My primary reason for having a car is to cover distance, not to burn fuel. So, to me the proper metric IS distance per volume of fuel. When you want to focus on cost advantage, your way is fine. When you want to calculate how to extend the number of years gas can be used for combustion vehicles before we run out of oil, MPG is the right metric.
GPM is shrouding the inefficiency of gas guzzlers. With MPG you can quickly see that twice the mileage is twice as efficient.
It would probably decay under aerobic conditions instead of anaerobic (anoxic at the bottom of a reservoir) . So, it would result in CO2 instead of CH4.
Consider the Beer-Lambert law. CO2 is transparent to visible light (like oxygen and nitrogen). When light hits the earth, it heats up the surface. Hotter surfaces radiate IR radiation. CO2 happens to be absorbing IR in those ranges (while oxygen and nitrogen don't). So, CO2 absorbs it and starts to vibrate more. Other air molecules bump into CO2 and pick up the energy. Result: The air gets warmer.
Water is indeed a greenhouse gas. That's good. We need it to keep the planet at the desired temperature. Doesn't matter whether the IR radiation gets absorbed by water of CO2. That is the good news. However, the absorption spectra and absorption constants (at various wavelengths) of CO2 and water are NOT identical. So, CO2 can have an effect that water alone doesn't have. Because CO2 doesn't do politics, it does. You can debate the amount of the effect, not the effect. The effect is pure physics.
It is not that hard to understand. Actually, I think that just about any scientist should be able to come up with this by him/herself. In any case, people I'm looking to hire should be able to figure out the relevant parameters and how this works by themselves.
And as to your statement that water fluctuates 100x as much as the total rise of CO2, try to figure that one out yourself.
Bert So, indeed, heat capacity has nothing to do with it
If Apple had presented it as an update for FC Express people would be all over it. Many professionals would say: Hey, in many cases that suffices. I can do the same job in less time. Great!!! Pundits would say: If Apple improves this a little bit more, it will make FCP redundant. Financial analysts would say: Apple is cannibalizing FCP, and speculate that all this easy to use power would still turn out profitable.
But the above situation is with exactly the same program as we have now. Apple WILL add the stuff pro's want (e.g. multicamera support which Pogue got word from Apple is their top priority now). It is just that some professionals will have to get used to the idea that complicated stuff can be done more easily and more quickly, and that for some features they'll have to wait a bit longer and keep using their old tools.
Every professional uses the tools that make him most productive. It would be foolish NOT to add this one to the toolbox. If you're so specialized that you can never use it, you could still give it a spin: You'd be fluent with it once the new features are there. $300 is really nothing if you're a professional.
"Does make one wonder just how well a uterus possibly in its 50's will hold up to pregnancy though? Just because you transplant it into a younger person doesn't make the organ suddenly young again."
The idea of a patent law is that people don't sit on their ideas and keep them secret. An independent inventor defense would be an incentive for a person NOT to learn what is already out there. Society benefits more if he DOES learn about other ideas. Both to incorporate in his own product to make it even more attractive (from which society benefits by getting better products) and give him new ideas.
A couple of posts higher, I explain why a patent system is a good idea and software patents are a bad idea . Solving it with an independent invention defense would be a bad idea (apart from the legal hassle and costs and possibility for fraud.)
The patent system is a trade-off. You don't want people to sit on their ideas. If half of the creative, thinking people don't want people to leech off their ideas without compensation, society loses a big part of the forward momentum.
For software, the situation is different: - Developers don't sit on their ideas. - Ideas get stale quickly - Programs use a multitude of (networking, interface, manipulation of objects etc. etc.), so there's tons of opportunity to infringe (not so with a mechanical invention. If someone develops a special material, I can buy that to create another product. With software a developer doesn't buy code. Most of the time the outside code he uses is APIs (which were meant to be used like that; and even then he doesn't see the code). For a mechanical invention, you get a description how to build it. For software, you get a description of the wish. - If software gets out in the open, you can see what it does, but it is still not easy to copy (I'm not talking file duplication here) because programs are hard to write; it takes time and to get the bugs out much more time. A developer with a new idea always has a head start when it introduces a program with that idea. And it will get the publicity (software reviews abound.
Back to what a patent law is about. There is already plenty of drive not to sit on ideas. Consequently, there is no need to apply the patent law to software. And finally: - It is very hard to do a proper prior art search for a software idea. - The software idea may not be published as such, but still very public in a patent law sense. If a program is sold, the idea is in there, the code can be checked. But (virtually) no one does. - Software is a product of many (deep) thoughts. It there's a multitude of possibilities to infringe many patents, with poor possibilities to check for that (the infringement could be in just about anything, whereas a mechanical product may have just one or two distinguishing aspects), innovation is better served if nobody can infringe. - If one company sells knives I like but not forks I like, and another company does the opposite. A consumer can buy knives from one and forks from the other. With software, you can't. It would not have been good if one company had a patent for 20 years for manipulating fonts, another for spell-checking, and yet another for having pictures in a document. It would take 20 years before a user would be allowed to prepare a nice document. Not in the interest of society. If a company invents a new material, he's happy to sell you the new material to make a product with it. With software, you can only buy the program developed by them.
A patent system is a good idea. But it really shouldn't extend to software.
And he'd have a fused chromosome, just so that it would lead big-brained people a couple of millennia later to believe that we'd actually share a common origin, because even the location where strands of DNA meet to form the familiar X-shape of chromosomes is present in his chromosome number 2. (Google for it).
It is just in one thing you're wrong. I'm god, I created you just 5 minutes ago with all the thoughts you have. And because I'm omnipotent I took my own powers away and gave myself a bad memory (so forgive that I can't provide you with details how I did stuff, how things were and how they'll be). I thought I'd enjoy mingling with a couple of earthlings here. But I'm having second thoughts already.
Bert
"(that is: true according to the best of our knowledge today, and may be altered tomorrow based on new evidence)" Yes, altered. With science, we're moving (roughly) asymptotically to the truth. With religion, you'd never get there. Hope you didn't pick the wrong god to worship. Yesterday was Thor's day. Did you pay tribute? A tip: Today it is Freya's day.
I do already have clothes that fit. I can measure specific distances of those. Why doesn't a webshop indicate those measures for particular items, instead of stupid indications like L, XL (that I believe vary among manufacturers) etc.
I was tempted to buy cool "Teach the controversy" T-shirts (http://controversy.wearscience.com/) but ended up not doing that.
I don't want to buy something with a right to return it; I don't want to waste my time on that. I want my purchased clothes to fit.
Well, if the legislator then honestly told his constituency that not-outlawing radar detectors is worth x deaths/injuries per year to save y jobs, THEN it was a kosher thing to do.
You know what. That company came up with the idea of making radar detectors. It can come up with something else.
Bert How about sending a postcard to a victim/relatives to thank them for their contribution to help save jobs in that state? Must console them that their sacrifice was worth it.
So I'll be like PC (http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/get-mac-security-94121) all the time, clicking Yes buttons when not needing them (while hating to see them), effectively priming me to approve one when I shouldn't.
the number of followers, the adoption by the rulers
Agreed on those two.
I don't agree. How many? A 100? A 1000? 1001 followers is a religion and 1000 a cult?
and whether it hinges on the worship of a living person (cult) or a dead one
Try walking into a Christian church and telling them Jesus is dead. For those of you who have no Christian experience, I'm not joking here. Christian doctrine dictates that Jesus is as alive today as he was on the day of his resurrection.
So that shows that when Jezus was alive christianity was a cult and evolved into a religion. Conclusion, religion and cults are human fabrications.
the number of followers, the adoption by the rulers
Agreed on those two.
I don't agree. What number? A 100? A 1000? 1001 is a religion? 1000 is a cult?
and whether it hinges on the worship of a living person (cult) or a dead one
Try walking into a Christian church and telling them Jesus is dead. For those of you who have no Christian experience, I'm not joking here. Christian doctrine dictates that Jesus is as alive today as he was on the day of his resurrection.
Or at best it show that a cult can become a religion: When Jezus was alive it was a cult. After that it became a religion. And that is just what it is: A fabrication by humans.
In the Netherlands the building code has targets for upcoming years. So, houses built in the future will have to be more energy efficient. Everybody knows this NOW, so technology is being developed because companies there will be a market (and if they don't develop, they won't have the technology to build).
This will probably be more complicated/require a bit more elaborate code in the US, with its various climate zones. But still, as you point out, air conditioning doesn't need to be energy intensive and you can have separate regulations for that.
And of course the same can be done with fuel efficiency requirements for cars. The change will be gradual, everybody (buyers of cars and producers of cars) know what to expect. It is where having government is very useful. If it acts, of course.
Well, the 6000 years is based on a calculation from a detailed list of descendants, with age at at which they got their offspring and their time of death given. It is not that god said the earth is 6000 of years old. So, if we are to take that a day is like a thousand years, then those guys that according to the bible lived for over 900 years lived, well, very very very very very very long.
And that's based on objective machines (DNA sequencers and computers comparing the sequences). The link is highly recommended for schools and teachers.
That means no Adam, no garden of eden, no eternal sin, no Jesus dying for our sins.
Here's what talkorgins had to say about that: (http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/may05.html#run)
"In a religious context, 'faith' and 'truth' are almost synonyms. And faith is automatically good. If an idea is considered truth in your religion, and you don't have faith in it, that's a reflection on your failure as a faith-holder rather than the idea's failure to be true. If you don't have enough faith on a given subject, you should work harder at it.
In the sciences, that kind of faith is not a virtue; it's a personal failing. Imagine a bridge engineer being invited to "have more faith" that a design has enough steel in it to keep his bridge from collapsing. His faith has nothing to do with it; either the bridge stays up, or it falls down. Faith in the sense of 'letting yourself be persuaded without adequate evidence' is morally wrong in that context. If the bridge engineer does so, and people die in the collapse, he's murdered them.
Scientists, or the good ones, feel the same way about their theories that good engineers feel about their bridges. It's their job to make them right, not to convince themselves for their own emotional comfort that they're already right, pretty much, close enough.
If a scientist says "I have faith this theory is true," he doesn't or shouldn't mean it in the religious sense of "I commit myself to this no matter what the evidence may say, forever. Don't try to change my mind, here I stand."
Instead, he means or ought to mean "I've tested this theory, and I've seen the results of other people's tests, and I'm as sure as I can possibly get on the available evidence that this theory is as close to right as we can get. Unless something else really radical turns up. Keep me posted.""
Slashdot Mirror
My primary reason for having a car is to cover distance, not to burn fuel. So, to me the proper metric IS distance per volume of fuel. When you want to focus on cost advantage, your way is fine. When you want to calculate how to extend the number of years gas can be used for combustion vehicles before we run out of oil, MPG is the right metric.
GPM is shrouding the inefficiency of gas guzzlers. With MPG you can quickly see that twice the mileage is twice as efficient.
Bert
It would probably decay under aerobic conditions instead of anaerobic (anoxic at the bottom of a reservoir) . So, it would result in CO2 instead of CH4.
Bert
Consider the Beer-Lambert law. CO2 is transparent to visible light (like oxygen and nitrogen). When light hits the earth, it heats up the surface. Hotter surfaces radiate IR radiation. CO2 happens to be absorbing IR in those ranges (while oxygen and nitrogen don't). So, CO2 absorbs it and starts to vibrate more. Other air molecules bump into CO2 and pick up the energy. Result: The air gets warmer.
Water is indeed a greenhouse gas. That's good. We need it to keep the planet at the desired temperature. Doesn't matter whether the IR radiation gets absorbed by water of CO2. That is the good news. However, the absorption spectra and absorption constants (at various wavelengths) of CO2 and water are NOT identical. So, CO2 can have an effect that water alone doesn't have. Because CO2 doesn't do politics, it does. You can debate the amount of the effect, not the effect. The effect is pure physics.
It is not that hard to understand. Actually, I think that just about any scientist should be able to come up with this by him/herself. In any case, people I'm looking to hire should be able to figure out the relevant parameters and how this works by themselves.
And as to your statement that water fluctuates 100x as much as the total rise of CO2, try to figure that one out yourself.
Bert
So, indeed, heat capacity has nothing to do with it
If Apple had presented it as an update for FC Express people would be all over it. Many professionals would say: Hey, in many cases that suffices. I can do the same job in less time. Great!!! Pundits would say: If Apple improves this a little bit more, it will make FCP redundant. Financial analysts would say: Apple is cannibalizing FCP, and speculate that all this easy to use power would still turn out profitable.
But the above situation is with exactly the same program as we have now. Apple WILL add the stuff pro's want (e.g. multicamera support which Pogue got word from Apple is their top priority now). It is just that some professionals will have to get used to the idea that complicated stuff can be done more easily and more quickly, and that for some features they'll have to wait a bit longer and keep using their old tools.
Every professional uses the tools that make him most productive. It would be foolish NOT to add this one to the toolbox. If you're so specialized that you can never use it, you could still give it a spin: You'd be fluent with it once the new features are there. $300 is really nothing if you're a professional.
Bert
"Does make one wonder just how well a uterus possibly in its 50's will hold up to pregnancy though? Just because you transplant it into a younger person doesn't make the organ suddenly young again."
There are several old women, even in their sixties who have conceived a child. Some Italian doctor does this type of treatment.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pregnancy_over_age_50
Bert
No they won't win. Gilette defense is the best to have if you're accused of infringement.
If they do use that defense, they're basically admitting it isn't inventive because the difference is trivial.
Bert
Patent attorney
The idea of a patent law is that people don't sit on their ideas and keep them secret. An independent inventor defense would be an incentive for a person NOT to learn what is already out there. Society benefits more if he DOES learn about other ideas. Both to incorporate in his own product to make it even more attractive (from which society benefits by getting better products) and give him new ideas.
A couple of posts higher, I explain why a patent system is a good idea and software patents are a bad idea . Solving it with an independent invention defense would be a bad idea (apart from the legal hassle and costs and possibility for fraud.)
Bert
The patent system is a trade-off. You don't want people to sit on their ideas. If half of the creative, thinking people don't want people to leech off their ideas without compensation, society loses a big part of the forward momentum.
For software, the situation is different:
- Developers don't sit on their ideas.
- Ideas get stale quickly
- Programs use a multitude of (networking, interface, manipulation of objects etc. etc.), so there's tons of opportunity to infringe (not so with a mechanical invention. If someone develops a special material, I can buy that to create another product. With software a developer doesn't buy code. Most of the time the outside code he uses is APIs (which were meant to be used like that; and even then he doesn't see the code). For a mechanical invention, you get a description how to build it. For software, you get a description of the wish.
- If software gets out in the open, you can see what it does, but it is still not easy to copy (I'm not talking file duplication here) because programs are hard to write; it takes time and to get the bugs out much more time. A developer with a new idea always has a head start when it introduces a program with that idea. And it will get the publicity (software reviews abound.
Back to what a patent law is about. There is already plenty of drive not to sit on ideas. Consequently, there is no need to apply the patent law to software. And finally:
- It is very hard to do a proper prior art search for a software idea.
- The software idea may not be published as such, but still very public in a patent law sense. If a program is sold, the idea is in there, the code can be checked. But (virtually) no one does.
- Software is a product of many (deep) thoughts. It there's a multitude of possibilities to infringe many patents, with poor possibilities to check for that (the infringement could be in just about anything, whereas a mechanical product may have just one or two distinguishing aspects), innovation is better served if nobody can infringe.
- If one company sells knives I like but not forks I like, and another company does the opposite. A consumer can buy knives from one and forks from the other. With software, you can't. It would not have been good if one company had a patent for 20 years for manipulating fonts, another for spell-checking, and yet another for having pictures in a document. It would take 20 years before a user would be allowed to prepare a nice document. Not in the interest of society. If a company invents a new material, he's happy to sell you the new material to make a product with it. With software, you can only buy the program developed by them.
A patent system is a good idea. But it really shouldn't extend to software.
Bert
"I thought about that little further. If you'd seen Adam 5 minutes after he was created you'd think, "He's an adult male, probably 20-30 years old."
Exactly. And he'd have retrovirusses in his DNA, at exactly the same positions that chimps and bonobo's had.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI
And he'd have a fused chromosome, just so that it would lead big-brained people a couple of millennia later to believe that we'd actually share a common origin, because even the location where strands of DNA meet to form the familiar X-shape of chromosomes is present in his chromosome number 2. (Google for it).
It is just in one thing you're wrong. I'm god, I created you just 5 minutes ago with all the thoughts you have. And because I'm omnipotent I took my own powers away and gave myself a bad memory (so forgive that I can't provide you with details how I did stuff, how things were and how they'll be). I thought I'd enjoy mingling with a couple of earthlings here. But I'm having second thoughts already.
Bert
"(that is: true according to the best of our knowledge today, and may be altered tomorrow based on new evidence)"
Yes, altered. With science, we're moving (roughly) asymptotically to the truth. With religion, you'd never get there. Hope you didn't pick the wrong god to worship. Yesterday was Thor's day. Did you pay tribute? A tip: Today it is Freya's day.
I do already have clothes that fit. I can measure specific distances of those. Why doesn't a webshop indicate those measures for particular items, instead of stupid indications like L, XL (that I believe vary among manufacturers) etc.
I was tempted to buy cool "Teach the controversy" T-shirts (http://controversy.wearscience.com/) but ended up not doing that.
I don't want to buy something with a right to return it; I don't want to waste my time on that. I want my purchased clothes to fit.
Bert
Well, if the legislator then honestly told his constituency that not-outlawing radar detectors is worth x deaths/injuries per year to save y jobs, THEN it was a kosher thing to do.
You know what. That company came up with the idea of making radar detectors. It can come up with something else.
Bert
How about sending a postcard to a victim/relatives to thank them for their contribution to help save jobs in that state? Must console them that their sacrifice was worth it.
And, Palin fans knowing this.... .
Ad infinitum
Bert
So I'll be like PC (http://www.adweek.com/adfreak/get-mac-security-94121) all the time, clicking Yes buttons when not needing them (while hating to see them), effectively priming me to approve one when I shouldn't.
Bert
More general, anyone without a brain is safe.
Bert
That joke was a no-brainer
I would expect it would easily dissolve in a couple of kilometers of ocean water above it, especially at those pressures.
Bert
Mwah, with my speeds is close to standing still.
Bert
And apparently his followers in TX have mastered the same feat (suspending logic). It is a miracle!
Bert
The organization
How so?
the number of followers, the adoption by the rulers
Agreed on those two.
I don't agree. How many? A 100? A 1000? 1001 followers is a religion and 1000 a cult?
and whether it hinges on the worship of a living person (cult) or a dead one
Try walking into a Christian church and telling them Jesus is dead. For those of you who have no Christian experience, I'm not joking here. Christian doctrine dictates that Jesus is as alive today as he was on the day of his resurrection.
So that shows that when Jezus was alive christianity was a cult and evolved into a religion. Conclusion, religion and cults are human fabrications.
Bert
Let's take this one step further and teach kids that there are some 10k other gods. And give them equal time.
Bert
The organization
How so?
the number of followers, the adoption by the rulers
Agreed on those two.
I don't agree. What number? A 100? A 1000? 1001 is a religion? 1000 is a cult?
and whether it hinges on the worship of a living person (cult) or a dead one
Try walking into a Christian church and telling them Jesus is dead. For those of you who have no Christian experience, I'm not joking here. Christian doctrine dictates that Jesus is as alive today as he was on the day of his resurrection.
Or at best it show that a cult can become a religion: When Jezus was alive it was a cult. After that it became a religion. And that is just what it is: A fabrication by humans.
Bert
These things will cool down quickly up there. What's in their design that they can keep operating?
Bert
In the Netherlands the building code has targets for upcoming years. So, houses built in the future will have to be more energy efficient. Everybody knows this NOW, so technology is being developed because companies there will be a market (and if they don't develop, they won't have the technology to build).
This will probably be more complicated/require a bit more elaborate code in the US, with its various climate zones. But still, as you point out, air conditioning doesn't need to be energy intensive and you can have separate regulations for that.
And of course the same can be done with fuel efficiency requirements for cars. The change will be gradual, everybody (buyers of cars and producers of cars) know what to expect. It is where having government is very useful. If it acts, of course.
Bert
Well, the 6000 years is based on a calculation from a detailed list of descendants, with age at at which they got their offspring and their time of death given. It is not that god said the earth is 6000 of years old. So, if we are to take that a day is like a thousand years, then those guys that according to the bible lived for over 900 years lived, well, very very very very very very long.
Bert
OK, let's suppose you're not trolling and you're not unwilling to challenge your own views. Not unreasonable assumptions, so watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUxLR9hdorI
And that's based on objective machines (DNA sequencers and computers comparing the sequences). The link is highly recommended for schools and teachers.
That means no Adam, no garden of eden, no eternal sin, no Jesus dying for our sins.
Bert
Here's what talkorgins had to say about that:
(http://www.talkorigins.org/origins/postmonth/may05.html#run)
"In a religious context, 'faith' and 'truth' are almost synonyms. And faith is automatically good. If an idea is considered truth in your religion, and you don't have faith in it, that's a reflection on your failure as a faith-holder rather than the idea's failure to be true. If you don't have enough faith on a given subject, you should work harder at it.
In the sciences, that kind of faith is not a virtue; it's a personal failing. Imagine a bridge engineer being invited to "have more faith" that a design has enough steel in it to keep his bridge from collapsing. His faith has nothing to do with it; either the bridge stays up, or it falls down. Faith in the sense of 'letting yourself be persuaded without adequate evidence' is morally wrong in that context. If the bridge engineer does so, and people die in the collapse, he's murdered them.
Scientists, or the good ones, feel the same way about their theories that good engineers feel about their bridges. It's their job to make them right, not to convince themselves for their own emotional comfort that they're already right, pretty much, close enough.
If a scientist says "I have faith this theory is true," he doesn't or shouldn't mean it in the religious sense of "I commit myself to this no matter what the evidence may say, forever. Don't try to change my mind, here I stand."
Instead, he means or ought to mean "I've tested this theory, and I've seen the results of other people's tests, and I'm as sure as I can possibly get on the available evidence that this theory is as close to right as we can get. Unless something else really radical turns up. Keep me posted.""