Adding to my other post: You of course have full right, even obligation to complain about the prices you think are too high... That way you can maybe affect how people think about the pricing structure of their mobile phone services, and collectively start demanding and choosing cheaper SMS messages, even if it meant more expensive phone calls.
So you spent hours at the diner, just drinking a lot of coffee for $1.06, possibly even hogging a place to sit and driving away more profitable customers? Then the owner probably made a loss, not profit, from your coffee spree. If every customer was like that, ie making the diner a loss by coming there just to drink a lot cheap coffee, then the free refills policy wouldn't last long.
However, if you also ate something, met a few friends who bought something too, etc, then it probably was very profitable for the owner to give you unlimited refills.
So, back to the actual topic: if operator gave you free unlimited SMS messages, would you spend more money on phone calls, and also get your friends to spend some money for the benefit of the mobile phone operator? Unlikely...
But I get your point. You don't want free market economy with businesses that try to maximize their profits, you want an economy where purpose of companies is to provide services to you at the minimal price. Now I'm sure you know that they tried (and are still trying) the latter in a few communist countries, while in some other parts of the world companies are expected to maximize their profits, not minimize their prices. It's funny how the real cost and price of services ends up being cheaper in the model where companies try to maximize their profits, and more expensive or even non-existent in a model where the intention is to have the lowest price...
Because you can't have it both ways. You can't take the ability of mobile telecom companies to decide their own prices in a competitive market (so you can lower the "overpriced" SMS prices), and still call it a free market.
A poster below explains how SMS worked previously, that it effectively uses part of the "wasted" sideband in the GSM signalling. This sideband always exists, and if the payload was not used, it is effectively wasted. If you call that wasted bandwidth, then just think of all the bandwidth wasted by unused network capacity! You know, at rural areas, at night etc... By that logic, all mobile phone use should be free when there is wasted bandwidth in the network...
The point being is that SMS is extremely cheap for the operators. So why the insane costs? One simpl reason is, that free SMSes would decrease amount of phone calls made. Therefore the cost of an SMS must reflect the cost of communicating the same thing over a phone call. The price should be optimized so that total revenue from both SMS and phone calls is maximized (also considering the peak network capacity etc).
Finally the same phones sending or receiving SMS and MMS, can also send Email at potentially more cost benefits, and you can see how crazy the whole situation is. It's crazy only if you imagine a connection where there isn't any. There is no connection between the real cost of an individual SMS/phone call/MMS/... versus its customer price. There only is the total cost of having the network capcity versus the total revenue from all the services provided to customers with that network capacity.
There might be crazy things about the whole telecom industry (corruption, monopolies, government control gone wrong...), but not having connection between the cost of an individual service and it's price is not one of them. It's just normal business, and every business does it.
Just think of the actual cost of ingredients in a cup of black coffee in a coffee shop... The cups and the place are there anyway, and that one cup worth of coffee would be thrown out soon if nobody bought it, so the cost is actually almost zero! Only the food and the sugar and the milk should cost, but the black coffee itself should be free! Anyting else is crazy! Or not.
The "you" in that sentence does not matter, in other words, if an ant bites us we step on it, if a dog bites us, we kick it and if an enemy country uses pereonnal computers to attack us, we use botnet. And if "you" happen to become a human shield to a terrorist or a robber, we defend ourselves by shooting through "you"...?
No the SMS messages are not free. The mobile network infrastructure cost billions and billions to build, and yearly maintenance costs are probably in the billions in the USA alone.
If you ignore these costs, then also the phone calls and the data connections cost nothing... And yet they charge us for that too! Outrageous!
If an isotope has a lifetime on par with Uranium, then it will have a natural abundance on par with Uranium, which means we would have found it either chemically or spectroscopically decades ago. Assuming both are synthesized in a supernova in equal amounts, of course. Which they of course wouldn't be, so your logic breaks there.
No, originally 2+2=4 is an obserevation. It's a property of ordinary solid objects. Take two objects, add 2 more similar objects, and you have total 4 objects.
That's an observed fact, and no definition can change it.
Of course, you can invent all kinds of bizarre definitions and axioms, and base mathematics on them, and then have a horribly complex way of doing "2+2=4" for ordinary solid objects. But even with these new definitons and axioms, you must arrive at the result "2+2=4", or your mathematics is demonstratably wrong.
If they died of malaria, then they or their children were probably saved from dying of starvation...
Above is stupid genralization of course, every area is different, but considering that people die of starvation today, then if there were more people because less deaths by malaria, more people would undboutly die of starvation today...
Ah, this particular device. Well, it uses solar power and (according to TFA) 40 kg of Xenon, which will last for 20 months, providing constant thrust. I'm not sure how you'd go about determining the efficiency in any meaningful way.
I guess you could sum up the weight of ion thrusters, Xenon tanks and extra solar panels needed by it, and compare that to weight of a chemical rocket thrusters and rocket fuel capable of giving same average thrust for the same perioid of time.
However, if we just consider Xenon (exhaust velocity 50km/s) vs. Hydrazine (exhaust velocity 1km/s) and forget engine mass, then 40kg Xenon is worth 2000kg of hydrazine. Since the entire craft weight is only 1000kg, I'd say Xenon ion engine is much more efficient.
Ok. The problem with that is, how do you define what "potential energy of fuel" means in ion engine. It has separate electric energy source (with nuclear fuel, or solar energy and no fuel at all), and separate propellant (like Xenon) with almost negligible mass.
So you'd have to make a lot of assumptions (type and mass of energy source, amount of fuel on board, amount of propellant on board) to calculate efficiency like you say.
But for any sensible assumptions, the efficiency will be much much higher than with chemical rockets.
Yeah, the proto-Earth prior to the Moon forming impact wasn't the current Earth. Rather, the proto-Earth (mother?) and Theia (father?) happened to cross each other's paths, they banged, and the result was twin sisters, the Earth and the Moon.
There's always change in environment, because other life forms change as well. Parasites and diseases adapt to their host's defences, and defences must adapt. Prey and predator have ongoing arms race. Sexual selection puts pressures and force change that doesn't depend on environment changing. Etc, etc.
Even if things stay superfically the same, underneath adaptation is going on all the time, constantly, inevitably.
True. Social darwinism is disgusting. It does make that leap. However, darwinism facilitates that leap. Ask yourself this. What truly is the underpinning for any morality at all if everything exists because of random chance? Everything isn't the way it is (I assume you mean this when you say "everything exists", and not the literal meaning) because random change so much. Things are they way they are mostly because almost every other way is impossible. Random chance only "selectes" between possibilites, but there are much more impossible ways than possible ways. When ever people like you say "it's just random chance", they fail to understand this crucial detail. Like trees don't have leaves by random chance, leaves aren't "green" by random chance, human eye isn't most sensitive to "green" by random chance... When you dig into things a bit, random chance has a rather minor role in fundamental level, things are the way they are mostly for a non-random reason.
This also applies to morals. There can be many different moral codes, but most moral codes would simply be impossible. To put it blutly, it's not "random chance" that our morals don't tell us to kill every baby on sight. It's not random chance that certain religious moral codes declare some animals holy or filthy. It's not random chance that morals reflect the non-random fact that men generally get mad if their partners practice the act of becoming pregnant with other men. Etc.
Yes, much more efficient, if by efficient you mean how much mass you need to achive certain change in velocity.
The problem is how fast they can convert the energy of the fuel into acceleration. I think we're still a long way from an ion engine that could lift even it's own weight on Earth surface, let alone weight of an entire spacecraft of any kind. A current or foreseeable technology ion engine on the surface of Earth will just sit there, even on full power.
So you still need something with a lot of thrust to get to a stable orbit (current option: chemical rocket; future options: nuclear rockets or laser "rockets" or space elevators). Once on stable orbit, you can use all the time you want to slowly but efficiently accelerate with an ion engine.
Instead of having to force PayPal users to use only specific browsers, they educate the consumers on safe browsing habits and not blindly clicking on "OMG SEND ME UR CC NUMBER AND BANK DETAILS LOLOL". Am I the only one that thinks this sounds completely ridiculous idea? Educate the public to browse safely? Muahaha bwahahaa haha ha... You might as well try to educate them to fly by flapping arms.
And that comparison is completely valid. Flying by flapping arms is physically impossible (without some major genetic engineering and/or cybernetics), while people in general browsing safely in current Internet with current software is psychologically impossible (without major genetic engineering of humans to not be gullible fools).
it is simply "illegal drug use" (and very likely legislative abuse of personal liberties at the same time) when an adult makes an informed choice about drug use that doesn't comply with the current law. I have no problem with any adult's drug use, iff said adult also makes an informed choice that they will not burden the emergency services if they overdo it, but use private means (like a friend or a cab) to get to a private health care center if they for example have a heart attack because of their drug use. Oh, and pay for all this with a health insurance that allows their kind of drug use (so that they dont't make non-drug-users to pay for the consequences their overuse)
However, as long as an individual wants a part of services provided by our modern society (such as emergency services, common health insurance), the society gains a limited right to mess around with the individuals personal liberties. Some kind of democratic process is probably the best way to determine how much messing around should be allowed.
Those aren't socialist countries, except from a very rightwing point of view, or in narrow sectors. But then again, in narrow sectors, the US is also a socialist country.
Perhaps I should have said "communism" instead of "socialism" though. Because government telling oil companies how much to produce and/or at what price to sell is much like communism...
Uh, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela are supply issues. This is the real world, stuff like that will be happening always.
Also, note that if there is so much demand that expensive "unconventional sources" are needed to satisfy the demand, then price of all oil (fungible commodity) will be the price of oil from the most expensive source.
Also, in this situation, increasing production from cheap sources so much that "unconventional sources" become unprofitable makes no economic sense for any oil producer. It would be spending money to run out of your cheap-to-produce oil faster, and getting less total money for it. Spending money to get less money, why would anybody do that? Just let the "unconventional sources" determine the price, and sell your cheap-to-produce oil at that price (or slightly lower if there is oversupply of "unconventional oil").
Don't tell me you are suggesting artifically increased supply, forced by the governments? That would be socialism, and it's been seen that it really doesn't work in the long run.
12 years, *phew*. That should push peak oil just enough so I won't live to see it! And those pesky kids deserve what's coming to them. THEY, the future generations, must to solve their own problems of energy, instead of using the energy OUR parents have invented!
I'm always amused by the idea of going and seeing scientific exhibits in person. Especially if you have no technical knowledge of them.I mean it's not like it really should be any better than just reading about it on wikipedia or the discovery channel but nevertheless I often find it rewarding. Shouldn't the same apply to, say, the Grand Canyon (unless you're a geologist) or the Great Wall of China (unless you're a historian or a construction engineer)?
Well, fine, have it your way. If we're ever planning to do that nuke exploding you suggest, first we should do a through research about possible consequences. And if there is even a small risk of really bad things happening, then not do it, not even if we really really want to.;-)
Well, yeah, putting earth into a nuclear winter and killing 95% of people in the process would of course be kind of bad, but still not very high in any "doomsday" scale. This topic is about having the Earth eaten by a black hole, or worse having Earth, and then possibly our solar system, and eventually our entire galaxy or even galaxy group being turned into strange matter. Now there's a doomsday for you.
Far higher-energy interaction happen every day as high-energy cosmic rays hit the atmosphere. If these things could happen, they would have already happened and destroyed the Earth long ago. But are LHC collisions essentially identical to those of high energy cosmic rays? I think not. Now LHC might not yet have enough power to do something doomsdayish, but the day will surely come that we humans create something that has real doomsday potential... So better start practicing extra caution already now. We'd better be damn sure nothing is going to happen at LHC that doesn't happen regularily when cosmic rays collide with matter in our solar system. And I mean not just "guessing" that it "must" be happening all the time, I mean having actual calculations showing that LHC energies, collision produced particles and their velocities etc. are something that happens all the time.
Nope. You need both carbon and hydrogen, and CO2 has no H. I believe the simplest organic molecule is methane, CH4. It's also hydrocarbon, which means it contains only carbon and hydrogen. Alternatively formaldehyde, CH2O, could be considered simplest, depending on how you define "simple". Then you get more complex stuff by adding more carbon (and hydrogen as much as that new carbon needs), and by adding other elements, like replacing an H in a hydrocarbon with an OH gives alcohols, most importantly from C2H6 to C2H5OH.
And now we get to the real problem with extraterrestial organic molecules. There's usually so much methanol (CH3OH), that drinking the stuff would be rather lethal. So you still need to do distillation to get pure enough ethanol. So there's no point sending people out there, because it's as easy to just make the ethanol here on earth using traditional methods. That's why it's better to send robots.
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Adding to my other post: You of course have full right, even obligation to complain about the prices you think are too high... That way you can maybe affect how people think about the pricing structure of their mobile phone services, and collectively start demanding and choosing cheaper SMS messages, even if it meant more expensive phone calls.
So you spent hours at the diner, just drinking a lot of coffee for $1.06, possibly even hogging a place to sit and driving away more profitable customers? Then the owner probably made a loss, not profit, from your coffee spree. If every customer was like that, ie making the diner a loss by coming there just to drink a lot cheap coffee, then the free refills policy wouldn't last long.
However, if you also ate something, met a few friends who bought something too, etc, then it probably was very profitable for the owner to give you unlimited refills.
So, back to the actual topic: if operator gave you free unlimited SMS messages, would you spend more money on phone calls, and also get your friends to spend some money for the benefit of the mobile phone operator? Unlikely...
But I get your point. You don't want free market economy with businesses that try to maximize their profits, you want an economy where purpose of companies is to provide services to you at the minimal price. Now I'm sure you know that they tried (and are still trying) the latter in a few communist countries, while in some other parts of the world companies are expected to maximize their profits, not minimize their prices. It's funny how the real cost and price of services ends up being cheaper in the model where companies try to maximize their profits, and more expensive or even non-existent in a model where the intention is to have the lowest price...
Because you can't have it both ways. You can't take the ability of mobile telecom companies to decide their own prices in a competitive market (so you can lower the "overpriced" SMS prices), and still call it a free market.
There might be crazy things about the whole telecom industry (corruption, monopolies, government control gone wrong...), but not having connection between the cost of an individual service and it's price is not one of them. It's just normal business, and every business does it.
Just think of the actual cost of ingredients in a cup of black coffee in a coffee shop... The cups and the place are there anyway, and that one cup worth of coffee would be thrown out soon if nobody bought it, so the cost is actually almost zero! Only the food and the sugar and the milk should cost, but the black coffee itself should be free! Anyting else is crazy! Or not.
No the SMS messages are not free. The mobile network infrastructure cost billions and billions to build, and yearly maintenance costs are probably in the billions in the USA alone.
If you ignore these costs, then also the phone calls and the data connections cost nothing... And yet they charge us for that too! Outrageous!
No problem, there are several possible definitions of the so called
natural units.
No, originally 2+2=4 is an obserevation. It's a property of ordinary solid objects. Take two objects, add 2 more similar objects, and you have total 4 objects.
That's an observed fact, and no definition can change it.
Of course, you can invent all kinds of bizarre definitions and axioms, and base mathematics on them, and then have a horribly complex way of doing "2+2=4" for ordinary solid objects. But even with these new definitons and axioms, you must arrive at the result "2+2=4", or your mathematics is demonstratably wrong.
If they died of malaria, then they or their children were probably saved from dying of starvation...
Above is stupid genralization of course, every area is different, but considering that people die of starvation today, then if there were more people because less deaths by malaria, more people would undboutly die of starvation today...
Ah, this particular device. Well, it uses solar power and (according to TFA) 40 kg of Xenon, which will last for 20 months, providing constant thrust. I'm not sure how you'd go about determining the efficiency in any meaningful way.
I guess you could sum up the weight of ion thrusters, Xenon tanks and extra solar panels needed by it, and compare that to weight of a chemical rocket thrusters and rocket fuel capable of giving same average thrust for the same perioid of time.
However, if we just consider Xenon (exhaust velocity 50km/s) vs. Hydrazine (exhaust velocity 1km/s) and forget engine mass, then 40kg Xenon is worth 2000kg of hydrazine. Since the entire craft weight is only 1000kg, I'd say Xenon ion engine is much more efficient.
Ok. The problem with that is, how do you define what "potential energy of fuel" means in ion engine. It has separate electric energy source (with nuclear fuel, or solar energy and no fuel at all), and separate propellant (like Xenon) with almost negligible mass.
So you'd have to make a lot of assumptions (type and mass of energy source, amount of fuel on board, amount of propellant on board) to calculate efficiency like you say.
But for any sensible assumptions, the efficiency will be much much higher than with chemical rockets.
Yeah, the proto-Earth prior to the Moon forming impact wasn't the current Earth. Rather, the proto-Earth (mother?) and Theia (father?) happened to cross each other's paths, they banged, and the result was twin sisters, the Earth and the Moon.
There's always change in environment, because other life forms change as well. Parasites and diseases adapt to their host's defences, and defences must adapt. Prey and predator have ongoing arms race. Sexual selection puts pressures and force change that doesn't depend on environment changing. Etc, etc.
Even if things stay superfically the same, underneath adaptation is going on all the time, constantly, inevitably.
This also applies to morals. There can be many different moral codes, but most moral codes would simply be impossible. To put it blutly, it's not "random chance" that our morals don't tell us to kill every baby on sight. It's not random chance that certain religious moral codes declare some animals holy or filthy. It's not random chance that morals reflect the non-random fact that men generally get mad if their partners practice the act of becoming pregnant with other men. Etc.
Yes, much more efficient, if by efficient you mean how much mass you need to achive certain change in velocity.
The problem is how fast they can convert the energy of the fuel into acceleration. I think we're still a long way from an ion engine that could lift even it's own weight on Earth surface, let alone weight of an entire spacecraft of any kind. A current or foreseeable technology ion engine on the surface of Earth will just sit there, even on full power.
So you still need something with a lot of thrust to get to a stable orbit (current option: chemical rocket; future options: nuclear rockets or laser "rockets" or space elevators). Once on stable orbit, you can use all the time you want to slowly but efficiently accelerate with an ion engine.
And that comparison is completely valid. Flying by flapping arms is physically impossible (without some major genetic engineering and/or cybernetics), while people in general browsing safely in current Internet with current software is psychologically impossible (without major genetic engineering of humans to not be gullible fools).
However, as long as an individual wants a part of services provided by our modern society (such as emergency services, common health insurance), the society gains a limited right to mess around with the individuals personal liberties. Some kind of democratic process is probably the best way to determine how much messing around should be allowed.
Those aren't socialist countries, except from a very rightwing point of view, or in narrow sectors. But then again, in narrow sectors, the US is also a socialist country.
Perhaps I should have said "communism" instead of "socialism" though. Because government telling oil companies how much to produce and/or at what price to sell is much like communism...
Uh, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela are supply issues. This is the real world, stuff like that will be happening always.
Also, note that if there is so much demand that expensive "unconventional sources" are needed to satisfy the demand, then price of all oil (fungible commodity) will be the price of oil from the most expensive source.
Also, in this situation, increasing production from cheap sources so much that "unconventional sources" become unprofitable makes no economic sense for any oil producer. It would be spending money to run out of your cheap-to-produce oil faster, and getting less total money for it. Spending money to get less money, why would anybody do that? Just let the "unconventional sources" determine the price, and sell your cheap-to-produce oil at that price (or slightly lower if there is oversupply of "unconventional oil").
Don't tell me you are suggesting artifically increased supply, forced by the governments? That would be socialism, and it's been seen that it really doesn't work in the long run.
12 years, *phew*. That should push peak oil just enough so I won't live to see it! And those pesky kids deserve what's coming to them. THEY, the future generations, must to solve their own problems of energy, instead of using the energy OUR parents have invented!
Well, fine, have it your way. If we're ever planning to do that nuke exploding you suggest, first we should do a through research about possible consequences. And if there is even a small risk of really bad things happening, then not do it, not even if we really really want to. ;-)
Well, yeah, putting earth into a nuclear winter and killing 95% of people in the process would of course be kind of bad, but still not very high in any "doomsday" scale. This topic is about having the Earth eaten by a black hole, or worse having Earth, and then possibly our solar system, and eventually our entire galaxy or even galaxy group being turned into strange matter. Now there's a doomsday for you.
Nope. You need both carbon and hydrogen, and CO2 has no H. I believe the simplest organic molecule is methane, CH4. It's also hydrocarbon, which means it contains only carbon and hydrogen. Alternatively formaldehyde, CH2O, could be considered simplest, depending on how you define "simple". Then you get more complex stuff by adding more carbon (and hydrogen as much as that new carbon needs), and by adding other elements, like replacing an H in a hydrocarbon with an OH gives alcohols, most importantly from C2H6 to C2H5OH.
And now we get to the real problem with extraterrestial organic molecules. There's usually so much methanol (CH3OH), that drinking the stuff would be rather lethal. So you still need to do distillation to get pure enough ethanol. So there's no point sending people out there, because it's as easy to just make the ethanol here on earth using traditional methods. That's why it's better to send robots.