Grandson, those newfangled "aKOOstik kupplurz" were what we old-timers used to call a "mouth". You'd tell someone something, and they'd tell someone else, etc. Eventually your message would reach the ear of the intended recipient.
Keep in mind that the "keep it expensive" mindset in America's utilities corporations also means that the telcos are going to raise the price on dialup, through 2 means: periodic pushes to increase the costs (base price or fee) of basic service, and mergers of dialup companies producing a steadily more monopolistic environment.
A basic phone in the US is probably $20. On top of that, basic dialup is $15. DSL is starting to dip down to $35. And around here, the cost of basic phone service is going to go up again, perhaps a relatively large increase this time. For myself, I'll have to strongly consider making the change just to avoid paying more money.
You give a good account, but it's too succinct. Consider this:
Social Security money comes in from taxes as MONEY. Since the era of Carter, this money has been largely tapped to buy T-bills, which put the money into its first layer of unreality. Unbeknownst to them, the beneficiaries of SS start loading up their futures with T-bills, which it takes even MORE TAXES to cover. In return, the government gets real money to waste as it loves to do.
But this wasn't a good enough rape of the SS system, so the government started to use the "IOU" method, which you correctly identified as having happened during the Clinton years. A second layer of unreality washed over the SS funds, and the Clinton Administration and the Congress could then re-sell the T-bills "liberated" by that process in order to get even more money to spend on wasteful government.
At this point, the levels of distraction alone are enough to send an AUDITING accountant screaming into the streets, where he'll promptly be run over by some huge-assed SUV (fueled by boiled Iraqi-baby's blood). But the costs of credit have to be applied to those T-bills. Hence, in order to dig ourselves out of this mess, we'll have to try a combination of things that have already started to happen:
1. Increasing the retirement age until a much smaller aged population can take advantage of SS.
2. Decreasing SS payouts until many retirees still have to work anyway.
3. Increasing the SS withholding until it becomes 20-30% of a paycheck.
This is the start of a sound argument FOR public utilities in the American Western states to indulge in this kind of electricity generation. Whatever non-profitable-ness exists in such a system can be laid to rest by having it publicized.
You'd figure that companies would have built many of these facilities to serve the overloaded California market. But they haven't. This clear example only proves that the "free market" does NOT apply to everything, and that public facilities are entirely valid in several applications.
Turning down the heat even when it's supplied "free" with the apartment is also an action of self-interest, since rising heat bills will cause your landlord to consider raising the rent.
It's because of these uncountable trillions of atomic and molecular opportunities that mankind produces all the chemicals that it does. Mankind merely speeds up the process of chemistry, producing things like acids in millions of tons by industry. So it's hardly difficult to give credit to these things happening naturally for organic chemicals when trillions of opportunities take place in a solar system each year.
Think of Nature as being a very patient and diffuse chemist, whereas the Engineer is a very hurried and concentrated one. Of course, Nature has no mind... and if you can PROVE that it does, then go ahead and do so. I'm all ears.
It seems a better answer that "given enough time and opportunities, the results become almost certain". We're talking about timescales of millennia (1,000s of years) to eons (1,000,000,000s of years), and then we're talking about uncountable trillions of atomic and molecular opportunities EACH YEAR in just ONE solar system for chemical action to take place. Time+Atoms+Energy = Molecules (like amino acids and water), and then Time+Molecules+Energy = Chemicals (for example, DNA and liquid water), and then Time+Chemicals+Energy = Life. Note that the last formula can start occuring pretty soon after the first formula starts acting, since they not only cascade into each other, but each does so CONSTANTLY.
It's truly remarkable that educated men cannot see or believe this process.
<tounge placement=cheek>
Sure, as long as there's a intelligence to start, guide and complete the design of molecular formulae. I mean, how ELSE does life develop? </tounge>
I betcha I can come up with a method of posting even faster than THAT, using an innovative mechanism derived from non-obvious technological advances. Claim#1:....
At this point it is completely clear that I am just feeding a troll.
If there are piles of body parts laying around, this becomes appropriate behavior.
How many people were killed or subject to amputations from this stupid war?
You're just doing what's natural, then. Keep feeding. Eventually the trolls get tired of rancid body parts after noticing that there's a bad taste in their mouths all the time. Yeeech!
They don't even SEEM to be blind to that fact; they're NOT blind to it AT ALL. Both highly partisan parties are obviously relying on marginalization of sensible moderates like you. They also rely heavily on fears and doubts in order to (literally) SCARE moderates into following one of the parties. A Two-Party Duopoly with almost no differences about the important issues (foreign relations and domestic economy) needs this kind of social control. Capitalists and corporatists are firmly in control from this mechanism.
Take me for example. I was outvoted by 99-to-1 in the last Presidential election. As far as I'm concerned, there's no Democracy around here at all, since my viewpoints never rise about 5% of the vote. What I face constantly is a monobloc... in other words, the Two-Party Duopoly. At least the Cold War Russkies acknowledged that they had little choice at the ballot box; most Americans still erroneously think that they do!
A minor rebuttal: Once bridges got long enough, the curvature of the Earth had to be taken into account, since their towers started to have differences in spacing from roadway to top. Allegedly, the Verranzo-Narrows bridge towers are almost 2 inches further apart at their tops due to this curvature. However, these bridges seem to be 20th Century artifacts, so older bridge construction would not have noticed.
Re:No credibility
on
The New Boom
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
I like your term "aftershock", but you may wish to reconsider it given that we seem to be subjected to "asset bounce" or "investment virulence". The monetized asset gains from the dotcom bubble were poured into real estate, and now it seems that people are cashing our their equally ill-gotten monetary gains and are pouring them back into the stock market.
Excessive monetization has led to a remarkably widespread lack of fiscal sense, as expressed by pervasive and intense asset speculation. We've allowed millions of people to simply buy and hold a variety of assets for no personal use whatsoever. The profits from one fiasco are used to inflate another asset market in order to create the profiting from yet another fiasco. This continues until (as I posit) the asset markets involved grow so unstable that some revolutionary change is implemented by government or the people. For instance, it may become effectively illegal or impossible to own an asset outright, since by a single revolutionary change every person will be subject to invasive billing mechanisms that constantly subject their finances to adjustment... and once they overextend (which is a guarantee by the actions of the market participants) they lose assets easily and wholesale in order to honor debts.
Now, if I don't put the right tag in my html, I forfeit copyright to search engines.
How so? The search engine just invokes delay in the exposure of the data you already exposed publicly. It's an information-distribution detail for something you've already distributed without qualification. What's been forfeited? You can't control the other delays or other modifications involved in distribution, either. For example, people record all kinds of broadcast media for review at a later time that's convenient to them. User-controlled delays are well established... they ARE THE PRECEDENT.
I think that it's reasonable to assume that anyone using the web for a public page knows that said page can be reached from a search engine like Google or Yahoo. After all, these engines are essential for making the web useful. Decrying a natural extension (like caching) of their utility is foolish on many levels. The court made the right choice.
"But Senator/Congressperson, consumer privacy is important. But think of all the lost jobs if ChoicePoint were to declare bankruptcy!!!"
Here's what our representatives (remember, they supposedly believe in the free market and Capitalism) should respond:
"Mr CheckPoint Executive, we in the Congress sympathize with the short-term hardship imposed by such a scenario, but we mostly have to be concerned with the long-term results. The long term in your case is that the assets from your failed company would eventually be bought out at pennies on the dollar and be put to use by whom we hope will be more moral and innovative businessmen. The jobs lost from your failed company would then be regained. At any rate, this is a free market, Sir, and you cannot claim Socialist protections on the basis of any privilege, real or perceived. Good day."
Of course, since our politicians have almost totally bought into the ideas of Socialism for the wealthy classes, and the "free market" for the poor and working classes, we're never going to hear this kind of response.
Unfortunately, that sounds like a very familiar type of anecdote. The point I was making was that millions of otherwise qualifiably unemployed men have been "hidden" in the medical care system on some sort of public assistance; unemployment in the United States is at least 4 points higher in real terms just for this crowd alone. Usually these men are on that widely-ranged thing called "disability". It is my opinion that the medical care system had felt significant pressure to get these millions of workers put onto the disability rolls, starting in the late 1980s.
Since this system is an onerous one for the taxpayers, it must snap like a dry stick eventually. THEN we'll see the shantytowns, bread lines, train hobos and all the other obvious indicators of Depression... and meanwhile, the major media outlets will be falling all over themselves to keep the urban yuppies in the spotlight to continue to blot out economic reality.
I said: "One major university Physics department.PLUS. 4 years intensive research budget.SHOULD.EQUAL. success."
You said: "Completely illogical. It took dozens of universities and several decades to produce fission power, and even more universities and time still haven't produced hot fusion. What on Earth makes you think that four years and a tiny budget is going to produce a final product from physics that weren't even understood before?"
Firstly, in this age of electronic collaboration, one large uni dept can do the work of many from the 1940s. You should have thought that one through a bit more, Rei, since it was obvious after a microsecond or so.
Secondly, I should have defined "success", so that's my fault. "Success" is a positive indication of fusion that takes the next step. Cold- and sono-fusion are still being ARGUED and DEBATED on basic levels ("does it exist?", etc.), which makes a laughingstock of all the academics involved. What's to argue about if you had bothered to (1) get adequate funding for the project, and (2) had done your experiments correctly (i.e. without errors, like Pons and F. were famous for)?
So my view point of scientists + time + funding = success is entirely correct. What we have now is media + scientists + halfassedfunding = travesty. So of course we're not seeing any successes... just a lot of people squawking. Note well that this is the major problem with Western Civilization today; there's a whole lot of talk, but very few people completing work towards goals. In effect, since too many academics are in a welfare system, they have little motivation to complete work towards defined goals. Literally, results are bad since that would mean projects (hence funding) would end.
I said: "Look, tech that can be figuratively-speaking "made in a garage" can ONLY produce results from a few garages across America and Europe."
You said: "Your garage has deuterated acetone and a Pu-Be neutron source? Wow, please invite me over some time!!!!"
Now you're just being an ass. We had an American kid refine radioactives from smoke detectors in his yard shed and basement, in his attempts to make a power-producing reactor. Things like rare chemicals and neutron sources can be obtained and installed in a garage. Stop being silly, Rei. America's inventors have done marvellous things in (figurative) garages... if they are allowed access to wealth and materials. They've also done the things that needed to be done when large organizations refused to do them. Any computer Apple user should be thankful for that, although the microcomputer industry cannot entirely claim fatherhood from Jobs' and Wozniak's garage antics.
I said: "Uni labs should have cranked a few dozen of these solutions out over a decade ago."
You said: "No, they most certainly shouldn't have. [details]"
Rei, listen to me verrrrrry carefully. Scientists are supposed to explore the limits of knowledge based upon their superb education and rationality, not hand us a list of arbitrary goddamn excuses about endless technical details that are allegedly causing them to not produce results. Your list sounds like the equally-arbitrary list of reasons the US invaded and occupied Iraq. Each point applies to the failure to get results purely on faith. We may as well have them tell us the "framistat was decalibrated".
Scientists are supposed to be smart and educated. "Smart and educated" means you have a deep understanding of things. One thing that should be understandable is WHAT you're experimenting for, and past that point HOW you'll overcome restrictions to make the NEXT discovery. But that's NOT what's happening with cold- and sono-fusion experiments. Either these so-called scientists are playing
hold down jobs that are now living off a mix of odd jobs and welfare
YES!! Yes, THAT is a good summary of "what the hell is wrong" with Rust Belt culture at the moment. This kind of personal economic uncertainty is becoming mainstream, hence is tolerated. I'm watching grown men resignedly losing their homes and talking about taking seasonal work to make "Christmas money" (itself a farcical sentiment, please note).
Unseen to the media and elite, there are millions of men in their late 40s to early 60s who have fallen out of the unemployment stats due to:
imprisonment
medical care system (back injuries)
medical care system (mental illness)
I am only guessing, but I'd bet that a significant disproportion of these men are from the Rust Belt.
As far as I'm concerned, the Rusty States are already in America's next Depression, and that Depression started in the 1990s.
Oh, get real, Rei. One major university Physics department.PLUS. 4 years intensive research budget.SHOULD.EQUAL. success. Since this hasn't happened yet, I just don't see this happening EVER with breakeven desktop fusion of any kind. Hence, I'm intensely skeptical.
Look, tech that can be figuratively-speaking "made in a garage" can ONLY produce results from a few garages across America and Europe. The same general rule applies to things like cold fusion and sonofusion. Uni labs should have cranked a few dozen of these solutions out over a decade ago. Since they haven't, it's likely that cold- and sono-fusion are simply bullshit.
In even more general terms, we've been buying into the fusion myth for 50 years. How many more decades of wasted money are we going to pour into academic welfare before we wise up? Meanwhile, solar exploitation is just begging for its Apollo Project, so I'd say that the Human race clearly has its wires crossed about what we SHOULD be investing in for practical energy research. Leave fusion to the quacks and lets get solar going, eh?
Nothing CAN speak louder than results. The fusion mythologists just don't have any practical results for us. Isn't it time to call snake oil "snake oil"?
"Thank you for demonstrating your knowledge of the GOTO statement. However, we're looking for a programmer with 10 more years experience with the GOTO statement. We'll keep your resume on file. Have a nice day."
Blue collar jobs have been leaving us for years, white collar jobs have been following - what is going to be left?
Red collar jobs -- the ones involving life and death, like security (security, police, intelligence, military), government, and some medical. This becomes especially true as the USA loses the last of the Republic and becomes a Fascist culture.
Of course, these jobs are an even tinier portion of the population, like the transition from blue to white was, and green (agricultural) to blue (industrial) was.
The loss of blue-collar jobs in the USA is still a work in progress, and the overall bankruptcy from that loss has yet to be fully felt... which is why the Right Wingnuts feel justified in saying "we lost a lot of manufacturing jobs and nothing terrible happened". The middle of America is actually a Third World country that we charitably call the "Rust Belt". We are just beginning to see the bankruptcy of the flight of white-collar work; the master/slave work ethic is reaching out to the coasts from the Third World country in the middle of America. So the transition to red-collar work is not going to be clearly demarcated. It never is. The transitions from Republic to Empire to Fallen Empire are never clear, even with singular events like the sacking of a capital city.
What you're really saying is that the executives are the real weak point in the organization. Considering how much overall operational power they're granted, combined with an equally large level of a lack of oversight, you're close to realizing the real problem.
Yeah, I agree, who in the hell would want to spend a few months of their time doing something they enjoy doing in exchange for a million bucks.
But's that's NOT what happens in 999999/1000000 of the cases. To be correct, your statement SHOULD be:
"I want to spend a few months of my time in exchange for a microscopic chance of 1 million dollars."
Voluntary Stupidity Tax. I'm sure that the thousands of people who have become millionaires agree with you too.
You're ignoring the many, many MILLIONS who didn't win, who financed the few THOUSANDS of the winners. Do the fortunes of the tiny minority trump the misfortuntate losses of the vast majority?
The mathematical ROI (return on investment) for a lottery ticket is so low that you're better off eating the dollar bill for the intestinal roughage it gains you. It's a Stupidity Tax because of attitudes like yours. You are stupid for not realizing the mathematical truth of lotteries.
There's a reason why people don't pick up pennies from the ground. One cent is just not a worthwhile ROI for bending over, picking it up, perhaps wiping it off, and then carrying it around. The same value system applies to lotteries... except that stupid people like you ignore the mathematical truth and instead concentrate on valueless hopes.
Slagging off these things, OTOH, is pretty stupid and narrow minded.
No, it's mathematically correct. The ROI on a lottery ticket is so low that it's a terrible investment. Stupid people like you will probably never realize this, which is why your poor neighborhoods are filled with shops selling lottery tickets, cigarettes, and alcohol.
Slashdot Mirror
Grandson, those newfangled "aKOOstik kupplurz" were what we old-timers used to call a "mouth". You'd tell someone something, and they'd tell someone else, etc. Eventually your message would reach the ear of the intended recipient.
Kids today.
Keep in mind that the "keep it expensive" mindset in America's utilities corporations also means that the telcos are going to raise the price on dialup, through 2 means: periodic pushes to increase the costs (base price or fee) of basic service, and mergers of dialup companies producing a steadily more monopolistic environment.
A basic phone in the US is probably $20. On top of that, basic dialup is $15. DSL is starting to dip down to $35. And around here, the cost of basic phone service is going to go up again, perhaps a relatively large increase this time. For myself, I'll have to strongly consider making the change just to avoid paying more money.
You give a good account, but it's too succinct. Consider this:
Social Security money comes in from taxes as MONEY. Since the era of Carter, this money has been largely tapped to buy T-bills, which put the money into its first layer of unreality. Unbeknownst to them, the beneficiaries of SS start loading up their futures with T-bills, which it takes even MORE TAXES to cover. In return, the government gets real money to waste as it loves to do.
But this wasn't a good enough rape of the SS system, so the government started to use the "IOU" method, which you correctly identified as having happened during the Clinton years. A second layer of unreality washed over the SS funds, and the Clinton Administration and the Congress could then re-sell the T-bills "liberated" by that process in order to get even more money to spend on wasteful government.
At this point, the levels of distraction alone are enough to send an AUDITING accountant screaming into the streets, where he'll promptly be run over by some huge-assed SUV (fueled by boiled Iraqi-baby's blood). But the costs of credit have to be applied to those T-bills. Hence, in order to dig ourselves out of this mess, we'll have to try a combination of things that have already started to happen:
1. Increasing the retirement age until a much smaller aged population can take advantage of SS.
2. Decreasing SS payouts until many retirees still have to work anyway.
3. Increasing the SS withholding until it becomes 20-30% of a paycheck.
One branch is all that's required to whup your hide, young fella!
This is the start of a sound argument FOR public utilities in the American Western states to indulge in this kind of electricity generation. Whatever non-profitable-ness exists in such a system can be laid to rest by having it publicized.
You'd figure that companies would have built many of these facilities to serve the overloaded California market. But they haven't. This clear example only proves that the "free market" does NOT apply to everything, and that public facilities are entirely valid in several applications.
Turning down the heat even when it's supplied "free" with the apartment is also an action of self-interest, since rising heat bills will cause your landlord to consider raising the rent.
It's because of these uncountable trillions of atomic and molecular opportunities that mankind produces all the chemicals that it does. Mankind merely speeds up the process of chemistry, producing things like acids in millions of tons by industry. So it's hardly difficult to give credit to these things happening naturally for organic chemicals when trillions of opportunities take place in a solar system each year.
... and if you can PROVE that it does, then go ahead and do so. I'm all ears.
Think of Nature as being a very patient and diffuse chemist, whereas the Engineer is a very hurried and concentrated one. Of course, Nature has no mind
It seems a better answer that "given enough time and opportunities, the results become almost certain". We're talking about timescales of millennia (1,000s of years) to eons (1,000,000,000s of years), and then we're talking about uncountable trillions of atomic and molecular opportunities EACH YEAR in just ONE solar system for chemical action to take place. Time+Atoms+Energy = Molecules (like amino acids and water), and then Time+Molecules+Energy = Chemicals (for example, DNA and liquid water), and then Time+Chemicals+Energy = Life. Note that the last formula can start occuring pretty soon after the first formula starts acting, since they not only cascade into each other, but each does so CONSTANTLY.
It's truly remarkable that educated men cannot see or believe this process.
<tounge placement=cheek>
Sure, as long as there's a intelligence to start, guide and complete the design of molecular formulae. I mean, how ELSE does life develop?
</tounge>
I betcha I can come up with a method of posting even faster than THAT, using an innovative mechanism derived from non-obvious technological advances. Claim#1: ....
At this point it is completely clear that I am just feeding a troll.
If there are piles of body parts laying around, this becomes appropriate behavior.
How many people were killed or subject to amputations from this stupid war?
You're just doing what's natural, then. Keep feeding. Eventually the trolls get tired of rancid body parts after noticing that there's a bad taste in their mouths all the time. Yeeech!
They don't even SEEM to be blind to that fact; they're NOT blind to it AT ALL. Both highly partisan parties are obviously relying on marginalization of sensible moderates like you. They also rely heavily on fears and doubts in order to (literally) SCARE moderates into following one of the parties. A Two-Party Duopoly with almost no differences about the important issues (foreign relations and domestic economy) needs this kind of social control. Capitalists and corporatists are firmly in control from this mechanism.
... in other words, the Two-Party Duopoly. At least the Cold War Russkies acknowledged that they had little choice at the ballot box; most Americans still erroneously think that they do!
Take me for example. I was outvoted by 99-to-1 in the last Presidential election. As far as I'm concerned, there's no Democracy around here at all, since my viewpoints never rise about 5% of the vote. What I face constantly is a monobloc
A minor rebuttal: Once bridges got long enough, the curvature of the Earth had to be taken into account, since their towers started to have differences in spacing from roadway to top. Allegedly, the Verranzo-Narrows bridge towers are almost 2 inches further apart at their tops due to this curvature. However, these bridges seem to be 20th Century artifacts, so older bridge construction would not have noticed.
I like your term "aftershock", but you may wish to reconsider it given that we seem to be subjected to "asset bounce" or "investment virulence". The monetized asset gains from the dotcom bubble were poured into real estate, and now it seems that people are cashing our their equally ill-gotten monetary gains and are pouring them back into the stock market.
... and once they overextend (which is a guarantee by the actions of the market participants) they lose assets easily and wholesale in order to honor debts.
Excessive monetization has led to a remarkably widespread lack of fiscal sense, as expressed by pervasive and intense asset speculation. We've allowed millions of people to simply buy and hold a variety of assets for no personal use whatsoever. The profits from one fiasco are used to inflate another asset market in order to create the profiting from yet another fiasco. This continues until (as I posit) the asset markets involved grow so unstable that some revolutionary change is implemented by government or the people. For instance, it may become effectively illegal or impossible to own an asset outright, since by a single revolutionary change every person will be subject to invasive billing mechanisms that constantly subject their finances to adjustment
Now, if I don't put the right tag in my html, I forfeit copyright to search engines.
... they ARE THE PRECEDENT.
How so? The search engine just invokes delay in the exposure of the data you already exposed publicly. It's an information-distribution detail for something you've already distributed without qualification. What's been forfeited? You can't control the other delays or other modifications involved in distribution, either. For example, people record all kinds of broadcast media for review at a later time that's convenient to them. User-controlled delays are well established
I think that it's reasonable to assume that anyone using the web for a public page knows that said page can be reached from a search engine like Google or Yahoo. After all, these engines are essential for making the web useful. Decrying a natural extension (like caching) of their utility is foolish on many levels. The court made the right choice.
"But Senator/Congressperson, consumer privacy is important. But think of all the lost jobs if ChoicePoint were to declare bankruptcy!!!"
Here's what our representatives (remember, they supposedly believe in the free market and Capitalism) should respond:
"Mr CheckPoint Executive, we in the Congress sympathize with the short-term hardship imposed by such a scenario, but we mostly have to be concerned with the long-term results. The long term in your case is that the assets from your failed company would eventually be bought out at pennies on the dollar and be put to use by whom we hope will be more moral and innovative businessmen. The jobs lost from your failed company would then be regained. At any rate, this is a free market, Sir, and you cannot claim Socialist protections on the basis of any privilege, real or perceived. Good day."
Of course, since our politicians have almost totally bought into the ideas of Socialism for the wealthy classes, and the "free market" for the poor and working classes, we're never going to hear this kind of response.
"Rope. Tree. Neck. ...some assembly required."
Some? That's a stretch.
{ducks}
Unfortunately, that sounds like a very familiar type of anecdote. The point I was making was that millions of otherwise qualifiably unemployed men have been "hidden" in the medical care system on some sort of public assistance; unemployment in the United States is at least 4 points higher in real terms just for this crowd alone. Usually these men are on that widely-ranged thing called "disability". It is my opinion that the medical care system had felt significant pressure to get these millions of workers put onto the disability rolls, starting in the late 1980s.
... and meanwhile, the major media outlets will be falling all over themselves to keep the urban yuppies in the spotlight to continue to blot out economic reality.
Since this system is an onerous one for the taxpayers, it must snap like a dry stick eventually. THEN we'll see the shantytowns, bread lines, train hobos and all the other obvious indicators of Depression
I said: "One major university Physics department .PLUS. 4 years intensive research budget .SHOULD.EQUAL. success."
... just a lot of people squawking. Note well that this is the major problem with Western Civilization today; there's a whole lot of talk, but very few people completing work towards goals. In effect, since too many academics are in a welfare system, they have little motivation to complete work towards defined goals. Literally, results are bad since that would mean projects (hence funding) would end.
... if they are allowed access to wealth and materials. They've also done the things that needed to be done when large organizations refused to do them. Any computer Apple user should be thankful for that, although the microcomputer industry cannot entirely claim fatherhood from Jobs' and Wozniak's garage antics.
You said: "Completely illogical. It took dozens of universities and several decades to produce fission power, and even more universities and time still haven't produced hot fusion. What on Earth makes you think that four years and a tiny budget is going to produce a final product from physics that weren't even understood before?"
Firstly, in this age of electronic collaboration, one large uni dept can do the work of many from the 1940s. You should have thought that one through a bit more, Rei, since it was obvious after a microsecond or so.
Secondly, I should have defined "success", so that's my fault. "Success" is a positive indication of fusion that takes the next step. Cold- and sono-fusion are still being ARGUED and DEBATED on basic levels ("does it exist?", etc.), which makes a laughingstock of all the academics involved. What's to argue about if you had bothered to (1) get adequate funding for the project, and (2) had done your experiments correctly (i.e. without errors, like Pons and F. were famous for)?
So my view point of scientists + time + funding = success is entirely correct. What we have now is media + scientists + halfassedfunding = travesty. So of course we're not seeing any successes
I said: "Look, tech that can be figuratively-speaking "made in a garage" can ONLY produce results from a few garages across America and Europe."
You said: "Your garage has deuterated acetone and a Pu-Be neutron source? Wow, please invite me over some time!!!!"
Now you're just being an ass. We had an American kid refine radioactives from smoke detectors in his yard shed and basement, in his attempts to make a power-producing reactor. Things like rare chemicals and neutron sources can be obtained and installed in a garage. Stop being silly, Rei. America's inventors have done marvellous things in (figurative) garages
I said: "Uni labs should have cranked a few dozen of these solutions out over a decade ago."
You said: "No, they most certainly shouldn't have. [details]"
Rei, listen to me verrrrrry carefully. Scientists are supposed to explore the limits of knowledge based upon their superb education and rationality, not hand us a list of arbitrary goddamn excuses about endless technical details that are allegedly causing them to not produce results. Your list sounds like the equally-arbitrary list of reasons the US invaded and occupied Iraq. Each point applies to the failure to get results purely on faith. We may as well have them tell us the "framistat was decalibrated".
Scientists are supposed to be smart and educated. "Smart and educated" means you have a deep understanding of things. One thing that should be understandable is WHAT you're experimenting for, and past that point HOW you'll overcome restrictions to make the NEXT discovery. But that's NOT what's happening with cold- and sono-fusion experiments. Either these so-called scientists are playing
YES!! Yes, THAT is a good summary of "what the hell is wrong" with Rust Belt culture at the moment. This kind of personal economic uncertainty is becoming mainstream, hence is tolerated. I'm watching grown men resignedly losing their homes and talking about taking seasonal work to make "Christmas money" (itself a farcical sentiment, please note).
Unseen to the media and elite, there are millions of men in their late 40s to early 60s who have fallen out of the unemployment stats due to:
I am only guessing, but I'd bet that a significant disproportion of these men are from the Rust Belt.
As far as I'm concerned, the Rusty States are already in America's next Depression, and that Depression started in the 1990s.
Oh, get real, Rei. One major university Physics department .PLUS. 4 years intensive research budget .SHOULD.EQUAL. success. Since this hasn't happened yet, I just don't see this happening EVER with breakeven desktop fusion of any kind. Hence, I'm intensely skeptical.
Look, tech that can be figuratively-speaking "made in a garage" can ONLY produce results from a few garages across America and Europe. The same general rule applies to things like cold fusion and sonofusion. Uni labs should have cranked a few dozen of these solutions out over a decade ago. Since they haven't, it's likely that cold- and sono-fusion are simply bullshit.
In even more general terms, we've been buying into the fusion myth for 50 years. How many more decades of wasted money are we going to pour into academic welfare before we wise up? Meanwhile, solar exploitation is just begging for its Apollo Project, so I'd say that the Human race clearly has its wires crossed about what we SHOULD be investing in for practical energy research. Leave fusion to the quacks and lets get solar going, eh?
Nothing CAN speak louder than results. The fusion mythologists just don't have any practical results for us. Isn't it time to call snake oil "snake oil"?
"Thank you for demonstrating your knowledge of the GOTO statement. However, we're looking for a programmer with 10 more years experience with the GOTO statement. We'll keep your resume on file. Have a nice day."
Blue collar jobs have been leaving us for years, white collar jobs have been following - what is going to be left?
... which is why the Right Wingnuts feel justified in saying "we lost a lot of manufacturing jobs and nothing terrible happened". The middle of America is actually a Third World country that we charitably call the "Rust Belt". We are just beginning to see the bankruptcy of the flight of white-collar work; the master/slave work ethic is reaching out to the coasts from the Third World country in the middle of America. So the transition to red-collar work is not going to be clearly demarcated. It never is. The transitions from Republic to Empire to Fallen Empire are never clear, even with singular events like the sacking of a capital city.
Red collar jobs -- the ones involving life and death, like security (security, police, intelligence, military), government, and some medical. This becomes especially true as the USA loses the last of the Republic and becomes a Fascist culture.
Of course, these jobs are an even tinier portion of the population, like the transition from blue to white was, and green (agricultural) to blue (industrial) was.
The loss of blue-collar jobs in the USA is still a work in progress, and the overall bankruptcy from that loss has yet to be fully felt
What you're really saying is that the executives are the real weak point in the organization. Considering how much overall operational power they're granted, combined with an equally large level of a lack of oversight, you're close to realizing the real problem.
Yeah, I agree, who in the hell would want to spend a few months of their time doing something they enjoy doing in exchange for a million bucks.
... except that stupid people like you ignore the mathematical truth and instead concentrate on valueless hopes.
But's that's NOT what happens in 999999/1000000 of the cases. To be correct, your statement SHOULD be:
"I want to spend a few months of my time in exchange for a microscopic chance of 1 million dollars."
Voluntary Stupidity Tax. I'm sure that the thousands of people who have become millionaires agree with you too.
You're ignoring the many, many MILLIONS who didn't win, who financed the few THOUSANDS of the winners. Do the fortunes of the tiny minority trump the misfortuntate losses of the vast majority?
The mathematical ROI (return on investment) for a lottery ticket is so low that you're better off eating the dollar bill for the intestinal roughage it gains you. It's a Stupidity Tax because of attitudes like yours. You are stupid for not realizing the mathematical truth of lotteries.
There's a reason why people don't pick up pennies from the ground. One cent is just not a worthwhile ROI for bending over, picking it up, perhaps wiping it off, and then carrying it around. The same value system applies to lotteries
Slagging off these things, OTOH, is pretty stupid and narrow minded.
No, it's mathematically correct. The ROI on a lottery ticket is so low that it's a terrible investment. Stupid people like you will probably never realize this, which is why your poor neighborhoods are filled with shops selling lottery tickets, cigarettes, and alcohol.
Dumbass.