Perhaps, but by this logic, all the carbon that we release by burning current fossil fuels is just putting it back into the atmosphere where it started since it was once in the air anyway...
Sure, some of the carbon in a field comes from the air, but some also comes from the ground. I don't know if people have done the studies on this one or not - the point is we really don't know what the appropriate climate for the planet is. We just know what we like, we know that we don't want to deal with it changing, etc. Also, there's a big difference at the rate of consumption of atmospheric CO2 by the growth of flora versus the rate of release due to combustion. There's also the geographic concerns - growing crops is typically not in the same area where fuel is burned in large quanitites, so there will always be geographic issues with the whole "no net change in CO2" that you suggest.
I'm not discounting that growing crops does use some atmospheric CO2, but I'm not sure that using crops to convert solar energy into fuel is the best use of solar power. It's arguably worse than using oil because of the effects on the land (nitrogen depletion, etc.).
I'm sure there are more aspects to this issue than either of us has covered - but I do laud your observation that growing plants eat up CO2. However, I don't know the size of forests we'd have to grow to make up for the current rate of CO2 production due to combustion.
The problem with using biodiesel, or even ethanol, is that you generally have to combust those to use the chemical energy. This results in the production of CO2, which everyone loves to hate these days. True, plants are a "great" converter of solar into chemical energy (they are actually really inefficient about this, but they are "natural" so people don't mind), but you still have to get that energy into a useful form.
I'm not sure why people haven't thought so much about the fact that most uses for ethanol and biodiesel are combustion... (I suppose you could crack these into hydrogen for use in fuel cells, but that seems like an added step of inefficiency...).
I agree about names being important - but GIMP is nowhere near as bizarre as this:
User: Can you get me a copy of Office?
Advocate: No, but I can give you a copy of OO.o.
User: What? Did something startle you? Why'd you say "ooh"?
Why not just call it OpenOffice and be done with it? The 'dot org' in the name is quite goofy - and has got to break some marketing rule about syllables in a product name. And when I see "OO.o" written somewhere my response is always "what's up with this number formatting string?"
GIMP, while not very descriptive, is unique and identifying. This serves its purpose, but the fact that "gimp" has negative connotations probably does weigh on the general public's perception.
Wow, I find myself responding to you quite a lot.;)
Anway, I find it interesting that you think "the idea that Jesus spent the time between death and ressurection in Hell is quite novel and not standard Christian rhetoric." This is among the most basic of standard Christian theology (as far as I know) in the Catholic and Protestant denomincations (granted, I'm not sure what you mean by "rhetoric" here - I agree that you definitely don't hear about the death of Christ much on television)! Part of the mystery about this is the Trinity - which nobody has ever claimed to understand (and gives folks like the Muslims a headache because they think it's polytheism) but it allows for God to completely separate himself from himself...yeah, I don't really understand it either but I take it on faith. And I don't mean that in a cop-out way either.
But the idea that God has accounting the same as we is preposterous anyway - just as it only takes one small lie to separate from God as much as, say, rape, why is it any question that one righteous man dying and "defeating" death isn't enough to defeat death for all of us (I'm not going to address, at this time, the question of "if his death was enough for all of us, then why do we have to accept it to reap the benefits?" The short answer is, again, justice and righteousness.)?
I think about this question like this - and it's really a question of how liberal you want to be with semantics. Think about it this way: do automobile manufacturers create car accidents? You can reasonably argue that they create the potential for car accidents, and they may even manufacture cars which are prone to result in an accident, but the car company itself doesn't creat the accident. This is not a perfect analogy, but it's the closest I've ever come to understanding how you can create the potential for something without creating that something.
Now explain why Adolf's in Heaven and Ghandi is in Hell with Stalin and Judas
In this instance, the only reason is because Hitler submitted to Christ. The same reason, in the Christian context, anyone is saved. Read the parable of the master and the workers (all workers get paid the same wage - the guys that started at 8:00am and the guys that started at 4:00pm) and the accounts of the Crucifixion where the one thief was reconciled at his execution.
How glorious is a God who offers mercy to an evildoer in exchange for a proclaimation of love, but turns his back on decent, common children who had the misfortune to die without hearing the gospel?
Yes, it's not palatable for most people. But this statement also lacks an understanding of the concepts of justice and mercy.
And the lack of sin is what is required to be in an eternal relationship with God
I'd correct this and say that what is required is not necessarily the lack of sin, but that sins be paid for. Hence the work of Christ on the cross - this basically paid the price for our sins. This is the core of the "good news" of Christianity.
Now, I don't say that you have to believe these things, but these are answers to your questions. They may not be the ones you want, and they may not even be completely well-formed at this point. But they are answers that have some thought behind them and are within the correct context of the entire Christian Scriptures. It's not in my capacity, nor is it my responsibility, to change your mind on any of this - it's simply my desire to get you to think about them in, perhaps, a different way.
...just as the "Hell is a bad place of eternal physical torment" notion has to be mistaken if God is both powerful and beneficent.
Ah, yes. God is both powerful and beneficient, but your statement leaves out things like righteous and just. The only way anyone can truly be beneficient is if they are also just. The existence of something like "hell" doesn't preclude beneficience; it simply proves justice.
Apologies; I did not mean to imply this (sometimes I forget to add "as far as I know" to things). However, as someone who is striving after what Christianity really is I realize that only one set of beliefs can be "right" (after all, Christ said he was the truth, way, and life, not a truth, way, or life. (Greek is pretty picky with articles so I don't doubt the use of 'the' over 'a').
If you can describe to me how your beliefs (as a Christian) differ, and why, I'd appreciate the dialogue. There is enough talk here on/. that others would probably at least find it interesting. (I wonder - we've got a Politics section, what about a "Religion" section? Or perhaps that's too far off the/. mantra, except it fits into the "stuff that matters" category.)
Anyway, seriously: I'm all about refining my world view in the search of truth. Inevitably this is why I look at Christ, because he claimed to be truth. If there's good evidence that I need to change, I probably will (eventually - I'm quite stubborn).
You're making the mistake here in thinking that God blessed them because they lied. God didn't bless them because they lied - God blessed Abraham because of his faith, and because God wanted to. There're lots of passages about "what are you Israel? I chose you not because you were strong or wealthy or pretty, but because I wanted to!".
Your line of logic is kind of weak. For instance, if you're a parent and your kid, say, draws all over the wall, then 3 years later you give your kid a present, your logic would imply that you gave the kid a present because he drew on the wall. Those are quite unrelated events, as are the tying-in of the "pimping out" of Sarai and the subsequent blessings God bestowed upon them. It's not contradictory at all if you look at the entire context.
I applaud you for catching a mis-wording on my post. I should have said "acts don't condemn us if we're under Christ any more than acts can save us if we're not". That's closer to the truth (there is a caveat that if a person actually was completely sinless, there wouldn't be a need for Christ).
I can also elaborate: it might have been better to say that we are already in a state of condemnation (rather than "we're headed toward (sic)hell") rather than we get put into a state of condemnation. For instance, when you're born, you're born into our universe. You don't get put there, you're just there. It's kind of the same thing with sin. If you're born, you've got it.
Incidentally, while I agree that it is hard to swallow that original sin condemned us all, but it's my observation that it is true because I've yet to meet or hear of anyone who has lived a completely "right" life. As far as I know (I admit that, in the light of new evidence, I might change by views) the idea of original sin is the only one that explains why people are so screwed up (i.e., they have this inherited disease called "sin").
As for what the original sin was, it wasn't "obtaining knowledge (of good and evil)". The original sin was putting oneself higher than God: "God said don't do this, but we know better than God!".
I appreciate the intent of your post, but here are a couple of clarifications for our viewers:
1. The Bible doesn't say it's OK to sin anywhere. While it is true that acts don't save or condemn us, maintaing a sinful lifestyle is not beneficial (to those sinning or those around them). Read up where Paul says (paraphrased), "If I get grace to cover my sin, and it's good to get grace, shall I sin more so I get more grace? By no means!" to address an incorrect view about what it means to deal with sin.
2. "Pushing people away" does not condemn people to hell. People are inherently condemned to hell already because all people sin. That's the beauty of it: God doesn't send anyone to hell (because we're already heading that way) - he only provides a way for them to be saved through Christ. No "Christian" ever saved any other person either - "salvation" is the sole work of Christ. What pushing people away does do, though, is - as you said - make them less likely to be open to what Christ could do for them: "why would I want to hang out with a bunch of hypocrites" is the typical response to groups who push others away in such fashion.
3. I think it's better to say "You need to be kind and welcoming to people even when you acknowledge what is and is not a sin." Jesus did this: he ministered to prostitutes, people who slept around, corporate theives, etc. and generally he said: "I have taken care of you, but go and sin no more!". The point is that you cannot sacrifice knowledge of right and wrong for the sake of "being nice". Being nice and welcoming has no meaning without the ideas of right and wrong (think about it).
Your basic statement is correct through: the general public needs to understand that how the media portrays Christians, and even how some that claim to be Christian portray Christians, is generally not entirely true. Read the Bible for yourself, study it, and really look at what it says.
The example you give is exactly my point: lasers (nor CNTs) are not bad at all - they are great. However, how much more could we do if we focused on solving the problems rather than finding solutions and then problems that can be solved by them?
Like I said, I don't want to knock science and technology at all - just tweak its focus a little bit. There's no reason we can't say, "hey, we have problem X. Let's throw research at it". This is generally not how the research institutions look at things - they are generally "let's poke around with stuff and hope we find a breakthrough!" (that's a gross generalization, I know).
I think what's best is a good balance between the two, but companies now only throw money into "the next big thing" and that may or may not be something that matters.
I know there are many brilliant folks out there who, if given focus to tackle any given existing technical problem, could find an elegant, efficient, profitable solution. The trouble is, there is usually little glory in solving such problems. After all, the biggest issues out there aren't technical anyway (those are generally political/social).
Now, as can be demonstrated by many of my previous posts, I'm all for pure and applied science. However, lately, I've been thinking quite a lot on the question "what good is technology?". Yes, building a space elevator would be cool. Yes, having light bulletproof vests would be cool. But how does this science help mankind? Does it improve agriculture? Does it help provide things people need? Does it help the environment? Does it help people get along better?
I know these are questions that don't have easy answers always, and I know that if people thought about these things in a literal sense then we probably would not have a lot of the technology we currently have.
My question is more of this: what research is being done into pure sciences and technology that does work for agriculture, health, the environment, and those types of things directly. Some technology simply supports those things indirectly by providing jobs, new materials, etc.
What is lacking in a lot of science, though, and much of life in general, is a lack of focus. Even in the pure sciences, what's the goal of a particular project? Sometimes it's "to see how things work". Sometimes it's "we would like a better way to do X". There is no overarching goal for a lot of modern technology though - mostly it's just "we want a profit!" (Reminds me of the line from Star Trek: First Contact where Zefram Cochrane says he wasn't in it for science but for profit!)
I am by most measures a successful person, but I've had to ask myself: what good is it? Not from a depressed standpoint, but a "shouldn't I be doing more?" standpoint. Carbon nanotubes are great, but what do they really give us? The list goes on - what do Linux desktops give us? MP3 players (without DRM, of course!)? Wi-Fi? These are all neat things - but do we have a purpose behind our technical passions?
Okay, I'll jump in here to address one simple point:
Exit polls cannot accurately represent actual polls because the total population does not have a known distribution. You can only project the results of a sample to the entire population if you have a known distribution (i.e., random, normal, etc.) of the entire population. If you don't, you need to "sample" the entire population (which is what a general election does - otherwise you'd only have x% of the population vote and use those results). It is expected that exit polls would be different than the actual polls. Of course, I don't know what percent of actual voters are polled in the exit polls. If it's not high enough, then this could explain a ~3% difference between exit and actual polls.
This is why we have elections - because if you only poll 5 out of 15 people (33% sample rate is HUGE), and all 5 of those go one way but the other 10 all went the other way (or even went 8 and 2) then your poll would predict one way but the actual results would be the other. If nothing else, all this paper does is show that voter behavior is non-deterministic.
I'll add to the group about "flying a plane is different" with this little bit. I fly a Cessna 172 - which has no autopilot at all. If you reach an altitude, set your heading, set your trim and throttle - if there are no gusts, thermals, etc., that plane will maintain its heading, speed, and attitude just fine with *no* electronic control. (Ah, the beauty of inertia!)
"Autopilot" simply does the small adjustments necessary to come back on-course in the event of thermals and gusts, and I think now it can be used to change attitude (turn, descend, climb, land, etc.) These are all a lot more deterministic in behavior than automobile traffic though - simply because the interactions between vehicles are regulated rather than the free-form system of roads today.
I'm astounded to realize that this actually makes more sense than anything I've thought about... and it's obvious in hindsight only. You should file a patent! (That last is only half tongue-in-cheek).
I don't know about the cost of this, but when you think about it you're absolutely right. The problem isn't that it's radioactive, it's that it's radioactive all in one place. I think you're on to something here!
Maybe we can practice other completely unnecessary acts of money waste.
You mean like spend $125 Million on a video game? That does almost absolutely nothing to advance society at all?
I'm tired of hearing people yap about tax money when they waste money on frivolous things. Not to say that video games are bad, but do you know how much health care or education $125 Million will purchase? And the general public dropped that in one day! Do you know how much good research $125 M will purchase? I haven't looked it up, but I'm guessing the X-43A project is on the same order of magnitude cost-wise as what the public spent on this one single video game.
It should be fairly simple to gather this information, and not even take that long. You can probably use the same sites I used here to take a look at the evidence for how minimum wage , employment rates, and per capita income (in the US) are related.
That everyone has an opinion does not mean each opinion is equally valid.
Oh, that I was able to mod this line up! This, my friend, is the observation that everyone seems to be missing in the world. Put another way: "Everything is permissible, but not everything is beneficial."
The reason why people don't like to acknowledge that some opinions have merit and others don't is because that means that someone is wrong, and heaven forbid that anyone is wrong! It might damage their self esteem! *gasp*
Seriously, though - you're right on where you note that there is a difference in opinions (extend to viewpoints, even "facts") that generally cannot be ignored. I think people inherently know this - that's why the "hot issues" of any generation are hot issues. We all know that opinions for and against abortion are not equal. That opinions for and against public health care, religion, homosexuality, gambling, alcohol, war, outsourcing, affirmative action, MP3s, and even if you like Coke or Pepsi (or don't care at all!) are so fundamentally different that the opinions themselves cannot be considered equal.
I often like to joke with people that "All men are created equal" doesn't mean "for all purposes". I'm definitely not equal in ability to a pro wrestler, or an olympic athlete, or a surgeon, or a teacher even. "Equal under the law" does not mean "has equal abilities". (I think that might have strayed a bit from your original point, but it's close enough that I didn't delete it).
If the argument is wrong, then why is there not a dearth of good code?
However, I'd like to address this line: "The only unambiguous design is the actual software" (by "software" I assume you mean "code". I have absolutely no clue what you mean by "..we could make the design the programming language.") Software cannot be the design any more than an automobile is the automobile design. The automobile reflects the design for the automobile, and code must also reflect the design for the software.
Here is a breakdown of the ideal engineering process:
Get requirements. Make sure they are the right requirements from the customer's standpoint (the customer and supplier both agree on what the supplier is going to give to the customer). In excruciating detail. This is the first point of failure in engineering: people generally get the wrong requirements.
Draft a design. A design cannot be tested directly, but the design must be examined to see that it should meet the requirements. Here's the second point of failure, where the design is not examined thoroughly enough for requirement compliance.
Implement the design. This could be writing some functions in code, building a physical model, or building a virtual model (the CAE to which you referred. Note that CAD is just a drawing - a design - not an implementation. An implementation is something that can tested. Recall that you cannot test a design, only examine it).
Check that the implemented thing meets the design. For hardware, it's making sure the dimensions are correct, that you used the right materials, etc. For code, it's examining the code to make sure it implements the algorithms stated in the design. If the implementation does not meet the design, you have to build another implementation - make a new prototype, make a new virtual model, change the function. This is probably the most common point of failure in any engineering project (although it may not be the most serious - the most serious are usually an incorrect requirement or incorrect design). The failure here is that the implemented thing doesn't actually match the design. An implementation that doesn't match the design invalidates all further testing.
Test the implementation. Here is where you check to make sure the thing you built (code, virtual hardware, physical hardware) meets the requirements. What you're doing here is confirming that your design meets the requriements. If these tests do not pass, you know the design needs to be changed. Typically what happens at this stage is that people just start changing the implementation (change the code, modify parts, etc.) but they don't consult the design. Testing is usually not a big point of failure, although some folks don't know how to define or run tests. More common, probably, is that people ignore the results of the tests.
The point of all that is to show that, if you don't have a design, your final product may by pure luck meet the requirements - but there's no way to ensure that all future products will without a design. Software is not a design - software is a product. It absolutely reflects the design, but it is not the design.
I think the confusion between design and implementation is very rampant in all engineering circles - at least in industry (I'm not sure if they're any better in academia). Saying "I need to send a message to tell the customer their car stalled" is a requirement, saying "I'm going to use a red light" is a design (more requirements come from the choice to use a red light - it must use 12 volts, must not consume more than 100 mA, etc.). Using Company Ex part number LED-12345 is the implementation. If you think that using LED-12345 is your design, I'd say that you're mistaken.
In the software land, you might have a requirement like "I want a program that says hello to the user". The design is "write the sentence 'hello user!' on the screen". You may then have another design choice: "Use C" - or you could have a requirement that says "thi
Yes, but you forget that most of the bugs are not in the little modules of code, but in the interaction between those chunks. Buffer overflows are because the thing with the overflow assumed that the thing giving it data would make sure it's a certain length, and the thing that gives it data assumed the chunk would handle different lengths of data gracefully. It's an interface problem, not a code-fragment problem. This is where good testing comes in, and where good system design comes in. A friend of mine has this theory that complexity goes up as N^2, or maybe even 2^N, where N is the number of little parts you have. This is not because each part is complex, but because the interfaces between the parts are complex.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, they did cancel Farscape....
Sure, some of the carbon in a field comes from the air, but some also comes from the ground. I don't know if people have done the studies on this one or not - the point is we really don't know what the appropriate climate for the planet is. We just know what we like, we know that we don't want to deal with it changing, etc. Also, there's a big difference at the rate of consumption of atmospheric CO2 by the growth of flora versus the rate of release due to combustion. There's also the geographic concerns - growing crops is typically not in the same area where fuel is burned in large quanitites, so there will always be geographic issues with the whole "no net change in CO2" that you suggest.
I'm not discounting that growing crops does use some atmospheric CO2, but I'm not sure that using crops to convert solar energy into fuel is the best use of solar power. It's arguably worse than using oil because of the effects on the land (nitrogen depletion, etc.).
I'm sure there are more aspects to this issue than either of us has covered - but I do laud your observation that growing plants eat up CO2. However, I don't know the size of forests we'd have to grow to make up for the current rate of CO2 production due to combustion.
I'm not sure why people haven't thought so much about the fact that most uses for ethanol and biodiesel are combustion... (I suppose you could crack these into hydrogen for use in fuel cells, but that seems like an added step of inefficiency...).
User: Can you get me a copy of Office?
Advocate: No, but I can give you a copy of OO.o.
User: What? Did something startle you? Why'd you say "ooh"?
Why not just call it OpenOffice and be done with it? The 'dot org' in the name is quite goofy - and has got to break some marketing rule about syllables in a product name. And when I see "OO.o" written somewhere my response is always "what's up with this number formatting string?"
GIMP, while not very descriptive, is unique and identifying. This serves its purpose, but the fact that "gimp" has negative connotations probably does weigh on the general public's perception.
Anway, I find it interesting that you think "the idea that Jesus spent the time between death and ressurection in Hell is quite novel and not standard Christian rhetoric." This is among the most basic of standard Christian theology (as far as I know) in the Catholic and Protestant denomincations (granted, I'm not sure what you mean by "rhetoric" here - I agree that you definitely don't hear about the death of Christ much on television)! Part of the mystery about this is the Trinity - which nobody has ever claimed to understand (and gives folks like the Muslims a headache because they think it's polytheism) but it allows for God to completely separate himself from himself...yeah, I don't really understand it either but I take it on faith. And I don't mean that in a cop-out way either.
But the idea that God has accounting the same as we is preposterous anyway - just as it only takes one small lie to separate from God as much as, say, rape, why is it any question that one righteous man dying and "defeating" death isn't enough to defeat death for all of us (I'm not going to address, at this time, the question of "if his death was enough for all of us, then why do we have to accept it to reap the benefits?" The short answer is, again, justice and righteousness.)?
Now, I don't say that you have to believe these things, but these are answers to your questions. They may not be the ones you want, and they may not even be completely well-formed at this point. But they are answers that have some thought behind them and are within the correct context of the entire Christian Scriptures. It's not in my capacity, nor is it my responsibility, to change your mind on any of this - it's simply my desire to get you to think about them in, perhaps, a different way.
Ah, yes. God is both powerful and beneficient, but your statement leaves out things like righteous and just. The only way anyone can truly be beneficient is if they are also just. The existence of something like "hell" doesn't preclude beneficience; it simply proves justice.
If you can describe to me how your beliefs (as a Christian) differ, and why, I'd appreciate the dialogue. There is enough talk here on /. that others would probably at least find it interesting. (I wonder - we've got a Politics section, what about a "Religion" section? Or perhaps that's too far off the /. mantra, except it fits into the "stuff that matters" category.)
Anyway, seriously: I'm all about refining my world view in the search of truth. Inevitably this is why I look at Christ, because he claimed to be truth. If there's good evidence that I need to change, I probably will (eventually - I'm quite stubborn).
Your line of logic is kind of weak. For instance, if you're a parent and your kid, say, draws all over the wall, then 3 years later you give your kid a present, your logic would imply that you gave the kid a present because he drew on the wall. Those are quite unrelated events, as are the tying-in of the "pimping out" of Sarai and the subsequent blessings God bestowed upon them. It's not contradictory at all if you look at the entire context.
I can also elaborate: it might have been better to say that we are already in a state of condemnation (rather than "we're headed toward (sic)hell") rather than we get put into a state of condemnation. For instance, when you're born, you're born into our universe. You don't get put there, you're just there. It's kind of the same thing with sin. If you're born, you've got it.
Incidentally, while I agree that it is hard to swallow that original sin condemned us all, but it's my observation that it is true because I've yet to meet or hear of anyone who has lived a completely "right" life. As far as I know (I admit that, in the light of new evidence, I might change by views) the idea of original sin is the only one that explains why people are so screwed up (i.e., they have this inherited disease called "sin").
As for what the original sin was, it wasn't "obtaining knowledge (of good and evil)". The original sin was putting oneself higher than God: "God said don't do this, but we know better than God!".
1. The Bible doesn't say it's OK to sin anywhere. While it is true that acts don't save or condemn us, maintaing a sinful lifestyle is not beneficial (to those sinning or those around them). Read up where Paul says (paraphrased), "If I get grace to cover my sin, and it's good to get grace, shall I sin more so I get more grace? By no means!" to address an incorrect view about what it means to deal with sin.
2. "Pushing people away" does not condemn people to hell. People are inherently condemned to hell already because all people sin. That's the beauty of it: God doesn't send anyone to hell (because we're already heading that way) - he only provides a way for them to be saved through Christ. No "Christian" ever saved any other person either - "salvation" is the sole work of Christ. What pushing people away does do, though, is - as you said - make them less likely to be open to what Christ could do for them: "why would I want to hang out with a bunch of hypocrites" is the typical response to groups who push others away in such fashion.
3. I think it's better to say "You need to be kind and welcoming to people even when you acknowledge what is and is not a sin." Jesus did this: he ministered to prostitutes, people who slept around, corporate theives, etc. and generally he said: "I have taken care of you, but go and sin no more!". The point is that you cannot sacrifice knowledge of right and wrong for the sake of "being nice". Being nice and welcoming has no meaning without the ideas of right and wrong (think about it).
Your basic statement is correct through: the general public needs to understand that how the media portrays Christians, and even how some that claim to be Christian portray Christians, is generally not entirely true. Read the Bible for yourself, study it, and really look at what it says.
Like I said, I don't want to knock science and technology at all - just tweak its focus a little bit. There's no reason we can't say, "hey, we have problem X. Let's throw research at it". This is generally not how the research institutions look at things - they are generally "let's poke around with stuff and hope we find a breakthrough!" (that's a gross generalization, I know).
I think what's best is a good balance between the two, but companies now only throw money into "the next big thing" and that may or may not be something that matters.
I know there are many brilliant folks out there who, if given focus to tackle any given existing technical problem, could find an elegant, efficient, profitable solution. The trouble is, there is usually little glory in solving such problems. After all, the biggest issues out there aren't technical anyway (those are generally political/social).
Now, as can be demonstrated by many of my previous posts, I'm all for pure and applied science. However, lately, I've been thinking quite a lot on the question "what good is technology?". Yes, building a space elevator would be cool. Yes, having light bulletproof vests would be cool. But how does this science help mankind? Does it improve agriculture? Does it help provide things people need? Does it help the environment? Does it help people get along better?
I know these are questions that don't have easy answers always, and I know that if people thought about these things in a literal sense then we probably would not have a lot of the technology we currently have.
My question is more of this: what research is being done into pure sciences and technology that does work for agriculture, health, the environment, and those types of things directly. Some technology simply supports those things indirectly by providing jobs, new materials, etc.
What is lacking in a lot of science, though, and much of life in general, is a lack of focus. Even in the pure sciences, what's the goal of a particular project? Sometimes it's "to see how things work". Sometimes it's "we would like a better way to do X". There is no overarching goal for a lot of modern technology though - mostly it's just "we want a profit!" (Reminds me of the line from Star Trek: First Contact where Zefram Cochrane says he wasn't in it for science but for profit!)
I am by most measures a successful person, but I've had to ask myself: what good is it? Not from a depressed standpoint, but a "shouldn't I be doing more?" standpoint. Carbon nanotubes are great, but what do they really give us? The list goes on - what do Linux desktops give us? MP3 players (without DRM, of course!)? Wi-Fi? These are all neat things - but do we have a purpose behind our technical passions?
</soapbox>
Exit polls cannot accurately represent actual polls because the total population does not have a known distribution. You can only project the results of a sample to the entire population if you have a known distribution (i.e., random, normal, etc.) of the entire population. If you don't, you need to "sample" the entire population (which is what a general election does - otherwise you'd only have x% of the population vote and use those results). It is expected that exit polls would be different than the actual polls. Of course, I don't know what percent of actual voters are polled in the exit polls. If it's not high enough, then this could explain a ~3% difference between exit and actual polls.
This is why we have elections - because if you only poll 5 out of 15 people (33% sample rate is HUGE), and all 5 of those go one way but the other 10 all went the other way (or even went 8 and 2) then your poll would predict one way but the actual results would be the other. If nothing else, all this paper does is show that voter behavior is non-deterministic.
"Autopilot" simply does the small adjustments necessary to come back on-course in the event of thermals and gusts, and I think now it can be used to change attitude (turn, descend, climb, land, etc.) These are all a lot more deterministic in behavior than automobile traffic though - simply because the interactions between vehicles are regulated rather than the free-form system of roads today.
I don't know about the cost of this, but when you think about it you're absolutely right. The problem isn't that it's radioactive, it's that it's radioactive all in one place. I think you're on to something here!
Yeah, maybe I should have said, "Do you know how much health care or education $125 M would buy without corruption?"
For FY 2002 and FY 2003, The X-43A program only cost a combined $52 M; the total budget for the project is $227 Million.
I'm tired of hearing people yap about tax money when they waste money on frivolous things. Not to say that video games are bad, but do you know how much health care or education $125 Million will purchase? And the general public dropped that in one day! Do you know how much good research $125 M will purchase? I haven't looked it up, but I'm guessing the X-43A project is on the same order of magnitude cost-wise as what the public spent on this one single video game.
It should be fairly simple to gather this information, and not even take that long. You can probably use the same sites I used here to take a look at the evidence for how minimum wage , employment rates, and per capita income (in the US) are related.
The reason why people don't like to acknowledge that some opinions have merit and others don't is because that means that someone is wrong, and heaven forbid that anyone is wrong! It might damage their self esteem! *gasp*
Seriously, though - you're right on where you note that there is a difference in opinions (extend to viewpoints, even "facts") that generally cannot be ignored. I think people inherently know this - that's why the "hot issues" of any generation are hot issues. We all know that opinions for and against abortion are not equal. That opinions for and against public health care, religion, homosexuality, gambling, alcohol, war, outsourcing, affirmative action, MP3s, and even if you like Coke or Pepsi (or don't care at all!) are so fundamentally different that the opinions themselves cannot be considered equal.
I often like to joke with people that "All men are created equal" doesn't mean "for all purposes". I'm definitely not equal in ability to a pro wrestler, or an olympic athlete, or a surgeon, or a teacher even. "Equal under the law" does not mean "has equal abilities". (I think that might have strayed a bit from your original point, but it's close enough that I didn't delete it).
Absolutely: Xgrid
However, I'd like to address this line: "The only unambiguous design is the actual software" (by "software" I assume you mean "code". I have absolutely no clue what you mean by "..we could make the design the programming language.") Software cannot be the design any more than an automobile is the automobile design. The automobile reflects the design for the automobile, and code must also reflect the design for the software.
Here is a breakdown of the ideal engineering process:
The point of all that is to show that, if you don't have a design, your final product may by pure luck meet the requirements - but there's no way to ensure that all future products will without a design. Software is not a design - software is a product. It absolutely reflects the design, but it is not the design.
I think the confusion between design and implementation is very rampant in all engineering circles - at least in industry (I'm not sure if they're any better in academia). Saying "I need to send a message to tell the customer their car stalled" is a requirement, saying "I'm going to use a red light" is a design (more requirements come from the choice to use a red light - it must use 12 volts, must not consume more than 100 mA, etc.). Using Company Ex part number LED-12345 is the implementation. If you think that using LED-12345 is your design, I'd say that you're mistaken.
In the software land, you might have a requirement like "I want a program that says hello to the user". The design is "write the sentence 'hello user!' on the screen". You may then have another design choice: "Use C" - or you could have a requirement that says "thi
Yes, but you forget that most of the bugs are not in the little modules of code, but in the interaction between those chunks. Buffer overflows are because the thing with the overflow assumed that the thing giving it data would make sure it's a certain length, and the thing that gives it data assumed the chunk would handle different lengths of data gracefully. It's an interface problem, not a code-fragment problem. This is where good testing comes in, and where good system design comes in. A friend of mine has this theory that complexity goes up as N^2, or maybe even 2^N, where N is the number of little parts you have. This is not because each part is complex, but because the interfaces between the parts are complex.