This isn't good news for us Climate Change folks. Not only does this show that things are possibly not nearly as worse as we thought they were, but that our understanding is potentially flawed, perhaps very flawed.
On the contrary, this tells us that there are more efficient mechanisms for removing CO2 from the atmosphere than we thought. So just reducing greenhouse gas emissions might allow us to stop the CO2 increase, and maybe to actually *stop* the climate change.
So I think this kind of information gives a very powerful argument: we *can* do something about it, 'cos the nature is on our side.
Sci Fi fantasy: In the longer run, if there are enough mechanisms that can remove CO2 relatively rapidly, and we humans can increase it relatively rapidly, then this gives us control. With good enough climate models (not the models we have today and not with the meager computing power we have today) we could actually manage the global climate over decades "simply" by adjusting our CO2 emissions up or down.
instantaneously reversing the state of any component of the system results in interesting and often unpredictable effects throughout the entire body
Could you clarify, just what component of the climate or the biosphere you're thinking about, when you talk about instantaneously reversing the state of it?
The real problem isn't nature, and to your point, the real solution isn't changing anything, it's dedicated research.
But you see, we are constantly changing something! We are adding carbon to the carbon cycle of the biosphere, and adding a lot of it, and increasing the carbon release rate. That's a change, and we're doing it, and there's no way we'll stop doing it, so option of "not changing anything" is out. But there is the uncomfortable option of trying to change our planet and biosphere as little as possible...
Alternatively, you could argue that if we stop spewing out CO2 so fast, then the Earth does have mechanisms to reduce CO2 faster than we thought. So strict CO2 controls could actually *reverse* the climate change and put greenhouse gas levels into *decline*, and not just give us more time to adapt our society by delaying the inevitable.
By this logic, opponents of global warming can no longer say that reducing CO2 doesn't really do anything, because now our actions really could mean the difference between major climate change happening or not happening.
I'm not saying it's like this, I'm just saying that those who want nothing to be done about climate change should be careful with their arguments...;-)
Why do you think they call them business ventures?
But we don't usually call gambling a venture, unless talking about a gambling business, but then it is not gambling, but a business venture, and often a very low risk, high profit business venture at that, very unlike gambling. Weird, eh...;-)
First, I didn't say an employer can't check on people they plan to hire. I only said that human labor is fundamentally different from other objects of trade (because of the attached human being), and therefore it's invalid to argue that if something is OK with other trade goods, it is OK with human labor too.
For example, human beings have in my opinion a right to reasonable privacy. Selling and buying human labor can't in my opinion be used as an excuse to erode this right. In practice, I'd say "reasonable privacy" means for example that a buyer of labor can do a health check for the human being trying sell their own labor. However, only the doctor doing the check has right to know all the dirty details (because that is unavoidable), the buyer only has right to get an overview, sort of "suitable/unsuitable" estimation from the doctor. Also, the buyer has no right for old (possibly outdated, certainly out-of-context) medical details, and no right to give away or sell the results from the new health check. But this is of course just an opinion, your idea of sufficient privacy is probably different...
Second, please don't try to put words in my mouth. I did not say "if you can't have A without B, whatever you do to A, you unavoidably do to B". I said something to the effect of: if B can't be separated/removed from A, whatever you do to B unavoidably affects A. Surely you can see the difference, but let's illustrate just in case:
At least in my toilet I see toilet paper without a delivery truck in sight, so I'm confident toilet paper *can* be removed from delivery truck. Good thing too, just try to imagine if you couldn't separate toilet paper and delivery truck. What a mess that'd be...
I assumed the tug hovering over the asteroid (as that's what it would do). With hovering, there's a feedback algorithm from location sensors to thrusters. As far as I understand English (not my native language), "trajectory" doesn't cover hovering, so there isn't any trajectory, reasonable or unreasonable.
So it seems the misunderstanding is on you, or then it's misscommunication about the meaning of word "trajectory". Which is why I asked you to clarify what you mean by trajectory, which you failed to do, which in Internet conversations usually means you don't actually know... But let's drop this, then.
Well, what's the different between gambling and grocery store? The store owners takes a risk they wouldn't otherwise have by buying goods (and even goods that have a very short expiry time!) at some price, and hoping they're calculated the odds correctly and stacked the cards in their favor, so that they'll end up with profit before the goods expire. What's the difference between that and gambling? None.
Well, maybe there's a bit of difference after all... The difference comes from the customers. Buyers of insurance or buyers of groceries aren't gambling, so selling insurance nor selling grocieries isn't running a gambling business.
That's how I see it, anyway.
Of course insurance companies seem to sell "insurance" that is more like gambling these days, so they may be *partly* in gambling business as well, but that's beside the point (difference between insurance and gambling).
Except there's this nasty meatbag, a "human being", permanently attached to that "human labor" thing, as inconvenient as it is.
Once you remove some "labor" from a "human", it's no longer "labor", it suddenly transforms into a product of some kind, tangible or intangible.
What ever you do to "human labor", you unavoidably do it to "human beings", since you can't have one without the other.
Now there *are* ways around this, mostly by minimizing the usage of "human labor", for example by using robots. *Then* nobody will object if you scrutinize the robot manufacturer for reliability and do the most invasive, intimate, greasy examination of the robots you're getting, and find out the most seemingly irrelevant details about them, even if it's just for your own amusement.
I think it's 'cos so many here do or have done something like that in the Internet... So they're scared for the consequences of their own actions, desperately crying after their free speech to impersonate and to bully "losers" without fear of taking any responsibility. To them, "freedom" means "freedom of responsibility"...
Then a whole different class of murderer sympathisers are those who believe that weak deserve to die if they're as weak as the girl here. Some of these might even think that those who test them like this are really almost heroes, culling the herd from the emotionally weak.
It's a sad day, when so many at/. seem to fall into either of those categories.
I don't know if you meant that as a joke, but I'm writing this as if you're serious. Then you'd need to separate the waste bags (paper or plastic), because burying all the waste we produce would fill the mines in a few days... And then there's of course the transportation and compacting problem. You can't just dump the waste there, you have to transport it to the ends of the tunnels and compact it there so it doesn't take too much space.
The problem of gathering them, the problem of them being dirty, the problem of different kinds of plastic used, some of which produce poisons gasses if not burned in a very high temperature...
Burning plastic bags could certainly be part of the solution, but it wouldn't be easy.
There are also other uses for waste plastic, such as using it in asphalt when pawing roads, partially replacing bitumen. But again it's the same problem, getting the waste plastic, and having it clean enough.
Sounds like a valid patent to me, unless there's prior art. At least it is doing exactly what patents are intended to do, ie. you have a business idea, and then want exclusive rights for that idea for a time so you can develop a business around it and talk to potential business partners without some of them just taking your idea once you tell it to them.
Good or bad, that's what patents are there for.
Also, it seems to be "non-obivious" if there is no prior art, since credit cards have been around for a long time without somebody doing this already.
Except I think that producing (including all the transportation of materials and bags) that plastic bag released far more CO2 than is buried with it. So increasing plastic bag use will increase CO2 emissions, so using as few of them as possible is good.
Now if we could make non-biodegradeable paper bags, that might make some sense... Trees remove the CO2 form atmosphere, then get made into paper bags, which then store the carbon for all eternity... Of course even the the paper bag would need to be used and re-used until it's ready to break, to avoid spending too much energy on making the bags.
Alas, there's not such thing as non-biodegradeable cellulose. Damn this evolved biosphere, with microbes so specialized on eating that stuff. A designed biosphere could avoid all these pesky problems of life forms evolving to take advantage of any conventient source of energy.
Just 'cos they have the key in escrow doesn't mean they'll check more than a tiny, tiny portion of all the traffic. I mean, for more than that they'd have to redirect all internet traffic to a location where the escrow keys are available, and that's not going to happen. So you just put your *real* encrypted channel inside an escrowed VPN. Double encryption is no big deal with current PC hardware.
"No amount of physical torture" is of course exagerating, since it's possible to completely break a human being with enough physcial torture. And there is no such thing as purely physical torture, the very act of torturing is automatically psychological too. That's what makes having bad teeth ripped off without anesthetics at dentist different from having them teeth ripped off as a form of torture, even though the physical pain is exactly the same.
The simple fact is, emotional crisis can change who we are, how we think. It directly messes with our brain, because that's how our brains are built. Plain physical pain we forget about very fast, even in physical torture it's the emotional part that leaves the real scars (well, unless the torture involves removing body parts) because that's also how our brains are built.
There's simple solution. Expatriate. Just be careful on what country you choose... Then hunt for the right opprotunity, and just move. Your ancestors (or you yourself?) expatriated to get a better life. Now it may be time for you to do the same...
That depends on your view of human rights. If you consider human beings as objects of trade, then certainly the buyer has the right to check the wares. OTOH, if you consider that human beings are not products or trade goods, then your argument holds no water.
Now this doesn't necessarily mean an employer shouldn't be allowed to check the people they hire as carefully as they can. It just means that you can't use the argument you're using, unless you believe that human beings are equal to trade goods.
Are you suggesting that mass is some kind of magical property of matter that affects magically? That doesn't really fly with science. No, there needs to be some kind of mechanism for the effect of particle's mass to interact with other particle's masses. Without the mechanism, "mass" has no meaning since it doesn't do anything. But clearly mass does something, so there must be some mechansim for masses to interact, either with "space-time continuum" or directly with other masses. Also there needs to be explanation why different particles have different masses (just like there's explanation why proton has the charge it has, while neutron is neutral, etc).
Higgs field and corresponding Higgs particle (consider electromagnetic field and photon, one can't exist without the other, and it's same with Higgs) are how the Standard Model expalains this whole "mass" thing.
If there's no Higgs, then (as far as I understand), the Standard Model is invalid, something like Ptolemaic epicycles. Then we'll just have a few decades worth of very accurate and consistent scientific observations about particles, no working model to explain them, and a stampeding herd of over-excited physicists trying to be the first make some sense out of the mess... Now that would be fun to watch!
I still think the difference is mostly very clear cut.
First of all, if you don't need to have some kind of "unexpected" loss, it's gambling. Gambling bets (or insurance fees) aren't unexpected so they don't count here.
Secondly, even with insurance, if the loss required is smaller than the compensation, then the loss can be considered as a part of the gambling bet, and above applies.
If you stand to get less compensation than your total expenses and losses, ie. you lose in every case, then it's quite clearly insurance.
A practical indicator that applies to most cases: If you hope to "win", then it's gambling. If you hope you don't "win", then it's insurance.
Of course just about any insurance can be used for gambling, but this is not very easy to do without it being insurance fraud. And some gambling schemes masquerading as insurance can be used for actual insuring too, but I think these are mostly designed so that they make little sense as a real insurance...?
I think you still need the classical channel to make any sense of the information you receive, just like before.
Without classical channel, you still just have the ability to sync two completely random one-time-pads faster than light, with zero information content.
If something, like sufficiently complex Ptolomaic explanation of solar system, matches reality to observational limit, then couldn't it be reduced to the more simple theory we know about (Newtonian or GR) with enough and suitable coordinate transforms, simplification of formulas etc?
If so, then it could be argued that the complex Ptolemaic explanation is equally valid because it is actually equal, just expressed in a needlesly complex way...
Slashdot Mirror
This isn't good news for us Climate Change folks. Not only does this show that things are possibly not nearly as worse as we thought they were, but that our understanding is potentially flawed, perhaps very flawed.
On the contrary, this tells us that there are more efficient mechanisms for removing CO2 from the atmosphere than we thought. So just reducing greenhouse gas emissions might allow us to stop the CO2 increase, and maybe to actually *stop* the climate change.
So I think this kind of information gives a very powerful argument: we *can* do something about it, 'cos the nature is on our side.
Sci Fi fantasy: In the longer run, if there are enough mechanisms that can remove CO2 relatively rapidly, and we humans can increase it relatively rapidly, then this gives us control. With good enough climate models (not the models we have today and not with the meager computing power we have today) we could actually manage the global climate over decades "simply" by adjusting our CO2 emissions up or down.
instantaneously reversing the state of any component of the system results in interesting and often unpredictable effects throughout the entire body
Could you clarify, just what component of the climate or the biosphere you're thinking about, when you talk about instantaneously reversing the state of it?
The real problem isn't nature, and to your point, the real solution isn't changing anything, it's dedicated research.
But you see, we are constantly changing something! We are adding carbon to the carbon cycle of the biosphere, and adding a lot of it, and increasing the carbon release rate. That's a change, and we're doing it, and there's no way we'll stop doing it, so option of "not changing anything" is out. But there is the uncomfortable option of trying to change our planet and biosphere as little as possible...
Alternatively, you could argue that if we stop spewing out CO2 so fast, then the Earth does have mechanisms to reduce CO2 faster than we thought. So strict CO2 controls could actually *reverse* the climate change and put greenhouse gas levels into *decline*, and not just give us more time to adapt our society by delaying the inevitable.
By this logic, opponents of global warming can no longer say that reducing CO2 doesn't really do anything, because now our actions really could mean the difference between major climate change happening or not happening.
I'm not saying it's like this, I'm just saying that those who want nothing to be done about climate change should be careful with their arguments... ;-)
Why do you think they call them business ventures?
But we don't usually call gambling a venture, unless talking about a gambling business, but then it is not gambling, but a business venture, and often a very low risk, high profit business venture at that, very unlike gambling. Weird, eh... ;-)
First, I didn't say an employer can't check on people they plan to hire. I only said that human labor is fundamentally different from other objects of trade (because of the attached human being), and therefore it's invalid to argue that if something is OK with other trade goods, it is OK with human labor too.
For example, human beings have in my opinion a right to reasonable privacy. Selling and buying human labor can't in my opinion be used as an excuse to erode this right. In practice, I'd say "reasonable privacy" means for example that a buyer of labor can do a health check for the human being trying sell their own labor. However, only the doctor doing the check has right to know all the dirty details (because that is unavoidable), the buyer only has right to get an overview, sort of "suitable/unsuitable" estimation from the doctor. Also, the buyer has no right for old (possibly outdated, certainly out-of-context) medical details, and no right to give away or sell the results from the new health check. But this is of course just an opinion, your idea of sufficient privacy is probably different...
Second, please don't try to put words in my mouth. I did not say "if you can't have A without B, whatever you do to A, you unavoidably do to B". I said something to the effect of: if B can't be separated/removed from A, whatever you do to B unavoidably affects A. Surely you can see the difference, but let's illustrate just in case:
At least in my toilet I see toilet paper without a delivery truck in sight, so I'm confident toilet paper *can* be removed from delivery truck. Good thing too, just try to imagine if you couldn't separate toilet paper and delivery truck. What a mess that'd be...
I assumed the tug hovering over the asteroid (as that's what it would do). With hovering, there's a feedback algorithm from location sensors to thrusters. As far as I understand English (not my native language), "trajectory" doesn't cover hovering, so there isn't any trajectory, reasonable or unreasonable.
So it seems the misunderstanding is on you, or then it's misscommunication about the meaning of word "trajectory". Which is why I asked you to clarify what you mean by trajectory, which you failed to do, which in Internet conversations usually means you don't actually know... But let's drop this, then.
Well, what's the different between gambling and grocery store? The store owners takes a risk they wouldn't otherwise have by buying goods (and even goods that have a very short expiry time!) at some price, and hoping they're calculated the odds correctly and stacked the cards in their favor, so that they'll end up with profit before the goods expire. What's the difference between that and gambling? None.
Well, maybe there's a bit of difference after all... The difference comes from the customers. Buyers of insurance or buyers of groceries aren't gambling, so selling insurance nor selling grocieries isn't running a gambling business.
That's how I see it, anyway.
Of course insurance companies seem to sell "insurance" that is more like gambling these days, so they may be *partly* in gambling business as well, but that's beside the point (difference between insurance and gambling).
Except there's this nasty meatbag, a "human being", permanently attached to that "human labor" thing, as inconvenient as it is.
Once you remove some "labor" from a "human", it's no longer "labor", it suddenly transforms into a product of some kind, tangible or intangible.
What ever you do to "human labor", you unavoidably do it to "human beings", since you can't have one without the other.
Now there *are* ways around this, mostly by minimizing the usage of "human labor", for example by using robots. *Then* nobody will object if you scrutinize the robot manufacturer for reliability and do the most invasive, intimate, greasy examination of the robots you're getting, and find out the most seemingly irrelevant details about them, even if it's just for your own amusement.
Time to burn some karma...
I think it's 'cos so many here do or have done something like that in the Internet... So they're scared for the consequences of their own actions, desperately crying after their free speech to impersonate and to bully "losers" without fear of taking any responsibility. To them, "freedom" means "freedom of responsibility"...
Then a whole different class of murderer sympathisers are those who believe that weak deserve to die if they're as weak as the girl here. Some of these might even think that those who test them like this are really almost heroes, culling the herd from the emotionally weak.
It's a sad day, when so many at /. seem to fall into either of those categories.
I don't know if you meant that as a joke, but I'm writing this as if you're serious. Then you'd need to separate the waste bags (paper or plastic), because burying all the waste we produce would fill the mines in a few days... And then there's of course the transportation and compacting problem. You can't just dump the waste there, you have to transport it to the ends of the tunnels and compact it there so it doesn't take too much space.
The problem of gathering them, the problem of them being dirty, the problem of different kinds of plastic used, some of which produce poisons gasses if not burned in a very high temperature...
Burning plastic bags could certainly be part of the solution, but it wouldn't be easy.
There are also other uses for waste plastic, such as using it in asphalt when pawing roads, partially replacing bitumen. But again it's the same problem, getting the waste plastic, and having it clean enough.
I think that'd depend on your IQ...
Sounds like a valid patent to me, unless there's prior art. At least it is doing exactly what patents are intended to do, ie. you have a business idea, and then want exclusive rights for that idea for a time so you can develop a business around it and talk to potential business partners without some of them just taking your idea once you tell it to them.
Good or bad, that's what patents are there for.
Also, it seems to be "non-obivious" if there is no prior art, since credit cards have been around for a long time without somebody doing this already.
Except I think that producing (including all the transportation of materials and bags) that plastic bag released far more CO2 than is buried with it. So increasing plastic bag use will increase CO2 emissions, so using as few of them as possible is good.
Now if we could make non-biodegradeable paper bags, that might make some sense... Trees remove the CO2 form atmosphere, then get made into paper bags, which then store the carbon for all eternity... Of course even the the paper bag would need to be used and re-used until it's ready to break, to avoid spending too much energy on making the bags.
Alas, there's not such thing as non-biodegradeable cellulose. Damn this evolved biosphere, with microbes so specialized on eating that stuff. A designed biosphere could avoid all these pesky problems of life forms evolving to take advantage of any conventient source of energy.
Before you change fecal coliform bacterial counts in our water treatment systems, you should at least learn how to spell it correctly.
I think that was meant to confuse the real terrorists. And now you spelled it out for them. Thanks a lot...
Just 'cos they have the key in escrow doesn't mean they'll check more than a tiny, tiny portion of all the traffic. I mean, for more than that they'd have to redirect all internet traffic to a location where the escrow keys are available, and that's not going to happen. So you just put your *real* encrypted channel inside an escrowed VPN. Double encryption is no big deal with current PC hardware.
"No amount of physical torture" is of course exagerating, since it's possible to completely break a human being with enough physcial torture. And there is no such thing as purely physical torture, the very act of torturing is automatically psychological too. That's what makes having bad teeth ripped off without anesthetics at dentist different from having them teeth ripped off as a form of torture, even though the physical pain is exactly the same.
The simple fact is, emotional crisis can change who we are, how we think. It directly messes with our brain, because that's how our brains are built. Plain physical pain we forget about very fast, even in physical torture it's the emotional part that leaves the real scars (well, unless the torture involves removing body parts) because that's also how our brains are built.
There's simple solution. Expatriate. Just be careful on what country you choose... Then hunt for the right opprotunity, and just move. Your ancestors (or you yourself?) expatriated to get a better life. Now it may be time for you to do the same...
That depends on your view of human rights. If you consider human beings as objects of trade, then certainly the buyer has the right to check the wares. OTOH, if you consider that human beings are not products or trade goods, then your argument holds no water.
Now this doesn't necessarily mean an employer shouldn't be allowed to check the people they hire as carefully as they can. It just means that you can't use the argument you're using, unless you believe that human beings are equal to trade goods.
Are you suggesting that mass is some kind of magical property of matter that affects magically? That doesn't really fly with science. No, there needs to be some kind of mechanism for the effect of particle's mass to interact with other particle's masses. Without the mechanism, "mass" has no meaning since it doesn't do anything. But clearly mass does something, so there must be some mechansim for masses to interact, either with "space-time continuum" or directly with other masses. Also there needs to be explanation why different particles have different masses (just like there's explanation why proton has the charge it has, while neutron is neutral, etc).
Higgs field and corresponding Higgs particle (consider electromagnetic field and photon, one can't exist without the other, and it's same with Higgs) are how the Standard Model expalains this whole "mass" thing.
If there's no Higgs, then (as far as I understand), the Standard Model is invalid, something like Ptolemaic epicycles. Then we'll just have a few decades worth of very accurate and consistent scientific observations about particles, no working model to explain them, and a stampeding herd of over-excited physicists trying to be the first make some sense out of the mess... Now that would be fun to watch!
I still think the difference is mostly very clear cut.
First of all, if you don't need to have some kind of "unexpected" loss, it's gambling. Gambling bets (or insurance fees) aren't unexpected so they don't count here.
Secondly, even with insurance, if the loss required is smaller than the compensation, then the loss can be considered as a part of the gambling bet, and above applies.
If you stand to get less compensation than your total expenses and losses, ie. you lose in every case, then it's quite clearly insurance.
A practical indicator that applies to most cases: If you hope to "win", then it's gambling. If you hope you don't "win", then it's insurance.
Of course just about any insurance can be used for gambling, but this is not very easy to do without it being insurance fraud. And some gambling schemes masquerading as insurance can be used for actual insuring too, but I think these are mostly designed so that they make little sense as a real insurance...?
Sometimes, having an adaptive neural network as a brain is a bitch...
I think you still need the classical channel to make any sense of the information you receive, just like before.
Without classical channel, you still just have the ability to sync two completely random one-time-pads faster than light, with zero information content.
Somebody correct me if above is wrong.
If something, like sufficiently complex Ptolomaic explanation of solar system, matches reality to observational limit, then couldn't it be reduced to the more simple theory we know about (Newtonian or GR) with enough and suitable coordinate transforms, simplification of formulas etc?
If so, then it could be argued that the complex Ptolemaic explanation is equally valid because it is actually equal, just expressed in a needlesly complex way...