I get the quantum mechanics principle, the mere act of observing changes the observed, that you can't measure the momentum or the position without affecting the other. But, just put a telescope in the orbit and it changed the universe?... come on guys, there should be some limits even on hyperbole.
I change the universe all the time. Of course, most of it will never be affected by those changes, but changes they are.
I wonder if anyone's tried combining some sort of sintering process with an electron microscope... it would be neat to be able to build up a complete molecular model of an object and then be able to reproduce it, layer by layer. It'd take forever, but you could replicate some pretty useful things really accurately. And once you've destructively scanned the item once, you can replicate it as much as the materials you have on hand allow. Great for making backups of mechanical parts, just in case someone stops making that specific part. Not so good if you don't get the printing accurate, as you'd have a part with stress lines most likely.
Only problem with that is: if you can replicate an object with this contraption, you can replicate the object using a similar contraption that doesn't contain the destructive/encryption element. So if the item ever leaves a secured area, anyone can replicate it.
So yeah; it could be used to send a key to a remote location... but you could just keep the plan for the key in an encrypted file and send that to whoever you want -- as you still can in this situation (anyone with the file and the key can replicate the item at any point in time).
Also worth noting that Avid owns Sibelius now too (music scoring software). They've become the one-stop shop for multimedia editing using excellent back-end tools with stale UI.
While Avid was available in the mid 90s, it wasn't what was being used professionally; it took a while to mature. Professionals, for the most part, were using custom hardware and Amigas.
Not only is DDT no longer effective against many mosquito populations, it's STILL effective against humans and birds of prey. Only took a century for us to realize that one.
I remember in 1988 getting my hands on a scanner, and doing frame-by-frame drawings, scanning them in, and using that to create animated sprites and backgrounds for a game. That was state of the art in 1988. At that point, video was still a splice-tape-record job, and visual effects were applied as either by-frame modifications to the film or as a filter applied during the filming process. Think "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".
I believe video editing software didn't come out for the Mac until 1986 -- it was something by Sorenson IIRC. I remember seeing a camera with its video out hooked up to the Plus and being amazed. The video was black and white and 512x386 pixels, of course.
And the real powerhorse for video editing 25 years ago was the Commodore Amiga and the Video Toaster (and Kitchen Sync). This setup was used by broadcast orgs and movie editors for a decade (until around 2000) at which point digital video started to take over. At this point, Video GIMP was a contender, along with Avid Studio and even iMovie.
So yeah; it's really only been the past 10 years or so that Windows and Mac offerings have surged ahead of Linux offerings (with Video GIMP getting its own project but not really moving any further ahead).
My wireless mouse was replaced by an iOS device about a decade ago. Pros: doubles as a small keyboard when needed and can even be used from time to time to make a phone call. cons: batteries are constantly being drained, too easy to misplace. At least they licked the orientation issue.
Adding to that, this article is about a technological solution to the grid problem. If such solutions aren't available, than the grid problem of inefficiency will be there, causing higher energy costs. Sure the infrastructure companies can change their pricing schemes, but without load balancing of some kind, the cost (and thereby price) of energy will have nowhere to go but up. If we become more efficient at using energy at the endpoint as well as at the grid level, that means less wasted energy. If the energy providers make more money from this, who cares? You'll still have fewer brownouts, price spikes, etc. to deal with.
I think you've totally misread what I wrote... "I think you sorely underestimate the impact a few degrees can have" is not the same as underestimating the impact it is having. People who may be overestimating the impact are studying all possible outcomes (including "nothing to see here, please move along") while those who may be underestimating the impact are refusing to follow the "if this happens/is happening, what could be the effects, and how do we deal with that?" line of thought.
The problem isn't whether local weather is warmer or cooler, or even if global temperature is warmer or cooler -- it's what effect a change in global temperature will have on the climate in which humans can survive comfortably. Things like the polar ice caps melting, global ocean temperatures rising and global weather patterns changing are facts I think almost everyone would agree with. The beginning of the mass extinction/migration event in the NW Pacific is something that is becoming steadily apparent.
Our world is changing, and it makes sense to model that change and try to figure out how we can prevent/adapt so that humans can, in general, have a comfortable existence in the future. Just brushing it all off as a scam helps only the very few in the short term, and nobody in the long term.
Depends on how you look at it; it means regional habitat change, as all regions are going to have to adapt to weather not acting the way it traditionally has. So you can get a sudden surge in pine beetles in areas where they historically haven't been much of an issue, and drained aquifers where there has traditionally been a lot of water available.
So not necessarily a good or a bad thing; just different, and either something that the environment will adapt to, or it won't. We don't really know enough to say which will happen.
To be fair, the extinction/migration event in the NW Pacific is only partly due to AGW: it's also due to oxygenation dead zones in the ocean, which are in turn caused by huge masses of man-made waste (mostly plastic) that are both floating on the surface and breaking down in the top layer of the ocean, preventing the natural convection currents. The fact that the polar ice is also melting has opened up alternative living areas for some species that are adaptable enough, and the others are just dying off.
Yeah; that was what took the extended deliberation -- deciding if it was enough. The prosecution probably *could* have provided enough in this circumstance, but the jury decided he didn't, likely because he was so confident that he'd already swayed us with the "obvious" circumstantial evidence.
This just proves the point I was making though -- even when the jurors can see through the grandstanding, it doesn't mean that they'll react positively or negatively to being cajoled along by the professionals -- they can be fickle (or methodical) in both directions.
This implies that this sort of system could solve the problem by turning off the intake overnight, except when the volume goes below a certain level. Better solution than what I suggested, for sure:)
Since 1880, Earth’s average surface temperature has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit (0.8 degrees Celsius)
In over 100 years the average has warmed 8/10's of a single degree.
Given the rate we are reproducing we will run out of resources as well as overpopulate ourselves into a corner well before we are done in by global warming.
I think you sorely underestimate the impact a few degrees can have on global climate, and the effects a slight change in global climate can have on our food supplies and energy consumption. The hyperbolic 10 degree shift is a long ways off (and we may self-correct before then), but any shift has consequences, and not all of them are in the distant future.
Reproduction rates self-correct in a generation or so; resource management is bounded by definition. But there's only a small wedge of potential planetary climate states that are favorable to humans.
Think about how opening the door on an oven or refrigerator affects temperature. This is a spike/drop that you want to recover from immediately to get back in the deadband, and professional appliances are optimized for this.
Now think about a refrigerator where you know the door won't be opened between certain hours. You can widen the deadband a bit as you won't be recovering from temp spikes, and so can handle a wider range without spoilage. Think of it as the compressor running more slowly during off-hours. Not only that, but the OTHER energy consumers in the fridge can go into low-power mode during this period too, such as any lights, internal sensors, stepping transformers, etc.
But as you say, we need some numbers to see how different usages can be optimized using this data before we just jump in and do it.
However, consider a home electrical heating system, or a hot water heating system (the two heaviest consumers): at night, you can turn the hot water heater off, and then spike it during the last hours of cheap electricity before morning, to bring it back up to temp while the cost is more affordable. For heaters, you can do the same thing, as the environment will hold that temperature for a while. Same goes for device chargers; instead of keeping the transformer powered up and a trickle charge all night, why not have the device pre-calculate how long it will take to charge, and do that during the optimal window within the period you expect it to be plugged in?
To me, an FM broadcast of information that can be acted on or not, as I decide, is far superior to a ThingNet. Let the information be free and the action local.
Bonus points to the appliance manufacturers that implement standby, energy-saving and regular modes that take multiple factors into consideration, such as price, usage patterns, and performance optimization. This is stuff we should be able to do right now without always-on bidirectional communication between all appliances.
"Since 1880, EarthÃ(TM)s average surface temperature has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit"
So we need to be alarmed because in 135 years the temperature has increased 1.4 degrees?
I am clearly missing something here.
You're missing the point that water freezes at 32 degrees*, so if the ice fields warm by 1.4 degrees, the result is a lot of messing with the world's oceans, which in turn means significant changes in the atmosphere. This is the sort of thing that can cause extinction events (and may currently be doing so). It can also cause issues for humans in the form of shifting weather patterns, shifting water availability, changed coastlines (water rises, but so do landmasses that used to be covered in ice), changed food supplies (the fisheries we currently depend on my vanish, the aquifers that feed grain supplies may dry up), and other more subtle shifts.
The other point is that you need be no more alarmed just before you hit the ground than you were after you fell out of an airplane -- the situation isn't likely to change for you from 3,000 feet to 1 foot. But when you make contact, the result is the same. So better to raise the alarm at 3,000 feet when there's still time to have someone intervene or deploy a parachute.
*Farenheit, in pure fresh water at standard pressure. The actual temperature melting the world's ice reserves is different but immaterial to this line of reasoning.
It may have been on average warmer, but at least in Minnesota we didn't get the massive heat wave weeks in the middle of the summer we use to get in the past.
Yup, that's due to arctic warming, causing a pressure slump that now pushes more moist air into that region during the summer months. Interestingly, it has also resulted in dryer weather on the west coast of North America, and colder weather down the east coast.
Slashdot Mirror
I get the quantum mechanics principle, the mere act of observing changes the observed, that you can't measure the momentum or the position without affecting the other. But, just put a telescope in the orbit and it changed the universe? ... come on guys, there should be some limits even on hyperbole.
I change the universe all the time. Of course, most of it will never be affected by those changes, but changes they are.
I wonder if anyone's tried combining some sort of sintering process with an electron microscope... it would be neat to be able to build up a complete molecular model of an object and then be able to reproduce it, layer by layer. It'd take forever, but you could replicate some pretty useful things really accurately. And once you've destructively scanned the item once, you can replicate it as much as the materials you have on hand allow. Great for making backups of mechanical parts, just in case someone stops making that specific part. Not so good if you don't get the printing accurate, as you'd have a part with stress lines most likely.
Only problem with that is: if you can replicate an object with this contraption, you can replicate the object using a similar contraption that doesn't contain the destructive/encryption element. So if the item ever leaves a secured area, anyone can replicate it.
So yeah; it could be used to send a key to a remote location... but you could just keep the plan for the key in an encrypted file and send that to whoever you want -- as you still can in this situation (anyone with the file and the key can replicate the item at any point in time).
Also worth noting that Avid owns Sibelius now too (music scoring software). They've become the one-stop shop for multimedia editing using excellent back-end tools with stale UI.
While Avid was available in the mid 90s, it wasn't what was being used professionally; it took a while to mature. Professionals, for the most part, were using custom hardware and Amigas.
Not only is DDT no longer effective against many mosquito populations, it's STILL effective against humans and birds of prey. Only took a century for us to realize that one.
He's probably under the impression that all Americans are dense, and thus do not float.
He's not that far off.
Disclaimer: I am a citizen of the United States of America, so I can make that joke. Spare me your accusations of European smugness.
Does that mean that no true American can be a witch?
I remember in 1988 getting my hands on a scanner, and doing frame-by-frame drawings, scanning them in, and using that to create animated sprites and backgrounds for a game. That was state of the art in 1988. At that point, video was still a splice-tape-record job, and visual effects were applied as either by-frame modifications to the film or as a filter applied during the filming process. Think "Who Framed Roger Rabbit".
You're not going back far enough.
The most recent scroll has only a small fragment deciphered so far.
It says "Move 'ZIG'".
I believe video editing software didn't come out for the Mac until 1986 -- it was something by Sorenson IIRC. I remember seeing a camera with its video out hooked up to the Plus and being amazed. The video was black and white and 512x386 pixels, of course.
And the real powerhorse for video editing 25 years ago was the Commodore Amiga and the Video Toaster (and Kitchen Sync). This setup was used by broadcast orgs and movie editors for a decade (until around 2000) at which point digital video started to take over. At this point, Video GIMP was a contender, along with Avid Studio and even iMovie.
So yeah; it's really only been the past 10 years or so that Windows and Mac offerings have surged ahead of Linux offerings (with Video GIMP getting its own project but not really moving any further ahead).
Instead of putting it in a mouse, why not put it in a wireless telephone with a touch sensitive display?
My wireless mouse was replaced by an iOS device about a decade ago. Pros: doubles as a small keyboard when needed and can even be used from time to time to make a phone call. cons: batteries are constantly being drained, too easy to misplace. At least they licked the orientation issue.
Adding to that, this article is about a technological solution to the grid problem. If such solutions aren't available, than the grid problem of inefficiency will be there, causing higher energy costs. Sure the infrastructure companies can change their pricing schemes, but without load balancing of some kind, the cost (and thereby price) of energy will have nowhere to go but up. If we become more efficient at using energy at the endpoint as well as at the grid level, that means less wasted energy. If the energy providers make more money from this, who cares? You'll still have fewer brownouts, price spikes, etc. to deal with.
I think you've totally misread what I wrote... "I think you sorely underestimate the impact a few degrees can have" is not the same as underestimating the impact it is having. People who may be overestimating the impact are studying all possible outcomes (including "nothing to see here, please move along") while those who may be underestimating the impact are refusing to follow the "if this happens/is happening, what could be the effects, and how do we deal with that?" line of thought.
The problem isn't whether local weather is warmer or cooler, or even if global temperature is warmer or cooler -- it's what effect a change in global temperature will have on the climate in which humans can survive comfortably. Things like the polar ice caps melting, global ocean temperatures rising and global weather patterns changing are facts I think almost everyone would agree with. The beginning of the mass extinction/migration event in the NW Pacific is something that is becoming steadily apparent.
Our world is changing, and it makes sense to model that change and try to figure out how we can prevent/adapt so that humans can, in general, have a comfortable existence in the future. Just brushing it all off as a scam helps only the very few in the short term, and nobody in the long term.
Hence my footnote stating that the argument I assumed the GP was going to make to my statement is immaterial to my line of reasoning :)
Depends on how you look at it; it means regional habitat change, as all regions are going to have to adapt to weather not acting the way it traditionally has. So you can get a sudden surge in pine beetles in areas where they historically haven't been much of an issue, and drained aquifers where there has traditionally been a lot of water available.
So not necessarily a good or a bad thing; just different, and either something that the environment will adapt to, or it won't. We don't really know enough to say which will happen.
To be fair, the extinction/migration event in the NW Pacific is only partly due to AGW: it's also due to oxygenation dead zones in the ocean, which are in turn caused by huge masses of man-made waste (mostly plastic) that are both floating on the surface and breaking down in the top layer of the ocean, preventing the natural convection currents. The fact that the polar ice is also melting has opened up alternative living areas for some species that are adaptable enough, and the others are just dying off.
Just to keep things fair and balanced :)
Yeah; that was what took the extended deliberation -- deciding if it was enough. The prosecution probably *could* have provided enough in this circumstance, but the jury decided he didn't, likely because he was so confident that he'd already swayed us with the "obvious" circumstantial evidence.
This just proves the point I was making though -- even when the jurors can see through the grandstanding, it doesn't mean that they'll react positively or negatively to being cajoled along by the professionals -- they can be fickle (or methodical) in both directions.
This implies that this sort of system could solve the problem by turning off the intake overnight, except when the volume goes below a certain level. Better solution than what I suggested, for sure :)
No, because many of the jurors were women on that one (and one actually knew the defendant by sight, which was a bit unnerving).
Wait what? Did you read the Summary?
In over 100 years the average has warmed 8/10's of a single degree.
Given the rate we are reproducing we will run out of resources as well as overpopulate ourselves into a corner well before we are done in by global warming.
I think you sorely underestimate the impact a few degrees can have on global climate, and the effects a slight change in global climate can have on our food supplies and energy consumption. The hyperbolic 10 degree shift is a long ways off (and we may self-correct before then), but any shift has consequences, and not all of them are in the distant future.
Reproduction rates self-correct in a generation or so; resource management is bounded by definition. But there's only a small wedge of potential planetary climate states that are favorable to humans.
...and now my beer is warm :(
Maybe the location sensor thought you were in the UK?
Think about how opening the door on an oven or refrigerator affects temperature. This is a spike/drop that you want to recover from immediately to get back in the deadband, and professional appliances are optimized for this.
Now think about a refrigerator where you know the door won't be opened between certain hours. You can widen the deadband a bit as you won't be recovering from temp spikes, and so can handle a wider range without spoilage. Think of it as the compressor running more slowly during off-hours. Not only that, but the OTHER energy consumers in the fridge can go into low-power mode during this period too, such as any lights, internal sensors, stepping transformers, etc.
But as you say, we need some numbers to see how different usages can be optimized using this data before we just jump in and do it.
However, consider a home electrical heating system, or a hot water heating system (the two heaviest consumers): at night, you can turn the hot water heater off, and then spike it during the last hours of cheap electricity before morning, to bring it back up to temp while the cost is more affordable. For heaters, you can do the same thing, as the environment will hold that temperature for a while. Same goes for device chargers; instead of keeping the transformer powered up and a trickle charge all night, why not have the device pre-calculate how long it will take to charge, and do that during the optimal window within the period you expect it to be plugged in?
I thought that was sarcasm. Was I wrong?
To me, an FM broadcast of information that can be acted on or not, as I decide, is far superior to a ThingNet. Let the information be free and the action local.
Bonus points to the appliance manufacturers that implement standby, energy-saving and regular modes that take multiple factors into consideration, such as price, usage patterns, and performance optimization. This is stuff we should be able to do right now without always-on bidirectional communication between all appliances.
"Since 1880, EarthÃ(TM)s average surface temperature has warmed by about 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit"
So we need to be alarmed because in 135 years the temperature has increased 1.4 degrees?
I am clearly missing something here.
You're missing the point that water freezes at 32 degrees*, so if the ice fields warm by 1.4 degrees, the result is a lot of messing with the world's oceans, which in turn means significant changes in the atmosphere. This is the sort of thing that can cause extinction events (and may currently be doing so). It can also cause issues for humans in the form of shifting weather patterns, shifting water availability, changed coastlines (water rises, but so do landmasses that used to be covered in ice), changed food supplies (the fisheries we currently depend on my vanish, the aquifers that feed grain supplies may dry up), and other more subtle shifts.
The other point is that you need be no more alarmed just before you hit the ground than you were after you fell out of an airplane -- the situation isn't likely to change for you from 3,000 feet to 1 foot. But when you make contact, the result is the same. So better to raise the alarm at 3,000 feet when there's still time to have someone intervene or deploy a parachute.
*Farenheit, in pure fresh water at standard pressure. The actual temperature melting the world's ice reserves is different but immaterial to this line of reasoning.
It may have been on average warmer, but at least in Minnesota we didn't get the massive heat wave weeks in the middle of the summer we use to get in the past.
Yup, that's due to arctic warming, causing a pressure slump that now pushes more moist air into that region during the summer months. Interestingly, it has also resulted in dryer weather on the west coast of North America, and colder weather down the east coast.