Bug free software is quite possible. It's just prohibitively expensive, because it usually requires that the developers use a mathematical validation system. Thus it's typically confined to projects where system failure would result in Human casualties. It's an irrelevant quibble though, since web browsers are far, far too complex to ever be formally validated.
And then what would you do when your measurement is 2.3+-0.2?
You're assuming that every instrument has an imprecision that's exactly a power 10. And that either introduces error or suggests precision that isn't there, because the actual precision will often lie between powers 10.
Yeah, I've done the whole "design an FPU" deal. And the point remains that the only sensible way to measure imprecision is to explicitly state that imprecision, either by specifying the measurements as a range (as in [2.2, 2.4]ml) or by specifying a center and a width (as in 2.3+-0.1 ml).
But I'll bite: how do you specify that a measurement falls between 2.2ml and 2.4ml using significant figures?
Oh, and round-off error is not a phenomenon confined to digital circuits. It occurs in ANY calculation in which rounding occurs, be it calculated by a human or by a machine. And sig figs are inherently about rounding.
Lord no, not sig figs. Sigs figs are a moron's answer to the problem of representing precision, and they do nothing but create confusion and introduce unnecessary round-off error. Take a numerical analysis course, please. Your equations will thank you.
At least if he had nuked Iraq, there wouldn't have been any ackward questions about where the WMDs actually WERE. It could all have been swept under the carpet of nuclear holocaust.
We're not talking about ablating hurricanes; we're talking about diverting them so that they don't crush major cities.
Modifying the environment must be done carefully, yes. But there are good reasons to do so. Connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans by the Panama canal was a pretty serious environmental modification, but it's considered a relatively worthwhile one. Diverting the courses of rivers to provide irrigation has major consequences on the river's ecosystem, both up and downstream; the same goes for damming rivers to provide power or prevent flooding.
Only in a fantasy world can humans thrive without affecting the planet. They key is make sensible, well-planned changes. That's why there's so much talk about simulations and modelling with regard to these hurricane prevention ideas.
Can this be done? It seems if buildings (including superscrapers!) can be built to withstand earthquakes, bomb blasts, and serious fires, withstanding hurricanes and floods ought to be within reason.
Isn't nationality somewhat meaningless for these big super-corporations? What does nationality actually mean for businesses that operate multinationally?
It's funny how this idea has been known about for millenia (at least as far back as pharonic Egypt), and yet people have never even hesitated to build homes in high-risk areas.
Well, maybe not that funny. After all, I live over a subduction zone that due for a city-levelling Earthquake any century now. But at least I can count on a quick, painless death!
The US isn't really a free-market state at all. There's a remarkable amount of centralized control -- just like in every western nation. The US is just a capable of huge projects. Just look at the US highway system (the envy of large spacious nations everywhere, particularly those nations that contain the transcanada highway), the Apollo missions, the ridiculous number of space probes Nasa launches, or the 10 million or so troops that the US pulled together to send to the second world war. None of those things would be possible in truly capitalist state. The US is far more socialistic than they give themselves credit for.
How many countries would just rebuild a destroyed city? Or for that matter, rebuild destroyed nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Japan and Germany? It takes enormous centralized wealth and control to do these things. The big advantage of the US is that it allows a large sphere of free economic activity that generates wealth and talent, which are then available for ultra-projects.
Why would a creator make technology possible, and give us the brains to discover and exploit it, if it didn't want us to use it?
Suffice to say, the whole point of most technology is make life better for people, and diverting hurricanes would seem to qualify. The whole history of the human race is a gradual removal of ourselves from the inequities of the natural world. Bad weather is no different from disease or tiger-attacks in that sense.
Don't some hurricanes just skim along the coast, dumping heavy rain and winds as they gradually lose power? I always thought that was how hurricanes made it to the Canadian maritime provinces (by which time they are usually just tropical storms).
The full article suggests that the first testbed for the technology would be enhancing rainfall. It is to be assumed that this would mean enhancing rainfall in areas that don't get enough of it -- the American midwest, drought-stricken areas of Africa, etc. Realistically, that would probably help more people overall than hurricane prevention, although hurricane prevention would probably win as far as preventing property damage goes.
It's hard to argue with the idea of keeping the world's breadbaskets well hydrated, am I right?
Science journalism often leaves a great deal to be desired. I suppose the problem is that anyone with sufficient knowledge of science to report on it reliably, is busy actually doing science. Those who can, do; those who can't, report. Meh.
or Kerry; do you really think his administration would have behaved differently? Especially given that they'd have essentially the same senate, congress, and supreme court to deal with?
Guantanamo Bay is the fault of every citizen who was stupid enough to fall into the two-party trap.
I hardly dispute the value of government investment in healthcare, public transportation, and all the other things people need to survive and prosper. Please don't mistake my post for some kind of rightwing nut-jobbery.
Still -- the free market, under the right circumstances, accomplishes truly miraculous things. And if the free market can make it comparitively cheap to get into orbit (for space tourism, satellite deployment, etc), then that's something that will make national and international efforts to go further that much easier.
With any luck, competition between government space programs and private space companies will spur incredible development over the next few decades. In time of course, the public space programs will probably end up doing the leading edge theoretical and experimental stuff, while the private sector focuses on applications and economical techniques -- just like every other industry.
Well, assuming that the hydrogen is extracted from water, the "supply" of hydrogen will still be tied to the supply of electricity. The whole hydrogen economy idea is closely tied to the notion that we'll have lots of relatively clean electricity in the future. In places like Canada that have low person to river ratios, that is practically already achieved. It's a much more daunting task in places like the UK or the USA, which have much higher person to river ratios.
In any case, a hundred years from now when we're all hypothetically driving hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, there could still be supply shortages. Suppose a major storm hit Greenland and disabled the UltrapowerMax 5000 Greenland Wind Farm for a week; the reduction in globally available power would increase electricity prices, thereby increasing hydrogen prices... hypothetically. Not as badly as with oil, but the potential for problems is still there.
And you think such a statement makes you something other than a monstrous, inhuman beast? Good luck with that.
Unlike you, I live in a country where there is very little poverty, very few children die of treatable illnesses, and the per-capita murder rate is 1/3rd of what it is in the US. So I can say what I did and feel pretty fucking smug about what a shithole Americans have created for themselves.
Thanks though, for proving my point with complete applomb.
Well, some countries at least make an effort to create a social support network, as opposed to just leaving the poor to rot in ghettos. In fact, lots of industrialized nations don't even have ghettos -- instead allowing the disadvantaged to live in amongst everyone else where they have a better chance at self-improvement.
But I suppose I should still amend my statement; I doubt ALL Americans are so monstrous. Just enough of them to prevent things from ever changing for the better in the USA.
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Well, there's no accounting for labours of love by dedicated ultrahackers. They violate all notions of what is reasonable, or even possible.
Bug free software is quite possible. It's just prohibitively expensive, because it usually requires that the developers use a mathematical validation system. Thus it's typically confined to projects where system failure would result in Human casualties. It's an irrelevant quibble though, since web browsers are far, far too complex to ever be formally validated.
You're assuming that every instrument has an imprecision that's exactly a power 10. And that either introduces error or suggests precision that isn't there, because the actual precision will often lie between powers 10.
Yeah, I've done the whole "design an FPU" deal. And the point remains that the only sensible way to measure imprecision is to explicitly state that imprecision, either by specifying the measurements as a range (as in [2.2, 2.4]ml) or by specifying a center and a width (as in 2.3+-0.1 ml). But I'll bite: how do you specify that a measurement falls between 2.2ml and 2.4ml using significant figures? Oh, and round-off error is not a phenomenon confined to digital circuits. It occurs in ANY calculation in which rounding occurs, be it calculated by a human or by a machine. And sig figs are inherently about rounding.
Lord no, not sig figs. Sigs figs are a moron's answer to the problem of representing precision, and they do nothing but create confusion and introduce unnecessary round-off error. Take a numerical analysis course, please. Your equations will thank you.
Hey, it could happen. If "journalists" can post something like this, can we really expect better from jihadi? :P
That would be cavities and gingivitis in the original poster's dental analogy, eh?
At least if he had nuked Iraq, there wouldn't have been any ackward questions about where the WMDs actually WERE. It could all have been swept under the carpet of nuclear holocaust.
That's exactly what I mean. A multinational corporation is no more American than the Equator or the Pacific ocean.
Modifying the environment must be done carefully, yes. But there are good reasons to do so. Connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans by the Panama canal was a pretty serious environmental modification, but it's considered a relatively worthwhile one. Diverting the courses of rivers to provide irrigation has major consequences on the river's ecosystem, both up and downstream; the same goes for damming rivers to provide power or prevent flooding.
Only in a fantasy world can humans thrive without affecting the planet. They key is make sensible, well-planned changes. That's why there's so much talk about simulations and modelling with regard to these hurricane prevention ideas.
Can this be done? It seems if buildings (including superscrapers!) can be built to withstand earthquakes, bomb blasts, and serious fires, withstanding hurricanes and floods ought to be within reason.
Isn't nationality somewhat meaningless for these big super-corporations? What does nationality actually mean for businesses that operate multinationally?
Well, maybe not that funny. After all, I live over a subduction zone that due for a city-levelling Earthquake any century now. But at least I can count on a quick, painless death!
How many countries would just rebuild a destroyed city? Or for that matter, rebuild destroyed nations like Afghanistan, Iraq, or Japan and Germany? It takes enormous centralized wealth and control to do these things. The big advantage of the US is that it allows a large sphere of free economic activity that generates wealth and talent, which are then available for ultra-projects.
Suffice to say, the whole point of most technology is make life better for people, and diverting hurricanes would seem to qualify. The whole history of the human race is a gradual removal of ourselves from the inequities of the natural world. Bad weather is no different from disease or tiger-attacks in that sense.
Don't some hurricanes just skim along the coast, dumping heavy rain and winds as they gradually lose power? I always thought that was how hurricanes made it to the Canadian maritime provinces (by which time they are usually just tropical storms).
The full article suggests that the first testbed for the technology would be enhancing rainfall. It is to be assumed that this would mean enhancing rainfall in areas that don't get enough of it -- the American midwest, drought-stricken areas of Africa, etc. Realistically, that would probably help more people overall than hurricane prevention, although hurricane prevention would probably win as far as preventing property damage goes. It's hard to argue with the idea of keeping the world's breadbaskets well hydrated, am I right?
Science journalism often leaves a great deal to be desired. I suppose the problem is that anyone with sufficient knowledge of science to report on it reliably, is busy actually doing science. Those who can, do; those who can't, report. Meh.
What, archaeology and history don't qualify as geeky?
or Kerry; do you really think his administration would have behaved differently? Especially given that they'd have essentially the same senate, congress, and supreme court to deal with? Guantanamo Bay is the fault of every citizen who was stupid enough to fall into the two-party trap.
Still -- the free market, under the right circumstances, accomplishes truly miraculous things. And if the free market can make it comparitively cheap to get into orbit (for space tourism, satellite deployment, etc), then that's something that will make national and international efforts to go further that much easier.
With any luck, competition between government space programs and private space companies will spur incredible development over the next few decades. In time of course, the public space programs will probably end up doing the leading edge theoretical and experimental stuff, while the private sector focuses on applications and economical techniques -- just like every other industry.
In any case, a hundred years from now when we're all hypothetically driving hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles, there could still be supply shortages. Suppose a major storm hit Greenland and disabled the UltrapowerMax 5000 Greenland Wind Farm for a week; the reduction in globally available power would increase electricity prices, thereby increasing hydrogen prices... hypothetically. Not as badly as with oil, but the potential for problems is still there.
Unlike you, I live in a country where there is very little poverty, very few children die of treatable illnesses, and the per-capita murder rate is 1/3rd of what it is in the US. So I can say what I did and feel pretty fucking smug about what a shithole Americans have created for themselves.
Thanks though, for proving my point with complete applomb.
But I suppose I should still amend my statement; I doubt ALL Americans are so monstrous. Just enough of them to prevent things from ever changing for the better in the USA.