Does everyone get their bandwidth caps lifted at the same time, or do they stagger them to avoid congestion? When do they start capping users, and what is the capped bandwidth vs uncapped bandwidth?
I think the fair way to deal with heavy users is to give everyone the same fast rate for their first twenty gigs or so per month. If they exceed the cap, there are three things that can be done:
cut the user off completely
charge a confiscatory per-gigabyte fee or
but a bandwidth cap on the user
The first option is bad for customers because they don't want to have their connection cut off abruptly. The second is bad because it leaves open the possibility of getting a surprise bill for hundreds or thousands of dollars. The third option, imposing a bandwidth cap once users exceed their monthly limit, solves the problem and is much less intrusive: their internet still works (just not as fast), and they don't get any surprise bills. If they want their service to be fast again, they can pay a fee. (note: to avoid congestion, the payment cycle would have to be staggered so that everyone doesn't have their caps lifted the same time each month)
Another approach ISPs would like to use is to target specific applications (bittorrent, youtube) rather than users, but this is just a short-term remedy that doesn't address the real problem - users who don't care how much bandwidth they use.
Alas, "dango" is already taken. Calling them "meshes" or "networks" seems reasonable to me, though I suppose current usage is already well established.
This means that switchgrass ethanol delivers 540 percent of the energy used to produce it, compared with just roughly 25 percent more energy returned by corn-based ethanol according to the most optimistic studies.
If I'm interpreting this right, it means corn ethanol is returning 125%, not 24% as the summary implies. Also, switchgrass requires refineries that can deal with cellulose, which we don't have. (Not that I'm saying that switchgrass or miscanthus based ethanol is a bad idea, just that the summary is misleading.)
I myself have paid over a hundred dollars for a single textbook (which I later regretted having purchased). Hopefully, poor countries are not paying that much for textbooks on basic subjects, yet ~$180 US for a laptop doesn't sound too bad when compared to the cost of the pile of textbooks a typical elementary school student might be lugging to and from class every day. Depending on book prices, it is conceivable that the laptop is actually cheaper for some schools. This isn't the whole reason why people are excited about the XO, but the ability to not buy so many books is a significant benefit.
Secondarily, publishing is easier as well. If no one is willing to pay for the publication of dead-tree versions of a few tens of thousands of textbooks in some obscure language, perhaps someone else is willing to produce a pdf of the same thing and not bother with printing at all.
Does that mean I'm supporting or opposing network neutrality? I don't even know anymore.
There is a decent solution that doesn't violate network neutrality: an ISP could simply give each customer a data quota*, and if they exceed it, they get their bandwidth reduced.** That's a good way of reducing bittorrent and video traffic without explicitly targeting bittorrent or video.
* If this is implemented the right way, the customer should know what their [monthly|weekly|daily] quota is when they sign up for the service, and should be able to check how much they've used.
** The ISP could alternatively disconnect the customer, or charge them some "excess usage" fee, but either of those options are rather obnoxious from the customer's perspective.
I have Verizon's fiber optic service, which according to wikipedia is single-mode as well, so maybe I'm wrong and most FTTH installs are single mode. That would be a very good thing - no one's going to need to dig up that fiber for at least thirty or forty years (and maybe hundreds), assuming there aren't silly bottlenecks somewhere in the system.
How the fuck are they using multi-frequency modulation techniques on light rays (fibre) ? This is either crap, very good or deserves a Nobel prize! Is this an early April 1st ??
Light is just another medium for transmitting a signal, why should it be any different? The only reason I can think of why they might not have done this earlier is that it's hard to do elaborate signal processing at the speeds they want to use.
True, but the routers and repeaters on the backbone have buses don't they?
The way a lot of telco hardware gets around the limitation that no computer exists that's fast enough to process the full available throughput, is that the connection is split into hundreds of separate channels, each one on a separate wavelength. A particular router interface need only deal with one channel, not all of them at once. (A single channel might be an OC-192, which runs about 10 gbps.)
The channels are combined and split apart by a dense wavelength division multiplexer; I don't really know how they work, but if you think of it as an expensive prism you're probably not far off.
The article linked doesn't mention fiber to the home at all, it seems it was a bit of embellishment on the part of the slashdot story poster.
The article doesn't say whether the new advancement was for singlemode or multimode fiber (or both), but given that singlemode fiber has maybe a thousand times the data capacity at distances of 100km that multimode has at distances of 2km, I suspect they are using singlemode.
I'm not certain, but I also suspect that most FTTH installations are multimode (it's easier to work with, and the equipment at either end is cheaper); if so, this new technology really doesn't apply to FTTH.
In the article, they say that the distance was chosen because it is the distance between the earth and either of the L1 or L2 lagrangian points. SOHO currently sits at L1 and talks to earth with a 200 kbit/s radio, so this isn't exactly a hypothetical scenario. (An interesting question in that case, though, might be whether we can reliably receive a laser signal against the sun's background radiation.)
I'm a little offended by the suggestion not to read the paper because it's too confusing. But then, it's not like we can read it anyways without jumping through a bunch of hoops and paying unreasonable sums of money.
If the device you are concerned about already works in Linux, but not as well as you would like it to, or with reduced functionality, please do not list it here. Instead, contact the author of the driver and work with them to fix the problem or add the new features.
In other words, "All we care about is if a driver exists. We don't care about whether it works or not. We don't care about user experience, we just want to be able to pat ourselves on the back for checking off one more box on the list of hardware 'supported by Linux'." Sounds like a project based on a good idea but misguided goals. I'm sure they will be doing a lot of good work that needs to be done, but they're leaving the hardest problems for someone else.
In both Bussard and Lerner's talks, it does come off as a bit crack-potish when they complain about lack of funding. However, in both cases, if I remember correctly, they had military funding and that funding was cut due to the Iraq war. That isn't a conspiracy, it's consistent with my understanding of the current funding climate. The military just doesn't have the money to fight a war and do basic research on things that aren't going to be in immediately deployable products.
I'm not sure if their claims that the DOE is only willing to fund tokomak research is true, but it does seem at least plausible, and both Bussard and Lerner are saying the same thing, which lends at least a little bit of credibility to the accusation.
According to wikipedia, depending on configuration, carbon nanotubes can be quite conductive. I don't know if this makes supplying power from the ground practical or not, nor if one can make a nanotube that is both sufficiently strong and superconductive. A cable that can carry a couple megawatts of power per lifter with low loss may need to be much heavier per unit of length than the elevator would otherwise be.
...while traveling. It was in the Singapore airport during the SARS scare. They were checking if anyone was running a fever. They weren't scanning a moving vehicle, though.
It's a pleasure talking to you - not many are in a posession of such a fine rhetoric weapons as you are.;-)
thank you.
I'm afraid, though, that this discussion, however interesting it may be, could go on forever, without any of us coming nearer the other.
It is likely that neither of us can convince the other regardless of how much we type. However, we can understand each other's point of view. It may be that our disagreement is less strong than it appears. I am sorry if I am prolonging this discussion past its useful conclusion.
My stance, which I don't claim to be "the only correct stance possible", is that for a real scientist, such thing as the origin of the universe definitely *is* within the realm of science. A *scientist*, as I understand the word, is somebody who is firmly attached to the scientific way of thinking, not only during the working hours, but also in the day-to-day life.
The history of the universe seems to be within the realm of science. I'm not so sure about the origin. Suppose the universe was created six thousand years ago, but it was created as an old universe, dinosaur bones and all. We would have no way of knowing. The universe may have been created fifteen minutes ago, and we wouldn't necessarily know it. In that case, it may be less true but more useful to say that the universe is, for all practical purposes, 13.7 billion years old and move on. Also, keep in mind that the big bang theory doesn't say much about why the universe even exists in the first place, or what (if anything) preceded the big bang. Maybe someday we'll know what came before, but that won't tell us much about why the universe exists or what exactly we're doing here. Those are metaphysical questions, not scientific ones.
To me, a scientist is someone who uses the scientific method when it's appropriate. In daily life, science can be useful to understand some things (such as trying to figure out why a car won't start), but it won't tell you what to do. It won't tell you that a working car is better than one that doesn't work, and it won't tell you where to drive when you get it fixed. If you already have some goal in mind, science will help you get there, but it won't tell you what that goal should be. For this reason, I don't think anyone can truly live exclusively by the scientific method, and if they think they are, they're fooling themselves.
Have you read "The Dragon in my Garage" from Carl Sagan? In that book, he shows the passion for science and for the scientific way of thinking. One can say about him what one wants, but he definitely proved his devotion towards critical thinking and promoting the knowledge instead of supersition. This is not enough to be a scientist, but in my eyes, it's a necessary prerequisite.
No, I haven't read that one. I think it's great that he's enthusiastic about science and has been able to share that enthusiasm with others, and misplaced superstition can be (and has historically been) more destructive than misplaced science. To be a scientist, you need to believe the scientific method is useful, and that implies that you believe the universe is at least mostly predictable (you don't look for miracles around every corner). I don't think being a scientist means you believe that universal truth can only be revealed by science.
Sometimes, science and religion overlap in unfortunate ways. Before orbital mechanics were understood, the rising of the sun every morning seemed miraculous, and before fusion was understood we didn't know where all that light came from. But it's important to realize that just because the world seems less miraculous than it did in the past, does not mean that religion can be completely replaced by science.
What I won't do is take you seriously as a scientist. Bible literalism makes me doubt your objectivity - it also gets in the way of the scientific method, as that requires you to consider only what you can observe.
There's a huge difference between rejecting a theory because it isn't scientifically sound, and rejecting a theory because the people who hold that theory happen to hold religious beliefs that you don't agree with. I have no problem with the former. The phrase "because the Bible says so" does not belong in a research paper (unless one is researching the Bible specifically). The latter is intolerance. If you refuse to take a scientist seriously not because of the merits of his/her research but because you can't fathom that a religious person is capable of rational thought, then you are letting your own personal biases interfere with your own scientific objectivity.
What you're leaving out is that ID is apolitical movement masquerading as a scientific theory. This is a direct assault on science. Don't ignore it, fight it.
It isn't an assault on science. ID generally doesn't affect science because it isn't taken seriously as a scientific theory within the scientific community (because it is untestable). It is an attack on the mainstream public perception of science. That's a big problem, but not one I can really do much about, other than to educate the people around me on the proper role of science. Telling people that their religious beliefs automatically disqualify them from being scientists is not helpful or productive; it merely encourages them to form new scientific or pseudoscientific movements where they won't be treated like imbeciles on account of their faith.
There's no point in pretending to be a scientist while actually believing universe was created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster or some similar creature.
Being a scientist does not preclude one from believing things that are outside the domain of science. It's important to know what fits inside the domain of science and what doesn't, and not to confuse those things (especially when attempting to convince other scientists of the correctness of one's own research). However, there is no requirement whatsoever that a person has to believe that science is the only form of truth in order to be a scientist. Science is powerful but is also quite limiting. Science only provides insight into how the world works, it does not tell you what to do about it, or provide distinctions like good or bad or right or wrong. We need other belief systems for that.
As we are speaking of tolerance (or the lack thereof), it's actually the religions of the world which are the incorporated intolerance. You can't cry for religious tolerance if you (respectively the vast majority of people sharing your religious oppinions) don't provide ANY in return. Just as a recent example, you might want to check this pope Benedict's blurb. And no, I don't buy the vicious back-pedalling which started shortly after he gave that speech of his.
You are attacking a straw man. I am not Catholic, I don't pay much attention to the pope, and I don't approve of religious intolerance, whether it is done by Christians, atheists, muslims, agnostics, whoever. I don't agree with the pope (in fact if I correctly understand what he is saying I think he's being intolerant) but if he wants to say I'm not part of the real church, that's his business. He's entitled to his opinions. And you and I are free to criticize them. But please don't make the mistake of thinking he speaks for all religious people, or all Christians. I don't even think it's safe to assume he speaks for all Catholics.
The viewpoints of religion and science are not compatible. Period.
I don't really see why that has to be the case. Some religions may be incompatible with science. Many practice religion in a way that is not incompatible. If I believe that Jesus died for my sins, what difference does that make to my scientific beliefs? None at all, as far as I can tell.
The ID crowd has managed quite successfully to mud the waters good enough in order to seduce quite a lot "poor souls" by pretending to be science.
So, this really isn't about science at all, it's about the perception of science within popular culture. I agree that most people don't understand science very well, and if they are unable to recognize that non-falsifiable theories (such as that the universe was made by an intelligent creator) are not real science, then we really need a better understanding of science in this country. The solution is better education, not telling religious people they aren't welcome in the sciences.
The reason for the claim that creationist scientists should be viewed with a suspicion is probably more of a moral one (funny thing you don't see it!)
Is religious intolerance a moral reason?
Creationism, just like any other form of religion, stands for principles and the way of thinking completely opposed to the scientific principles and way of thinking.
Not a problem if you consider biblical and scientific authority to govern separate non-overlapping domains. If you're trying to understand the universe, it doesn't matter if you think it was created by God or not. If you're a young-earth creationist you might have some trouble with evolutionary biology or astrophysics, depending on your point of view. Also, there's been a lot of phony science in the name of intelligent design (there's even a museum now), but ID is a political movement, not a scientific or religious one, and I prefer to ignore them.
The grandparent post wasn't talking about young-earth creationism or ID, but just creationism. The idea that God made the universe. To me, this is what the post appears to be saying:
"The belief that God created the universe disqualifies one from being a good scientist."
or perhaps
"Science needs to be protected from people who have personal beliefs that aren't testable and that I don't agree with."
The scientific method was designed to work regardless of the individual biases of it's practitioners. Science doesn't need to be defended from creationists, it can take care of itself.
Any scientist who is a creationist should be viewed with deepest suspicion.
Why, because they don't believe the same thing you do? I have found that religious beliefs generally don't affect the quality of a scientist's research. It doesn't matter if they believe in higher truths as long as they do good science and don't try to use faith-based arguments to justify their research results.
Slashdot Mirror
Does everyone get their bandwidth caps lifted at the same time, or do they stagger them to avoid congestion? When do they start capping users, and what is the capped bandwidth vs uncapped bandwidth?
I think the fair way to deal with heavy users is to give everyone the same fast rate for their first twenty gigs or so per month. If they exceed the cap, there are three things that can be done:
The first option is bad for customers because they don't want to have their connection cut off abruptly. The second is bad because it leaves open the possibility of getting a surprise bill for hundreds or thousands of dollars. The third option, imposing a bandwidth cap once users exceed their monthly limit, solves the problem and is much less intrusive: their internet still works (just not as fast), and they don't get any surprise bills. If they want their service to be fast again, they can pay a fee. (note: to avoid congestion, the payment cycle would have to be staggered so that everyone doesn't have their caps lifted the same time each month)
Another approach ISPs would like to use is to target specific applications (bittorrent, youtube) rather than users, but this is just a short-term remedy that doesn't address the real problem - users who don't care how much bandwidth they use.
Alas, "dango" is already taken. Calling them "meshes" or "networks" seems reasonable to me, though I suppose current usage is already well established.
You're right, the original version is much better.
I just noticed that the original article is inconsistent: the caption under the image says "540% more" (640%), whereas the actual text says "540% of".
I myself have paid over a hundred dollars for a single textbook (which I later regretted having purchased). Hopefully, poor countries are not paying that much for textbooks on basic subjects, yet ~$180 US for a laptop doesn't sound too bad when compared to the cost of the pile of textbooks a typical elementary school student might be lugging to and from class every day. Depending on book prices, it is conceivable that the laptop is actually cheaper for some schools. This isn't the whole reason why people are excited about the XO, but the ability to not buy so many books is a significant benefit.
Secondarily, publishing is easier as well. If no one is willing to pay for the publication of dead-tree versions of a few tens of thousands of textbooks in some obscure language, perhaps someone else is willing to produce a pdf of the same thing and not bother with printing at all.
There is a decent solution that doesn't violate network neutrality: an ISP could simply give each customer a data quota*, and if they exceed it, they get their bandwidth reduced.** That's a good way of reducing bittorrent and video traffic without explicitly targeting bittorrent or video.
* If this is implemented the right way, the customer should know what their [monthly|weekly|daily] quota is when they sign up for the service, and should be able to check how much they've used.
** The ISP could alternatively disconnect the customer, or charge them some "excess usage" fee, but either of those options are rather obnoxious from the customer's perspective.
I have Verizon's fiber optic service, which according to wikipedia is single-mode as well, so maybe I'm wrong and most FTTH installs are single mode. That would be a very good thing - no one's going to need to dig up that fiber for at least thirty or forty years (and maybe hundreds), assuming there aren't silly bottlenecks somewhere in the system.
The way a lot of telco hardware gets around the limitation that no computer exists that's fast enough to process the full available throughput, is that the connection is split into hundreds of separate channels, each one on a separate wavelength. A particular router interface need only deal with one channel, not all of them at once. (A single channel might be an OC-192, which runs about 10 gbps.)
The channels are combined and split apart by a dense wavelength division multiplexer; I don't really know how they work, but if you think of it as an expensive prism you're probably not far off.
The article linked doesn't mention fiber to the home at all, it seems it was a bit of embellishment on the part of the slashdot story poster.
The article doesn't say whether the new advancement was for singlemode or multimode fiber (or both), but given that singlemode fiber has maybe a thousand times the data capacity at distances of 100km that multimode has at distances of 2km, I suspect they are using singlemode.
I'm not certain, but I also suspect that most FTTH installations are multimode (it's easier to work with, and the equipment at either end is cheaper); if so, this new technology really doesn't apply to FTTH.
In the article, they say that the distance was chosen because it is the distance between the earth and either of the L1 or L2 lagrangian points. SOHO currently sits at L1 and talks to earth with a 200 kbit/s radio, so this isn't exactly a hypothetical scenario. (An interesting question in that case, though, might be whether we can reliably receive a laser signal against the sun's background radiation.)
Well, here's an actual link to the paper if someone wants to actually read it: Homogeneous Catalytic Reduction of Dioxygen Using Transfer Hydrogenation Catalysts. Unfortunately, they don't let anyone read more than the abstract without an account or paying $25.
I'm a little offended by the suggestion not to read the paper because it's too confusing. But then, it's not like we can read it anyways without jumping through a bunch of hoops and paying unreasonable sums of money.
That is an excellent post you link to.
From the linuxdriverproject.org wiki:
In other words, "All we care about is if a driver exists. We don't care about whether it works or not. We don't care about user experience, we just want to be able to pat ourselves on the back for checking off one more box on the list of hardware 'supported by Linux'." Sounds like a project based on a good idea but misguided goals. I'm sure they will be doing a lot of good work that needs to be done, but they're leaving the hardest problems for someone else.
In both Bussard and Lerner's talks, it does come off as a bit crack-potish when they complain about lack of funding. However, in both cases, if I remember correctly, they had military funding and that funding was cut due to the Iraq war. That isn't a conspiracy, it's consistent with my understanding of the current funding climate. The military just doesn't have the money to fight a war and do basic research on things that aren't going to be in immediately deployable products.
I'm not sure if their claims that the DOE is only willing to fund tokomak research is true, but it does seem at least plausible, and both Bussard and Lerner are saying the same thing, which lends at least a little bit of credibility to the accusation.
Reminds me of the positron rifle from the 6th episode of Evangelion.
There's a good answer to this question here.
According to wikipedia, depending on configuration, carbon nanotubes can be quite conductive. I don't know if this makes supplying power from the ground practical or not, nor if one can make a nanotube that is both sufficiently strong and superconductive. A cable that can carry a couple megawatts of power per lifter with low loss may need to be much heavier per unit of length than the elevator would otherwise be.
...while traveling. It was in the Singapore airport during the SARS scare. They were checking if anyone was running a fever. They weren't scanning a moving vehicle, though.
thank you.
It is likely that neither of us can convince the other regardless of how much we type. However, we can understand each other's point of view. It may be that our disagreement is less strong than it appears. I am sorry if I am prolonging this discussion past its useful conclusion.
The history of the universe seems to be within the realm of science. I'm not so sure about the origin. Suppose the universe was created six thousand years ago, but it was created as an old universe, dinosaur bones and all. We would have no way of knowing. The universe may have been created fifteen minutes ago, and we wouldn't necessarily know it. In that case, it may be less true but more useful to say that the universe is, for all practical purposes, 13.7 billion years old and move on. Also, keep in mind that the big bang theory doesn't say much about why the universe even exists in the first place, or what (if anything) preceded the big bang. Maybe someday we'll know what came before, but that won't tell us much about why the universe exists or what exactly we're doing here. Those are metaphysical questions, not scientific ones.
To me, a scientist is someone who uses the scientific method when it's appropriate. In daily life, science can be useful to understand some things (such as trying to figure out why a car won't start), but it won't tell you what to do. It won't tell you that a working car is better than one that doesn't work, and it won't tell you where to drive when you get it fixed. If you already have some goal in mind, science will help you get there, but it won't tell you what that goal should be. For this reason, I don't think anyone can truly live exclusively by the scientific method, and if they think they are, they're fooling themselves.
No, I haven't read that one. I think it's great that he's enthusiastic about science and has been able to share that enthusiasm with others, and misplaced superstition can be (and has historically been) more destructive than misplaced science. To be a scientist, you need to believe the scientific method is useful, and that implies that you believe the universe is at least mostly predictable (you don't look for miracles around every corner). I don't think being a scientist means you believe that universal truth can only be revealed by science.
Sometimes, science and religion overlap in unfortunate ways. Before orbital mechanics were understood, the rising of the sun every morning seemed miraculous, and before fusion was understood we didn't know where all that light came from. But it's important to realize that just because the world seems less miraculous than it did in the past, does not mean that religion can be completely replaced by science.
There's a huge difference between rejecting a theory because it isn't scientifically sound, and rejecting a theory because the people who hold that theory happen to hold religious beliefs that you don't agree with. I have no problem with the former. The phrase "because the Bible says so" does not belong in a research paper (unless one is researching the Bible specifically). The latter is intolerance. If you refuse to take a scientist seriously not because of the merits of his/her research but because you can't fathom that a religious person is capable of rational thought, then you are letting your own personal biases interfere with your own scientific objectivity.
It isn't an assault on science. ID generally doesn't affect science because it isn't taken seriously as a scientific theory within the scientific community (because it is untestable). It is an attack on the mainstream public perception of science. That's a big problem, but not one I can really do much about, other than to educate the people around me on the proper role of science. Telling people that their religious beliefs automatically disqualify them from being scientists is not helpful or productive; it merely encourages them to form new scientific or pseudoscientific movements where they won't be treated like imbeciles on account of their faith.Being a scientist does not preclude one from believing things that are outside the domain of science. It's important to know what fits inside the domain of science and what doesn't, and not to confuse those things (especially when attempting to convince other scientists of the correctness of one's own research). However, there is no requirement whatsoever that a person has to believe that science is the only form of truth in order to be a scientist. Science is powerful but is also quite limiting. Science only provides insight into how the world works, it does not tell you what to do about it, or provide distinctions like good or bad or right or wrong. We need other belief systems for that.
You are attacking a straw man. I am not Catholic, I don't pay much attention to the pope, and I don't approve of religious intolerance, whether it is done by Christians, atheists, muslims, agnostics, whoever. I don't agree with the pope (in fact if I correctly understand what he is saying I think he's being intolerant) but if he wants to say I'm not part of the real church, that's his business. He's entitled to his opinions. And you and I are free to criticize them. But please don't make the mistake of thinking he speaks for all religious people, or all Christians. I don't even think it's safe to assume he speaks for all Catholics.
I don't really see why that has to be the case. Some religions may be incompatible with science. Many practice religion in a way that is not incompatible. If I believe that Jesus died for my sins, what difference does that make to my scientific beliefs? None at all, as far as I can tell.
So, this really isn't about science at all, it's about the perception of science within popular culture. I agree that most people don't understand science very well, and if they are unable to recognize that non-falsifiable theories (such as that the universe was made by an intelligent creator) are not real science, then we really need a better understanding of science in this country. The solution is better education, not telling religious people they aren't welcome in the sciences.
The grandparent post wasn't talking about young-earth creationism or ID, but just creationism. The idea that God made the universe. To me, this is what the post appears to be saying:
"The belief that God created the universe disqualifies one from being a good scientist."
or perhaps
"Science needs to be protected from people who have personal beliefs that aren't testable and that I don't agree with."
The scientific method was designed to work regardless of the individual biases of it's practitioners. Science doesn't need to be defended from creationists, it can take care of itself.
Why, because they don't believe the same thing you do? I have found that religious beliefs generally don't affect the quality of a scientist's research. It doesn't matter if they believe in higher truths as long as they do good science and don't try to use faith-based arguments to justify their research results.
If you don't agree, you can vote one it.