I don't see that moon dust is going to be as big of a deal as the fear monger scientists are suggesting in terms of negative health effects. But the only way we will know is by actually going there and finding out.
As for raw materials, the Moon has them in bucket loads, and the only trick is to get the machines that make the machines that make the machines up there. And a few people who can improvise on the fly with their own brains once they get up there to work as well.
I believe that in time (centuries +) you will see cheap consumer goods being made on the moon for your to purchase in your local volume discount store (aka WalMart). The hard part is getting there in the first place.
I like the idea that even with fast spacecraft that I would be out of range from idiots like the IRS or the Selective Service... well at least more than a week's worth of warning if they were coming, and the ability to get away even further if I wanted.
And with Mars or the Asteroids.... months of travel and plenty of space to tell my neighbors to go to hell, pointing them at Venus if they really don't have a clue what I'm talking about (or Io for that matter).
Yes, I can get some secluded hunk of real estate in Nevada or Montana to get close to this kind of solitude, but a helicopter can get you even there in less than a couple of hours if somebody really has a beef against you.
I also feel that it is past due for mankind to move among the other planets of the solar system, with bureaucrats being the only think keeping people from being there, not money or desire.
So there's going to be a period after 2010 during which the US won't have a heavy launch capability. Probably a long period.
If you change that from "US" to "NASA", I would have to agree. NASA is used up as an agency and won't be building more than one or two more earth to orbit manned launch vehicles for the rest of the history of that agency. If even they get built at all, and I have my doubts about that.
It would be a sad day if the Shuttle was the last spacecraft ever launched by NASA, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were to occur.
People like Elon Musk (XCOR) and others have said that if the demand is there, they will build it. In other words, if the demand for heavy launch is needed, it will be made, but I don't see it coming from pork barrel politics like was done back in the 1960's. That simply won't happen anymore.
If you think that private industry won't even ante up for heavy launch vehicles, I would say you need to change the above quote from "US" to simply "the Earth". And that would be sad indeed to no end. I don't see ESA or Russia coming up with a reliable man-rated heavy launch vehicle in the next 10-20 years either. Russia has them, but they don't need them.
If Utah doesn't get tornadoes, then explain the F3 tornado that hit downtown Salt Lake City a couple of years ago? Nice damage to the Delta Center and other fun stuff, and a couple of homes totally destroyed. I'm sure their insurance companies (of the home owners) would like to have scientific confirmation that it is impossible to occur so a claim couldn't be made.
And local TV stations routinely (about once every month or so in the summer) show pictures of an F1 somewhere... sometimes as a waterspout in the Great Salt Lake (where it is somewhat common to be seen... not as common as Kansas, but it does happen). I guess that is just Photoshop, right?
I used to live in Southern Minnesota, and I will admit that tornadoes are much more common there. And in Utah (where I am living now), not only do you have problems with relative energies to produce tornadoes, you also have mountains that tend to muck up any consistant rainfall patterns. It is common for a major storm to dump 2" to 4" of rain in one area and just a trace 10 miles to the north or south. Wind going around a mountain range has similar distortions, all which contribute to breaking up systems that might produce tornadoes.
All that said, and to get this more on topic, I would hate to be near large bodies of water like the Great Salt Lake, Bear Lake, or Lake Powell if an earthquake was triggered underneath. It could certainly produce Tsumai-like effects in a localized area. Or imagine a major earthquake under Lake Michigan and what damage it could do to shoreline properties around that lake. That would be billions of dollars in damage at a minimum.
Still, it is more likely that something would happen in the Pacific (due to "Ring of Fire" combined with the extraordinarly large size of the Pacific Ocean), and why the money is being dumped into warnings for that area of the USA, and not the Rustbelt of the Great Lakes region.
Reminds me of an NTSC video capture card I re-wrote a driver for, due to differences in the operating system and application specific requirements.
The manufacturer had put together the PCI card using more or less common components, but they "wrote" their own driver as a closed source binary that you could use.
I basically said "to hell with them" and got the specs for the chip sets on the board, which were publicly available (in an interesting twist of events). I actually got the board to work, but I discovered that the hardware interrupt was not working at all. It seems that buried in their "driver" code was a polling operation to extract the data as a work-around because they didn't get the interrupt working properly. As you said, they wanted to make it look like their equipment was flawless and worked perfectly for all of their customers, but in this case they tried to cover it up.
What ended up in my case was that I sent word up the food chain that the board was flawed in a mission critical manner, and couldn't be used. The manufacturer got pissed at me and a whole bunch of ill will both ways... primarily because I had the balls to actually write the driver myself, and killed a deal worth about $2 million to that manufactuer.
I think this is coming from a typical IT specalist who only has a B.S. degree.
That is very common in industry, and even if somebody has a M.S. or even PhD, it means on a practical basis absolutely nothing in the private sector. Somebody with experience can and do get promoted, even to supervisory positions, over those with technically a more advanced degree.
The degree absolutely does matter in the University setting, and I totally agree with the grandparent post that the degree matters more. Face it, the "business" of a university is to grant degrees. They may throw a bunch of roadblocks to individuals trying to get them, so you can also suggest that the basic design of most universities is to decrease effeciency to obtain their main product as well. This is by design, and a good way to chew up the $$$ sent to it as well.
When you have a B.S. in an academic department, you are indeed the low guy on the totem pole, even with 10-15 years experience. The only way to improve the situation is to take advantage of the reduced tuition and get those advanced degrees. They start to treat you more as an "equal" once you get the M.S., and of course if you get your PhD while you are doing projects for the department, you will gain a whole lot of respect from just about everybody in the department.
You might even be able to get a couple of faculty members that you've been working with for several years to sit on your PhD review committee, which can be golden opportunities compared to the typical process that most grad students have to go through to orgainze that committee. While not much of a perk, it can mean that you won't get "blackballed" preventing you from getting the PhD just because the faculty hates your last name or skin color or political opinions. Don't say that doesn't happen, but being university staff you will make a bunch of friends, sometimes in many different departments. They may actually be "harder" on you in terms of what you have to do for your PhD defense, but they will also let you know candidly what you need to work on and potentially who to avoid.
If you stay with the B.S. after working for the university for more than 5 years, don't complain that you are still the low man on the totem pole. You deserve to be there because you are not working to help with the university's "product".
I find that "personal use only" or even "non-commercial use only" clauses are self-destructive at best anyway, under any circumstances.
I understand that the use of information gleaned from copyrighted sources require that extra applications of that information be done under "fair-use" provisions of copyright law... and Google is under some incredible pressure to demonstrate that it doesn't violate copyright law under these circumstances.
Even with this knowlege of copyright law, I simply can't imagine anybody who will stop using something "for personal use". What about people who use similar data in a professional environment? How can you possibly stop somebody from using it in that manner? If you make a map with the data using the google software, what is the legal rationale behind preventing you from publishing that "original map" in your local newspaper? Or stopping the newspaper itself from publishing on its own?
I would argue that the TOS is unenfocable, at least to the extent that they have put in restrictions that simply make a "service" like this more of a toy than anything that you can substantively do something with. And a good example on how lawyers are really screwing up computer professionals trying to let their imaginations free.
From somebody who uses mathmatics on a daily basis (I am a software engineer), I find many co-workers who have a very difficult time trying to derive a formula, and in some cases don't understand the basics of what mathmatics are really all about.
That is the point of mathmatics education: You need to learn the fundimentals about how number manipulation works, and the reasoning behind why equations work the way they do.
In the case of dividing 2314595 by 14, I think you should be capable of doing that by hand if necessary. I would agree that lazy instructors who throw out "math facts" and expect students to fill out worksheets full of hundreds of math problems to solve by hand is rather pointless. Unfortunately, this is requiring a math teacher to get off their hind end and actually teach something, try to understand exactly what the weakness of the student is, and how to get the concept across not just to the bright student, but to the student who is struggling on a particular concept. This is being an excellent educator rather than an ordinary one.
I'm not suggesting or even trying to imply that teachers aren't hard working, but my experience with education (besides actually going through the "public education system", I also spend a year as a substitute teacher at the local high school in math and science classes.) is that many teachers simply can't get the subject across, or don't really want to try... for many factors and reasons. And just like any profession, there are people who do the job better than others.
Another huge issue is that textbooks, particularly for elementary grades, but also for secondary education, are still written around the need to memorize "math facts", and the computational drill experience is embedded within the textbook itself. When better textbooks are written, this hopefully will change, but if I am suggesting that some teachers might not be doing a good job teaching the subject, textbook publishers positively don't have any real commitment at all to write quality textbooks. I find that most mathamatics textbooks I've had to look at (primarily the books my kids bring home from school) are full of fluff, real strange things that don't make sense, and way too much "politically correct" material that really doesn't even belong in there that is more fitting a social studies textbook rather than mathmatics. I kid you not on this last point.
From the way that I typically use alkaline batteries, they really are a convient energy source... using your definition. It says right on the label that you should not recharge them.
And what about hydroelectric resevoirs? They do get discharged, with sometimes considerable effort to get them "recharged". Or a tank of gasoline?
It really is just a matter of viewpoint. The advantage of an "energy storage device" is that you can take it from the energy source, use it at a distance, and then return to the original energy source to "refill" or "recharge" with a fresh supply of energy.
I would have to grant that "amature nuclear physics" is something that is widely discouraged by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, as is "amature chemistry". In other words, somebody who is not a part of the mainstream research community studying the subject but rather somebody who litterally tinkers in their garage trying new things just because knowledge is cool.
Other scientific disciplines have numerous amatures involved, notably astronomy, and to a lesser extent biology, and even computer science. Having a telescope in your backyard, while still making you a weirdo or a definitive "nerd", is not going to get you on the Dept. of Homeland Security's "watch list". They might raise an eyebrow if they think you are a "hacker", but that is peanuts compared to if they think you are making explosives. Or even hint that you are manufacturing pharmaceuticals without DEA permission (choose your poison on this comment).
Nuclear material experimentation is just over the top, and sure to get police involved. Unfortunately, the energies involved with nuclear energy are so large that a single individual can create a huge mess, and potentially cause a lot of radioactive debris, if not take out a small corner of the city they are living in.
In some ways this is too bad, as it is the amatures that come up with the really cool things, and a small group working in their basement or garage that often come up with new ideas that traditional research departments overlook. It is also a sad statement that some areas of knowledge are considered too hazardous for "ordinary people" to study and understand.
RE: Oil
The petroleum industry has a weakened influence in the USA, and becoming less over time. Part of this is because so much is imported that now oil reserves are considered a matter of the State Department rather than a Department of Energy or some other more domestic agency. While "big oil" is still influential in Washington D.C., I do see an end in sight for their influence, and that the petroleum industry will be focused more on lubricants rather than energy sources. The key to look for is how motor vehicles are taxed, and when you no longer pay for highway construction on a per gallon basis, you know that "big oil" is dead.
This is already a consideration and subject of debate in many state legislatures, as well as in the U.S. Congress.
While I think that solar sails are a neat technology, I would like to hear what some other people here think of their potential as manned spacecraft.
My contention of what I've seen from all of the numbers that get used to describe velocities and transit times for solar sails, is that this will be used primarily for transfer of bulk goods between different places in space.
A comparison would be how bulk goods are shipped today in industrial countries. Right now the most common methods are by barge (or equivalent ocean ships like oil tankers) or by rail, and slow-moving rail at that. It doesn't have to get there immediately, the stuff simply has to get there eventually, and as cheap as possible, at least on a price/kg basis.
In space a bulk shipping service would be even more crucial. Passenger traffic would have to be done on much faster ships, and IMHO the only reliable energy source with the density needed to accomplish that sort of travel (i.e. Earth to Mars in 3-4 weeks) is nuclear propulsion. Chemical rockets simply don't have the energy needed to get us anywhere... at least in any sort of hurry.
While a neat technology, and necessary to the opening of the solar system to mankind, this technology will be a more workhorse technology rather than something "sexy" that some cool people will want to get to put on their "space yacht". A 1 GW reactor that can push your ship at a continuous 2 G acceleration for 7 weeks on the other hand....
A very good moderator for radiation is ordinary H2O, water. There are multiple reasons why you find quite a bit of water in nuclear power plants, and the moderation effects of water are just one of them.
Another good reason to have water is for life support on a spacecraft, as it is a very dense material to supply emergency oxygen if necessary. Or to drink with your Tang that you brought with you.:)
Still, the radiation hazards for prolonged travel at even a minor fraction of the speed of light is going to be an issue, but there are practical engineering designs that could cope with those issues.
The critical issues would be simply how could you get that much energy into a small spaceship?
The solar system is a pretty empty place. There was some "concern" that the asteroid belt may have large amounts of "dust", but most of the outer solar system missions (Pioneer, Voyager, Cassini, Magellan) have more than demonstrated that this is not the case.
Yes, the asteroid belt has a lot of pieces, but you would be foolish to run into an asteroid, especially anything that would cause real problems to a solar sail.
As to debris in LEO, yeah, there is a bunch of that right now, primarily due to space activities over 60 years and nearly weekly launches somewhere in the world. And even in LEO there it is mostly empty space.
And as for added propellant, it isn't needed. When the sail is "folded up" or put to an inactive state, it would be no different than all current extra-terrestrial space travel: they would rely on pure kinetic energy to continue their momentum to wherever they are headed. Yeah, it would take some course corrections enroute, but again nothing new to even current spacecraft that tour the solar system. Even 17th century sailing ships back elsewhen had to deal with weird circumstances in order to travel across the ocean, and they seemed to have done fairly well, even without a computer.
It is not the solar wind that is captured by solar sails... it is sunlight.
And last time I checked, sunlight was traveling at, you guessed it, the speed of light.
While I would agree that it would take years to accelerate to a significant velocity, you still can't dismiss the constant acceleration that would be able to assist the propulsion of a spacecraft. And this is something "free" as well, as you don't need to bring any extra payload for fuel. Once you get to your destination, you can return to your origin without too much hassle.
The only way that a "solar sail" is going to even get to a fraction of the speed of light, at least based on high quality SF stories regarding the subject, is to have an incredible space-based laser that projects the energy straight at the sail. There is a similar delta-vee that is pushed back on whatever the laser is sitting on, but that doesn't matter if it is some very large platform or on a plantary body (like an asteroid or Mercury). The question at that point would be how long could you maintain a 1 TW laser? 1 hour? 10 weeks? 1 year?
Similar lasers used for fusion research only have to fire for 1/100th of a second, so this really would be new technology if developed.
And would you want to be in the path of a 1 TW laser beam, even if the diameter of the light blast is several km across (at a distance)?
Keep in mind that the reason why many of the key NASA sites are in Texas is because of the one ledgendary "Fairy God Senator" from Texas:
Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ)
He "ruled" the Democratic Senate with an iron fist during the late 1950's and early 1960's before becoming President, and then he was able to wield even more political power. Detractors of G.W. Bush notwithstanding, I don't know of any other recent President who had that kind of personal political power.
The Manned Spaceflight Command Center was put in Houston, Texas specifically so every time astronauts would talk, the name of the city would come up, as in "Houston, we have a problem here!" This is not coincidence.
That a former Texas governor is currently President and the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is also from Texas will mean that this run of pork to Texas will continue for some time to come.
By continuing to call me as having lesser intelligence than yourself and making light of things I consider to be sacred, you are showing just who you are. Rude, insulting, and desiring to engage in a flame war. And somebody with a serious psycosis that is afraid they may be wrong.
All I'm asking is that you try to understand the viewpoint I'm coming from, not to join my religious faith as it is apparent that you are already quite set on your current philosophical approach to life.
Ethics in some cases is a codification of life habits. This can be like the Hippocratic Oath or the oath of office for a soldier. This can even be the code of conduct by criminal organizations like the Mafia. By having ethical behavior, you know just where you have made a mistake and what the consequences of those mistakes could be, and not necessarily just legal consequences.
I am contending that people can't have ethics without at least some foundation in something beyond themselves. It doesn't have to be in some supernatural force, but it does have to be in something that doesn't change just because your circumstances have changed. Without this foundation, you can talk yourself into doing just about anything for any reason, and even come up with a "rational" reason for doing it.
As far as a "single reliable case for the existance of a supernatural being" is concerned, I guess that is a matter of what you would set as the standard for a "reliable case". If I told you that I personally had the opportunity to talk with God himself, I doubt you would ever believe me. If I told you I was your God, you would probabally spit in my face just to prove a point. I can try to talk you out of your assumption of the non-existance of God, but that would be useless unless you are willing to acknowledge that there is at least a possibility that God could exist.
For me, I will tell you that I know God does exist, and I also believe that in time you will find out for yourself that this is true. I am also willing to wait for events that go beyond this mortal life we are living at the moment for you to get this realization, but it would be sad for you if that happens and God does in fact exist.
I believe only jainism has the same number of religious wars as atheism, namely, zero.
Considering that most communist countries are (or were) officially atheist, I think you can count several non-zero wars that they were involved with. Religious intentions regarding the wars notwithstanding, and indeed many of these conflicts were done to eliminate religious thought. And certainly it was to spread their philosophies further (with the exception of the "Great Patriotic War"... which did further spread the ideas anyway as a result).
I'm not saying all athiests are communist, but the conflicts that communist governments were involved with did spread atheistic thought, and in a manner similar to the spread of Islam in the 12th Century as well as Christian Crusades and conquests of Western and Northern Europe by Christian armies.
It could even be argued that even tacit tolerance for religious thought in communist countries was a major part of the downfall of those governments (notably the role of the Catholic Church in Communist Poland).
RE: Faith
I deliberately phrased the definition of faith that I used to exclude reference to God or gods. I totally disagree with the assertion that an atheist is somebody without faith. They may not have faith in God or even any person, but I am claiming that you indeed have faith in something, even if it is only in yourself.
In this case I also disagree with this use of authority to claim that my definition of faith is wrong. All a dictionary attempts to do is put into words what the meaning of a word or phrase has. And the authority of dictionary.com is no better or worse than my own. I have spent years studying the concept of faith, in addition to holding ecclesiastical office, if you want to get down to who has authority to comment on these things.
The same thing goes to the definition of religion. You are deliberately putting god into the definition so you can take yourself out of the category. I am arguing that religion does not require belief in the supernatural, but instead is a philosophy that governs how you live. That many people with religion may feel that philosophy came from a divine source is another issue, but it is not necessarily a part of the definition of religion, and including that aspect into the definition only serves to muddle this arguement.
I am also looking at history and remarking that ethics have to have some fundimental basis of reason in order for them to mean anything. If you lack that foundation, you can twist your ethics to allow you to do just about anything you want to do, including oppression, murder, and most things that would commonly be called unethical by traditional ethical systems.
Indeed, a common complaint about corporations is that they have no ethical standards other than the quest for more money. It is even written into the corporate charters to be exactly that... to "maximize profit through proper management of resources and thoughful investing." These organizations may have been started by what you or I would call moral people, but using the charter as the only standard to go against companies like Enron was able to cause a lot of heartburn. And most often a company (nor its corporate officers in extreme cases) really care if somebody is killed due to their business practices. Often they even plan on it as a necessary part of their business plan, and can give fairly accurate estimates regarding how many people will die when they get into some project.
I would argue that atheists with moral codes of ethics are indeed people who also have some faith in things that are greater than themselves, even if it isn't God. That may be in the future of humanity, their country, or aquired "wisdom of the ages", or even fear of getting hurt or killed if you don't follow some ethical values. This is faith pure and simple, and does not require a divine influence to support it.
Atheism is far too much of a catch-all term for all of the other possibilities for philosophical viewpoints regarding the nature of this Universe.
What I would call atheism could be also called "Secular-Humanism", or the belief in scientific principles and moral secular government. Even this is hard to pin down, but is a common philosophy found in Western Europe and the Americas, and is a common meme of 21st Century society and culture.
The problem I have is that those who have this viewpoint won't even try to understand people like myself who have a very different viewpoint. I accept the fact that I am accountable to a higher being. For me (not all religions believe this), my God does not really care if I worship him. That is not the point. What is important is that I improve myself and become a better person today than I was yesterday. Also, I hold as a belief that what we call a human life goes way beyond the brief period of time between birth from our mothers and death in a grave. Furthermore, who I call God also has a non-interference philosophy that values personal freedom to choose and act as you want. This includes the ability to even deny God if that is the path you want to follow. Or for you to have the ability to oppress others against their will. I choose to allow freedom and to encourage political and social frameworks that promote religious tolarance. This is not the same as elimination of religious thought altogether as some atheistic philosophers have advocated.
Religious rituals and worship is there to pass on traditions from our past, to open our eyes that there may be more to life than what you normally think is there, and in part to disguise religious truths from the unbelievers. Far too often people who are not of a religious tradition make light of sacred things, such as the supposed desecration of the Quoran that is getting so much attention lately. By encrypting this in a spiritual code, this information can be passed to other believers without the contexts understandable to believers getting corrupted by unbelievers. This occurs primarily due to millenia of repression of religious thought by governments and non believers. It also allows people who are seeking spiritual enlightenment to learn at their own pace, but still participate in a community of like-minded people.
Since you have insulted my intelligence, I could choose not to respond, but I find that you are indeed professing faith.
Faith is living a lifestyle that demonstrates what you believe to be true about this Universe, how it was formed, and what its governing principles have in regards to how it affects your life.
If you choose to believe that there is no God or gods that govern this Universe, then that is also an expression of faith. This is a faith that there is no god to return to when you die, that it really doesn't matter what you do, and no final accountability other than in some abstract way that the legacy of your life has had on the rest of your species. You can have ethics and morals and also be atheistic (an argument often used against atheism), but it must be grounded in something more basic like saving the world or helping humanity in general.
Otherwise, get out your Uzi and go out of this life with a bang, having fun and trashing all that you can. Of course, that is another form of insanity that some people do choose to follow as well. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tommorrow we will die."
I just find that there is more to life than that, and more basic good that can come from following religious philosophies that have come from our ancestors. Even if you may not strictly believe that God exists, at least pay attention to what concepts have been developed by over 1000 generations of oral and written traditions. There may be something to life that you are missing.
if I'm witness to real miracles, I'd become religious
Unfortunately, there is a history of people who are witnesses to spiritual events, even miracles, who openly dismiss them for one reason or another.
In short, even if you see a miracle, odds are likely that you would not become any more religious than you already are.
A classic example is how many soldiers "became religious" when they were at the Hanoi Hilton. Yeah, for the moments they were in struggle fighting the North Vietnamese as a prisioner they prayed to God, but as soon as they got out and returned to America, many of these soldiers stopped their prayers and could care less about God or what role He might have had in their release.
As for your meetings that you say are equivalent as "going to church": usually when people go to church, they do it to pray, so..
This may be a difference in religious attitudes between Europe and America. For the most part, I don't know any Christian or Moslem for that matter who feels like they have to be in a church in order to pray. They may be there to gain religious instruction, seeking spiritual guidance from a religious leader, or to socialize with people who have the same religious viewpoint. There are community and political aspects that also show up with religious worship, but having it as the only place to pray is not the role of a church.
For the rest, I'm French and we do have very strict limitations on religious right of people in the schools, and I agree with those. And we have no backlash, currently at least.
In America, supposedly we have the 1st Ammendment that guarentees that the government will not "establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof". Civil liberty groups try to push for denoucing any establishment of religion, but often forget that free exercise of religion is just as important. Apparently France doesn't have this sort of religious freedom protection at all.
As an atheist, I hope you can appreciate that atheism is a religious viewpoint as well. You may put faith in "rational thought", "human nature", or a variety of other philosophical thoughts. Indeed, atheism has as much if not more variety as any other major world philosophical approach (aka religion). I have seen far more "faith" in the concept of global warming than I've seen religious people have "faith" that their god will protect them from harm. Or even "faith" that the United Nations should be strengthened and American soverignty be abolished. It is a matter of a point of view, and neither philosophical viewpoint is grounded on divine influence, but it does drive people with a passion to have it take up their entire life for that one cause.
I even know some "atheists" that go to "church", in the sense they get together once a week (usually Sunday because it is convinent due to local socal norms) and have a barbeque or a game of poker in the afternoon with others sharing their philosophical viewpoint. They openly admit this is only for social reasons, simply because they want to meet other people. The local newspaper and the Chamber of Commerce even publish the contact information for this group as a "church" for visitors to come and participate with if you happen to be in town.
Where religious people (I count myself among them) get upset with is when I'm told I can't have my religious viewpoint, or that I need to keep it in the closet. Outward signs that I have a religious viewpoint (such as a school teacher wearing a cross on their chest when they teach class) is prohibited in a public setting.
I'll admit that there is a fine line between being permitted to display religious attitudes and forcing the group or community to follow in those religious viewpoints, but from my experience with current politically correct thought is that such religious expression is encouraged or even demanded to be supressed altogether. An overeaction to this supression is what currently drives the "religious right" in America today. Unfortunately most atheists simply don't understand the motivation, and that tends to enflame the arguements rather than address the issue.
I will admit that baud rate is not completely the same as data transmission rate, but there is a strong correlation between the two. When you are using a modem connection at 1200 baud, you only get a hundred characters (or bytes) per second for transmission. When you go up to 2400 baud, that transmission rate doubles.
Also, modems are rated at baud rate because the initial modems that connected to computers were external devices (you can still get some this way) that connected to your computer via serial communication link, usually RS-232 protocol. This was not simply bits per second, but a true baud rate because it included stop bits and parity check bits. When you had a 2400 baud modem or a 4800 baud modem... the baud rate was a very accurate measurement of what the data rate to that modem required. Even now, communication over a modem requires programming for the 8250 chip (and its successors... there are many). These are usually wrapped up in the driver-level operations, but still there.
I will agree, however, there was a difference between internal (i.e. between the CPU and the modem) data transfer rate and the data rate between modems. Another thing to keep in mind is that a typical POTS line can only handle 9600 baud communications for a simple serial data transmission method. When you are transmitting at a higher "baud rate" over a modem, the protocols are sending multiple bits simultaneously to overcome limitations of POTS systems. Most modern telephone modems still are only transmitting at 9600 baud, but the data rates are much more. This doesn't change the internal serial data lines to the modem, however, so the baud rate going to the modem (i.e. 28,800 baud) is still an accurate baud rate of the modem, even if the serial "transmission" is only across a 1/4" wire on a PCI card.
I have some serious problems with the way that most financial institutions treat personal information. And particularly in the manner that they try to establish identity in the first place.
In most American financial instititions, all you need to know in order to access a bank account is just your name, with your social security number as the password. Anybody who has designed computer authentication and identification systems (confirming that the person signing onto a computer system/network really does belong there) should know that is really a stupid idea. Here is why:
Your Social Security number is really a part of your name. OK, it is a serialized number issued by the government guarenteed to be unique, but otherwise is public information. And considering the number of institutions that have that information (schools, banks, mortgage companies, utilities, credit reporting agencies, accountants, etc.) you can hardly expect it to stay private.
Imagine if you had a really cool password (like Blink187 as an example) that is long enough that a random alphanumeric generator would take a substantial amount of time to crack doing a brute force attack. Often people will use that same password to log into their accounts (like your user account here on/.) across multiple platforms. Face it, you can't remember 1000 passwords to access all of the accounts you need to get at.
This is the same as the SSN, however one critical thing becomes apparent. If you have been issued a SSN, it is nearly an act of Congress in order to get a new SSN number issued to you. Once somebody breaks the layer of trust (as in what happens by a banker that is careless with this supposed SSN password they use), you are forever in the cold. With your own homegrown password you can at least come up with a new password.
For my own use, I tend to have a heirarchy of about 3-5 passwords, with one for throwaway accounts that I could care less if the password gets published in a public place, and a couple reserved for machine logins that I consider very sensitive. I also am willing to drop a password completely from this heirarchy if I think I accidentally gave the information to somebody that I should not have (choose your own criteria here), or if I suspect the information is being shared against my will. I will go back and change the passwords in the accounts that I regularly access, and in some cases review the heirarchy. For financial information, however, this is usually not an option.
To further illustrate the ineptitude of banks, the only other piece of information that they use to "protect" your personal information (access your account, do money transfers, etc.) is the "PIN", or personal ID number. This is almost always a 4 digit number, and even then you can pretty much stick with just the numbers 1-9 for most of them. That gives only a little over 6500 different passwords, and you can do some social engineering to drop that number down a bit more. (like assume that no digit will repeat itself... reducing the number of possible PINs to about 3000). How hard would it be to brute force that many PINs? And this is considered a secure technology for a bank?
Banks want to make it easy for not-so-bright customers to be able to access their account, but at the same time make sure that only the person who opened the account (presumably... or a trusted representative of that person like a parent or lawyer) can access the information and more importantly... the money in that account. IMHO, banks and related organizations (like credit bureaus) are too fast and loose with that information, and make it far too easy for people who are not the account owner to be able to conduct financial transactions. (Like a scam artist that simply wants to drain any money you have in your account.)
Re:Somekind of thingy I don't have a word for
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New NASA Budget Woes
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The real redeeming quality that the ISS provides is a technology transfer vehicle (pun intended) for the USA to pick up the space station building skills that the Soviets had developed over the 1970s. (Remember, MIR was built by the USSR, not the Russian Republic, although the breakup of the USSR did happen midway through planning and early construction of the ISS.)
Unfortunately, with the exception of Robert Bigelow who might actually take advantage of some of those skills, it appears as though NASA is going to even squander that talent base just as they have done with how to build interplantary manned spacecraft (aka the Apollo program). These skills are useful, but I would have to agree to question if the $100 billion was really worth it.
I would have to disagree that nobody has been able to figure out anything useful to do in space. The problem is that the political powers that are around have tried to deliberately sabotage any attempt to privitize space and allow individual citizens to take the risks themselves. The X-Prize "flew under" the political radar of most congressmen, partly because most people who have been controlling access to space didn't think it would succeed.
There are several useful technologies that would work in space, but the problem right now is that the overall cost of going into space has been too much to get them accomplished, and the prices being charged by traditional rocket launching companies (Boeing, etc.) make the only thing cost effective is unmanned satellite technology. If companies like XCOR and Scaled Composites succeed, that may change.
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I guess it was "downgraded" to an F2 tornado. The weather forecasters at KSL and KTVX were saying at the time it was F3.
t ornado.04/ s tm (with some cool pictures of the tornado itself)
Links to relevant info about this tornado:
http://edition.cnn.com/WEATHER/9908/11/salt.lake.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/418042.
It did do more than rock cars, but that doesn't matter. The point was that this was a real tornado and hit in Utah.
I don't see that moon dust is going to be as big of a deal as the fear monger scientists are suggesting in terms of negative health effects. But the only way we will know is by actually going there and finding out.
As for raw materials, the Moon has them in bucket loads, and the only trick is to get the machines that make the machines that make the machines up there. And a few people who can improvise on the fly with their own brains once they get up there to work as well.
I believe that in time (centuries +) you will see cheap consumer goods being made on the moon for your to purchase in your local volume discount store (aka WalMart). The hard part is getting there in the first place.
I like the idea that even with fast spacecraft that I would be out of range from idiots like the IRS or the Selective Service... well at least more than a week's worth of warning if they were coming, and the ability to get away even further if I wanted.
And with Mars or the Asteroids.... months of travel and plenty of space to tell my neighbors to go to hell, pointing them at Venus if they really don't have a clue what I'm talking about (or Io for that matter).
Yes, I can get some secluded hunk of real estate in Nevada or Montana to get close to this kind of solitude, but a helicopter can get you even there in less than a couple of hours if somebody really has a beef against you.
I also feel that it is past due for mankind to move among the other planets of the solar system, with bureaucrats being the only think keeping people from being there, not money or desire.
If you change that from "US" to "NASA", I would have to agree. NASA is used up as an agency and won't be building more than one or two more earth to orbit manned launch vehicles for the rest of the history of that agency. If even they get built at all, and I have my doubts about that.
It would be a sad day if the Shuttle was the last spacecraft ever launched by NASA, but I wouldn't be surprised if that were to occur.
People like Elon Musk (XCOR) and others have said that if the demand is there, they will build it. In other words, if the demand for heavy launch is needed, it will be made, but I don't see it coming from pork barrel politics like was done back in the 1960's. That simply won't happen anymore.
If you think that private industry won't even ante up for heavy launch vehicles, I would say you need to change the above quote from "US" to simply "the Earth". And that would be sad indeed to no end. I don't see ESA or Russia coming up with a reliable man-rated heavy launch vehicle in the next 10-20 years either. Russia has them, but they don't need them.
If Utah doesn't get tornadoes, then explain the F3 tornado that hit downtown Salt Lake City a couple of years ago? Nice damage to the Delta Center and other fun stuff, and a couple of homes totally destroyed. I'm sure their insurance companies (of the home owners) would like to have scientific confirmation that it is impossible to occur so a claim couldn't be made.
And local TV stations routinely (about once every month or so in the summer) show pictures of an F1 somewhere... sometimes as a waterspout in the Great Salt Lake (where it is somewhat common to be seen... not as common as Kansas, but it does happen). I guess that is just Photoshop, right?
I used to live in Southern Minnesota, and I will admit that tornadoes are much more common there. And in Utah (where I am living now), not only do you have problems with relative energies to produce tornadoes, you also have mountains that tend to muck up any consistant rainfall patterns. It is common for a major storm to dump 2" to 4" of rain in one area and just a trace 10 miles to the north or south. Wind going around a mountain range has similar distortions, all which contribute to breaking up systems that might produce tornadoes.
All that said, and to get this more on topic, I would hate to be near large bodies of water like the Great Salt Lake, Bear Lake, or Lake Powell if an earthquake was triggered underneath. It could certainly produce Tsumai-like effects in a localized area. Or imagine a major earthquake under Lake Michigan and what damage it could do to shoreline properties around that lake. That would be billions of dollars in damage at a minimum.
Still, it is more likely that something would happen in the Pacific (due to "Ring of Fire" combined with the extraordinarly large size of the Pacific Ocean), and why the money is being dumped into warnings for that area of the USA, and not the Rustbelt of the Great Lakes region.
Reminds me of an NTSC video capture card I re-wrote a driver for, due to differences in the operating system and application specific requirements.
The manufacturer had put together the PCI card using more or less common components, but they "wrote" their own driver as a closed source binary that you could use.
I basically said "to hell with them" and got the specs for the chip sets on the board, which were publicly available (in an interesting twist of events). I actually got the board to work, but I discovered that the hardware interrupt was not working at all. It seems that buried in their "driver" code was a polling operation to extract the data as a work-around because they didn't get the interrupt working properly. As you said, they wanted to make it look like their equipment was flawless and worked perfectly for all of their customers, but in this case they tried to cover it up.
What ended up in my case was that I sent word up the food chain that the board was flawed in a mission critical manner, and couldn't be used. The manufacturer got pissed at me and a whole bunch of ill will both ways... primarily because I had the balls to actually write the driver myself, and killed a deal worth about $2 million to that manufactuer.
I think this is coming from a typical IT specalist who only has a B.S. degree.
That is very common in industry, and even if somebody has a M.S. or even PhD, it means on a practical basis absolutely nothing in the private sector. Somebody with experience can and do get promoted, even to supervisory positions, over those with technically a more advanced degree.
The degree absolutely does matter in the University setting, and I totally agree with the grandparent post that the degree matters more. Face it, the "business" of a university is to grant degrees. They may throw a bunch of roadblocks to individuals trying to get them, so you can also suggest that the basic design of most universities is to decrease effeciency to obtain their main product as well. This is by design, and a good way to chew up the $$$ sent to it as well.
When you have a B.S. in an academic department, you are indeed the low guy on the totem pole, even with 10-15 years experience. The only way to improve the situation is to take advantage of the reduced tuition and get those advanced degrees. They start to treat you more as an "equal" once you get the M.S., and of course if you get your PhD while you are doing projects for the department, you will gain a whole lot of respect from just about everybody in the department.
You might even be able to get a couple of faculty members that you've been working with for several years to sit on your PhD review committee, which can be golden opportunities compared to the typical process that most grad students have to go through to orgainze that committee. While not much of a perk, it can mean that you won't get "blackballed" preventing you from getting the PhD just because the faculty hates your last name or skin color or political opinions. Don't say that doesn't happen, but being university staff you will make a bunch of friends, sometimes in many different departments. They may actually be "harder" on you in terms of what you have to do for your PhD defense, but they will also let you know candidly what you need to work on and potentially who to avoid.
If you stay with the B.S. after working for the university for more than 5 years, don't complain that you are still the low man on the totem pole. You deserve to be there because you are not working to help with the university's "product".
I find that "personal use only" or even "non-commercial use only" clauses are self-destructive at best anyway, under any circumstances.
I understand that the use of information gleaned from copyrighted sources require that extra applications of that information be done under "fair-use" provisions of copyright law... and Google is under some incredible pressure to demonstrate that it doesn't violate copyright law under these circumstances.
Even with this knowlege of copyright law, I simply can't imagine anybody who will stop using something "for personal use". What about people who use similar data in a professional environment? How can you possibly stop somebody from using it in that manner? If you make a map with the data using the google software, what is the legal rationale behind preventing you from publishing that "original map" in your local newspaper? Or stopping the newspaper itself from publishing on its own?
I would argue that the TOS is unenfocable, at least to the extent that they have put in restrictions that simply make a "service" like this more of a toy than anything that you can substantively do something with. And a good example on how lawyers are really screwing up computer professionals trying to let their imaginations free.
From somebody who uses mathmatics on a daily basis (I am a software engineer), I find many co-workers who have a very difficult time trying to derive a formula, and in some cases don't understand the basics of what mathmatics are really all about.
That is the point of mathmatics education: You need to learn the fundimentals about how number manipulation works, and the reasoning behind why equations work the way they do.
In the case of dividing 2314595 by 14, I think you should be capable of doing that by hand if necessary. I would agree that lazy instructors who throw out "math facts" and expect students to fill out worksheets full of hundreds of math problems to solve by hand is rather pointless. Unfortunately, this is requiring a math teacher to get off their hind end and actually teach something, try to understand exactly what the weakness of the student is, and how to get the concept across not just to the bright student, but to the student who is struggling on a particular concept. This is being an excellent educator rather than an ordinary one.
I'm not suggesting or even trying to imply that teachers aren't hard working, but my experience with education (besides actually going through the "public education system", I also spend a year as a substitute teacher at the local high school in math and science classes.) is that many teachers simply can't get the subject across, or don't really want to try... for many factors and reasons. And just like any profession, there are people who do the job better than others.
Another huge issue is that textbooks, particularly for elementary grades, but also for secondary education, are still written around the need to memorize "math facts", and the computational drill experience is embedded within the textbook itself. When better textbooks are written, this hopefully will change, but if I am suggesting that some teachers might not be doing a good job teaching the subject, textbook publishers positively don't have any real commitment at all to write quality textbooks. I find that most mathamatics textbooks I've had to look at (primarily the books my kids bring home from school) are full of fluff, real strange things that don't make sense, and way too much "politically correct" material that really doesn't even belong in there that is more fitting a social studies textbook rather than mathmatics. I kid you not on this last point.
From the way that I typically use alkaline batteries, they really are a convient energy source... using your definition. It says right on the label that you should not recharge them.
And what about hydroelectric resevoirs? They do get discharged, with sometimes considerable effort to get them "recharged". Or a tank of gasoline?
It really is just a matter of viewpoint. The advantage of an "energy storage device" is that you can take it from the energy source, use it at a distance, and then return to the original energy source to "refill" or "recharge" with a fresh supply of energy.
I would have to grant that "amature nuclear physics" is something that is widely discouraged by the U.S. Dept. of Homeland Security, as is "amature chemistry". In other words, somebody who is not a part of the mainstream research community studying the subject but rather somebody who litterally tinkers in their garage trying new things just because knowledge is cool.
Other scientific disciplines have numerous amatures involved, notably astronomy, and to a lesser extent biology, and even computer science. Having a telescope in your backyard, while still making you a weirdo or a definitive "nerd", is not going to get you on the Dept. of Homeland Security's "watch list". They might raise an eyebrow if they think you are a "hacker", but that is peanuts compared to if they think you are making explosives. Or even hint that you are manufacturing pharmaceuticals without DEA permission (choose your poison on this comment).
Nuclear material experimentation is just over the top, and sure to get police involved. Unfortunately, the energies involved with nuclear energy are so large that a single individual can create a huge mess, and potentially cause a lot of radioactive debris, if not take out a small corner of the city they are living in.
In some ways this is too bad, as it is the amatures that come up with the really cool things, and a small group working in their basement or garage that often come up with new ideas that traditional research departments overlook. It is also a sad statement that some areas of knowledge are considered too hazardous for "ordinary people" to study and understand.
RE: Oil
The petroleum industry has a weakened influence in the USA, and becoming less over time. Part of this is because so much is imported that now oil reserves are considered a matter of the State Department rather than a Department of Energy or some other more domestic agency. While "big oil" is still influential in Washington D.C., I do see an end in sight for their influence, and that the petroleum industry will be focused more on lubricants rather than energy sources. The key to look for is how motor vehicles are taxed, and when you no longer pay for highway construction on a per gallon basis, you know that "big oil" is dead.
This is already a consideration and subject of debate in many state legislatures, as well as in the U.S. Congress.
While I think that solar sails are a neat technology, I would like to hear what some other people here think of their potential as manned spacecraft.
My contention of what I've seen from all of the numbers that get used to describe velocities and transit times for solar sails, is that this will be used primarily for transfer of bulk goods between different places in space.
A comparison would be how bulk goods are shipped today in industrial countries. Right now the most common methods are by barge (or equivalent ocean ships like oil tankers) or by rail, and slow-moving rail at that. It doesn't have to get there immediately, the stuff simply has to get there eventually, and as cheap as possible, at least on a price/kg basis.
In space a bulk shipping service would be even more crucial. Passenger traffic would have to be done on much faster ships, and IMHO the only reliable energy source with the density needed to accomplish that sort of travel (i.e. Earth to Mars in 3-4 weeks) is nuclear propulsion. Chemical rockets simply don't have the energy needed to get us anywhere... at least in any sort of hurry.
While a neat technology, and necessary to the opening of the solar system to mankind, this technology will be a more workhorse technology rather than something "sexy" that some cool people will want to get to put on their "space yacht". A 1 GW reactor that can push your ship at a continuous 2 G acceleration for 7 weeks on the other hand....
A very good moderator for radiation is ordinary H2O, water. There are multiple reasons why you find quite a bit of water in nuclear power plants, and the moderation effects of water are just one of them.
:)
Another good reason to have water is for life support on a spacecraft, as it is a very dense material to supply emergency oxygen if necessary. Or to drink with your Tang that you brought with you.
Still, the radiation hazards for prolonged travel at even a minor fraction of the speed of light is going to be an issue, but there are practical engineering designs that could cope with those issues.
The critical issues would be simply how could you get that much energy into a small spaceship?
The solar system is a pretty empty place. There was some "concern" that the asteroid belt may have large amounts of "dust", but most of the outer solar system missions (Pioneer, Voyager, Cassini, Magellan) have more than demonstrated that this is not the case.
Yes, the asteroid belt has a lot of pieces, but you would be foolish to run into an asteroid, especially anything that would cause real problems to a solar sail.
As to debris in LEO, yeah, there is a bunch of that right now, primarily due to space activities over 60 years and nearly weekly launches somewhere in the world. And even in LEO there it is mostly empty space.
And as for added propellant, it isn't needed. When the sail is "folded up" or put to an inactive state, it would be no different than all current extra-terrestrial space travel: they would rely on pure kinetic energy to continue their momentum to wherever they are headed. Yeah, it would take some course corrections enroute, but again nothing new to even current spacecraft that tour the solar system. Even 17th century sailing ships back elsewhen had to deal with weird circumstances in order to travel across the ocean, and they seemed to have done fairly well, even without a computer.
It is not the solar wind that is captured by solar sails... it is sunlight.
And last time I checked, sunlight was traveling at, you guessed it, the speed of light.
While I would agree that it would take years to accelerate to a significant velocity, you still can't dismiss the constant acceleration that would be able to assist the propulsion of a spacecraft. And this is something "free" as well, as you don't need to bring any extra payload for fuel. Once you get to your destination, you can return to your origin without too much hassle.
The only way that a "solar sail" is going to even get to a fraction of the speed of light, at least based on high quality SF stories regarding the subject, is to have an incredible space-based laser that projects the energy straight at the sail. There is a similar delta-vee that is pushed back on whatever the laser is sitting on, but that doesn't matter if it is some very large platform or on a plantary body (like an asteroid or Mercury). The question at that point would be how long could you maintain a 1 TW laser? 1 hour? 10 weeks? 1 year?
Similar lasers used for fusion research only have to fire for 1/100th of a second, so this really would be new technology if developed.
And would you want to be in the path of a 1 TW laser beam, even if the diameter of the light blast is several km across (at a distance)?
Keep in mind that the reason why many of the key NASA sites are in Texas is because of the one ledgendary "Fairy God Senator" from Texas:
Lyndon B. Johnson (LBJ)
He "ruled" the Democratic Senate with an iron fist during the late 1950's and early 1960's before becoming President, and then he was able to wield even more political power. Detractors of G.W. Bush notwithstanding, I don't know of any other recent President who had that kind of personal political power.
The Manned Spaceflight Command Center was put in Houston, Texas specifically so every time astronauts would talk, the name of the city would come up, as in "Houston, we have a problem here!" This is not coincidence.
That a former Texas governor is currently President and the Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives is also from Texas will mean that this run of pork to Texas will continue for some time to come.
Unfortuately, I think you are correct.
By continuing to call me as having lesser intelligence than yourself and making light of things I consider to be sacred, you are showing just who you are. Rude, insulting, and desiring to engage in a flame war. And somebody with a serious psycosis that is afraid they may be wrong.
All I'm asking is that you try to understand the viewpoint I'm coming from, not to join my religious faith as it is apparent that you are already quite set on your current philosophical approach to life.
Ethics in some cases is a codification of life habits. This can be like the Hippocratic Oath or the oath of office for a soldier. This can even be the code of conduct by criminal organizations like the Mafia. By having ethical behavior, you know just where you have made a mistake and what the consequences of those mistakes could be, and not necessarily just legal consequences.
I am contending that people can't have ethics without at least some foundation in something beyond themselves. It doesn't have to be in some supernatural force, but it does have to be in something that doesn't change just because your circumstances have changed. Without this foundation, you can talk yourself into doing just about anything for any reason, and even come up with a "rational" reason for doing it.
As far as a "single reliable case for the existance of a supernatural being" is concerned, I guess that is a matter of what you would set as the standard for a "reliable case". If I told you that I personally had the opportunity to talk with God himself, I doubt you would ever believe me. If I told you I was your God, you would probabally spit in my face just to prove a point. I can try to talk you out of your assumption of the non-existance of God, but that would be useless unless you are willing to acknowledge that there is at least a possibility that God could exist.
For me, I will tell you that I know God does exist, and I also believe that in time you will find out for yourself that this is true. I am also willing to wait for events that go beyond this mortal life we are living at the moment for you to get this realization, but it would be sad for you if that happens and God does in fact exist.
I believe only jainism has the same number of religious wars as atheism, namely, zero.
Considering that most communist countries are (or were) officially atheist, I think you can count several non-zero wars that they were involved with. Religious intentions regarding the wars notwithstanding, and indeed many of these conflicts were done to eliminate religious thought. And certainly it was to spread their philosophies further (with the exception of the "Great Patriotic War"... which did further spread the ideas anyway as a result).
I'm not saying all athiests are communist, but the conflicts that communist governments were involved with did spread atheistic thought, and in a manner similar to the spread of Islam in the 12th Century as well as Christian Crusades and conquests of Western and Northern Europe by Christian armies.
It could even be argued that even tacit tolerance for religious thought in communist countries was a major part of the downfall of those governments (notably the role of the Catholic Church in Communist Poland).
RE: Faith
I deliberately phrased the definition of faith that I used to exclude reference to God or gods. I totally disagree with the assertion that an atheist is somebody without faith. They may not have faith in God or even any person, but I am claiming that you indeed have faith in something, even if it is only in yourself.
In this case I also disagree with this use of authority to claim that my definition of faith is wrong. All a dictionary attempts to do is put into words what the meaning of a word or phrase has. And the authority of dictionary.com is no better or worse than my own. I have spent years studying the concept of faith, in addition to holding ecclesiastical office, if you want to get down to who has authority to comment on these things.
The same thing goes to the definition of religion. You are deliberately putting god into the definition so you can take yourself out of the category. I am arguing that religion does not require belief in the supernatural, but instead is a philosophy that governs how you live. That many people with religion may feel that philosophy came from a divine source is another issue, but it is not necessarily a part of the definition of religion, and including that aspect into the definition only serves to muddle this arguement.
I am also looking at history and remarking that ethics have to have some fundimental basis of reason in order for them to mean anything. If you lack that foundation, you can twist your ethics to allow you to do just about anything you want to do, including oppression, murder, and most things that would commonly be called unethical by traditional ethical systems.
Indeed, a common complaint about corporations is that they have no ethical standards other than the quest for more money. It is even written into the corporate charters to be exactly that... to "maximize profit through proper management of resources and thoughful investing." These organizations may have been started by what you or I would call moral people, but using the charter as the only standard to go against companies like Enron was able to cause a lot of heartburn. And most often a company (nor its corporate officers in extreme cases) really care if somebody is killed due to their business practices. Often they even plan on it as a necessary part of their business plan, and can give fairly accurate estimates regarding how many people will die when they get into some project.
I would argue that atheists with moral codes of ethics are indeed people who also have some faith in things that are greater than themselves, even if it isn't God. That may be in the future of humanity, their country, or aquired "wisdom of the ages", or even fear of getting hurt or killed if you don't follow some ethical values. This is faith pure and simple, and does not require a divine influence to support it.
Atheism is far too much of a catch-all term for all of the other possibilities for philosophical viewpoints regarding the nature of this Universe.
What I would call atheism could be also called "Secular-Humanism", or the belief in scientific principles and moral secular government. Even this is hard to pin down, but is a common philosophy found in Western Europe and the Americas, and is a common meme of 21st Century society and culture.
The problem I have is that those who have this viewpoint won't even try to understand people like myself who have a very different viewpoint. I accept the fact that I am accountable to a higher being. For me (not all religions believe this), my God does not really care if I worship him. That is not the point. What is important is that I improve myself and become a better person today than I was yesterday. Also, I hold as a belief that what we call a human life goes way beyond the brief period of time between birth from our mothers and death in a grave. Furthermore, who I call God also has a non-interference philosophy that values personal freedom to choose and act as you want. This includes the ability to even deny God if that is the path you want to follow. Or for you to have the ability to oppress others against their will. I choose to allow freedom and to encourage political and social frameworks that promote religious tolarance. This is not the same as elimination of religious thought altogether as some atheistic philosophers have advocated.
Religious rituals and worship is there to pass on traditions from our past, to open our eyes that there may be more to life than what you normally think is there, and in part to disguise religious truths from the unbelievers. Far too often people who are not of a religious tradition make light of sacred things, such as the supposed desecration of the Quoran that is getting so much attention lately. By encrypting this in a spiritual code, this information can be passed to other believers without the contexts understandable to believers getting corrupted by unbelievers. This occurs primarily due to millenia of repression of religious thought by governments and non believers. It also allows people who are seeking spiritual enlightenment to learn at their own pace, but still participate in a community of like-minded people.
Since you have insulted my intelligence, I could choose not to respond, but I find that you are indeed professing faith.
Faith is living a lifestyle that demonstrates what you believe to be true about this Universe, how it was formed, and what its governing principles have in regards to how it affects your life.
If you choose to believe that there is no God or gods that govern this Universe, then that is also an expression of faith. This is a faith that there is no god to return to when you die, that it really doesn't matter what you do, and no final accountability other than in some abstract way that the legacy of your life has had on the rest of your species. You can have ethics and morals and also be atheistic (an argument often used against atheism), but it must be grounded in something more basic like saving the world or helping humanity in general.
Otherwise, get out your Uzi and go out of this life with a bang, having fun and trashing all that you can. Of course, that is another form of insanity that some people do choose to follow as well. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tommorrow we will die."
I just find that there is more to life than that, and more basic good that can come from following religious philosophies that have come from our ancestors. Even if you may not strictly believe that God exists, at least pay attention to what concepts have been developed by over 1000 generations of oral and written traditions. There may be something to life that you are missing.
Unfortunately, there is a history of people who are witnesses to spiritual events, even miracles, who openly dismiss them for one reason or another.
In short, even if you see a miracle, odds are likely that you would not become any more religious than you already are.
A classic example is how many soldiers "became religious" when they were at the Hanoi Hilton. Yeah, for the moments they were in struggle fighting the North Vietnamese as a prisioner they prayed to God, but as soon as they got out and returned to America, many of these soldiers stopped their prayers and could care less about God or what role He might have had in their release.
This may be a difference in religious attitudes between Europe and America. For the most part, I don't know any Christian or Moslem for that matter who feels like they have to be in a church in order to pray. They may be there to gain religious instruction, seeking spiritual guidance from a religious leader, or to socialize with people who have the same religious viewpoint. There are community and political aspects that also show up with religious worship, but having it as the only place to pray is not the role of a church.
In America, supposedly we have the 1st Ammendment that guarentees that the government will not "establish a religion or prohibit the free exercise thereof". Civil liberty groups try to push for denoucing any establishment of religion, but often forget that free exercise of religion is just as important. Apparently France doesn't have this sort of religious freedom protection at all.
As an atheist, I hope you can appreciate that atheism is a religious viewpoint as well. You may put faith in "rational thought", "human nature", or a variety of other philosophical thoughts. Indeed, atheism has as much if not more variety as any other major world philosophical approach (aka religion). I have seen far more "faith" in the concept of global warming than I've seen religious people have "faith" that their god will protect them from harm. Or even "faith" that the United Nations should be strengthened and American soverignty be abolished. It is a matter of a point of view, and neither philosophical viewpoint is grounded on divine influence, but it does drive people with a passion to have it take up their entire life for that one cause.
I even know some "atheists" that go to "church", in the sense they get together once a week (usually Sunday because it is convinent due to local socal norms) and have a barbeque or a game of poker in the afternoon with others sharing their philosophical viewpoint. They openly admit this is only for social reasons, simply because they want to meet other people. The local newspaper and the Chamber of Commerce even publish the contact information for this group as a "church" for visitors to come and participate with if you happen to be in town.
Where religious people (I count myself among them) get upset with is when I'm told I can't have my religious viewpoint, or that I need to keep it in the closet. Outward signs that I have a religious viewpoint (such as a school teacher wearing a cross on their chest when they teach class) is prohibited in a public setting.
I'll admit that there is a fine line between being permitted to display religious attitudes and forcing the group or community to follow in those religious viewpoints, but from my experience with current politically correct thought is that such religious expression is encouraged or even demanded to be supressed altogether. An overeaction to this supression is what currently drives the "religious right" in America today. Unfortunately most atheists simply don't understand the motivation, and that tends to enflame the arguements rather than address the issue.
I think you have things just as confused.
I will admit that baud rate is not completely the same as data transmission rate, but there is a strong correlation between the two. When you are using a modem connection at 1200 baud, you only get a hundred characters (or bytes) per second for transmission. When you go up to 2400 baud, that transmission rate doubles.
Also, modems are rated at baud rate because the initial modems that connected to computers were external devices (you can still get some this way) that connected to your computer via serial communication link, usually RS-232 protocol. This was not simply bits per second, but a true baud rate because it included stop bits and parity check bits. When you had a 2400 baud modem or a 4800 baud modem... the baud rate was a very accurate measurement of what the data rate to that modem required. Even now, communication over a modem requires programming for the 8250 chip (and its successors... there are many). These are usually wrapped up in the driver-level operations, but still there.
I will agree, however, there was a difference between internal (i.e. between the CPU and the modem) data transfer rate and the data rate between modems. Another thing to keep in mind is that a typical POTS line can only handle 9600 baud communications for a simple serial data transmission method. When you are transmitting at a higher "baud rate" over a modem, the protocols are sending multiple bits simultaneously to overcome limitations of POTS systems. Most modern telephone modems still are only transmitting at 9600 baud, but the data rates are much more. This doesn't change the internal serial data lines to the modem, however, so the baud rate going to the modem (i.e. 28,800 baud) is still an accurate baud rate of the modem, even if the serial "transmission" is only across a 1/4" wire on a PCI card.
For a more complete explaination, visit this Wikibook
I have some serious problems with the way that most financial institutions treat personal information. And particularly in the manner that they try to establish identity in the first place.
/.) across multiple platforms. Face it, you can't remember 1000 passwords to access all of the accounts you need to get at.
In most American financial instititions, all you need to know in order to access a bank account is just your name, with your social security number as the password. Anybody who has designed computer authentication and identification systems (confirming that the person signing onto a computer system/network really does belong there) should know that is really a stupid idea. Here is why:
Your Social Security number is really a part of your name. OK, it is a serialized number issued by the government guarenteed to be unique, but otherwise is public information. And considering the number of institutions that have that information (schools, banks, mortgage companies, utilities, credit reporting agencies, accountants, etc.) you can hardly expect it to stay private.
Imagine if you had a really cool password (like Blink187 as an example) that is long enough that a random alphanumeric generator would take a substantial amount of time to crack doing a brute force attack. Often people will use that same password to log into their accounts (like your user account here on
This is the same as the SSN, however one critical thing becomes apparent. If you have been issued a SSN, it is nearly an act of Congress in order to get a new SSN number issued to you. Once somebody breaks the layer of trust (as in what happens by a banker that is careless with this supposed SSN password they use), you are forever in the cold. With your own homegrown password you can at least come up with a new password.
For my own use, I tend to have a heirarchy of about 3-5 passwords, with one for throwaway accounts that I could care less if the password gets published in a public place, and a couple reserved for machine logins that I consider very sensitive. I also am willing to drop a password completely from this heirarchy if I think I accidentally gave the information to somebody that I should not have (choose your own criteria here), or if I suspect the information is being shared against my will. I will go back and change the passwords in the accounts that I regularly access, and in some cases review the heirarchy. For financial information, however, this is usually not an option.
To further illustrate the ineptitude of banks, the only other piece of information that they use to "protect" your personal information (access your account, do money transfers, etc.) is the "PIN", or personal ID number. This is almost always a 4 digit number, and even then you can pretty much stick with just the numbers 1-9 for most of them. That gives only a little over 6500 different passwords, and you can do some social engineering to drop that number down a bit more. (like assume that no digit will repeat itself... reducing the number of possible PINs to about 3000). How hard would it be to brute force that many PINs? And this is considered a secure technology for a bank?
Banks want to make it easy for not-so-bright customers to be able to access their account, but at the same time make sure that only the person who opened the account (presumably... or a trusted representative of that person like a parent or lawyer) can access the information and more importantly... the money in that account. IMHO, banks and related organizations (like credit bureaus) are too fast and loose with that information, and make it far too easy for people who are not the account owner to be able to conduct financial transactions. (Like a scam artist that simply wants to drain any money you have in your account.)
The real redeeming quality that the ISS provides is a technology transfer vehicle (pun intended) for the USA to pick up the space station building skills that the Soviets had developed over the 1970s. (Remember, MIR was built by the USSR, not the Russian Republic, although the breakup of the USSR did happen midway through planning and early construction of the ISS.)
Unfortunately, with the exception of Robert Bigelow who might actually take advantage of some of those skills, it appears as though NASA is going to even squander that talent base just as they have done with how to build interplantary manned spacecraft (aka the Apollo program). These skills are useful, but I would have to agree to question if the $100 billion was really worth it.
I would have to disagree that nobody has been able to figure out anything useful to do in space. The problem is that the political powers that are around have tried to deliberately sabotage any attempt to privitize space and allow individual citizens to take the risks themselves. The X-Prize "flew under" the political radar of most congressmen, partly because most people who have been controlling access to space didn't think it would succeed.
There are several useful technologies that would work in space, but the problem right now is that the overall cost of going into space has been too much to get them accomplished, and the prices being charged by traditional rocket launching companies (Boeing, etc.) make the only thing cost effective is unmanned satellite technology. If companies like XCOR and Scaled Composites succeed, that may change.