I am a meteorologist. I'm not going to dispute this particular Chinese claim, but I think it needs to be taken in context because the Chinese have not been above stretching the facts when it serves them.
The weather and air quality have been fairly close to the worrisome scenario painted months ago. I've been checking meteorological observations every day, finding the dew point at Beijing's airport in the mid and upper 70s on a regular basis and visibility of 1-2 miles common (It is currently under 1 mile, but there is rain falling).
Back in February I wrote on my blog of the potential Olympic weather: "So, when the deputy chief engineer of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau says, "Even if the rare extreme weather hits Beijing in August, people will not feel muggy. High humidity will not accompany the hot weather in August because their climax periods are different, " I'd hide the silverware and other valuables."
Dew points (the real number you should look at when you think humidity) have been consistently in the 70s--often the upper 70s. That's like walking around with a warm, damp cloth wrapped around your body. Much of yesterday had Beijing more humid than Miami.
I would feel better about what the Chinese say if dissenting voices were allowed to speak about the air!
There is an independent group from Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants in England who have been monitoring the air and issuing their own forecasts which have been much more pessimistic than the official government version. Now that forecast is gone! From Telegraph.co.uk: British scientists monitoring air quality in Beijing have been ordered to close down their website after their readings clashed with official statistics showing the city was meeting its pollution targets.
I read the article last night and posted a comment about this line on my blog:
"Cosmological theory implies that because the universe is expanding, any living creatures outside the observable universe are and will forever remain causally disconnected from us: they can never visit us, communicate with us, or be seen by us or our descendants."
In other words, even if the universe is infinite, it is finite to us! And, it must always be finite. Period. End of story.
I'd never heard that expressed before. It makes our place in the general scheme of things seem smaller.
After a thirty plus year break, I took 53 additional distance learning college credits to complete a certification. All of our quizzes and tests were multiple choice. The biggest failure of the tests were the answer choices! Because writing skills are so poor, the majority of the tests had at least a few questions and answers which didn't say what the professor thought they said. As a student, I often had to choose between what I knew he meant and what he actually said.
A close second was counting negatives. To make easy concepts more difficult on tests, professors would often throw in layers of negative concepts (which of these isn't...). As I took the test, I'd count on my fingers while saying negative, positive, negative, positive ad nauseum. Once, I counted five negatives in one question and correct answer.
This wasn't testing my knowledge of the subject being taught. It was just seeing how well I could parse.
Of course essay tests are much more difficult to administer, though they are better indicators of your grasp of the subject.
I am a meteorologist. I primarily forecast synoptic scale weather, but I know a reasonable amount about tropical weather.
It is my opinion, lots of people have played fast and loose, blaming a multitude of things on global warming. GW has become as much a political statement as a scientific one... in fact, it's probably more political right now. If it were pure science you'd have heard more about the positive points of the global warming scenario - whatever they are.
The best info I have seen shows higher sea surface temperatures (SST) in most global warming scenarios would only add minimally to hurricane strength. Not everyone agrees. Proponents, like Kerry Emanuel from MIT, say higher SSTs will make a big difference. It is his voice you probably heard two seasons ago. Chris Landsea of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA and Dr. William Gray of Colorado State disagree.
Truth is, hurricane formation is a lot more than just SST. Last year there was an unusually high amount of wind shear, which inhibits formation. And, the number of storms doesn't necessarily equate with the amount of tumult. Hurricane Andrew, the "A" storm, came in mid-August of a pretty slow hurricane season - but it devastated South Florida.
I remember listening to Dr. Bob Sheets of the Hurricane Center lecture about twenty years ago. Even then he was predicting an increase in storm frequency, based on a multi-decadal cycle that is observed, but not understood.
The parent post was right about one thing. There isn't a particularly large amount of skill in these seasonal forecasts. As I remember, last year's seasonal forecast from the Hurricane Center was off by a factor of two, or so.
To me, the scarier implication of the original posting is, Vista forces manufacturers to lock down hardware and drivers - making them, in essence, impenetrable black boxes. As I read it, once hardware is designed to operate in a Vista environment, it will never be usable in Linux or other open source situations. Can someone expand on this, please?
Part of Russia's need for more orbiting hardware is because of its far northern location. When you are close to the poles, it is impossible to use geosynchronous satellites. There is just too much atmosphere to cut through when the satellite is that low in the sky. Instead, Russia must use constellations of three satllites in a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit Molniya orbit to accomplish what the US can do with one.
I'm not saying this accounts for all the volume, but it's certainly some of it.
I have read through the comments, and I haven't seen anyone mention (I could have missed it) the major change that's brought this about. Search engines are the outward evidence of a totally different way to use information. It used to be you would pick up a paper or turn on the TV news and see what someone else had planned for you. Now, it's information on demand. That's an immense change.
Oh - the Times article's own headline will be ineffective to search engines.
OK - this is what I do for a living - forecasting the weather. I've been doing it for better than 25 years.
Most operational meteorologists I know feel human induced global warming is a bad theory, based on really bad modeling. The equations are incomplete as is the data set. Maybe we're worried because we use numeric weather prediction models on a daily basis and understand we can't always get the temperature right to within 2-3 degree over 24 hours, much less 24 years!
Academicians and theorists seem to support the idea in great numbers. These are people who haven't had to answer for a bad forecast in the supermarket.
Surely, human induced global warming is a political argument. Ask yourself, why have I never heard even one positive influence from global warming? In science, you should hear the good and the bad. In this argument, it's only the bad that gets publicized. If everyone in the Northern Plains, Northern Europe, New England, Canada and other cold weather climates get a longer growing season with lower winter heating costs, shouldn't that be weighed against tidal rises on Vanuatu?
Recently, after Katrina and the others, there has been a chorus trying to connect more hurricanes with global warming. Here's what Dr. William Gray says (he's the guy you hear quoted every year with seasonal hurricane predictions):
There is absolutely no solid evidence that the recent US hurricane disasters of 2004-05 and of Japan in 2004 are 'directly' attributed to the impact of global warming. Landfalling major hurricanes have occurred in earlier periods when the globe was cooler. The two scientific papers in Nature and Science have been largely discredited by myself and others.
Most of the warming of the last 30 years (1975-2005) cannot possibly be due solely to greenhouse gas increases. Although CO2 amounts have gone up by about 378 ppm/330 ppm = ~15% during this period, the net energy forcing (of about 0.65 w/m2) from this CO2 increase is considerably less than the other energy forcing changes of long wave radiation (LW), evaporation-precipitation, and ocean thermohaline circulation change that have been measured by the reanalysis data over the last 30 and 55 years. For instance, various rainfall measurements indicate there has been a small global average rainfall decrease of 0.5-1.0 mm/d. This is equivalent to global evaporation decreases of 1.5-3.0 w/m2 - 2 to 4 times than that can be attributed to CO2 increase. There are similar energy variations in the last 30 years in OLR and in the global thermohaline circulation. I believe that the global surface warming of the last 30 years is largely due to a small decrease in ocean surface evaporation cooling brought about by ocean deep water circulation changes.
Blaming all the warming of the last 30 years on CO2 requires that one believe that all the other larger energy source-sinks sum to zero. It is naive to think this is the case. Most warming of the last 30 years has to be of natural origin.
I disagree. The telcos don't see enough revenue in being pure data carriers, especially when they're forced to beef up their physical networks to compete. They want their fingers in programming, which has a larger potential revenue stream. In fact, telcos are moving into direct competition with the cable companies, while the cable MSOs move into data and POTS and compete with them!
Both are worried that pure IP program distribution, along with the continuation of network neutrality, will carve away much of their most lucrative business.
In many ways competition will be good for consumers, but it is also likely the data carriers will be forced to look for some sort of exclusive content to keep them from being forced to compete on price or service, which is quite costly.
Think of how many different channels you already need to subscribe to to see all the games of your favorite baseball or football team? Look at the example of DirecTV tying down the out-of-market importation of NFL football.
As the teclos and cable MSOs get my desperate, they will take desperate measures.
Disclosure: I am employed in broadcast TV. I own a very small position in Comcast as part of my retirement fund.
I work in local television. I told some co-workers last night and got a 'so what' response. Maybe they're right. Maybe I'm paranoid. I see this as a very large test to find if online distribution of TV is cost effective.
When TV began, distribution channels were very limited. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, our biggest markets, had 7 channels. Most other places got a lot less.
Cable TV started in the sixties. In 1970, when I signed up for cable TV service (TelePrompTer) in West Palm Beach, we got 12 stations - one of which was a rotating camera showing ads and a thermometer. I don't think I got anything that couldn't be plucked off the air.
Living in the Philadelphia suburbs in the mid-70s, cable TV began to bring additional channels like HBO (it was only programmed in the evenings) and CNN. For programmers, and advertisers, there were additional venues.
Try to get a new cable channel on now. Even with a hundred or more slots, there isn't room for anything new. Or, if a channel does somehow get on, it is relegated to such bad 'real estate' that no one sees it.
If AOL is successful, it will open up new channels and, more importantly, change the economics of distribution.
In the old days, the broadcast networks paid to have local stations carry them. That era is ending (and has already ended for most stations). In addition, the networks allowed local affiliates to sell a few commercials within the local shows.
If the AOL experiment works, and distribution costs are reasonable, AOL can sell the local and national ads itself, in any way it wishes, and eliminate the middleman.
Most local stations understand this... well, I hope they understand this. They will have to adapt their business model when they are no longer used by others as distributors, getting free or discounted shows to fill their broadcast day.
Over the past decade, local news programming has increased. Under this scenario there will probably be even more local programming.
I don't know what this means for those channels that don't do anything but play shows from syndicators or networks. This such a radical switch. Can they change? Many are physically incapable of even producing programs in-house.
Don't dwell on the specific programs AOL is rolling out on the Internet. The titles are unimportant, because if this move is at all successful, more valuable programming will follow. It's much easier to experiment with Welcome Back Kotter, which has little value at the moment.
Unfortunately, there are corollaries to Gresham's Law that come into play here. Will the addition of all these new distribution channels drive down the quality of TV? Stay tuned.
From a San Francisco Chronicle interview this past April. Speaking is Ivan Seidenberg, Verizon's CEO. As much as I want the market to decide, this attitude makes it tough to believe I'll always get a fair deal.
"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said. "The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."
Seidenberg said it's not Verizon's responsibility to correct the misconception by giving out statistics on how often Verizon's service works inside homes or by distributing more detailed coverage maps, showing all the possible dead zones. He pointed out that there are five major wireless networks, none of which works perfectly everywhere.
There was an editorial piece in the New York Times which pointed out Yahoo's Hong Kong subsidiary responded to the Chinese government's request. Under the current law, Hong Kong is still autonomous in this regard. That subsidiary was under no more legal control of the Chinese than Yahoo's home office in the United States.
Lawyer Guo has practiced law in China for over 20 years. He believes that, "Yahoo! Inc. is not under any legal obligation to 'conform to the laws of the countries in which they operate,' as was claimed by Jerry Yang."
As a law expert, Guo explained that, "Yahoo! Inc. is obligated to first obey International Law. If the International Law happens to be in conflict with the laws in China or with the CCP's strategies, then the International Law should take precedence, which is an internationally acknowledged principle. China is a signatory of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, and of the International Covenant on Human Rights. Shi Tao simply exercised his right to the freedom of expression by sending mail. In addition, he was legitimately practicing his profession, not committing a crime. Consequently, Yahoo! Inc. has no legal obligation to cooperate with the government. The legal entity of Yahoo! Holdings (Hong Kong) is not in China, so it is not obligated to operate within the laws of China or to cooperate with the Chinese police."
Speaking of hurricanes, and not weather in general, we know there is a natural rhythym that is reflected in annual occurrences in the Atlantic Basin. It is not an annular rhythm. It has a multidecadal period. I remember Dr. Bob Sheets, then director of the National Hurricane Center, citing this rhythm and forecasting this very increase in activity that we're seeing... nearly 20 years ago.
So, this doesn't reflect heating or cooling, but is the natural variability of our climate. At least that's my read on this.
I've written about this on my blog, and since this entry is now well enough buried to get minimal traffic, I'll add a link.
When you think back to 1933, please remember - no satellites or radar and much more rudimentary communications. It is the prevailing wisdom that 21 understates the actual number, since there were probably some storms at sea (which ships try to avoid) which aren't accounted for.
As to the Global Warming/hurricane connection, here are the words of hurricane guru Dr. William Gray:
Many individuals have queried whether the unprecedented landfall of four destructive hurricanes in a seven-week period during August-September 2004 and the landfall of two more major hurricanes in the early part of the 2005 season is related in any way to human-induced climate changes. There is no evidence that this is the case. If global warming were the cause of the increase in United States hurricane landfalls in 2004 and 2005 and the overall increase in Atlantic basin major hurricane activity of the past eleven years (1995-2005), one would expect to see an increase in tropical cyclone activity in the other storm basins as well (ie., West Pacific, East Pacific, Indian Ocean, etc.). This has not occurred. When tropical cyclones worldwide are summed, there has actually been a slight decrease since 1995. In addition, it has been well-documented that the measured global warming during the 25-year period of 1970-1994 was accompanied by a downturn in Atlantic basin major hurricane activity over what was experienced during the 1930s through the 1960s.
BTW - I am a meteorologist... or meaty urologist, I never quite remember.
I deposited $250 at Pokerstars in August 2003. I play nearly every day. My wife does as well. We don't have a fortune or even a small fortune... but we still have our $250 and a profit. During these two years Pokerstars has made thousands off our playing, but not from us.
Our secret is only playing in small sit 'n go tournaments. It is very easy for the casinos to keep track of collusion in these. Because you need money in the bank, it is not easy to quickly change names, so players who play too many of these together stick out like a sore thumb.
All the games I've played online have made me a much better player at brick and mortar casinos. I've played tens of thousands of hands at Pokerstars - a lifetime of hands - in two years. When I'm playing live, it's as if I can see through the other player's cards.
In a moment of weakness, I sent $250 to Costa Rica via Western Union two years ago this month. I am still playing that same money... actually, my bankroll has increased, though still under $1,000 (it's varied from $40 to $1,200).
It seems it would be easy to cheat by collusion, but only at the 'ring' games. I have chosen to play small sit 'n go tournaments almost exclusively. It's much easier for the casinos to see who plays together in these 9 player matches.
When you play poker, the casino makes its money by 'renting' you your seat. It's the only game the house serves in which they don't have an interest in who wins or loses. These online casinos would die a quick death if any evidence of cheating ever emerged.
I'm a meteorologist (or a meaty urologist - I can never remember). It's tough to believe there is any scientific discipline better suited for computer manipulation than the weather. For years, even before the advent of today's high speed computing, data was collected in a very systematic way, making it easier to compile and compare. Because I know there are so many reading this with the ability to advance the art, let me point you to a few data sources. Each of the files at this site contains all the world's weather observations for a since hour. Here's how to translate that. Here's forecast info from the GFS model, a time series for single points covering a full week's weather. Here's the same for the shorter range NAM model. The Weather Service even developed this free "Swiss Army Knife" program to read them called BUFKIT. BUFKIT has saved my sorry butt on more than one occasion. Here are MOS forecasts (dynamic model forecasts 'massaged' to take into account local climatology). The NWS is just scratching the surface, but it's getting better all the time. I look at my relationship with NWS as a partnership, not a competition.
I have. WebCT readily admits they do not support Firefox (they even have a browser compatibility tester on their site). MSNBC... well, that's "MS"NBC. Does anyone really think they'd help Firefox or Firefox users?
I would like to use Firefox as much and as often as is possible, but I find more and more multimedia pages are written exclusively for Internet Explorer. Certainly MSNBC is an example, but there are others.
More surprising is the fact that WebCT, used to administer 'distance learning' programs doesn't support Firefox. When I'm taking a timed test, the last thing I want to deal with is a browser incompatibility.
So, for me, my use of IE has gone up recently... but not because I want it to.
Back in 1967, when I was 17, I used to hang out in Greenwich Village on Friday and Saturday nights. There were many stores, including many music stores. One night, while I was walking down Bleeker Street, I heard music coming from one storefront and it went like this...
"Oh dear Miss Morse. I love you. Yes I do, really do. Dit dit dah dit. Dit dit dah. Dah dit dah dit. Dah dit dah." They really sang the dits and dahs.
The group was Pearls Before Swine and the song was "Miss Morse." Without my knowledge of Morse Code, I would have never known the four letter invective Pearls Before Swine was belting down this crowded block.
And now you know the rest of the story. Please don't take away my Morse.
de WA1U
From the original post: "Initially thought to be shaped like a pickle, it came to resemble more of a banana shape as comet Tempel I drew closer."
For four seasons I hosted Inside Space, a science fact program on the SciFi Channel (it's like being on the Celibacy Show on Playboy). We traveled everywhere visiting the brightest minds in space (pun intended) and nearly every human on the Earth who has "rocket scientist" on his/her business card. There was one recurring theme. Everything in space that's not a planet or star is potato shaped - period, case closed. Next.
There is no doubt the astronauts who fly the Shuttle and International Space Station, and before them the earlier crews, know the dangers they face. Do we?
It should have come as no surprise that astronauts died with Columbia and earlier Challenger. Leaving our atmosphere is inherently dangerous. There are thousands of critical components and systems, any one of which could shape the same outcome. NASA has had plenty of close calls before.
It has been my opinion, and it seems to be born out by what I've read, that NASA has taken a less than rigorous attitude toward full safety. The conditions they allowed US astronauts to fly to aboard the Soviet MIR were shocking, to say the least. Of course we've all read that NASA experts played down fears about the very foam collision that was the Shuttle's undoing.
We will fix the foam, and the wings and anything else that's been made obvious by the events of February 1, 2003, but the changes will only marginally improve the safety of the crew. There are still those thousands of parts and systems. As long as men fly in space, there will be danger and there will be death.
This is a profession so dangerous that you can get killed just practicing - as we found out with Apollo One.
It's time we, as a nation, took a look at the facts, and made a decision. Is what we're doing in space worth jeopardizing human lives? I say no.
Look back at Columbia. It was a 'junk science' mission. There was little of any scientific import on board. Our other major manned program, the International Space Station, isn't much better. Even if it weren't crippled by a caretaker crew, it would be accomplishing few things worth writing home about.
Why are we doing this? Is it a matter of pride? In this day and age there's a better way to explore - robotically. We are proving, on Mars, and with other missions, that robots can accomplish the same, or more, than man. And, it's being done at a significant savings, with little human danger.
Don't underestimate the cost. My producer at SciFi used to say that if, somehow, the Shuttle's payload bay was mysteriously filled with gold while in orbit, the mission would still lose money!
The time to change our attitude is now. If the goal is to explore space, let's do it the right way - so there can be worthwhile science and exploration. As it stands now, the space program is crippled by the fear of further disaster... and there will be further disaster. It's only a matter of time.
For the past few years my wife and I have been watching Major League Baseball on our PC. Our team, the Phillies, aren't on-the-air here in Connecticut. What we've found is very important. It isn't necessary to have full screen video to have a meaningful streaming experience!
Whenever I read about the promises of VOD or using the Internet for television type programming, I hear about the huge bandwidth necessary for full screen, VHS quality. It's just not necessary. In fact, full screen might be a detriment.
Computers are viewed differently than TV's. It's an immense difference. We're closer and we're not adverse to doing multiple tasks on the screen at once. Someone is going to have to step up to the plate with that realization and then VOD over an IP network will be reality.
After one game, I asked my wife if she'd be willing to pay for a live concert by an artist she really likes (Rick Springfield) at this smallish screen size, but with sharp video and good stereo audio? She said, "yes."
To me, this makes some events economically feasible that wouldn't make sense as free TV, basic cable or even pay-per-view. There are undoubtedly other applications, with similar niche audiences.
The current streaming technologies from Microsoft and Real and especially Macromedia Flash (quickly becoming the major player in streaming video) make it easy to integrate advertisements in many different ways, often without stopping or disturbing the actual desired content.
This is the 500 channel universe we've heard about. Except, it's really an infinite channel universe.
Of course, there's a question of whether there's enough bandwidth right now to handle it. The answer's probably no - but - there is a plethora of 'dark' fiber, waiting to be powered up. If video is the next killer app for computers, there will be plenty of incentive to unleash enough bandwidth to enable it.
I work for a local TV station, but I don't consider this our ruin. If we're smart and aggressive, we'll be able to sell the content we already produce, and specialized content that demands our localized expertise, in this new venue.
The wave action of a tsunami is hardly noticable until it comes to the nearshore shallows. It is only there where the tsunami becomes a monster.
From Wikipedia:
Tsunamis act very differently from typical surf swells; they are phenomena which move the entire depth of the ocean (often several kilometres deep) rather than just the surface, so they contain immense energy, propagate at high speeds and can travel great transoceanic distances with little overall energy loss. A tsunami can cause damage thousands of kilometres from its origin, so there may be several hours between its creation and its impact on a coast, arriving long after the seismic wave generated by the originating event arrives. Although the total or overall loss of energy is small, the total energy is spread over a larger and larger circumference as the wave travels, so the energy per linear meter in the wave decreases as the inverse power of the distance from the source. This is the two-dimensional equivalent of the inverse square law in three dimensions.
In open water, tsunamis have extremely long periods (the time for the next wave top to pass a point after the previous one), from minutes to hours, and long wavelengths of up to several hundred kilometres (compare to the typical wind-generated swell one sees at a beach, which might be spawned by a faraway storm and rhythmically roll in, one wave after another, with a period of about 10 seconds and a wavelength of 150 m). The actual height of a tsunami wave in open water is often less than one metre. This is often practically unnoticeable to people on ships. The energy of a tsunami passes through the entire water column to the sea bed, unlike surface waves, which typically reach only down to a depth of 10 m or so.
Slashdot Mirror
The weather and air quality have been fairly close to the worrisome scenario painted months ago. I've been checking meteorological observations every day, finding the dew point at Beijing's airport in the mid and upper 70s on a regular basis and visibility of 1-2 miles common (It is currently under 1 mile, but there is rain falling).
Back in February I wrote on my blog of the potential Olympic weather: "So, when the deputy chief engineer of the Beijing Meteorological Bureau says, "Even if the rare extreme weather hits Beijing in August, people will not feel muggy. High humidity will not accompany the hot weather in August because their climax periods are different, " I'd hide the silverware and other valuables."
Current Beijing observations are here.
Dew points (the real number you should look at when you think humidity) have been consistently in the 70s--often the upper 70s. That's like walking around with a warm, damp cloth wrapped around your body. Much of yesterday had Beijing more humid than Miami.
I would feel better about what the Chinese say if dissenting voices were allowed to speak about the air!
There is an independent group from Cambridge Environmental Research Consultants in England who have been monitoring the air and issuing their own forecasts which have been much more pessimistic than the official government version. Now that forecast is gone! From Telegraph.co.uk: British scientists monitoring air quality in Beijing have been ordered to close down their website after their readings clashed with official statistics showing the city was meeting its pollution targets.
In other words, even if the universe is infinite, it is finite to us! And, it must always be finite. Period. End of story. I'd never heard that expressed before. It makes our place in the general scheme of things seem smaller.
A close second was counting negatives. To make easy concepts more difficult on tests, professors would often throw in layers of negative concepts (which of these isn't...). As I took the test, I'd count on my fingers while saying negative, positive, negative, positive ad nauseum. Once, I counted five negatives in one question and correct answer.
This wasn't testing my knowledge of the subject being taught. It was just seeing how well I could parse.
Of course essay tests are much more difficult to administer, though they are better indicators of your grasp of the subject.
It is my opinion, lots of people have played fast and loose, blaming a multitude of things on global warming. GW has become as much a political statement as a scientific one... in fact, it's probably more political right now. If it were pure science you'd have heard more about the positive points of the global warming scenario - whatever they are.
The best info I have seen shows higher sea surface temperatures (SST) in most global warming scenarios would only add minimally to hurricane strength. Not everyone agrees. Proponents, like Kerry Emanuel from MIT, say higher SSTs will make a big difference. It is his voice you probably heard two seasons ago. Chris Landsea of the Hurricane Research Division of NOAA and Dr. William Gray of Colorado State disagree.
Truth is, hurricane formation is a lot more than just SST. Last year there was an unusually high amount of wind shear, which inhibits formation. And, the number of storms doesn't necessarily equate with the amount of tumult. Hurricane Andrew, the "A" storm, came in mid-August of a pretty slow hurricane season - but it devastated South Florida.
I remember listening to Dr. Bob Sheets of the Hurricane Center lecture about twenty years ago. Even then he was predicting an increase in storm frequency, based on a multi-decadal cycle that is observed, but not understood.
The parent post was right about one thing. There isn't a particularly large amount of skill in these seasonal forecasts. As I remember, last year's seasonal forecast from the Hurricane Center was off by a factor of two, or so.
To me, the scarier implication of the original posting is, Vista forces manufacturers to lock down hardware and drivers - making them, in essence, impenetrable black boxes. As I read it, once hardware is designed to operate in a Vista environment, it will never be usable in Linux or other open source situations. Can someone expand on this, please?
Part of Russia's need for more orbiting hardware is because of its far northern location. When you are close to the poles, it is impossible to use geosynchronous satellites. There is just too much atmosphere to cut through when the satellite is that low in the sky. Instead, Russia must use constellations of three satllites in a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molniya_orbit Molniya orbit to accomplish what the US can do with one. I'm not saying this accounts for all the volume, but it's certainly some of it.
I have read through the comments, and I haven't seen anyone mention (I could have missed it) the major change that's brought this about. Search engines are the outward evidence of a totally different way to use information. It used to be you would pick up a paper or turn on the TV news and see what someone else had planned for you. Now, it's information on demand. That's an immense change.
s _not_smart_to_be_clever.php
Oh - the Times article's own headline will be ineffective to search engines.
I've written more about this on my blog: http://www.geofffox.com/MT/archives/2006/04/09/it
Most operational meteorologists I know feel human induced global warming is a bad theory, based on really bad modeling. The equations are incomplete as is the data set. Maybe we're worried because we use numeric weather prediction models on a daily basis and understand we can't always get the temperature right to within 2-3 degree over 24 hours, much less 24 years!
Academicians and theorists seem to support the idea in great numbers. These are people who haven't had to answer for a bad forecast in the supermarket.
Surely, human induced global warming is a political argument. Ask yourself, why have I never heard even one positive influence from global warming? In science, you should hear the good and the bad. In this argument, it's only the bad that gets publicized. If everyone in the Northern Plains, Northern Europe, New England, Canada and other cold weather climates get a longer growing season with lower winter heating costs, shouldn't that be weighed against tidal rises on Vanuatu?
Recently, after Katrina and the others, there has been a chorus trying to connect more hurricanes with global warming. Here's what Dr. William Gray says (he's the guy you hear quoted every year with seasonal hurricane predictions):
You can read more of Dr. Gray's thoughts in this excellent paper "Global Warming and Hurricanes."
I have posted this late. Positive modding to make it more visible would be appreciated.
I disagree. The telcos don't see enough revenue in being pure data carriers, especially when they're forced to beef up their physical networks to compete. They want their fingers in programming, which has a larger potential revenue stream. In fact, telcos are moving into direct competition with the cable companies, while the cable MSOs move into data and POTS and compete with them! Both are worried that pure IP program distribution, along with the continuation of network neutrality, will carve away much of their most lucrative business. In many ways competition will be good for consumers, but it is also likely the data carriers will be forced to look for some sort of exclusive content to keep them from being forced to compete on price or service, which is quite costly. Think of how many different channels you already need to subscribe to to see all the games of your favorite baseball or football team? Look at the example of DirecTV tying down the out-of-market importation of NFL football. As the teclos and cable MSOs get my desperate, they will take desperate measures. Disclosure: I am employed in broadcast TV. I own a very small position in Comcast as part of my retirement fund.
When TV began, distribution channels were very limited. New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, our biggest markets, had 7 channels. Most other places got a lot less.
Cable TV started in the sixties. In 1970, when I signed up for cable TV service (TelePrompTer) in West Palm Beach, we got 12 stations - one of which was a rotating camera showing ads and a thermometer. I don't think I got anything that couldn't be plucked off the air.
Living in the Philadelphia suburbs in the mid-70s, cable TV began to bring additional channels like HBO (it was only programmed in the evenings) and CNN. For programmers, and advertisers, there were additional venues.
Try to get a new cable channel on now. Even with a hundred or more slots, there isn't room for anything new. Or, if a channel does somehow get on, it is relegated to such bad 'real estate' that no one sees it.
If AOL is successful, it will open up new channels and, more importantly, change the economics of distribution.
In the old days, the broadcast networks paid to have local stations carry them. That era is ending (and has already ended for most stations). In addition, the networks allowed local affiliates to sell a few commercials within the local shows.
If the AOL experiment works, and distribution costs are reasonable, AOL can sell the local and national ads itself, in any way it wishes, and eliminate the middleman.
Most local stations understand this... well, I hope they understand this. They will have to adapt their business model when they are no longer used by others as distributors, getting free or discounted shows to fill their broadcast day.
Over the past decade, local news programming has increased. Under this scenario there will probably be even more local programming.
I don't know what this means for those channels that don't do anything but play shows from syndicators or networks. This such a radical switch. Can they change? Many are physically incapable of even producing programs in-house.
Don't dwell on the specific programs AOL is rolling out on the Internet. The titles are unimportant, because if this move is at all successful, more valuable programming will follow. It's much easier to experiment with Welcome Back Kotter, which has little value at the moment.
Unfortunately, there are corollaries to Gresham's Law that come into play here. Will the addition of all these new distribution channels drive down the quality of TV? Stay tuned.
"Why in the world would you think your (cell) phone would work in your house?" he said. "The customer has come to expect so much. They want it to work in the elevator; they want it to work in the basement."
Seidenberg said it's not Verizon's responsibility to correct the misconception by giving out statistics on how often Verizon's service works inside homes or by distributing more detailed coverage maps, showing all the possible dead zones. He pointed out that there are five major wireless networks, none of which works perfectly everywhere.
Here's another similar take from Guo Guoting, an attorney
So, this doesn't reflect heating or cooling, but is the natural variability of our climate. At least that's my read on this. I've written about this on my blog, and since this entry is now well enough buried to get minimal traffic, I'll add a link.
As to the Global Warming/hurricane connection, here are the words of hurricane guru Dr. William Gray:
BTW - I am a meteorologist... or meaty urologist, I never quite remember.I deposited $250 at Pokerstars in August 2003. I play nearly every day. My wife does as well. We don't have a fortune or even a small fortune... but we still have our $250 and a profit. During these two years Pokerstars has made thousands off our playing, but not from us. Our secret is only playing in small sit 'n go tournaments. It is very easy for the casinos to keep track of collusion in these. Because you need money in the bank, it is not easy to quickly change names, so players who play too many of these together stick out like a sore thumb. All the games I've played online have made me a much better player at brick and mortar casinos. I've played tens of thousands of hands at Pokerstars - a lifetime of hands - in two years. When I'm playing live, it's as if I can see through the other player's cards.
In a moment of weakness, I sent $250 to Costa Rica via Western Union two years ago this month. I am still playing that same money... actually, my bankroll has increased, though still under $1,000 (it's varied from $40 to $1,200).
It seems it would be easy to cheat by collusion, but only at the 'ring' games. I have chosen to play small sit 'n go tournaments almost exclusively. It's much easier for the casinos to see who plays together in these 9 player matches.
When you play poker, the casino makes its money by 'renting' you your seat. It's the only game the house serves in which they don't have an interest in who wins or loses. These online casinos would die a quick death if any evidence of cheating ever emerged.
I'm a meteorologist (or a meaty urologist - I can never remember). It's tough to believe there is any scientific discipline better suited for computer manipulation than the weather. For years, even before the advent of today's high speed computing, data was collected in a very systematic way, making it easier to compile and compare. Because I know there are so many reading this with the ability to advance the art, let me point you to a few data sources. Each of the files at this site contains all the world's weather observations for a since hour. Here's how to translate that. Here's forecast info from the GFS model, a time series for single points covering a full week's weather. Here's the same for the shorter range NAM model. The Weather Service even developed this free "Swiss Army Knife" program to read them called BUFKIT. BUFKIT has saved my sorry butt on more than one occasion. Here are MOS forecasts (dynamic model forecasts 'massaged' to take into account local climatology). The NWS is just scratching the surface, but it's getting better all the time. I look at my relationship with NWS as a partnership, not a competition.
I have. WebCT readily admits they do not support Firefox (they even have a browser compatibility tester on their site). MSNBC... well, that's "MS"NBC. Does anyone really think they'd help Firefox or Firefox users?
I would like to use Firefox as much and as often as is possible, but I find more and more multimedia pages are written exclusively for Internet Explorer. Certainly MSNBC is an example, but there are others. More surprising is the fact that WebCT, used to administer 'distance learning' programs doesn't support Firefox. When I'm taking a timed test, the last thing I want to deal with is a browser incompatibility. So, for me, my use of IE has gone up recently... but not because I want it to.
Back in 1967, when I was 17, I used to hang out in Greenwich Village on Friday and Saturday nights. There were many stores, including many music stores. One night, while I was walking down Bleeker Street, I heard music coming from one storefront and it went like this... "Oh dear Miss Morse. I love you. Yes I do, really do. Dit dit dah dit. Dit dit dah. Dah dit dah dit. Dah dit dah." They really sang the dits and dahs. The group was Pearls Before Swine and the song was "Miss Morse." Without my knowledge of Morse Code, I would have never known the four letter invective Pearls Before Swine was belting down this crowded block. And now you know the rest of the story. Please don't take away my Morse. de WA1U
From the original post: "Initially thought to be shaped like a pickle, it came to resemble more of a banana shape as comet Tempel I drew closer." For four seasons I hosted Inside Space, a science fact program on the SciFi Channel (it's like being on the Celibacy Show on Playboy). We traveled everywhere visiting the brightest minds in space (pun intended) and nearly every human on the Earth who has "rocket scientist" on his/her business card. There was one recurring theme. Everything in space that's not a planet or star is potato shaped - period, case closed. Next.
There is no doubt the astronauts who fly the Shuttle and International Space Station, and before them the earlier crews, know the dangers they face. Do we? It should have come as no surprise that astronauts died with Columbia and earlier Challenger. Leaving our atmosphere is inherently dangerous. There are thousands of critical components and systems, any one of which could shape the same outcome. NASA has had plenty of close calls before. It has been my opinion, and it seems to be born out by what I've read, that NASA has taken a less than rigorous attitude toward full safety. The conditions they allowed US astronauts to fly to aboard the Soviet MIR were shocking, to say the least. Of course we've all read that NASA experts played down fears about the very foam collision that was the Shuttle's undoing. We will fix the foam, and the wings and anything else that's been made obvious by the events of February 1, 2003, but the changes will only marginally improve the safety of the crew. There are still those thousands of parts and systems. As long as men fly in space, there will be danger and there will be death. This is a profession so dangerous that you can get killed just practicing - as we found out with Apollo One. It's time we, as a nation, took a look at the facts, and made a decision. Is what we're doing in space worth jeopardizing human lives? I say no. Look back at Columbia. It was a 'junk science' mission. There was little of any scientific import on board. Our other major manned program, the International Space Station, isn't much better. Even if it weren't crippled by a caretaker crew, it would be accomplishing few things worth writing home about. Why are we doing this? Is it a matter of pride? In this day and age there's a better way to explore - robotically. We are proving, on Mars, and with other missions, that robots can accomplish the same, or more, than man. And, it's being done at a significant savings, with little human danger. Don't underestimate the cost. My producer at SciFi used to say that if, somehow, the Shuttle's payload bay was mysteriously filled with gold while in orbit, the mission would still lose money! The time to change our attitude is now. If the goal is to explore space, let's do it the right way - so there can be worthwhile science and exploration. As it stands now, the space program is crippled by the fear of further disaster... and there will be further disaster. It's only a matter of time.
Whenever I read about the promises of VOD or using the Internet for television type programming, I hear about the huge bandwidth necessary for full screen, VHS quality. It's just not necessary. In fact, full screen might be a detriment.
Computers are viewed differently than TV's. It's an immense difference. We're closer and we're not adverse to doing multiple tasks on the screen at once. Someone is going to have to step up to the plate with that realization and then VOD over an IP network will be reality.
After one game, I asked my wife if she'd be willing to pay for a live concert by an artist she really likes (Rick Springfield) at this smallish screen size, but with sharp video and good stereo audio? She said, "yes."
To me, this makes some events economically feasible that wouldn't make sense as free TV, basic cable or even pay-per-view. There are undoubtedly other applications, with similar niche audiences.
The current streaming technologies from Microsoft and Real and especially Macromedia Flash (quickly becoming the major player in streaming video) make it easy to integrate advertisements in many different ways, often without stopping or disturbing the actual desired content.
This is the 500 channel universe we've heard about. Except, it's really an infinite channel universe.
Of course, there's a question of whether there's enough bandwidth right now to handle it. The answer's probably no - but - there is a plethora of 'dark' fiber, waiting to be powered up. If video is the next killer app for computers, there will be plenty of incentive to unleash enough bandwidth to enable it.
I work for a local TV station, but I don't consider this our ruin. If we're smart and aggressive, we'll be able to sell the content we already produce, and specialized content that demands our localized expertise, in this new venue.
No kids, no lids, no space cadets, no school bus riders. I haven't heard that since he was calling CQ with it in the early 60s!
The wave action of a tsunami is hardly noticable until it comes to the nearshore shallows. It is only there where the tsunami becomes a monster. From Wikipedia: Tsunamis act very differently from typical surf swells; they are phenomena which move the entire depth of the ocean (often several kilometres deep) rather than just the surface, so they contain immense energy, propagate at high speeds and can travel great transoceanic distances with little overall energy loss. A tsunami can cause damage thousands of kilometres from its origin, so there may be several hours between its creation and its impact on a coast, arriving long after the seismic wave generated by the originating event arrives. Although the total or overall loss of energy is small, the total energy is spread over a larger and larger circumference as the wave travels, so the energy per linear meter in the wave decreases as the inverse power of the distance from the source. This is the two-dimensional equivalent of the inverse square law in three dimensions. In open water, tsunamis have extremely long periods (the time for the next wave top to pass a point after the previous one), from minutes to hours, and long wavelengths of up to several hundred kilometres (compare to the typical wind-generated swell one sees at a beach, which might be spawned by a faraway storm and rhythmically roll in, one wave after another, with a period of about 10 seconds and a wavelength of 150 m). The actual height of a tsunami wave in open water is often less than one metre. This is often practically unnoticeable to people on ships. The energy of a tsunami passes through the entire water column to the sea bed, unlike surface waves, which typically reach only down to a depth of 10 m or so.