I disagree with a basic premise of Sam Harris and this video:
He claims that religion is the only area of human experience from which "faith" is applied and commonly accepted in human society. If only that were true. I know people who profess a "belief" in the Apollo landings as a hoax, in UFOs, in the destruction of the World Trade Center by the U.S. Government (or the Bilderberger group, Illumaniti, Gnomes of Zurich, Free Masons, or what ever conspiracy you can think up), Barack Obama's Birth Certificate in Kenya, and a great many other areas of life.
He did mention the "Elvis Lives!" fans, but missed those who think Adolph Hitler disaapeared in a U-boat and went to Argentina to become an adviser to Juan Perón instead of committing suicide in Berlin. Strangely there are even people who become heads of universities or get elected to Congress believing one or more of these things. It still is a matter of faith and interestingly there is a part of humanity thinking stuff of this nature.... and lie about the fact that they believe in it as well.
To point something out about Christianity, there have been bombings in the name of God done by Christians, perhaps the most recent being the bombings of the Irish Republican Army and the last remaining gun killings between Catholics and Protestants. Even that could be argued as a politicization of the conflict between two Christian factions that has more to do with the politics than the religion. The religious aspects of that feud were a side line rather than the cause. The Hundred Years' War is perhaps more along the same line of thought, but religion did play a larger part of that 17th Century conflict.
Only going back to the 10th Century do you find Christians in open conflict in the name of religion, and that is largely a response to Muslim aggression I should notes as well. After the end of the 15th Century there essentially became an armed detente between "Christendom" and "Islam" until World War I. Arguably what is happening now is the resolution of what happened after World War I, the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and push-back by the peoples ruled by the Ottomans.
It is fair to point out that the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth discouraged the practice of waging war in his name, while Mohammed was openly a warrior who conquered territory and enslaved people. Islam certainly doesn't have any story in its theology like Jesus healing the ear of a soldier after Peter sliced it off.
If you are going to do conversions, make sure you include proper rounding to significant digits and avoid false precision.
In other words: 1300 feet = 400 m = 2 furlongs.
Well, those are approximate conversions, but it is an approximate distance as well. This is something I think most "science reporting" does a horrible job of dealing with as well.
As for cubits, those were about 21 inches or about 52 centimeters, which would put the distance at about 800 cubits or about 80 rods. A hoghead is a unit of volume, which isn't applicable.
There are ways to make re-entry possible without the traditional ballistic re-entry process that currently is being used. You need to manipulate your overall density and engage in some flight dynamics that haven't really been explored to any significant degree, so it really is bleeding edge science. In theory you could ride something appearing like a surf board and be able to attempt re-entry without a capsule (something seriously considered for emergency situations for crewed flight in orbit) and you may also be able to ride some aerogels or something else with a huge surface area compared to weight that may "skip" across the atmosphere a fair bit longer than sinking into the atmosphere in a metal capsule.
The trick is to dissipate the energy over a longer period of time, as what happens in reentry is the kinetic energy is transformed into heat energy. Taking longer implies that the heat energy doesn't get pushed onto the vehicle in a short period of time.
Yes, I realize the speed is huge for orbital spaceflight. It still is an energy budget that you are dealing with.
I would need to review the mathematics of the whole endeavor, but it may be possible to use something like the SpaceShip One shuttecock system for very small payloads (about 5-10 kg) where you end up with still another flight regime, with the small size of the "re-entry vehicle" being able to do things that a larger scale vehicle can't get away with. The U.S. Air Force for a great many years experimented with small return vehicles for their photo reconnaissance missions with actual film being returned in those re-entry vehicles. I would imagine that there could be commercial applications where due to bandwidth issues or simply for operational security that you may want perform a similar "micropayload" return vehicle.
Certainly there are other ideas on how to engage in spaceflight, where not all possible ideas have been tried. There are certainly drawbacks to any other alternative, but if those drawbacks can become strengths in some cases, it may be worth looking at.
I would suggest you look at what JP aerospace is proposing. The interesting thing is that they are working on propellers that can work at very high altitudes for thrust, and their long-term plan is indeed to use airships for travel into orbit, not just high altitude locations. They are fully aware of the delta-v requirements, and it is a part of their business plan and development model for their vehicles to get there.
Yes, a simple balloon like a weather balloon is not going to get you there, and those folks who put on demonstrations in a stratosphere saying how they got into space really haven't. I get that, but then again there is a reason why the upper stratosphere is called the "ignorosphere", because it is pretty much out of reach for most long term studies. Orbital altitudes have quite a bit of information and experience has built up due to space stations like the ISS, Mir, and Skylab (as well as the Manned Orbital Laboratory and the Salyut stations that were developed before those other stations). The lower stratosphere is understood due to commercial jet aviation and some military experience, but the upper atmosphere is too thick for spacecraft and too thin for most forms of aviation. That is where the JP Aerospace "airship to orbit" is trying to make a difference, with technologies that specifically operate in this regime and can get this necessary delta-v with the main issue that the delta-v will be accumulated over the course of a week instead of in a ten minute period of time like is the case with rocketry.
I have no idea if these guys can pull it off, but it certainly is a novel approach to spaceflight.
That other approaches might be possible as well, it doesn't mean this particular concept won't work.
MPEG audio codecs (including MP3) are also used for live streaming as well. That is what is being used when I turn on my television and watch the "digitial television" broadcasts from the various television studios now. That is about as "live" as you can get.
Please don't think I'm complaining that because other solutions exist that creating a new standard is an effort in futility, just that it is going to be an uphill climb in terms of widespread acceptance. Making such a standard available without a license is going to make a difference.
Perhaps live stream internet radio broadcasts could be happening again if people could set one up without paying horrible fees that simply prohibit a small start-up from even trying at the moment.
MP3 seems to be working just fine for 99% of the applications on the web. MP3 players are ubiquitous, including on a web page. For those that don't work (like Wikipedia), they seem to be using Ogg Vorbis. That quite a bit of Ogg Vorbis seems to be in Opus is true, it is still a different standard.
I fail to see how this is going to be making a change, unless Fraunhofer (or somebody else from out of the blue) decides to do something stupid like Unisys did with the LZW algorithm and the GIF image format. I think that boat has sailed too and unlikely to happen.
I'm not saying that there will be some advantages to using Opus, but "changing the face of the web" seems very unlikely. The web just isn't a killer app any more for stuff like this.
What would make an audio codec something worth using that would make you switch?
I would assume that widespread support among major applications would be an issue. You could also throw in the ability to compact an audio stream better than alternatives might be useful in some applications. Simply having content in that codec would be very useful as well.
I would say being patent and license free (aka it can be incorporated into a GPL'd application) would be pretty far down the list, but not needing to pay a licensing fee might make the difference for some marginal applications or for start up groups needing some sort of audio playback where even a few extra dollars in royalties can end up costing more than it is worth (such as is the case for the current MP3 format).
Then again that is sort of what pushed the VHS format over Betamax in the video tape format wars.... small independent producers could mass produce VHS tapes cheaper than the Betamax tapes, and for marginal videos (*cough* porn movies *cough*) that made all of the difference.
The problem here is that audio codecs are pretty entrenched and as you've suggested that even free alternatives are available. Unless there is something substantially different being done by this codec that even a non-techie can notice and suggest that this new algorithm is substantially better, I really have a hard time seeing this being adopted widely. There might be some niche applications if the compression algorithm is even a few percentage points better, such as perhaps a transmission protocol for audio on the Iridium satellites. Something like that may even be useful to have an on the fly codec converter depending on how it is used.
Internet Explorer is indeed a game. It is just a game played at a higher level and you are unwittingly a participant in that game acting as a pawn. That you may or may not actually be using that software is itself a part of the game.
What a depressing view of human potential. A child born may be a problem, true, but also has the potential to come up with any number of solutions. And, yes, how is an unsubstantiated claim that a whole swathe of people delimited by region and religion are 'not that intelligent' not racist?
Take a look at the facts instead. With decreasing poverty, overall birth rates tend to decrease, Arab countries included. Whilst war tends to increase birthrates and long term population densities.
I won't even say children being born is a problem. They may be a "burden" on society and upon their families while they are young, learning, and may be unproductive compared to middle aged adults (using the term very broadly meaning somebody from the age of 20 to the age of 70, give or take a few years on each end of the age range), but you are correct that the potential of children to grow up and become a part of the solution to the problems posed by over population is something to consider as well.
The limiting factor for population growth really is, at least to me, freedom to choose or even freedom at its most basic level. It is the freedom to move from wherever you are to wherever you may like to be. The freedom to start a business and solve a problem that you see which you think will not only help your neighbors but also yourself. It is the freedom to do what you want, when you want, however you want. As long as you aren't harming your neighbors (yeah, that isn't an easy concept to nail down either... such is life), you shouldn't be prohibited from doing that.
I would dare say that those parts of the world where poverty is most rampant, where population pressures cause the most distress and seem to be the best candidates for a demonstration of Malthus' ideas are also the places in the world where the government is most oppressive, where people aren't even capable of posting a message on Slashdot not because of a lack of language skills, but because the government of that country won't even let the citizens express their opinion on line. In nearly every situation you can bring up, when the governments involved opened up and granted freedoms to their citizens in even the smallest degree, economic prosperity resulted and the country as a whole became much stronger... especially compared to its neighbors but also in terms of the ability of that country to deal with issues like poverty, disease, famine, and other major issues that can result from what seems on the outside to be a crushing population.
China is an excellent example, where for many generations there have been oppressive governments (before and after the Communist take-over) and ordinary citizens had little to do other than simply obey the local magistrate or party chief. People with advanced degrees in physics or engineering (particularly in the "Cultural Revolution") had their talents completely crushed under by being forced at gun point to work in rice paddies and manually plant the crops and to perform those tasks in the most inefficient manner possible. The fact that those folks even had degrees should be impressive at all, but it got worse under Mao than it had been earlier.... and that is saying quite a bit. It shouldn't be a wonder that with such inefficiencies and lack of respect for people that millions starved to death in China.
With the granting of economic freedoms in China and a general relaxed attitude toward political dissent (not up to western Europe standards, but far more tolerated than it w
It helps to have a very wealthy endowed foundation with super hero like powers to be able to influence events on a galactic scale to make the predictions come true.
Wait a minute..... isn't that what is currently called the Bilderberg Group?
Unflavored Jell-O happens to be one food that will gradually kill you into starvation, as your body needs more calories to consume and digest the food than you obtain from the food itself. What calories you get from it come from the fruit or sugar thrown into the food instead of the Jell-O itself.
I'm curious about what sort of survey you have used to come to this conclusion or what you consider to be "few" or "very few"? Is 60% of the population "very few"?
I don't know what you are basing this information on, but I think you are showing your bias for how you personally eat and perhaps a close circle of friends rather than anything objective and quantifiable. Don't let the internet echo chambers make you think your lifestyle is necessary typical without something outside of your immediate circle of acquaintances confirm your suspicions.
I'm not saying that 60% of Americans or any other objective number is eating healthy food because I happen to know I live in a community where such meals are pretty common. I'm just saying don't jump to any conclusion here either based upon a highly skewed and statically small sample size.
Which is why the Wikimedia Foundation set up OTRS to both confirm the copyright status of something that is questioned (aka written permission is given by a 3rd party) or for DCMA notices and other similar stuff.
When is this not a problem? If the first notice of a problem is from a lawsuit brief, it is likely that the person somehow offended is clueless about the internet and doesn't know how to look up an e-mail address, much less actually know how to use hyperlinks. Do you really think such a lawsuit would even be heard by a judge when the plaintiff didn't even bother asking for a retraction in the first place before they filed the lawsuit?
You still need to dump energy getting down. That is why heat shields get so hot, as it is the atmosphere + shield which is absorbing all of the kinetic energy of the spacecraft on its way back to the surface.
An alternative solutions has been proposed by JP Aerospace with an alternative launch + reentry vehicle design that uses airships rather than rockets. It seems like a really crazy idea as it is something that nobody else has even considered and doesn't really have anything to be used in comparison. Still, JP Aerospace seems to have a whole lot of experience with high altitude balloons and being able to operate them from a high altitude remotely. Their goal is to send hundreds of tons of supplies into orbit for under a million dollars. If they can pull it off, it would radically change commercial spaceflight. There would still be a need for conventional rockets, but they would be fast couriers rather than the only game in town.
Mainly that the capsule isn't just a concept on paper but that "metal is bent" and the capsule appears to be moving well down the path of becoming something real that may fly in space. Far too many companies don't even make it that far, so it is an accomplishment to be noted. Bending metal costs serious money and doesn't really give you an immediate payoff for having done that. It tends to separate out the scams from serious efforts trying to get into space as well... or for any other similar kind of engineering objective.
the secrecy is to douse flames that NASA is paying them for nothing.
simple? (how is it a private company when it's money source is NASA contracts, which seem to be much like in fashion like when building Apollo.. plenty of parts were done by outside companies, usually defense contractors)
The money that NASA gives Blue Origin is peanuts for their operating expenses. Most of the money is stuff they get straight from Jeff Bezos and from a few private contracts they have received over the years. It certainly is disingenuous to suggest that NASA is the only source of money and that this company (by implication) is living off of the teat of government largess due to a couple fairy god-senators.
Jeff Bezos is trying to build a company which will be doing stuff in space. The long term goal is to build spacecraft and other things that may be cool to perform in space as well, and in the long term perhaps make a profit as well. It will take decades and millions of dollars to get that to happen, but it is a risk he is willing to take and it is his own damn money to do with as he pleases. He doesn't answer to shareholders (Jeff Bezos is the only shareholder of Blue Origin), and except for those specific projects which he performed contracts for NASA,he doesn't need to tell anybody else what he is doing. Perhaps the IRS, but I doubt Blue Origin has turned a profit and may even be officially called a "hobby" according to IRS rules (for failure to turn a profit in over five years of business). That just means Jeff Bezos can't write off losses by Blue Origin as a business loss to reduce taxes.
The reason NASA has gone to Blue Origin at all is because Blue Origin has some pretty competent aerospace engineers and have previously built some stuff that is impressive... at least to NASA engineers. NASA put out a "request for proposals" on some projects, and not only did Blue Origin feel confident that they could compete for those projects that they bid upon against a great many other companies, Blue Origin even beat out several "traditional" aerospace companies including Alliant Techsystems (ATK). In other words they had to impress NASA that they could meet the terms of the contract, and so far that seems to be the case too.
As for why there is secrecy, it is a combination that Jeff Bezos doesn't give a damn about publicity on his private space program, and that by keeping things secret he isn't accused of vaporware when he finally has something to show for all of the money he has dumped into the company. Perhaps he is embarrassed by the fact that he doesn't have as much to show for that money as he would hope. It doesn't really matter what the reason is other than he doesn't have to reveal anything at all.
If you are googling for contracts and can only find NASA as a source of money, that is in part because NASA contracts are the only thing by law that Jeff Bezos must disclose.
I think he was quoting some other bloke, but I tend to agree that is general philosophy of governance in America and most of the rest of the world.
We are right now in sort of a "golden era" of spacecraft construction, where anybody with a few million dollars can slap together a rocket and go into space with a minimum of regulation. Sort of like how the automobile industry was like a hundred years ago or so. Or like how the aviation industry was for companies building aircraft. Eventually it will shake down to just a few or even a single company and be almost impossible to make a startup in the industry.
I don't know if the SpaceShipOne design is necessarily inappropriate for orbital spaceflight. Certainly some other way to get more velocity is needed (like perhaps a significant booster engine being used by Stratolaunch) and there would need to be some sort of thermal tiles added to "SpaceShipThree" resembling what was done for the Space Shuttle. The "shuttlecock" re-entry mode thought up by Burt Rutan has some interesting characteristics which would be very useful to at least explore in terms of how much further that engineering design can be used and how far it can be scaled up. For returning smaller payloads from orbit, it may even be a very useful design. The nice thing about the "shuttlecock" design is that it has passive guidance rather than needing a pilot showing skill on re-entry. A pilot can be unconscious and still technical survive at least the atmospheric re-entry itself, even if not necessarily the landing.
Still, energy is really the key to spaceflight, and you need a whole lot of energy spent very quickly in order to get into orbit.
Until Boeing gets the CST-100 built, or SpaceX uprates their Dragon capsule, or if the Chinese want to let you fly in one of their Shenzhou spacecraft. Orbital Science is also working on a crew-rated capsule too.
Still, since the ISS partners don't trust China for trips to the ISS, the Soyuz spacecraft is pretty much the only way to get there at the moment.
What you are complaining about here though is to use Wikipedia itself as a primary source. At least that is what was done by this author. He felt that since he was a subject matter expert, that by his own authority he could change Wikipedia to reflect what he "knew" was correct without backing up his assertions with any other source or reference.
It is also missing what Wikipedia is about. An encyclopedia is not a place where you publish original content like a scientific paper that may have been rejected by other scholarly journals. That is what the "no original research" is all about. You may have discovered a new form of energy, found convincing proof that Einstein was wrong about General Relativity, uncovered a hidden tomb in Egypt of a previously unknown pharaoh, or something else equally remarkable. Wikipedia simply isn't the correct forum to be publishing that kind of information, particularly for the first time. There are numerous places to publish those kind of articles. Once you have published those papers elsewhere, had them reviewed by peers, cited and challenged, and have had other reviewers synthesize what you said in that paper in other books... then it is fine to incorporate that information into an encyclopedia article.
Most people new to WIkiipedia, and I dare say many Wikipedia administrators as well, simply don't understand what it is about. I've even seen some excellent scientific papers published on Wikipedia with good data and something that should have been submitted to a respectable journal. I've also seen a whole bunch of crackpots post pure junk that would never stand up to any kind of peer review at all. Telling people with something very interesting is personally hard to remind them about the "No original research" policy, but I don't mind telling crackpots to leave. BTW, the Wikipedia sister project known as Wikiversity has a much more relaxed attitude about original research and readily takes such unpublished or even republished papers. Standards are high even on that site, but it isn't complete prohibition.
The point of proper peer review is to see that the idea is challenged, to show that good science was followed (if it was a scientific paper), and to have the idea at least vetted in the wider forum of world public opinion. Wikipedia is not the proper place to perform that kind of vetting on new ideas.
None of this stops somebody from using a primary source in a Wikipedia article. Articles dominated by primary sources are suspect and challenged, as it seem to bring up the idea that the topic itself isn't notable (does anybody really care about the mayor of Taopi, Minnesota and what he or she ate for breakfast?) Still, a primary source and and indeed should be used as appropriate within the article and trying to keep a neutral tone to the article so it doesn't advocate for a particular cause or viewpoint. A Wikipedia article also isn't a place to write a promotional advertisement for a business. "Just the facts, ma'am" is what is sought more often than not in such an article.
If there is something worth saying that is original, something not found in a published biography, journal, or at least a newspaper article or television news report or even simply a book published by a respected published, that is where it should be published. If a professor has something useful to say about the topic, looks in a Wikipedia article and sees that the information isn't there, it should inspire him to call up a press agent or to write up an article or "letter" into some other place to get that information "out there". How hard is it for a professor at a university or for that matter any "famous" person to get some information corrected that is a widely circulated rumor or considered by that person to be misleading? If rumors and falsehoods are showing up in Wikipedia, based upon what is considered to be reliable sources to Wikipedia contributors (and not just some troll being an idiot), it sounds like there would be a much more serious issue t
Considering you neither read the assignment, knew the professor, know me, or understand what the class was about, this is rather presumptuous to suggest I didn't meet the requirements of the class nor the assignment. For myself, if a kid studying up on sorts comes up with a recursive sort after hearing about a bubble sort for the first time, I think the kid deserves a "A" in the assignment.
Heck, I think even your logic here with recursion being used instead of a loop is flawed, as student is instead showing he has not only mastered the basic concepts but is willing to go beyond. I don't even think your example is a reasonable counterpoint, other than to suggest you read the snopes article referenced above. Very likely such a student doing as you suggest is bored and has already mastered the concept and the professor is not really providing an education in the first place. If you consider that the point of a college education is just to "punch your ticket" and churn mindlessly through classes regurgitating what the professors expect and promptly forgetting everything said just so you can get that degree certificate that might as well be from a diploma mill, you may be correct on the assessment.
It does take a special professor to recognize a particularly bright student and to properly challenge them. Most don't care.
Case by case basis. A lot of my editing involves a foreign country and other foreign countries near it. If nearly all the editors who have been there has observed something in person, often that includes me, but no one has bothered to document it in a scholarly paper, then we'll probably let it in (provided it is notable). Obviously we need to avoid "old wives tales" that "everyone" knows to be true.
Having his kind of undocumented information is the exception rather than the norm.
That is sort of the point about the "no original research" policy. You really shouldn't be adding content that isn't verifiable (it says that on the edit page itself as you are adding content). Some articles are a bit more lax on documentation, especially if they are still in development. An article won't get "GA" or "FA" status (the top quality article designations) if such statements can't be referenced.
The admins, by and large, have a pretty hazy understanding of the rules; usually it seems like they've just read the title of the rule, and imagined what it said, and they are in deep contempt of anyone that really does understand the rules (they call that 'wikilawyering' and it's an insult.) If you quote the rules to them, you will get absolutely nowhere. The admins will very often apply rules in a way that the rules themselves explicitly say is not what they mean.
Most of the admins I've worked with have a pretty good understanding of the site policies, but there are certainly some who are novices compared to even long time editors who eschew becoming an admin.
I've seen even recently more than a couple admins get disciplinary action...usually getting their admin rights stripped and other steps taken against them. Admins also patrol each other, so it isn't in a vacuum. That there are some abusive admins I won't deny, but Wikipedia doesn't have a wall of asshats acting as admins. "Tattling" on admins is even encouraged on places like the admin's notice board or the Village Pump (project-wide discussion area).
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I disagree with a basic premise of Sam Harris and this video:
He claims that religion is the only area of human experience from which "faith" is applied and commonly accepted in human society. If only that were true. I know people who profess a "belief" in the Apollo landings as a hoax, in UFOs, in the destruction of the World Trade Center by the U.S. Government (or the Bilderberger group, Illumaniti, Gnomes of Zurich, Free Masons, or what ever conspiracy you can think up), Barack Obama's Birth Certificate in Kenya, and a great many other areas of life.
He did mention the "Elvis Lives!" fans, but missed those who think Adolph Hitler disaapeared in a U-boat and went to Argentina to become an adviser to Juan Perón instead of committing suicide in Berlin. Strangely there are even people who become heads of universities or get elected to Congress believing one or more of these things. It still is a matter of faith and interestingly there is a part of humanity thinking stuff of this nature.... and lie about the fact that they believe in it as well.
To point something out about Christianity, there have been bombings in the name of God done by Christians, perhaps the most recent being the bombings of the Irish Republican Army and the last remaining gun killings between Catholics and Protestants. Even that could be argued as a politicization of the conflict between two Christian factions that has more to do with the politics than the religion. The religious aspects of that feud were a side line rather than the cause. The Hundred Years' War is perhaps more along the same line of thought, but religion did play a larger part of that 17th Century conflict.
Only going back to the 10th Century do you find Christians in open conflict in the name of religion, and that is largely a response to Muslim aggression I should notes as well. After the end of the 15th Century there essentially became an armed detente between "Christendom" and "Islam" until World War I. Arguably what is happening now is the resolution of what happened after World War I, the destruction of the Ottoman Empire, and push-back by the peoples ruled by the Ottomans.
It is fair to point out that the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth discouraged the practice of waging war in his name, while Mohammed was openly a warrior who conquered territory and enslaved people. Islam certainly doesn't have any story in its theology like Jesus healing the ear of a soldier after Peter sliced it off.
If you are going to do conversions, make sure you include proper rounding to significant digits and avoid false precision.
In other words: 1300 feet = 400 m = 2 furlongs.
Well, those are approximate conversions, but it is an approximate distance as well. This is something I think most "science reporting" does a horrible job of dealing with as well.
As for cubits, those were about 21 inches or about 52 centimeters, which would put the distance at about 800 cubits or about 80 rods. A hoghead is a unit of volume, which isn't applicable.
There are ways to make re-entry possible without the traditional ballistic re-entry process that currently is being used. You need to manipulate your overall density and engage in some flight dynamics that haven't really been explored to any significant degree, so it really is bleeding edge science. In theory you could ride something appearing like a surf board and be able to attempt re-entry without a capsule (something seriously considered for emergency situations for crewed flight in orbit) and you may also be able to ride some aerogels or something else with a huge surface area compared to weight that may "skip" across the atmosphere a fair bit longer than sinking into the atmosphere in a metal capsule.
The trick is to dissipate the energy over a longer period of time, as what happens in reentry is the kinetic energy is transformed into heat energy. Taking longer implies that the heat energy doesn't get pushed onto the vehicle in a short period of time.
Yes, I realize the speed is huge for orbital spaceflight. It still is an energy budget that you are dealing with.
I would need to review the mathematics of the whole endeavor, but it may be possible to use something like the SpaceShip One shuttecock system for very small payloads (about 5-10 kg) where you end up with still another flight regime, with the small size of the "re-entry vehicle" being able to do things that a larger scale vehicle can't get away with. The U.S. Air Force for a great many years experimented with small return vehicles for their photo reconnaissance missions with actual film being returned in those re-entry vehicles. I would imagine that there could be commercial applications where due to bandwidth issues or simply for operational security that you may want perform a similar "micropayload" return vehicle.
Certainly there are other ideas on how to engage in spaceflight, where not all possible ideas have been tried. There are certainly drawbacks to any other alternative, but if those drawbacks can become strengths in some cases, it may be worth looking at.
I would suggest you look at what JP aerospace is proposing. The interesting thing is that they are working on propellers that can work at very high altitudes for thrust, and their long-term plan is indeed to use airships for travel into orbit, not just high altitude locations. They are fully aware of the delta-v requirements, and it is a part of their business plan and development model for their vehicles to get there.
Yes, a simple balloon like a weather balloon is not going to get you there, and those folks who put on demonstrations in a stratosphere saying how they got into space really haven't. I get that, but then again there is a reason why the upper stratosphere is called the "ignorosphere", because it is pretty much out of reach for most long term studies. Orbital altitudes have quite a bit of information and experience has built up due to space stations like the ISS, Mir, and Skylab (as well as the Manned Orbital Laboratory and the Salyut stations that were developed before those other stations). The lower stratosphere is understood due to commercial jet aviation and some military experience, but the upper atmosphere is too thick for spacecraft and too thin for most forms of aviation. That is where the JP Aerospace "airship to orbit" is trying to make a difference, with technologies that specifically operate in this regime and can get this necessary delta-v with the main issue that the delta-v will be accumulated over the course of a week instead of in a ten minute period of time like is the case with rocketry.
I have no idea if these guys can pull it off, but it certainly is a novel approach to spaceflight.
That other approaches might be possible as well, it doesn't mean this particular concept won't work.
MPEG audio codecs (including MP3) are also used for live streaming as well. That is what is being used when I turn on my television and watch the "digitial television" broadcasts from the various television studios now. That is about as "live" as you can get.
Please don't think I'm complaining that because other solutions exist that creating a new standard is an effort in futility, just that it is going to be an uphill climb in terms of widespread acceptance. Making such a standard available without a license is going to make a difference.
Perhaps live stream internet radio broadcasts could be happening again if people could set one up without paying horrible fees that simply prohibit a small start-up from even trying at the moment.
This codec will change the face of the Web.
MP3 seems to be working just fine for 99% of the applications on the web. MP3 players are ubiquitous, including on a web page. For those that don't work (like Wikipedia), they seem to be using Ogg Vorbis. That quite a bit of Ogg Vorbis seems to be in Opus is true, it is still a different standard.
I fail to see how this is going to be making a change, unless Fraunhofer (or somebody else from out of the blue) decides to do something stupid like Unisys did with the LZW algorithm and the GIF image format. I think that boat has sailed too and unlikely to happen.
I'm not saying that there will be some advantages to using Opus, but "changing the face of the web" seems very unlikely. The web just isn't a killer app any more for stuff like this.
What would make an audio codec something worth using that would make you switch?
I would assume that widespread support among major applications would be an issue. You could also throw in the ability to compact an audio stream better than alternatives might be useful in some applications. Simply having content in that codec would be very useful as well.
I would say being patent and license free (aka it can be incorporated into a GPL'd application) would be pretty far down the list, but not needing to pay a licensing fee might make the difference for some marginal applications or for start up groups needing some sort of audio playback where even a few extra dollars in royalties can end up costing more than it is worth (such as is the case for the current MP3 format).
Then again that is sort of what pushed the VHS format over Betamax in the video tape format wars.... small independent producers could mass produce VHS tapes cheaper than the Betamax tapes, and for marginal videos (*cough* porn movies *cough*) that made all of the difference.
The problem here is that audio codecs are pretty entrenched and as you've suggested that even free alternatives are available. Unless there is something substantially different being done by this codec that even a non-techie can notice and suggest that this new algorithm is substantially better, I really have a hard time seeing this being adopted widely. There might be some niche applications if the compression algorithm is even a few percentage points better, such as perhaps a transmission protocol for audio on the Iridium satellites. Something like that may even be useful to have an on the fly codec converter depending on how it is used.
Internet Explorer is indeed a game. It is just a game played at a higher level and you are unwittingly a participant in that game acting as a pawn. That you may or may not actually be using that software is itself a part of the game.
What a depressing view of human potential. A child born may be a problem, true, but also has the potential to come up with any number of solutions. And, yes, how is an unsubstantiated claim that a whole swathe of people delimited by region and religion are 'not that intelligent' not racist?
Take a look at the facts instead. With decreasing poverty, overall birth rates tend to decrease, Arab countries included. Whilst war tends to increase birthrates and long term population densities.
I won't even say children being born is a problem. They may be a "burden" on society and upon their families while they are young, learning, and may be unproductive compared to middle aged adults (using the term very broadly meaning somebody from the age of 20 to the age of 70, give or take a few years on each end of the age range), but you are correct that the potential of children to grow up and become a part of the solution to the problems posed by over population is something to consider as well.
The limiting factor for population growth really is, at least to me, freedom to choose or even freedom at its most basic level. It is the freedom to move from wherever you are to wherever you may like to be. The freedom to start a business and solve a problem that you see which you think will not only help your neighbors but also yourself. It is the freedom to do what you want, when you want, however you want. As long as you aren't harming your neighbors (yeah, that isn't an easy concept to nail down either... such is life), you shouldn't be prohibited from doing that.
I would dare say that those parts of the world where poverty is most rampant, where population pressures cause the most distress and seem to be the best candidates for a demonstration of Malthus' ideas are also the places in the world where the government is most oppressive, where people aren't even capable of posting a message on Slashdot not because of a lack of language skills, but because the government of that country won't even let the citizens express their opinion on line. In nearly every situation you can bring up, when the governments involved opened up and granted freedoms to their citizens in even the smallest degree, economic prosperity resulted and the country as a whole became much stronger... especially compared to its neighbors but also in terms of the ability of that country to deal with issues like poverty, disease, famine, and other major issues that can result from what seems on the outside to be a crushing population.
China is an excellent example, where for many generations there have been oppressive governments (before and after the Communist take-over) and ordinary citizens had little to do other than simply obey the local magistrate or party chief. People with advanced degrees in physics or engineering (particularly in the "Cultural Revolution") had their talents completely crushed under by being forced at gun point to work in rice paddies and manually plant the crops and to perform those tasks in the most inefficient manner possible. The fact that those folks even had degrees should be impressive at all, but it got worse under Mao than it had been earlier.... and that is saying quite a bit. It shouldn't be a wonder that with such inefficiencies and lack of respect for people that millions starved to death in China.
With the granting of economic freedoms in China and a general relaxed attitude toward political dissent (not up to western Europe standards, but far more tolerated than it w
It helps to have a very wealthy endowed foundation with super hero like powers to be able to influence events on a galactic scale to make the predictions come true.
Wait a minute..... isn't that what is currently called the Bilderberg Group?
Unflavored Jell-O happens to be one food that will gradually kill you into starvation, as your body needs more calories to consume and digest the food than you obtain from the food itself. What calories you get from it come from the fruit or sugar thrown into the food instead of the Jell-O itself.
It is a great way to go on a diet though.
I'm curious about what sort of survey you have used to come to this conclusion or what you consider to be "few" or "very few"? Is 60% of the population "very few"?
I don't know what you are basing this information on, but I think you are showing your bias for how you personally eat and perhaps a close circle of friends rather than anything objective and quantifiable. Don't let the internet echo chambers make you think your lifestyle is necessary typical without something outside of your immediate circle of acquaintances confirm your suspicions.
I'm not saying that 60% of Americans or any other objective number is eating healthy food because I happen to know I live in a community where such meals are pretty common. I'm just saying don't jump to any conclusion here either based upon a highly skewed and statically small sample size.
Which is why the Wikimedia Foundation set up OTRS to both confirm the copyright status of something that is questioned (aka written permission is given by a 3rd party) or for DCMA notices and other similar stuff.
When is this not a problem? If the first notice of a problem is from a lawsuit brief, it is likely that the person somehow offended is clueless about the internet and doesn't know how to look up an e-mail address, much less actually know how to use hyperlinks. Do you really think such a lawsuit would even be heard by a judge when the plaintiff didn't even bother asking for a retraction in the first place before they filed the lawsuit?
You still need to dump energy getting down. That is why heat shields get so hot, as it is the atmosphere + shield which is absorbing all of the kinetic energy of the spacecraft on its way back to the surface.
An alternative solutions has been proposed by JP Aerospace with an alternative launch + reentry vehicle design that uses airships rather than rockets. It seems like a really crazy idea as it is something that nobody else has even considered and doesn't really have anything to be used in comparison. Still, JP Aerospace seems to have a whole lot of experience with high altitude balloons and being able to operate them from a high altitude remotely. Their goal is to send hundreds of tons of supplies into orbit for under a million dollars. If they can pull it off, it would radically change commercial spaceflight. There would still be a need for conventional rockets, but they would be fast couriers rather than the only game in town.
What "stimulus money" did Blue Origin actually get? I'm curious and calling your bluff as I don't think there is any.
Mainly that the capsule isn't just a concept on paper but that "metal is bent" and the capsule appears to be moving well down the path of becoming something real that may fly in space. Far too many companies don't even make it that far, so it is an accomplishment to be noted. Bending metal costs serious money and doesn't really give you an immediate payoff for having done that. It tends to separate out the scams from serious efforts trying to get into space as well... or for any other similar kind of engineering objective.
the secrecy is to douse flames that NASA is paying them for nothing.
simple? (how is it a private company when it's money source is NASA contracts, which seem to be much like in fashion like when building Apollo.. plenty of parts were done by outside companies, usually defense contractors)
The money that NASA gives Blue Origin is peanuts for their operating expenses. Most of the money is stuff they get straight from Jeff Bezos and from a few private contracts they have received over the years. It certainly is disingenuous to suggest that NASA is the only source of money and that this company (by implication) is living off of the teat of government largess due to a couple fairy god-senators.
Jeff Bezos is trying to build a company which will be doing stuff in space. The long term goal is to build spacecraft and other things that may be cool to perform in space as well, and in the long term perhaps make a profit as well. It will take decades and millions of dollars to get that to happen, but it is a risk he is willing to take and it is his own damn money to do with as he pleases. He doesn't answer to shareholders (Jeff Bezos is the only shareholder of Blue Origin), and except for those specific projects which he performed contracts for NASA,he doesn't need to tell anybody else what he is doing. Perhaps the IRS, but I doubt Blue Origin has turned a profit and may even be officially called a "hobby" according to IRS rules (for failure to turn a profit in over five years of business). That just means Jeff Bezos can't write off losses by Blue Origin as a business loss to reduce taxes.
The reason NASA has gone to Blue Origin at all is because Blue Origin has some pretty competent aerospace engineers and have previously built some stuff that is impressive... at least to NASA engineers. NASA put out a "request for proposals" on some projects, and not only did Blue Origin feel confident that they could compete for those projects that they bid upon against a great many other companies, Blue Origin even beat out several "traditional" aerospace companies including Alliant Techsystems (ATK). In other words they had to impress NASA that they could meet the terms of the contract, and so far that seems to be the case too.
As for why there is secrecy, it is a combination that Jeff Bezos doesn't give a damn about publicity on his private space program, and that by keeping things secret he isn't accused of vaporware when he finally has something to show for all of the money he has dumped into the company. Perhaps he is embarrassed by the fact that he doesn't have as much to show for that money as he would hope. It doesn't really matter what the reason is other than he doesn't have to reveal anything at all.
If you are googling for contracts and can only find NASA as a source of money, that is in part because NASA contracts are the only thing by law that Jeff Bezos must disclose.
To quote Burt Rutan on the topic:
I think he was quoting some other bloke, but I tend to agree that is general philosophy of governance in America and most of the rest of the world.
We are right now in sort of a "golden era" of spacecraft construction, where anybody with a few million dollars can slap together a rocket and go into space with a minimum of regulation. Sort of like how the automobile industry was like a hundred years ago or so. Or like how the aviation industry was for companies building aircraft. Eventually it will shake down to just a few or even a single company and be almost impossible to make a startup in the industry.
I don't know if the SpaceShipOne design is necessarily inappropriate for orbital spaceflight. Certainly some other way to get more velocity is needed (like perhaps a significant booster engine being used by Stratolaunch) and there would need to be some sort of thermal tiles added to "SpaceShipThree" resembling what was done for the Space Shuttle. The "shuttlecock" re-entry mode thought up by Burt Rutan has some interesting characteristics which would be very useful to at least explore in terms of how much further that engineering design can be used and how far it can be scaled up. For returning smaller payloads from orbit, it may even be a very useful design. The nice thing about the "shuttlecock" design is that it has passive guidance rather than needing a pilot showing skill on re-entry. A pilot can be unconscious and still technical survive at least the atmospheric re-entry itself, even if not necessarily the landing.
Still, energy is really the key to spaceflight, and you need a whole lot of energy spent very quickly in order to get into orbit.
Until Boeing gets the CST-100 built, or SpaceX uprates their Dragon capsule, or if the Chinese want to let you fly in one of their Shenzhou spacecraft. Orbital Science is also working on a crew-rated capsule too.
Still, since the ISS partners don't trust China for trips to the ISS, the Soyuz spacecraft is pretty much the only way to get there at the moment.
What you are complaining about here though is to use Wikipedia itself as a primary source. At least that is what was done by this author. He felt that since he was a subject matter expert, that by his own authority he could change Wikipedia to reflect what he "knew" was correct without backing up his assertions with any other source or reference.
It is also missing what Wikipedia is about. An encyclopedia is not a place where you publish original content like a scientific paper that may have been rejected by other scholarly journals. That is what the "no original research" is all about. You may have discovered a new form of energy, found convincing proof that Einstein was wrong about General Relativity, uncovered a hidden tomb in Egypt of a previously unknown pharaoh, or something else equally remarkable. Wikipedia simply isn't the correct forum to be publishing that kind of information, particularly for the first time. There are numerous places to publish those kind of articles. Once you have published those papers elsewhere, had them reviewed by peers, cited and challenged, and have had other reviewers synthesize what you said in that paper in other books... then it is fine to incorporate that information into an encyclopedia article.
Most people new to WIkiipedia, and I dare say many Wikipedia administrators as well, simply don't understand what it is about. I've even seen some excellent scientific papers published on Wikipedia with good data and something that should have been submitted to a respectable journal. I've also seen a whole bunch of crackpots post pure junk that would never stand up to any kind of peer review at all. Telling people with something very interesting is personally hard to remind them about the "No original research" policy, but I don't mind telling crackpots to leave. BTW, the Wikipedia sister project known as Wikiversity has a much more relaxed attitude about original research and readily takes such unpublished or even republished papers. Standards are high even on that site, but it isn't complete prohibition.
The point of proper peer review is to see that the idea is challenged, to show that good science was followed (if it was a scientific paper), and to have the idea at least vetted in the wider forum of world public opinion. Wikipedia is not the proper place to perform that kind of vetting on new ideas.
None of this stops somebody from using a primary source in a Wikipedia article. Articles dominated by primary sources are suspect and challenged, as it seem to bring up the idea that the topic itself isn't notable (does anybody really care about the mayor of Taopi, Minnesota and what he or she ate for breakfast?) Still, a primary source and and indeed should be used as appropriate within the article and trying to keep a neutral tone to the article so it doesn't advocate for a particular cause or viewpoint. A Wikipedia article also isn't a place to write a promotional advertisement for a business. "Just the facts, ma'am" is what is sought more often than not in such an article.
If there is something worth saying that is original, something not found in a published biography, journal, or at least a newspaper article or television news report or even simply a book published by a respected published, that is where it should be published. If a professor has something useful to say about the topic, looks in a Wikipedia article and sees that the information isn't there, it should inspire him to call up a press agent or to write up an article or "letter" into some other place to get that information "out there". How hard is it for a professor at a university or for that matter any "famous" person to get some information corrected that is a widely circulated rumor or considered by that person to be misleading? If rumors and falsehoods are showing up in Wikipedia, based upon what is considered to be reliable sources to Wikipedia contributors (and not just some troll being an idiot), it sounds like there would be a much more serious issue t
Considering you neither read the assignment, knew the professor, know me, or understand what the class was about, this is rather presumptuous to suggest I didn't meet the requirements of the class nor the assignment. For myself, if a kid studying up on sorts comes up with a recursive sort after hearing about a bubble sort for the first time, I think the kid deserves a "A" in the assignment.
Heck, I think even your logic here with recursion being used instead of a loop is flawed, as student is instead showing he has not only mastered the basic concepts but is willing to go beyond. I don't even think your example is a reasonable counterpoint, other than to suggest you read the snopes article referenced above. Very likely such a student doing as you suggest is bored and has already mastered the concept and the professor is not really providing an education in the first place. If you consider that the point of a college education is just to "punch your ticket" and churn mindlessly through classes regurgitating what the professors expect and promptly forgetting everything said just so you can get that degree certificate that might as well be from a diploma mill, you may be correct on the assessment.
It does take a special professor to recognize a particularly bright student and to properly challenge them. Most don't care.
Case by case basis. A lot of my editing involves a foreign country and other foreign countries near it. If nearly all the editors who have been there has observed something in person, often that includes me, but no one has bothered to document it in a scholarly paper, then we'll probably let it in (provided it is notable). Obviously we need to avoid "old wives tales" that "everyone" knows to be true.
Having his kind of undocumented information is the exception rather than the norm.
That is sort of the point about the "no original research" policy. You really shouldn't be adding content that isn't verifiable (it says that on the edit page itself as you are adding content). Some articles are a bit more lax on documentation, especially if they are still in development. An article won't get "GA" or "FA" status (the top quality article designations) if such statements can't be referenced.
The admins, by and large, have a pretty hazy understanding of the rules; usually it seems like they've just read the title of the rule, and imagined what it said, and they are in deep contempt of anyone that really does understand the rules (they call that 'wikilawyering' and it's an insult.) If you quote the rules to them, you will get absolutely nowhere. The admins will very often apply rules in a way that the rules themselves explicitly say is not what they mean.
Most of the admins I've worked with have a pretty good understanding of the site policies, but there are certainly some who are novices compared to even long time editors who eschew becoming an admin.
I've seen even recently more than a couple admins get disciplinary action...usually getting their admin rights stripped and other steps taken against them. Admins also patrol each other, so it isn't in a vacuum. That there are some abusive admins I won't deny, but Wikipedia doesn't have a wall of asshats acting as admins. "Tattling" on admins is even encouraged on places like the admin's notice board or the Village Pump (project-wide discussion area).