I meant, literally rumbling trains that are old, not maglevs. The OP was suggesting that by keeping the rolling stock in motion you wouldn't need maglev speeds at all, and therefore you could do this with the existing railway setup.
"Several times a year", not "several thousand times a year", mind you. When you multiply your trials a thousandfold, safety becomes an issue. And in orbit you have the advantage of vehicle behavior you can simulate to the micron with a pencil and paper, unlike rumbly old trains. Fascinating idea though, if you could make it work.
Those are vulnerabilities of existing rail and road structures too, though. I mean, damaging a major road bridge at rush hour could probably cause as much havoc as derailing a maglev. More so floating bridges like the one out in Seattle. And aircraft aren't exactly reknowned for their imperviousness to rockets.
To be fair, trying to explore space is a lot simpler than trying to explore the ocean. Under the sea, you have all the same problems of trying to maintain life in an airtight box, but that box is under significantly higher pressures, visiblity is a lot poorer, and there are a lot more things to run into. That's not to say that space exploration is easy, or even easier (especially on long trips), just that there are more unresolved engineering challenges to properly exploring the sea. And to be blunt, there's a lot less on the moon to analyse than there is down here.
On that subject, I recall that certain brands of modem lit the activity indicator by flashing it on for a zero and off for a one. The LED was quick enough to allow an attacker to read off all the data from across the room.
Right, this was probably an analogy too far. You could imply the existence of atoms and molecules from chemistry for example. My point is essentially that there are plenty of phenomena which could be hidden by a lack of experimental grunt rather than some insurmountable logical shortfall. String theory on one end, galaxy-spanning civilisations on the other.
I'm not criticising the precision, I'm just irked that he quoted so far beyond it. I'd settle for just the order of magnitude on an open question like this too!
I'd question whether a civilisation capable of sending out sizable populations which survive in interstellar space would show an interest in planetary life at all after that. And it's worth bearing in mind that life is a relatively new phenomenon, on the cosmic scale. Heavy nuclei only started appearing a bit more than 5 bn years ago, so it's reasonable to assume that life in the universe isn't much older than us.
Well, I'd say the main issue with that argument is that we just plain don't have the tools to detect intelligent life outside our solar system. By analogy atoms were first proposed in Greek times at the latest, but were pure fancy until experimental tools to properly confirm their existence popped up. It was an answerable-in-principle, but still open, question.
For example, we can only just see a planet that seems to be rocky and atmosphere-bearing, which therefore meets some of the criteria for "life as we know it". We've been able to see gas giants, which might harbour life as we don't know it, for a little while now. However we can't actually resolve giveaway cues for planet-spanning civilisations, never mind lower life, either kind of planet yet. And we have no reason to assume that they'll be "chatty" in any way we can detect over long distances. To a group of aliens flying through alpha centauri whose civilisation skipped radio and went straight to fibre optic and laser, 2000AD Earth and 200,000BC Earth would be indistinguishable.
No kidding. Our current estimates of the number of stars in the galaxy only go to about one significant figure, with upper and lower estimates differing by a factor of two. That puts a pretty serious cap on the precision of his answer.
"So should those be removed for not being under a free license?"
Although Wikipedia is almost exclusively GFDL or public domain, correctly licenced or fair use images are allowed where all the following criteria are met:
The image has a strong need to be in the articles it is found in. If you take it away, the article would be missing something important.
No free alternative could conceivably exist. A home-made version of the company logo, the only sensible alternative, would be a derivative work of that logo and therefore no more "free" than the original image of the logo.
No ownership of the image is implied or assumed - the original copyright or licence is noted on the image info page.
The image is only of sufficiently high quality to illustrate what it's illustrating.
There is an explicit statement of the relevant licence or justification for fair use attached to the image info page. Wikipedia's ass is pre-covered.
Basically, everything on Wikipedia is meant to be freely redistributable to anyone under the GFDL. Therefore everything on the encyclopedia must be explicitly public domain or GFDL, or Wikimedia have to provide proper fair-use justification the redistribution of someone else's copyrighted/licenced material to cover their asses. However note that fair-use images may not be permissible in many of the nations where Wikipedia mirrors (physical, disk or online) may be made and hosted. So even that's not ideal. It's not some bureaocratic triviality, it's a serious problem. If you upload just one of my photos, say, and it gets onto Wikipedia V0.5 on CD, then I would be well within my rights to get an injunction against its distribution until that's removed. It's not a stock image, and I would want the same remuneration I'd expect if I had sold it to a stock image site. Obviously Wikimedia do not want this to happen, and the GFDL-or-free-or-justify-your-ass-off requirement for images is a consequence of this.
Yes, exactly, you can't have it on Wikipedia's servers unless it's a free-use, all-rights waived image or (if it's fair use or licenced) you provide a justication. One of the founding ideas of Wikipedia is that the whole project is licenced for wholesale reproduction, forking and mirroring as needed. So obviously they want explicit permission before they freely redistribute your artwork, even something as trivial as that logo. They're stricter about images than text (which is just subject to a clickwrap this-is-mine-and-I-release-it-on-GFDL) presumably because they're self contained and not edited after upload, and therefore easier to assess.
Well, they have company logos because (and I quote from the Google logo page's justification for using a non-fre image):
"The entire logo is used to convey the meaning intended and avoid tarnishing or misrepresenting the intended image. The logo is a size and resolution sufficient to maintain the quality intended by the company or organization, without being unnecessarily high resolution. The image is placed in the infobox at the top of the article discussing Google, a subject of public interest. The significance of the logo is to help the reader identify the organization, assure the readers that they have reached the right article containing critical commentary about the organization, and illustrate the organization's intended branding message in a way that words alone could not convey. Because it is a logo there is almost certainly no free equivalent. Any substitute that is not a derivative work would fail to convey the meaning intended, would tarnish or misrepresent its image, or would fail its purpose of identification or commentary."
In between paroxisms of fear, the paper makes it clear that this is a purely hypothetical plan and, like most things the government does, will probably come to nothing. It's not surprising that the government has people coming up with ideas like this, and it's certainly not all that scary.
Even though there are lots of jokes about Black Mesa inbound, and the damage was anomalous, materials seem to be okay so they're not going to let those unforseen consequences bother them at the office. Complex and expensive science might mean that we've got hostiles who come to Slashdot to blast, pitting investigation against pragmatism, but when the CERN manages to completely power up those nay-sayers will be run out of town on a rail. There was some apprehension and the mistrust will hang around as a residue, processing of the results will take a while, and I'm sure some will still say they have questionable ethics, but under this surface tension most people want to see the project succeed, so we'll forget about freeman and the lambda core and all that other nonsense. It's not going to turn into Gonarch's Lair and we can forget about any interdimensional interloper like Nihilanth.
It's not illegal to say "I am going to kill the Queen". Otherwise I'd be locked up right now. Your second example is more important. Suppose they decide that 40GB encrypted partition of work documents that you are legally obliged not to reveal to third parties under Deed of Covenant. Now by asking you to release the key, they're asking you to break an existing legal agreement you have with another party.
It's not exactly Labour's totalitarian regime, in the sense that it would disappear if they left power. The Conservatives haven't exactly been falling over themselves in the race to oppose it, for example.
Given the high-profile data "misplaced" in laptops and on CDs the past few years, I'm not worried about what the government's going to do with this as much as I am about what random guys buying my phone logs off the internet are going to do with it. Spammers would love to find out who your top 5 email correspondents are for address spoofing, for example, and this database would give them exactly that.
Except the government, of course. I'm sure their communications would be exempt either way. Whether it's their frisky emails to their secretary or details on just how they're planning to screw us next, I'm sure they won't be logged in any way.
You're right, there's nothing scientific about testing existing ideas to see if they're true or not. Or to see what the underlying reasons and mechanisms are.
(On a related note, "big expensive and very dangerous things" are excepted from the eagle eye of RoHS. You can produce gear carved from giant blocks of lead if it's for medical use.)
I wouldn't call the Xbox 360 GPU failures (which don't seem to have affected any other ATi products) or the nVidia notebook GPU failures (which don't seem to have affected any other nVidia products) "big, expensive, and very dangerous things". Certainly the very specific nature of the problems suggests it has nothing to do with the switch to lead-free processes themselves (which nVidia and ATi themselves are using in other products without issue). I'd welcome other examples of course, as there could be low-profile problems which I've overlooked and show this to be a more general issue. Of course there are many new theoretical failure modes introduced by lead-free components and soldering, I'm just pointing out that from where I stand it's not yet an issue in the real world.
Slashdot Mirror
I meant, literally rumbling trains that are old, not maglevs. The OP was suggesting that by keeping the rolling stock in motion you wouldn't need maglev speeds at all, and therefore you could do this with the existing railway setup.
"Several times a year", not "several thousand times a year", mind you. When you multiply your trials a thousandfold, safety becomes an issue. And in orbit you have the advantage of vehicle behavior you can simulate to the micron with a pencil and paper, unlike rumbly old trains. Fascinating idea though, if you could make it work.
Those are vulnerabilities of existing rail and road structures too, though. I mean, damaging a major road bridge at rush hour could probably cause as much havoc as derailing a maglev. More so floating bridges like the one out in Seattle. And aircraft aren't exactly reknowned for their imperviousness to rockets.
To be fair, trying to explore space is a lot simpler than trying to explore the ocean. Under the sea, you have all the same problems of trying to maintain life in an airtight box, but that box is under significantly higher pressures, visiblity is a lot poorer, and there are a lot more things to run into. That's not to say that space exploration is easy, or even easier (especially on long trips), just that there are more unresolved engineering challenges to properly exploring the sea. And to be blunt, there's a lot less on the moon to analyse than there is down here.
Of course, it's of more use as a novel way of spying on your flatmates than a serious security vulnerability.
On that subject, I recall that certain brands of modem lit the activity indicator by flashing it on for a zero and off for a one. The LED was quick enough to allow an attacker to read off all the data from across the room.
Right, this was probably an analogy too far. You could imply the existence of atoms and molecules from chemistry for example. My point is essentially that there are plenty of phenomena which could be hidden by a lack of experimental grunt rather than some insurmountable logical shortfall. String theory on one end, galaxy-spanning civilisations on the other.
I never thought I'd say this, but you've just given me a serious rationale for voting for the Tories.
I'm not criticising the precision, I'm just irked that he quoted so far beyond it. I'd settle for just the order of magnitude on an open question like this too!
I'd question whether a civilisation capable of sending out sizable populations which survive in interstellar space would show an interest in planetary life at all after that. And it's worth bearing in mind that life is a relatively new phenomenon, on the cosmic scale. Heavy nuclei only started appearing a bit more than 5 bn years ago, so it's reasonable to assume that life in the universe isn't much older than us.
On that subject, may I recommend this paper on meaningful computational chemistry simulations.
Well, I'd say the main issue with that argument is that we just plain don't have the tools to detect intelligent life outside our solar system. By analogy atoms were first proposed in Greek times at the latest, but were pure fancy until experimental tools to properly confirm their existence popped up. It was an answerable-in-principle, but still open, question.
For example, we can only just see a planet that seems to be rocky and atmosphere-bearing, which therefore meets some of the criteria for "life as we know it". We've been able to see gas giants, which might harbour life as we don't know it, for a little while now. However we can't actually resolve giveaway cues for planet-spanning civilisations, never mind lower life, either kind of planet yet. And we have no reason to assume that they'll be "chatty" in any way we can detect over long distances. To a group of aliens flying through alpha centauri whose civilisation skipped radio and went straight to fibre optic and laser, 2000AD Earth and 200,000BC Earth would be indistinguishable.
No kidding. Our current estimates of the number of stars in the galaxy only go to about one significant figure, with upper and lower estimates differing by a factor of two. That puts a pretty serious cap on the precision of his answer.
"So should those be removed for not being under a free license?"
Although Wikipedia is almost exclusively GFDL or public domain, correctly licenced or fair use images are allowed where all the following criteria are met:
The image has a strong need to be in the articles it is found in. If you take it away, the article would be missing something important.
No free alternative could conceivably exist. A home-made version of the company logo, the only sensible alternative, would be a derivative work of that logo and therefore no more "free" than the original image of the logo.
No ownership of the image is implied or assumed - the original copyright or licence is noted on the image info page.
The image is only of sufficiently high quality to illustrate what it's illustrating.
There is an explicit statement of the relevant licence or justification for fair use attached to the image info page. Wikipedia's ass is pre-covered.
Basically, everything on Wikipedia is meant to be freely redistributable to anyone under the GFDL. Therefore everything on the encyclopedia must be explicitly public domain or GFDL, or Wikimedia have to provide proper fair-use justification the redistribution of someone else's copyrighted/licenced material to cover their asses. However note that fair-use images may not be permissible in many of the nations where Wikipedia mirrors (physical, disk or online) may be made and hosted. So even that's not ideal. It's not some bureaocratic triviality, it's a serious problem. If you upload just one of my photos, say, and it gets onto Wikipedia V0.5 on CD, then I would be well within my rights to get an injunction against its distribution until that's removed. It's not a stock image, and I would want the same remuneration I'd expect if I had sold it to a stock image site. Obviously Wikimedia do not want this to happen, and the GFDL-or-free-or-justify-your-ass-off requirement for images is a consequence of this.
Yes, exactly, you can't have it on Wikipedia's servers unless it's a free-use, all-rights waived image or (if it's fair use or licenced) you provide a justication. One of the founding ideas of Wikipedia is that the whole project is licenced for wholesale reproduction, forking and mirroring as needed. So obviously they want explicit permission before they freely redistribute your artwork, even something as trivial as that logo. They're stricter about images than text (which is just subject to a clickwrap this-is-mine-and-I-release-it-on-GFDL) presumably because they're self contained and not edited after upload, and therefore easier to assess.
Well, they have company logos because (and I quote from the Google logo page's justification for using a non-fre image):
"The entire logo is used to convey the meaning intended and avoid tarnishing or misrepresenting the intended image. The logo is a size and resolution sufficient to maintain the quality intended by the company or organization, without being unnecessarily high resolution. The image is placed in the infobox at the top of the article discussing Google, a subject of public interest. The significance of the logo is to help the reader identify the organization, assure the readers that they have reached the right article containing critical commentary about the organization, and illustrate the organization's intended branding message in a way that words alone could not convey. Because it is a logo there is almost certainly no free equivalent. Any substitute that is not a derivative work would fail to convey the meaning intended, would tarnish or misrepresent its image, or would fail its purpose of identification or commentary."
In between paroxisms of fear, the paper makes it clear that this is a purely hypothetical plan and, like most things the government does, will probably come to nothing. It's not surprising that the government has people coming up with ideas like this, and it's certainly not all that scary.
Even though there are lots of jokes about Black Mesa inbound, and the damage was anomalous, materials seem to be okay so they're not going to let those unforseen consequences bother them at the office. Complex and expensive science might mean that we've got hostiles who come to Slashdot to blast, pitting investigation against pragmatism, but when the CERN manages to completely power up those nay-sayers will be run out of town on a rail. There was some apprehension and the mistrust will hang around as a residue, processing of the results will take a while, and I'm sure some will still say they have questionable ethics, but under this surface tension most people want to see the project succeed, so we'll forget about freeman and the lambda core and all that other nonsense. It's not going to turn into Gonarch's Lair and we can forget about any interdimensional interloper like Nihilanth.
It's not illegal to say "I am going to kill the Queen". Otherwise I'd be locked up right now. Your second example is more important. Suppose they decide that 40GB encrypted partition of work documents that you are legally obliged not to reveal to third parties under Deed of Covenant. Now by asking you to release the key, they're asking you to break an existing legal agreement you have with another party.
BRB, being arrested for first sentence.
It's not exactly Labour's totalitarian regime, in the sense that it would disappear if they left power. The Conservatives haven't exactly been falling over themselves in the race to oppose it, for example.
Given the high-profile data "misplaced" in laptops and on CDs the past few years, I'm not worried about what the government's going to do with this as much as I am about what random guys buying my phone logs off the internet are going to do with it. Spammers would love to find out who your top 5 email correspondents are for address spoofing, for example, and this database would give them exactly that.
Except the government, of course. I'm sure their communications would be exempt either way. Whether it's their frisky emails to their secretary or details on just how they're planning to screw us next, I'm sure they won't be logged in any way.
You're right, there's nothing scientific about testing existing ideas to see if they're true or not. Or to see what the underlying reasons and mechanisms are.
(On a related note, "big expensive and very dangerous things" are excepted from the eagle eye of RoHS. You can produce gear carved from giant blocks of lead if it's for medical use.)
I wouldn't call the Xbox 360 GPU failures (which don't seem to have affected any other ATi products) or the nVidia notebook GPU failures (which don't seem to have affected any other nVidia products) "big, expensive, and very dangerous things". Certainly the very specific nature of the problems suggests it has nothing to do with the switch to lead-free processes themselves (which nVidia and ATi themselves are using in other products without issue). I'd welcome other examples of course, as there could be low-profile problems which I've overlooked and show this to be a more general issue. Of course there are many new theoretical failure modes introduced by lead-free components and soldering, I'm just pointing out that from where I stand it's not yet an issue in the real world.