals on Slashdot. I preserve a separation between my Slashdot and my meatspace identity; consequently I avoid as much as possible arguing from a position of authority even on areas where I am very knowledgeable (radiation physics, molecular biology, and physical chemistry) and back my remarks about science with citations (peer-reviewed wherever available in a quick PubMed search). If I refer to myself as a scientist, I make that claim only where my knowledge, training, and research are applicable to the question at hand.
It troubles me greatly to see someone claiming to be a 'scientist' and using that to support the credibility of an argument without indicating any sort of qualifications. From what I gather of the parent poster's qualifications, his area of expertise is computer science--a long step away from climatology.
Imagine you're at the scene of a car accident. A man lies bleeding on the ground. A strong, confident voice rises above the crowd, and a dignified gentleman steps forward.
"I am a doctor. How may I be of assistance?" Relief! Heavens be praised!
"Doctor, what should we do to help this man?"
"Damned if I know. I teach C# to whiny undergrads. I'm just a PhD."
Feel free to express a lay opinion on Slashdot. Don't pretend to be an expert and cloak yourself in the term 'scientist' unless you deserve it.
Driver's licenses are the only uniform photo ID issued in the US.
Driver's licences are decidedly nonuniform. They vary significantly from state to state. The information that they contain, the security features, the size, shape, colour...
The only uniform photo ID issued in the US is a passport. Noncitizens can't get them, which is inconvenient from the standpoint of using them as a universal ID--but driver's licences aren't available to everyone either. They can't be acquired by people under a certain age (which varies by state) or people unable to drive (due to medical disqualificaion or plain lack of coordination.)
In the niche market that you describe, it very well might be cheaper to buy a boat and hire a taxi on the mainland, than to own and maintain a flying car. (You don't want to be in a situation where you need "roadside" assistance--I suspect that the enhanced reliability and more frequent preventive maintenance will be costly indeed.) In any conditions that you wouldn't want to take a small boat out, you probably wouldn't want to try the trip in your flying car either.
Small hovercraft also come to mind as a possible solution in this situation.
Maybe an amphibious vehicle would be appropriate. Those have been tried before, though with limited commercial success.
I fear that any vehicle that can operate on regular roads and fly will probably do a half-assed job at both, and the market will always be a tiny niche--a toy for the wealthy. Such vehicles may have some military potential, though the military already has helicopters which do the job in most situations. Unless entirely new technologies for flight are developed (stuff that we don't even know about now--techniques to build Back To The Future-style hoverboards and the like) I just don't think there ever will be a "practical flying car for the masses". The masses don't need it, can't afford it, and would hurt themselves and others if they had it.
The Soyuz-U booster has been in use for more then 30 years, with something like 700 launches behind it, and a success rate of better than 97% It's not exactly novel, untested technology.
I suspect it's the most-flown orbital booster in the world, though I could be wrong on that. I think there's a difference between a booster with hundreds of flights and a relatively untested private vehicle. For the latter, I think I'd want to see something bound by at least a few safety regulations.
I'm not going to deny that there are certain industries that require regulation. But I would say that this is an industry that requires no regulation at this point in time.
I presume that the parent believes that this is an industry that likely will require regulation in the future, correct?
If organizations like the FAA start thinking about this stuff now, rather than five years from now when Virgin Galactic wants to start putting rockets in the air, then there might actually be a cohesive, comprehensible regulatory framework in place by the time it is needed.
If they start drafting regs now, there's less hurry, more opportunity for consultation, and everyone gets to know the ground (ha!) rules before they pour a ton of money into projects that would otherwise run afoul of the law.
In this case, regulation is a good thing--there's a reason why air travel is safer per mile than driving.
Or am I making some gross, embarassing error in my figuring?
Just one--the figures for solar radiation are daily averages, not hourly. In other words, you have incident radiation equivalent to 1.3 gallons of gasoline per day in Seattle--seven fluid ounces (200 mL) per hour.
You'll also pay a bit of a penalty for surface area because you can't put solar panels on the windshield.:D
As others have observed, PV efficiency doesn't seem likely to go much above 30 to 40 percent in the next few decades...which takes us down to three ounces of fuel per hour. Ouch.
Slashdot Mirror
How do you know your vote is "recorded and verifiable" with a lever voting machine? I thought that one of the problems with those units--as with the touchscreen systems--was the lack of any post-election paper trail.
Food for thought.
I just happen to be messing with a plug-in electricity meter...
$1.19 =... 40 seconds
Admit it. You're just boasting. You wanted us to all know that you've got two big honking monitors, and you're getting paid $107 per hour to screw around with an electric meter.
Insensitive clod!
Clippy getting a blowjob. Thanks. That's just the image I need in my mind.
Well, almost all. There are a couple of difficulties with respect to pointing. Even under a sixth of normal gravity, you still need a much beefier structure to rigidly support a telescope on the Moon, compared to the same object in space. Particularly when the direction of that gravitational force changes as you tilt the telescope to follow objects.
In principle, you could build a space telescope of hundreds of meters in diameter, and it wouldn't sag. You'd have to brace it a bit for aiming motions, but you can do those at a hundredth of a gee, not a sixth--and the stress is off again once you're aimed.
For a really big telescope, that's another advantage of being in space--you don't have to move it while imaging. Point it, and it keeps looking at the same object for as long as you want to integrate. On the Moon, you have to track objects across the sky.
The ESA's Darwin project proposes a free-flying array of six(!) 1.5 meter telescopes up to five hundred meters apart, with their relative positions controlled to within micrometers to do optical interferometry. They want to be able to do things like 40 day exposures to measure the spectra of extrasolar planets and possibly detect life. I don't mean to suggest that such a facility isn't possible on the Moon, but assembling and reconfiguring it (if necessary) is probably a lot easier in space where you don't have to pour concrete foundations.
What the Hell is a Hip-e?
These guys are so painfully behind the times that they don't even know that "e" is a prefix used to make uncool things marketable, not a suffix.
Idiots.
This may, possibly, have something to do with prefacing your remarks with a tacit invitation to flamewar?
Actually, this is rather the point Jon Stewart was trying to make. Modern news/talk/interview programs very seldom engage in the actual debate that is so important to a functional political process. Shows like Crossfire epitomize the problem. In lieu of debate, one sees screaming heads parroting party-line talking points and engaging in as much intellectual dishonesty and name-calling as they think they can get away with.
If you get past the fact that Jon Stewart leans to the left and actually listen to what he said, you might find that you agree with him--he genuinely seems to believe in vigorous, honest debate, and he rightly calls the partisan hacks on Crossfire on their own lack of depth, substance, or independent thought.
The problem is CO2 is a very stable molecule. We smack into a thermodynamic barrier pretty quickly. Why do we have carbon dioxide to dispose of? We burned carbon rich materials to release energy as heat.
How much energy will it take to turn that CO2 back into industrially useful things like pure carbon (coal), or hydrocarbons (oil), or some such? Just as much as we got out of burning it in the first place, plus a little more for inefficiencies in the process.
Carbon is not hard to get hold of. There's gobs of it on our planet, and its easier to get from a lot of other sources besides extraction from CO2.
If we have to keep burning liquid or solid fuels, use ones that are not long-term carbon sinks like fossil fuels. Switch to ethanol or other biomass-sourced fuels--the carbon they contain came out of the air already, and can be cycled indefinitely through plants and back to fuel. It's a solar-powered system.
I thought that the whole point of a protest was to be seen. There's no point to protesting if the target doesn't notice you've done anything. My understanding is that most protesters are very keen to be seen, recorded, and rebroadcast by the mainstream media, bloggers, tourists, and whomever else happens to be about. Saying "I'm going to go out in a public place, make a lot of noice, march about, and wave signs--but I only want some people to videotape me doing it!" seems a tad disingenuous.
The police pay particular attention to the most "vocal" individuals? Well, no surprise there. That's who everyone else is paying attention to as well. People with megaphones tend to attract one's notice, whether you want them to or not. Indeed, that's presumably their goal.
Is it police intimidation to record a protest? It's an interesting question. There's an argument that having a record of attendees at a large gathering--and particularly of the most vocal leaders--is good police practice in the event that something untoward does happen.
If you're at a protest or rally, then you shouldn't be doing anything illegal that will be caught on tape. Chanting, speaking, and waving signs are all generally legitimate, legal practices. If you're leading a group and encouraging them all to do something illegal, you probably should be recorded and charged. Take your lumps like a man. Civil disobedience involves facing the risk of punishment. Gandhi did it.
Police bringing cameras to a protest "intimidates" protestors in the same way that a cop on the corner intimidates pedestrians. It inconveniences you if you want to smash a window; otherwise it is--or should be--moot.
Being on government subversive files can become a health hazard.
Historically and in some countries this has been the case. Is there evidence to support this statement now, in Britain?
Dude, you give a browser a cookie.
My mouse just eats batteries.
You're not a bad organism, yourself.
My website draws maybe 100 hits on a good day.
Even if I got that hit rate for an entire year, and even if we assumed they were all hits from people in my district, that would still leave over 95% of the voters who didn't bother to check it out.
(365 days) * (100 hits per day) = 36,500 hits = ~30% of the district.
Actually, you don't need very many people to read your site. You just need community opinion leaders (I use the term very loosely) to pick up the key points and spread them around at the water cooler. Honestly, a lot of people don't do any research into who they vote for beyond talking to their buddies. If you can get one in twenty people to start enthusiastically spreading around your talking points, then you're in really good shape.
You're also running Green in the right place--people aren't going to send Green politicians to Washington until they've had a chance to test them out at the state level, first. (Until then, federal Green candidates are just giving Republicans seats.)
This is where common sense kicks in. Even live performers will tolerate a pager vibrating, as long as you're sitting near the back of the hall. Take a seat on the aisle, so you're not climbing over other people if you're called away. If at all possible, wait for a suitable break in the performance to leave.
There are very few jobs for which a person is required to be on-call 24/7 for the entire year. Physicians and EMTs often have at least some time (alternate weekends, or one weekend a month, or something similar) where they are not on call. Plan to attend live performances at these times. Network/broadcast engineer? Haven't you got an assistant? Somebody trained to fill in if you're deathly ill or on vacation? If not, your employer is being dreadfully negligent, wouldn't you say?
Attending a play, or the orchestra, or the opera isn't a right. If an individual can't attend without disturbing members of the audience or--worse--the performers, then perhaps he or she should find alternate entertainment. If you're on call for a job, that is an obligation for which you are being (or should be being) compensated--whether explicitly, or as part of your salary. In exchange for that, you do have to sacrifice some freedom. Remember, it could be worse. It wasn't so many years ago that on-call doctors had to leave a landline number where they could be reached at all times.
It could be argued that as soon as the University permitted a partisan group to use its phone lines, it was moving beyond merely allowing free expression. It could be construed as directly supporting a partisan cause, which is something they're forbidden to do under other California law. (As the editorial writer notes, they cannot support partisan activities and retain their 501c3 nonprofit status.)
The University wouldn't have a leg to stand on if they were to interfere with a public protest, or a political rally, or students distributing pamphlets on campus. Making facilities available for partisan telemarketing...it's a very interesting legal question. The school would definitely be on the wrong side of the law if they let pamphleteers photocopy campaign material for free--is giving free use of the phones in the same category? Where is the line drawn with respect to what constitutes 'support' for partisan activities?
The students here shouldn't be protesting the University's decision. They should be protesting the California tax code. Or, possibly, they should be using their own telephones. As has been said on Slashdot so many times before, the First Amendment guarantees the right to free speech. It does not guarantee an audience, nor does it compel anyone else to pay for your soapbox.
The usual disclaimers apply to my post: I am not a lawyer; I am a Canadian; I have lived and worked in the United States (in Indiana--I was a Hoser Hoosier, if you will.)
Normally I leave alone the qualifications of individuals on Slashdot. I preserve a separation between my Slashdot and my meatspace identity; consequently I avoid as much as possible arguing from a position of authority even on areas where I am very knowledgeable (radiation physics, molecular biology, and physical chemistry) and back my remarks about science with citations (peer-reviewed wherever available in a quick PubMed search). If I refer to myself as a scientist, I make that claim only where my knowledge, training, and research are applicable to the question at hand.
It troubles me greatly to see someone claiming to be a 'scientist' and using that to support the credibility of an argument without indicating any sort of qualifications. From what I gather of the parent poster's qualifications, his area of expertise is computer science--a long step away from climatology.
Feel free to express a lay opinion on Slashdot. Don't pretend to be an expert and cloak yourself in the term 'scientist' unless you deserve it.I call BS. If you really believed in the One True Cause, you would have written,
Waers f te wrd TE!
Yeah. Now it goes to eleven.
Steal what?
It rather depends on what the RFID contains. If it's just a name and address, that's not exactly difficult information to find anyway....
Driver's licences are decidedly nonuniform. They vary significantly from state to state. The information that they contain, the security features, the size, shape, colour...
The only uniform photo ID issued in the US is a passport. Noncitizens can't get them, which is inconvenient from the standpoint of using them as a universal ID--but driver's licences aren't available to everyone either. They can't be acquired by people under a certain age (which varies by state) or people unable to drive (due to medical disqualificaion or plain lack of coordination.)
Bah! The parent was just looking for an opportunity to flaunt his obscenely small UID.
Small hovercraft also come to mind as a possible solution in this situation.
Maybe an amphibious vehicle would be appropriate. Those have been tried before, though with limited commercial success.
I fear that any vehicle that can operate on regular roads and fly will probably do a half-assed job at both, and the market will always be a tiny niche--a toy for the wealthy. Such vehicles may have some military potential, though the military already has helicopters which do the job in most situations. Unless entirely new technologies for flight are developed (stuff that we don't even know about now--techniques to build Back To The Future-style hoverboards and the like) I just don't think there ever will be a "practical flying car for the masses". The masses don't need it, can't afford it, and would hurt themselves and others if they had it.
The Soyuz-U booster has been in use for more then 30 years, with something like 700 launches behind it, and a success rate of better than 97% It's not exactly novel, untested technology.
I suspect it's the most-flown orbital booster in the world, though I could be wrong on that. I think there's a difference between a booster with hundreds of flights and a relatively untested private vehicle. For the latter, I think I'd want to see something bound by at least a few safety regulations.
I presume that the parent believes that this is an industry that likely will require regulation in the future, correct?
If organizations like the FAA start thinking about this stuff now, rather than five years from now when Virgin Galactic wants to start putting rockets in the air, then there might actually be a cohesive, comprehensible regulatory framework in place by the time it is needed.
If they start drafting regs now, there's less hurry, more opportunity for consultation, and everyone gets to know the ground (ha!) rules before they pour a ton of money into projects that would otherwise run afoul of the law.
In this case, regulation is a good thing--there's a reason why air travel is safer per mile than driving.
Just one--the figures for solar radiation are daily averages, not hourly. In other words, you have incident radiation equivalent to 1.3 gallons of gasoline per day in Seattle--seven fluid ounces (200 mL) per hour.
You'll also pay a bit of a penalty for surface area because you can't put solar panels on the windshield. :D
As others have observed, PV efficiency doesn't seem likely to go much above 30 to 40 percent in the next few decades...which takes us down to three ounces of fuel per hour. Ouch.
They're too busy running down corrupt wizards?
Does anyone else find that name really, really, funny?
Never mind. I need more coffee.