It seems to me that the energy utilities need to restructure their billing. I suggest dividing it into two parts, one of which is related to the need to pay for infrastructure maintenance and expansion, while the other is related to the energy they sell. The first part could be charged to every customer equally. The second would depend on energy usage. In places where the customers can sell energy to the utilities, the most reasonable answer was devised and implemented in various places years ago: Just install a second meter and think of the energy company as a middleman. You can't sell to the middleman at the same price you buy from him --and when you are a customer selling energy to the utility, you are essentially selling it to some other customer of the middleman. It would make sense for your sales price of energy to be equivalent to what the utility pays to generate it.
I should have specified a longer-term history than just the past few years. Here is a nice long and detailed list. Enron, for example, and the recent banking-crisis-caused Recession, are Republican scandals, because they have never been interested in making sure businesses do honest dealings, and they block Democrat attempts for such oversight at every opportunity. (It is possible that the Democrats want to over-do it, but History shows we need more than Zero oversight, of business dealings.) Attempts to repeal the Clean Air Act is a Republican scandal (they don't care if they poison more millions of people with air pollution). Nixon was a Republican scandal. Reagan and Eisenhower weren't, but their underlings most certainly were scandalous. Attempts to reduce the Minimum Wage is a Republican scandal (millions of people are already living from paycheck-to-paycheck, and they want to make the situation worse?). Attempts to increase numbers of skilled foreign workers is a Republican scandal (preferring cheap labor over American labor; whatever happened to companies being willing to do OJT?). The entire Republican economic "trickle down" policy has been proved to not work, yet they still push for more of it, because it financially benefits them, and very few others. And per that list presented at the start of this message, lots more Republican politicians have been associated with financial shenanigans, than Democrat politicians.
If you step back and look at the history of scandals associated with political power, you might notice that, in general, Democrat scandals have tended to involve sex and drugs, and hurt a few people (along with the status of a high political office). Meanwhile, in general, Republican scandals have tended to involve money and power, and hurt thousands or even millions of people. It's tempting to predict that, if the Republicans gain control of the Senate, some sort of money/power scandal will result. One example: They might repeal part of Obamacare, the part that the Supreme Court associated Congress' power to tax --while keeping the part that requires everyone to get insurance. Because, after all, the majority owners of most big insurance companies are, largely, Republicans, and therefore would directly financially benefit from such a scandalous change. Remember that the preceding is just a possibility/example. If some sort of money/power scandal does happen, it will take time to plan, time to become manifested, and time to be discovered/exposed. So, it will be a while before anyone knows for sure, whether or not it was smart to give Republicans control of the Senate.
Sounds like the start of making each phone module into a nano-computer. Each nano-computer controls only its own module, running a nano-OS. The nano-OS would only need two things: a way to plug in a driver for the particular hardware of the module, and a communications program so all the modules can be coordinated. One particular module would have, as its "driver", the coordination program, producing the overall result with which the end-user interacts.
I tend to agree that other social animals also mostly are not quite so egalitarian. However, the way it is expressed is more about "alpha male" dominance, among animals, while among humans it is more about "social power". On the other hand, we can easily form groups to resist some current Authority figure. When our species emigrated from Africa, for thousands of years human tribes split and went separate ways because of social divisions. After the accessible world was filled with hunter-gatherers, then came more serious inter-tribal competition for resources, and the first battles. Meanwhile, something Robert Heinlein wrote appears to have been valid the entire time [paraphrased here]: "Any government can work if power and responsibility are matched." So the masses of low-status citizens can basically say, "Sure, you can have the social power, but you had better use it to deal with these responsibilities...." That is the advantage seen by those masses of low-status citizens, for themselves: less responsibilities.
One of the simplest ways to lock down a computer is to physically lock it away from access. Originally car-makers did that --you needed physical access to the computer (usually inside locked hood compartment) to do anything to it. Now they have connected it to radio waves. That is the main security hole. Go back to a solid wired-only connection, with the connection point(s) behind locked doors, and a significant chunk of the security problems goes away.
One problem is that the politics has overlooked two important things. First, those power companies build "base load" capacity plus "peak power" capacity. Often the peak-power capacity involves a different and more-expensive source of energy than the base-load capacity. Meanwhile, peak-power capacity is most often needed in the middle of the day (like for running lots of air conditioners). Well, solar power is pretty much ideal for matching the peak-power needs. There could be a legal compromise between customers installing some solar power, enough to handle their peak needs, and customers installing so much solar power they don't need the power company at all. This would save the power companies the investment in those peak-load power plants, while the customers generally simply wouldn't be producing levels of power such that they might want to sell some over the grid. The second important thing is the fact that as population rises, the need for more base-load power keeps going up. The power grid can currently handle the current-base-load plus current-peak-load, and as the overall load increases, the grid needs to be enhanced. Well, again if customers can have solar power adequate to handle their peak needs, then the power companies, by not needing peak-load power plants, can also save on investing in upgrades to the grid for a while. They would only need to do that when the total base-load production rises to equal the current total of base+peak.
If we concentrate on fusion, not fission. Today there are a number of researchers who think that the theoretical problems of fusion have been solved enough that all we need to do is invest money in actual hardware. But the existing entrenched interests keep opposing such investments. Well, that's what THEY say, anyway. But they are certainly right that fusion, when perfected, will be less problematic than fission, especially with regard to wastes.
I'm imagining ten thousand different players exploring in ten thousand different directions, and every time something is procedurally generated, it either needs to be remembered for the next player to come along to that same location, or the generator has to be super-well-done, to reach a given point from ten thousand different directions, and the same landscape/space-scape/whatever gets generated every time.
There seems to me to be a slight error in the original article. Neutrinos have been determined to possess mass. It is only a slight amount of mass, but it precludes them from being able to travel at exactly the speed of light. How close to light-speed do they normally travel? I can't say. But it is reasonable to think that the distance from Supernova 1987A to Earth should have led to a slightly later arrival time, for neutrinos, than if they had actually traveled at light-speed.
The preceding relates to another thing, the quantum-mechanical mechanism for interfering with the actual speed of light. Those pairs of virtual particles that form also have mass. That means, while they temporarily exist, they also cannot be traveling at exactly light-speed; they have to be traveling slightly slower.
Something they might not have taken into account is the "view it again" factor. Sure, the manufacture of DVDs has a significant environmental impact. But when not simply thrown away after being purchased, it means that saving a movie for a few years, and then seeing it again, does not have the same environmental impact it did the first time. It might be interesting to see how many "views" are needed to make owning a DVD a better environmental bargain that streaming its content.
It occurs to me that this might be a good thing for a satellite equipped with a solar-sail, to be used for. It wouldn't have to worry about running out of fuel, maneuvering from one location to another, which the space telescope might be aimed at.
You missed the point, regarding E.T.s --each such species (even if only one per hundred galaxies) represents yet another way that Nature would have found to build a brain that can host enough consciousness for self-recognition. With hundreds of billions of galaxies out there, one such type of brain per hundred galaxies would mean there are billions of ways to build such brains. And so I repeat, anyone who thinks "no variant of computer hardware will ever be able to do that" --especially when we are deliberately copying brain-designs into our computer hardware!-- is just not thinking clearly.
"Non-computable" does not mean "non-copy-able". In other words, consider the sort of consciousness associated with recognizing oneself in a mirror. Humans are not the only animals that can do that. Among those that can are quite a few other primates, dolphins, elephants, some species of birds (certain parrots), and even the octopus. So, think about that in terms of brain structure: Birds have a variant on the basic "reptilian brain", elephants and dolphins have the "mammalian brain" extension of the reptilian brain, chimps and gorillas have the "primate brain" extension of the mammalian brain, and the octopus brain is in an entirely different class altogether (the mollusk family includes clams and snails). Yet Nature found ways to give all of those types of data-processing equipment enough consciousness for self-recognition. And after you include however-many extraterrestrial intelligences there might be, all across the Universe, well, anyone who thinks "no variant of computer hardware will ever be able to do that" is just not thinking clearly.
I think the authors of the paper have overlooked something. It has been discovered that if we pump water into the ground along a fault line, we can literally lubricate the fault and help the plates slide past each other. (Side note: sounds like a good way to prevent major earthquakes, but nobody wants to be responsible for causing the initial quakes associated with unlocking long-locked plates. The problem with that attitude is, those quakes are eventually going to happen anyway, except they will be bigger and more catastrophic then, than if deliberately caused now.)
Anyway, on Earth we have lots of water, including water deep underground, presumably doing SOME assisting of tectonic plate motion. Meanwhile, on Venus it has always been too hot for much water to percolate deep underground....
"on the seabed" means it becomes vulnerable to earthquakes. A handy adage to keep in mind is, "If it is sitting on the floor, it can't fall and break --but it will get kicked." MIT definitely needs to address the "storm" issue --the "Ocean Ranger" was claimed to be "unsinkable" (much like the "Titanic"), and look where it is now. Perhaps the place to put it is NEAR the sea-bottom, so waves and storms can pass harmlessly above it, and quakes can pass harmlessly below it. Then the only thing to worry about are sinking ships hitting it, and big meteors hitting it, and so on. Relatively rare!
Yes, so long as you have sufficient energy available, you most certainly can do the "net effect" of making hydrocarbon combustion run backward. It simply takes MORE energy to do that than you got from the original hydrocarbon combustion, because of inevitable inefficiencies in the system. So, if you have the energy to waste, and have no easier supply of hydrocarbons available, this certainly is Cool. Just not very practical for everyday use, worldwide....
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As long as an AI, no matter how powerful its brain, can't repair its own hardware, it won't be ignoring us.
Think of an EMP as a beam weapon....
It seems to me that the energy utilities need to restructure their billing. I suggest dividing it into two parts, one of which is related to the need to pay for infrastructure maintenance and expansion, while the other is related to the energy they sell. The first part could be charged to every customer equally. The second would depend on energy usage. In places where the customers can sell energy to the utilities, the most reasonable answer was devised and implemented in various places years ago: Just install a second meter and think of the energy company as a middleman. You can't sell to the middleman at the same price you buy from him --and when you are a customer selling energy to the utility, you are essentially selling it to some other customer of the middleman. It would make sense for your sales price of energy to be equivalent to what the utility pays to generate it.
I should have specified a longer-term history than just the past few years. Here is a nice long and detailed list. Enron, for example, and the recent banking-crisis-caused Recession, are Republican scandals, because they have never been interested in making sure businesses do honest dealings, and they block Democrat attempts for such oversight at every opportunity. (It is possible that the Democrats want to over-do it, but History shows we need more than Zero oversight, of business dealings.) Attempts to repeal the Clean Air Act is a Republican scandal (they don't care if they poison more millions of people with air pollution). Nixon was a Republican scandal. Reagan and Eisenhower weren't, but their underlings most certainly were scandalous. Attempts to reduce the Minimum Wage is a Republican scandal (millions of people are already living from paycheck-to-paycheck, and they want to make the situation worse?). Attempts to increase numbers of skilled foreign workers is a Republican scandal (preferring cheap labor over American labor; whatever happened to companies being willing to do OJT?). The entire Republican economic "trickle down" policy has been proved to not work, yet they still push for more of it, because it financially benefits them, and very few others. And per that list presented at the start of this message, lots more Republican politicians have been associated with financial shenanigans, than Democrat politicians.
If you step back and look at the history of scandals associated with political power, you might notice that, in general, Democrat scandals have tended to involve sex and drugs, and hurt a few people (along with the status of a high political office). Meanwhile, in general, Republican scandals have tended to involve money and power, and hurt thousands or even millions of people. It's tempting to predict that, if the Republicans gain control of the Senate, some sort of money/power scandal will result. One example: They might repeal part of Obamacare, the part that the Supreme Court associated Congress' power to tax --while keeping the part that requires everyone to get insurance. Because, after all, the majority owners of most big insurance companies are, largely, Republicans, and therefore would directly financially benefit from such a scandalous change. Remember that the preceding is just a possibility/example. If some sort of money/power scandal does happen, it will take time to plan, time to become manifested, and time to be discovered/exposed. So, it will be a while before anyone knows for sure, whether or not it was smart to give Republicans control of the Senate.
Sounds like the start of making each phone module into a nano-computer. Each nano-computer controls only its own module, running a nano-OS. The nano-OS would only need two things: a way to plug in a driver for the particular hardware of the module, and a communications program so all the modules can be coordinated. One particular module would have, as its "driver", the coordination program, producing the overall result with which the end-user interacts.
I tend to agree that other social animals also mostly are not quite so egalitarian. However, the way it is expressed is more about "alpha male" dominance, among animals, while among humans it is more about "social power". On the other hand, we can easily form groups to resist some current Authority figure. When our species emigrated from Africa, for thousands of years human tribes split and went separate ways because of social divisions. After the accessible world was filled with hunter-gatherers, then came more serious inter-tribal competition for resources, and the first battles. Meanwhile, something Robert Heinlein wrote appears to have been valid the entire time [paraphrased here]: "Any government can work if power and responsibility are matched." So the masses of low-status citizens can basically say, "Sure, you can have the social power, but you had better use it to deal with these responsibilities...." That is the advantage seen by those masses of low-status citizens, for themselves: less responsibilities.
One of the simplest ways to lock down a computer is to physically lock it away from access. Originally car-makers did that --you needed physical access to the computer (usually inside locked hood compartment) to do anything to it. Now they have connected it to radio waves. That is the main security hole. Go back to a solid wired-only connection, with the connection point(s) behind locked doors, and a significant chunk of the security problems goes away.
One problem is that the politics has overlooked two important things. First, those power companies build "base load" capacity plus "peak power" capacity. Often the peak-power capacity involves a different and more-expensive source of energy than the base-load capacity. Meanwhile, peak-power capacity is most often needed in the middle of the day (like for running lots of air conditioners). Well, solar power is pretty much ideal for matching the peak-power needs. There could be a legal compromise between customers installing some solar power, enough to handle their peak needs, and customers installing so much solar power they don't need the power company at all. This would save the power companies the investment in those peak-load power plants, while the customers generally simply wouldn't be producing levels of power such that they might want to sell some over the grid. The second important thing is the fact that as population rises, the need for more base-load power keeps going up. The power grid can currently handle the current-base-load plus current-peak-load, and as the overall load increases, the grid needs to be enhanced. Well, again if customers can have solar power adequate to handle their peak needs, then the power companies, by not needing peak-load power plants, can also save on investing in upgrades to the grid for a while. They would only need to do that when the total base-load production rises to equal the current total of base+peak.
If we concentrate on fusion, not fission. Today there are a number of researchers who think that the theoretical problems of fusion have been solved enough that all we need to do is invest money in actual hardware. But the existing entrenched interests keep opposing such investments. Well, that's what THEY say, anyway. But they are certainly right that fusion, when perfected, will be less problematic than fission, especially with regard to wastes.
The TSA is probably thinking that if the battery in your gadget doesn't work, it might not actually be a battery...so, just to be on the safe side....
If a hospital sends you a reminder like that, you can be sure a bill for it will soon follow.
I'm imagining ten thousand different players exploring in ten thousand different directions, and every time something is procedurally generated, it either needs to be remembered for the next player to come along to that same location, or the generator has to be super-well-done, to reach a given point from ten thousand different directions, and the same landscape/space-scape/whatever gets generated every time.
There seems to me to be a slight error in the original article. Neutrinos have been determined to possess mass. It is only a slight amount of mass, but it precludes them from being able to travel at exactly the speed of light. How close to light-speed do they normally travel? I can't say. But it is reasonable to think that the distance from Supernova 1987A to Earth should have led to a slightly later arrival time, for neutrinos, than if they had actually traveled at light-speed.
The preceding relates to another thing, the quantum-mechanical mechanism for interfering with the actual speed of light. Those pairs of virtual particles that form also have mass. That means, while they temporarily exist, they also cannot be traveling at exactly light-speed; they have to be traveling slightly slower.
There is a new-ish technology out there for making flying machines, and they can be roughly automobile-sized. Perhaps Toyota should consider teaming up with the inventors....
Something they might not have taken into account is the "view it again" factor. Sure, the manufacture of DVDs has a significant environmental impact. But when not simply thrown away after being purchased, it means that saving a movie for a few years, and then seeing it again, does not have the same environmental impact it did the first time. It might be interesting to see how many "views" are needed to make owning a DVD a better environmental bargain that streaming its content.
It occurs to me that this might be a good thing for a satellite equipped with a solar-sail, to be used for. It wouldn't have to worry about running out of fuel, maneuvering from one location to another, which the space telescope might be aimed at.
So long as other operating systems suck worse. Kind of like "democracy is not really a good form of government, but all the others suck worse".
I think I want a phone with a slight modification, that lets me jack into the car's antenna.
You missed the point, regarding E.T.s --each such species (even if only one per hundred galaxies) represents yet another way that Nature would have found to build a brain that can host enough consciousness for self-recognition. With hundreds of billions of galaxies out there, one such type of brain per hundred galaxies would mean there are billions of ways to build such brains. And so I repeat, anyone who thinks "no variant of computer hardware will ever be able to do that" --especially when we are deliberately copying brain-designs into our computer hardware!-- is just not thinking clearly.
"Non-computable" does not mean "non-copy-able". In other words, consider the sort of consciousness associated with recognizing oneself in a mirror. Humans are not the only animals that can do that. Among those that can are quite a few other primates, dolphins, elephants, some species of birds (certain parrots), and even the octopus. So, think about that in terms of brain structure: Birds have a variant on the basic "reptilian brain", elephants and dolphins have the "mammalian brain" extension of the reptilian brain, chimps and gorillas have the "primate brain" extension of the mammalian brain, and the octopus brain is in an entirely different class altogether (the mollusk family includes clams and snails). Yet Nature found ways to give all of those types of data-processing equipment enough consciousness for self-recognition. And after you include however-many extraterrestrial intelligences there might be, all across the Universe, well, anyone who thinks "no variant of computer hardware will ever be able to do that" is just not thinking clearly.
I think the authors of the paper have overlooked something. It has been discovered that if we pump water into the ground along a fault line, we can literally lubricate the fault and help the plates slide past each other. (Side note: sounds like a good way to prevent major earthquakes, but nobody wants to be responsible for causing the initial quakes associated with unlocking long-locked plates. The problem with that attitude is, those quakes are eventually going to happen anyway, except they will be bigger and more catastrophic then, than if deliberately caused now.)
Anyway, on Earth we have lots of water, including water deep underground, presumably doing SOME assisting of tectonic plate motion. Meanwhile, on Venus it has always been too hot for much water to percolate deep underground....
"on the seabed" means it becomes vulnerable to earthquakes. A handy adage to keep in mind is, "If it is sitting on the floor, it can't fall and break --but it will get kicked." MIT definitely needs to address the "storm" issue --the "Ocean Ranger" was claimed to be "unsinkable" (much like the "Titanic"), and look where it is now. Perhaps the place to put it is NEAR the sea-bottom, so waves and storms can pass harmlessly above it, and quakes can pass harmlessly below it. Then the only thing to worry about are sinking ships hitting it, and big meteors hitting it, and so on. Relatively rare!
I thought the entire ring system was inside Roche's Limit, and as a result it should be impossible for a moon to form there.
Yes, so long as you have sufficient energy available, you most certainly can do the "net effect" of making hydrocarbon combustion run backward. It simply takes MORE energy to do that than you got from the original hydrocarbon combustion, because of inevitable inefficiencies in the system. So, if you have the energy to waste, and have no easier supply of hydrocarbons available, this certainly is Cool. Just not very practical for everyday use, worldwide....