Only a single failed attempt at reproducing the experiment is insufficient to give up on it.
In the original "cold fusion" fiasco, there was a lot of misinformation or missing details about experimental apparatus. Only with a lot of work did it become clear that the experiment could not be duplicated.
Bubble fusion is not as far fetched as electrochemical fusion. Sonoluminescence is not well understood and there may very well be high enough temperatures to cause an occasional fusion reaction. After all, you can get plenty of fusion in a vacuum tube with only 150eV of potential... and that ain't much (basically, it's house voltage).
One suspicious thing, however, is the preloading of the bubbles from a neutron generator. I haven't read the paper, but I am at a loss for what effect that might have in terms of enhancing fusion.
"*sigh* That again. Look, science is exactly identical to the construction and testing of models. I presume you mean high-order fluid-dynamics based models in particular. These are much more highly constrained than some would have you believe.
It just isn't possible to build a fluid dynamical model that reproduces the contemporary climate well that gives you whatever arbitrary future prediction you want. Unfortunately, you'll have to try it for yourself before you can do other than take my word for it. Anyway, I'll presume you are taliking about that class of model below."
What you say is correct but misleading. Science is constructing hypotheses and then attempting to falsify them. Computer models were of course what I was referring to, and science is not just the constructing of computer models.
It is true, however, that you cannot arbitrarily create a fluid dynamics model to get the outcome you would desire, and it is true that the fluid dynamics models accurately reflect the physics within the limits of the programming - large grid sizes, for example.
However, the fluid dynamics models in use today are not perfect. For one thing, computational limitations cause all sorts of compromises... for example grid size, time resolution, calculation accuracy, equation simplification (throwing out nth order terms), representation of surface topography and other characteristics, cloud physics, input parameter set, etc. Unfortunately, some of these things can have dramatic effects - especially cloud characteristics. Also note that the models changed their prediction radically when the effects of aerosols were added. What else has been left out?
Weather has been shown to be chaotic. Climate may also be chaotic even if the models are not! We don't have the data set to be certain every way. Paleoclimatic data is spotty and uses a lot of assumptions to infer climate conditions from subtle indicators like isotope ratios or tree rings. There are known problems with these inferences, and there may be other problems we are unaware of. For example, tree ring sizes are affected by all sorts of factors - trying to convert them to temperature or precipitation is fraught with potential errors.
For all of these reasons, plus tweak factors (see below), it is quite possible to have models that accurately reflect the "current climate" (to our best estimate) that are wrong in the future. For one thing, they are modelling an atmosphere with CO2 concentrations from about 250-375 ppm up until now, but predicting for higher concentrations. Who is to say that n-th order effects don't become significant at higher levels? I give a trivial example, but there are other more significant issues, such as time scale. The time scale for which we have somewhat accurate climate data is very short, so a high order model can match that climate data and yet be very far off outside of that time range. In fact, the higher order models you use, the more likely this is, because the easier it is to find a match. It is like curve fitting... a trend extrapolated from an average will be a lot less surprising than one derived from an Nth order fit. The latter is much more sensitive to shorter term variations when projected into the future. Or, as a standard statistical rule... don't arbitrarily take a curve fit and extrapolate it outside the sample set and apply meaning to it. Fluid dynamical models are of course vastly more complex, and they have a reason to their projections other than a simple statistical model of the past (i.e. they are based on physical laws, not just statistics), but they are still prone to significant error simply because they do not have enough resolution and historical data to accurate;y grind 100 years into the future!
Assuming that were true [tweak factors](it isn't exactly true of any significant models I know of) that would not constitute a bias in a statistical sense. It would not systematically cause the overestimate or underestimate of any quantity.
Oh please! Of course there are tweak factors although they may have different names.
For example, how do you account for the influence of the Rocky Mountains or the Andes? Do you model every centimeter of them or do you have a factor that allows you to treat them at lower resolution? I am sure you have a factor of some sort - an averaging method, a hard constant altering certain parameters in certain grids, or something!
And of course these factors can systematically cause overestimates or underestimates of specific quantities. If they didn't have any effect, then the model would be insensitive to changes in them, in which case there wouldn't be any point in having them. If they do have an effect, it may be systematically wrong in one direction.
"Not in a consistent direction" is what one would hope for in converging on a complex truth, isn't it?
A field that is converging on accuracy usually converges (dError/dT < 0). A field which is seeking truth but is thrashing around because it is still rapidly changing exhibits less convergence. In other words, from watching the outputs, one can have a lot less confidence in the results.
A lot of faith is being put into complex models, and a lot of effort and brainpower is employed to improve those models. But that doesn't mean the models are right. It doesn't even mean that in theory the phenomenon can be accurately modeled!
An equivalent amount of effort has been put into weather models, which are also highly complex hydrodynamic models which attempt to predict the future. And the state of the art produces models which are useful out to about 5 days, and rapidly deteriorate after that. Climate is the time integral of weather, so for climate models to work, one has to assume that the short term weather effects average out, and do so in such a way that the hydrodynamic equations properly process those averages. That is a pretty strong assumption of mathematical properties of the atmosphere and related systems! And yet we know that there are extremely nonlinear systems at work. Ocean currents may very rapidly (in climate scales) and change patterns in ways that radically alter heat transport and hence climate. They don't do this in any linear sense... they cruise along until some complex set of conditions is met, and then they hit a positive feedback and simply flip state very quickly. There are other factors that affect climate that are equally non-linear. One that is very hard to forecast is the response of life to these changes, and how that response affects the energy budget and the carbon sequestration cycle (which is very poorly understood now). I could go on, but my point is that the system is way too complex for me to feel at all comfortable with the accuracy or even direction of the models... especially when dealing with major effects from the change of a trace gas in the atmosphere (CO2).
The Constitution requires not signing of the treaty, but ratification by the Senate of the United States. I have seen no information stating that the Senate signed this treaty. OTOH I have seen no information to the contrary.
In the US, signing a treaty is meaningless until it is ratified, as Clinton found out to his dismay.
I am not a spam expert, but it seems to me that if I had a lot of spam to send, and there were NO open relays anywhere, it wouldn't slow me down. I would simply use the same technique that a relay server uses to resolve the address of the true recipient email server, and send the message direct.
In researching this question, I came across sites that sell software that will do the above. See. Even worse, they will test email addresses against servers they find, locating the valid ones. And, some sell services that will do use this sort of software to send the spam.
Finally, where are most customers located? How about hotmail.com, aol.com and a few others. How hard is it to simply use THEM as the server for all the addresses going to those domains? Then you are not relaying at all. Of course, they may have filters that cut off an SMTP sender after N messages, unless it is a trusted address.
If the previous poster had ever been to the "town" of Mobile, he would realize it had an extremely small population and was out in the middle of nowhere.
Specifically, Mobile is about halfway between the tiny town of Maricopa and the small town of Gila Bend. The location was chosen because it was out in the middle of nowhere, on the railroad line.
Woah! CO2 does not create acid rain or air pollution! So obviously you will have a problem applying "common sense" to this problem. It's role in global warming is in dispute.
I think that anyone advocating for 'zero polution' is more than counterbalanced by the companies/lobbists who would like to have 'zero' controls.
Nonsense. Nobody would pay attention to companies/lobbies with such dumb ideas. But people pay a lot of attention to environmentalists whose real goal is zero pollution or even zero technology, but who hide it behind nice platitudes and the very distortions revealed in the book.
"As a side point, if technology/population without pollution is as impossible as you seem to think, then we're probably going to have a really, really hard time with space travel much beyond the orbit of the moon."
It depends on how you define pollution, and what kind of space travel you plan to have. Does the space ship have to be able to produce itself? Does it have to be able to make semiconductors (which you are obviously using in order to have this conversation)?
And of course, there is a huge difference between zero and acceptible. Do you really believe that zero pollution is necessary for space travel? Do you really believe that zero pollution is even possible in any human activity? Do you believe that nature itself doesn't pollute?
Here's a few clues:
Dioxins are produced by lightning induced natural forest fires.
Chlorinated hydrocarbons are produced by some life forms.
CO2 is produced by all animals.
Pesticides are produced by many plants.
Sulfur oxides are produced by volcanoes in huge amounts.
Get it? Zero pollution is not only a silly goal... it is impossible and unnatural!
No, I show that since they are neutral or left establishes their bias. If they were ALL neutral it would not. If they were neutral and left and right it would not.
I use the terms left and right very loosely here, btw.
Never forget that Scientific American has long had a strong left-wing bias. I have read both the Scheptical Environmentalist and the Scientific American attack on it. The only thing interesting about the attack in SA is that they devoted so much space to it.
Scientific American, in addition to its environmental bias, also has very strong biases in the area of arms control. Thus they always publish the most pessimistic scenario about anti-missile defense and related issues.
The fact that all articles they publish are either neutral or tilting towards the left/green establishes without doubt their bias.
The general principal which you advocate is valid, and I wish environmental advocates would use it (but they won't, because it conflicts with their real agenda).
However...
The problem with the IPCC data as fuel to your approach is that the weighted average itself is biased. For one thing, the field has been largely led by climate modelers, even though the validity of the models is highly questionable. Climate models, like weather models, have a lot of "tweak factors" which are used to adjust for factors that the model cannot incorporate. This means that models are tweaked to produce a match to history, and then their forecast is used.
But the historic timeline is too short for statistical valid matching, and as some paleoclimatologist friends of mine have shown, full of very dubious data. On top of that, this approach is based on the same fallacy as that of a successful mutual fund manager: chance predicts that some models will have good historical track records (as it does for mutual fund managers). Selection (publication selection) leads those models to be included as the best forecasters (fund managers are given more money if they have good track records). And yet the underlying physical model (trading theories for the fund managers) are unlikely to be very accurate, and the outcome may be strictly a result of the operations of chance (See Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb for an odd but insightful look at this).
This is one reason that the IPCC consensus estimate changes significantly (and not in a convergent direction) from one report to the next.
When we add to this the politicization of the field, and the resulting funding and publication bias, the situation gets even worse.
Thus, the weighting factors are very hard to get right.
In addition, a cost/benefit analysis requires a good analysis of the cost of remediation. In the environmental area, most analysis goes towards the "benefit" (degrees of avoided warming per century, or in your case, avoided economic losses from pessimistic outcomes). But little focus is given to the cost (economic impact with trickle-down costs). Since the economic system seems to be as hard to predict as the climate, this means that we need to take the most pessimistic views of the economic cost of remediation into our cost benefit analysis also!
BTW... most of the better arguments I have seen against CO2 reductions are not by free market extremists, and I think you mischaracterize those of us who end up siding with the corporations. All but a very few free market advocates understand that there are externalities - costs which are passed outside the market system with no corresponding cost inside the system, and that the market does not deal well with externalities (unless they can be internalized). Thus we know that invoking the wisdom of the market to solve some economic goals is just as silly as invoking the wisdom of environmental absolutism.
BTW... it might surprise you to know that there is a lot of big corporate support for CO2 remediation. For example, Enron tried to get the bush administration to *support* the Kyoto Protocol (fortunately they got nothing for their money). Other companies have done the same. The reason is simple self interest - they see an advantage for themselves in the post-Kyoto environment. In the case of Enron, they wanted to trade in emissions credits, which Kyoto would greatly increase. They also had lower carbon fuels in their inventory than many competitors, which gave them a competitive advantage.
An acquaintance of mine, who stopped researcher and started business as a Global Warming consultant to business, recently was lamenting that nobody wanted to hear his anti-Kyoto message any more becaus they had figured out how to profit from Kyoto. So those who imagine that big business is killing Kyoto in the US are not well informed.
There are ways in which the market can help, however. For example, privately owned forest land is definitely treated better than public forest land, because the owner has a long term investment in it. This is a market "solution" to some environmental issues (not including biodiversity on that land). Likewise, both sides have recognized that tradeable emission rights are a good way to reduce emissions if reducing emissions is really worth the cost of the program.
On a side note, most environmentalists do not get up in arms against farming unless it is "corporate farming" or uses "nasty chemicals." And yet, farming has transformed the landscape of the northern hemisphere more than any other act of man, and smaller farms requires more land per amount of crop produced than the more-efficient larger (often corporate) farms! Framing has destroyed (transformed?) huge swaths of environment. This bias shows the marxist viewpoint of much of the environmental movement.
supernova87a states: "Given these choices, in the absence of information, isn't it more logical to bet on the second? Isn't it safer to assume the worst case scenario? I.e. let's stop doing the things that people suggest may be harming the environment, because if they actually do, we'll be screwed in 50 years? And if they're not harming the environment, we did no harm anyway?"
In fact, this principle is starting to be used by environmentalist to justify all sorts of policies that they otherwise cannot support with evidence.
The problem with this principal is that in an uncertain, complex system, your actions to mitigate harm may themselves cause harm. Environmentalists have a narrow definition of harm - for example they rarely recognize that their actions may harm or even result in the death of those people who are at the edge of existence economically. The banning of DDT is one example - with the death rate from maliaria around a million a year now, when it was much lower before. Did anybody do a "least harm" analysis there?
Furthermore, it is unscientific in the sense that it is really saying "We don't have proof of X, but we are going to act as if X is true, and take actions that force people to change their behavior as a result."
For example, if in fact the costs of CO2 mitigation are high, they may lead to significant damage to third world economies. This would lead to increased environmental damage in the third world areas as those people are more desperate and less able to import what they need... so they strip more forests, overfish more fish, etc. They also have more kids - the greater the uncertainty of survival of kids, the more kids people have. The result: population growth.
The correct thing to do is do a cost benefit analysis (a phrase detested by environmentalists), and to account for these uncertainties.
The other important thing to realize is that we have greatly reduced the amount of most pollutants (with the exception of CO2 if one buys the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis). But environmentalists are pushing for zero pollution (which means zero technology which means zero population).
The biggest problem with the environmental movement is that it is not satisfied with success. You don't need to go to "The Skeptical Environmentalist" to find out that pollution in many areas is vastly decreased from previous levels. Another problem is that the environmental movement invariable sees progress and capitalism as the villain. As a result it is blind to the fact that increased prosperity leads to decreased birth rate (one of the main goals of environmentlaists), and that it leaves society with the option of considering environmental choices without killing people in the process
Another problem with the environmentalist movement is that much of it has been hijacked by extremists who use it as a weapon against capitalism. Thus we have every project obstructed by these "environmentalists." For example, here in Arizona there was a project to build a toxic waste incinerator (a *good* thing for the environment since it would destroy most of the toxicity). Greenpeace sent agitators down to block the project, and it was ultimately shelved. That incinerator would have been out in the middle of the Sonoran Desert ( a *good* place - far from people).
Finally, I would comment that most environmentalists in this day and age cannot do a good job of answering the question of "why preserve the environment?" Or more directly, "why preserve this particular aspect of the environment?" One tends to get answers that imply that it is an absolute good (essentially in a religious sense) to preserve the environment. But that sort of reasoning gives no guidance as to how to do that (other than the mass elimination of the human race - also advocated by some environmentalists). Also, the *good* that can come from environmental change is always discounted. I have friends who research the beneficial effects of increased CO2 on plants. They have trouble getting funding due to the politicization of the global warming issue. Nobody wants to find good outcomes!
Nor can they define what a desirable environment is. Some want us to go back to the hunter gatherer days (ignoring the fact that those hunter gatherers caused major species extinctions and major environmental change). Some simply want us to freeze and preserve the current environment in whatever state it is (ignoring Darwin essentially). Others want man to have no impact on the environment. A few want to preserve the environment for the future (I would call the more reasonable of these "conservationists" as opposed to environmentalists).
Almost none recognize that man *is* part of the environment and the actions of *man* are by definition "natural." Recognizing that allows more rational choices to be considered. It leads us to force a definition of goals for the environment, and that can allow us to do benefit/harm analysis (called cost-benefit analysis technically but that term is hated by many environmentalists, probably because of both their anti-capitalist feelings and their absolutism).
There is an enormous amount of informatino available on this. I recommend a recent book - "The Skeptical Environmentalist" which gives a lot of the history.
As per the specifics of your post... There were both petitions. In both cases, most of the signers were not experts in the appropriate field (climatology).
There is no dispute that global warming has occurred in the last century. There is significant dispute as to whether mankind is to blame for that dispute, although the "anti" side is frequently suppressed in the popular media. It is also true that the earth is coming out of a temporary cooling period, and that it is (by historical standards) in a short warming period between ice ages. It is also true that there was a big scare in the late 1970's where "scientists" were saying that the next ice age was about to strike.
I suggest you read up on this subject. The information isn't hard to find, although you want to be sure to read both sides of the debate.
The trouble with PGP is: Once it becomes so widespread that the government has to fear loss of face in front of a court, other countries will do the same as the UK: Pass a law that requires you to hand over the key, or else...
IANAL, but in the US, if the message is part of an investigation, they could get a warrant requiring you to turn over the key. No new law needed.
Many in the industry (especially George Gilder) have argued that the current regulations have hurt competitive DSL. The reason is that current regulations apparently force the phone company's to wsell holesale DSL access to third party providers with no profit or even at a loss. As a result, phone companies have no incentive to invest in the system upgrades to make DSL suitable. My RBOC, QWest, has announced that it will do no more system upgrades for DSL until the regulation is changed.
It sounds like the regulations were well intentioned but poorly designed - a common problem with regulation! In addition, the phone companies have non-regulated businesses in which they would rather invest.
I personally believe that monopolies (whether RBOC's or water companies or M$FT) should be forced to divest themselves of all other businesses. You are either a monopoly or not. If you are a monopoly, all of your business is subject to public utility regulation. If you are not, you aren't. The current approach is to allow monopolies to also engage in non-monopoly businesses, so they screw their monopoly customers in order to invest in their other businesses, or use their guaranteed monopoly-based cash flows to subsidize unfair competition in other areas (a la Microsoft).
BTW, someone asked about the Powell name. Yes, Michael Powell is the son of Colin Powell.
So what are we to do? Apparently we must keep our eyes tightly shut, from birth, except in complete darkness. Otherwise the light will damage them!
Sigh!
Point in time recovery is not yet available AFAIK. This is one critical feature that distinguishes commercial databases from Postgresql.
My company is using Postgresql in a traditional OLTP context, and we would very much like to have the point in time recovery. At some point it could make the difference between us continuing in the open source mode or switching to (ugh) Oracle!
I do understand that PIT recovery is being worked on. I wish I had time to help!
The reason that actors and other performers are often very highly paid is because the constitute a marketing brand. It is the brand that has the value (and brands DO have a very marketable value). But you can't separate the brand from the person, so the person ends up commanding big bucks.
The major advances in aviation in the 1950's were sufficient to provide a number of platforms that are so cost effective as to not be worth replacing. B-52's and P-3's are examples.
It is unfortunate you got flamed! Most hams welcome folks who would like to get into the hobby.
Most ham radio today requires no morse code testing. The technical tests are relatively easy to master and don't require hundreds of hours of studying. There are classes in most areas for prospective hams, or you can buy test study books and cram for them.
Very few hams have tens of thousands of dollars in equipment. You can get on VHF/UHF radio for a few hundred dollars (less if you buy surplus at a hamfest swapmeet). Add to that a $100 packet controller and you have digital modes. HF gear (where you operate by either ground-wave or ionospheric propagation) is more expensive, but you can definitely get a complete station for under $1000.
Or you could really get into the spirit of ham radio and build your own - although I would not recommend building a receiver unless you have a lot of time and expertise. But transmitters (except for SSB) are easy to build. I built my first transmitter.
Before you go after the small amount of exclusive ham radio bandwidth, why don't you go after the vast amounts of bandwidth wasted by broadcast television. Each television station today wastes about 30 MHz (counting empty channels required for interference protection)! That is the equivalent of the ENTIRE shortwave spectrum, of which ham radio occupies little.
The ham bands above the shortwave spectrum are perhaps a more interesting target, until you consider that many of them are shared (900 MHZ, parts of the 75cm band) and others are tiny (The most popular 2 meter band is only 4 MHz wide).
The ham radio bands are scattered through the spectrum (to allow for experimentation at different wavelengths) and thus do not represent any contiguous chunk of bandwidth.
Finally, ham radio has a number of justifications - often more important than the desire for bandwidth by internet nerds to be first to reply to a/. post! These include education, research and disaster assistance.
You may think that the latter is superfluous, but it is still very useful. For example, the Hurricane Watch Net (www.hwn.org) provides valuable assistance to the National Hurricane Center and has been given awards by them and other organizations. Why? Because we communicate with people who do not have sat-phones and whose cell-phones (if they have any) have been disabled by the hurricane. We provide a central communications frequency for those who need to coordinate information on a hurricane - we have had rescue helicopters, warships, hurricane hunter aircraft, ships-in-distress, government research organizations and state department entities contact us in emergencies (contact with non-ham entities is only legal in an emergency). They wouldn't do that if they had the sort of communications you envision.
Likewise, the Skywarn organizations provides invaluable life-saving data to the NWS through ham radio. Why ham radio and not cell phone? Ham radio provides trained operators that filter information for NWS. It also provides a controlled shared frequency for coordinating communications among the many spotters. NWS invests significant resources to train and operate the spotter networks.
Hams help with many other disasters - partly because we can deploy equipment in unplanned for situations, partly because we have redundant and highly varied communications assets, and partly because we often become an inter-organizational communications mechanism for organizations that don't have interoperability.
Ham radio also provides a last-ditch communications method. When your phones are overloaded, or your other methods are out, the *simplest* transmitter to construct or own (if you are poor in the third world) is a CW (morse code) transmitter. All it requires is an oscillator that can be turned on and off, and an easily made antenna.
Ham radio also helps young people learn useful technical and organizational skills.
My father started his electronics interest with ham radio, went on to invent the VLF submarine antenna (his doctoral thesis) and is a respected scientist.
I started with an interest in ham radio. It led me to jobs (while in high school and college) as a broadcast engineer. When I joined the Navy, I was already a trained radio operator, and thus was able to become an airborne radio operator without going to a one year school for it. I got into engineering in college because of ham radio, and that let me into computers, and hence 35 years of computer geekdom. A person met through ham radio led me to group of computer geeks whom I have worked with for the last 30 years. Through ham radio contacts, I have met people in many interesting positions, making friends and also getting personal tours of such places as the Stanford Linear Accelerator and the Multiple Mirror Telescope. Ham radio led me to start my current company, which originally made embedded controller based ham radio repeater controllers. Ham radio has led to adventures including a NASA research expedition, disaster relief in Mexico City after the earthquake, and various other things.
Ham radio operators have developed new technology for use in ham radio, and even in this age of electronic engineering continue to do so. For example, extremely high altitude remote sensing balloons are currently a favorite hobby of some ham nerds.
As requested by Kevin, who wrote the original article, I am posting my email to him that originally replied to this article.
>You're making my column oversimplistic by oversimplifying it.
>My main argument is not that we can "prevent interference." It's the following, quoting from the piece:
>In practice, there are still limits on how many users can communicate effectively, depending on available frequencies, power, competing uses and the design of >transmitters and receivers. The benefit of open spectrum is that it's more efficient than the traditional licensing model, and that gap will widen over time.
>
There's much more detail in the issue of Release 1.0 [release1-0.com] that the column was based on (though unfortunately it's not available for free).
>And no, I don't claim to be an engineer... which is why I rely on engineers like David Reed, Tim Shepard and Dewayne Hendricks who've done work in this area (both >theory and practice).
First of all, I apologize for the tone (the attack on non-engineers). As a piece of technical writing, your article is quite good IMHO. And the subject is a good one and I am glad you brought it up. It is certainly true that spectrum regulation could use the sorts of changes proposed.
I have seen way too much truly ignorant writing on technical topics, and yours does not fall into that category.
I was, however, concerned about the impression many readers might get, and which I got (from a not overly careful reading), and it is that which I was trying to deal with.
I just reread your article. It seems to argue for fully open spectrum, which I still think is impractical. I think it leaves non-engineers with the idea that if we just did away with all this regulation, wonderful stuff would happen. I realize that is not exactly what you are saying, but I think that is what some readers would get out of it. It also has some oversimplistic quotes (perhaps from real experts in the field) that lend to that impression. It is not so much what you are saying, but what I feared people who did a quick read might come away wait.
The quotes that leave a dangerous impression range from highly insightful (but not exactly correct) to just plain wrong.
These are:
Benkler summarizes open spectrum's most startling claim: "Bandwidth is just a parameter in an equation; it's not a naturally bounded resource."
This really is not true. Bandwidth *is* a naturally bounded resource. There is only so much to go around at any location and point of time for a given need. For example, ionospheric bounce radios ("short wave") can only operate in a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and for communications between specific points, that are shrinks even further. If one needs that form of communication, there are HARD (natural) limits on the bandwidth availble. What he should have said is that bandwidth is one of the parameters, not the only parameter, to be considered in spectrum regulation and engineering design.
Communication is inherently an exercise in computation.
This is insightful, but easily leads one to assume that the Moore's Law rule of computation can be applied to communication. In fact, computation is only a part of the equation, but one which has risen from almost none of the process to significant part. I tried to point out limits that cannot be overcome by improved computation. I believe that in the last 10 years we have seen most of the improvement that computation can bring to communications. However, creating larger unlicensed bands would certainly allow those improvements to be applied in a way that adds a lot of transmission capability compared to the current system.
One variant, called ultra-wideband, uses such low power that it can share frequencies with licensed services, because to them it is indistinguishable from background noise.
This statement, which the promoters of UWB keep making, is really not true at all. UWB is, as you (unlike most other commentators) note, is a variant of spread spectrum, and as such it has the same limitations. The main practical difference is that it operates over a very wide spectrum (higher processing gain) so it produces *less* interference than any other system - all other variables held constant.
Overall, I think your article was a good public service.
Slashdot Mirror
In the original "cold fusion" fiasco, there was a lot of misinformation or missing details about experimental apparatus. Only with a lot of work did it become clear that the experiment could not be duplicated.
Bubble fusion is not as far fetched as electrochemical fusion. Sonoluminescence is not well understood and there may very well be high enough temperatures to cause an occasional fusion reaction. After all, you can get plenty of fusion in a vacuum tube with only 150eV of potential... and that ain't much (basically, it's house voltage).
One suspicious thing, however, is the preloading of the bubbles from a neutron generator. I haven't read the paper, but I am at a loss for what effect that might have in terms of enhancing fusion.
"*sigh* That again. Look, science is exactly identical to the construction and testing of models. I presume you mean high-order fluid-dynamics based models in particular. These are much more highly constrained than some would have you believe.
It just isn't possible to build a fluid dynamical model that reproduces the contemporary climate well that gives you whatever arbitrary future prediction you want. Unfortunately, you'll have to try it for yourself before you can do other than take my word for it. Anyway, I'll presume you are taliking about that class of model below."
What you say is correct but misleading. Science is constructing hypotheses and then attempting to falsify them. Computer models were of course what I was referring to, and science is not just the constructing of computer models.
It is true, however, that you cannot arbitrarily create a fluid dynamics model to get the outcome you would desire, and it is true that the fluid dynamics models accurately reflect the physics within the limits of the programming - large grid sizes, for example.
However, the fluid dynamics models in use today are not perfect. For one thing, computational limitations cause all sorts of compromises... for example grid size, time resolution, calculation accuracy, equation simplification (throwing out nth order terms), representation of surface topography and other characteristics, cloud physics, input parameter set, etc. Unfortunately, some of these things can have dramatic effects - especially cloud characteristics. Also note that the models changed their prediction radically when the effects of aerosols were added. What else has been left out?
Weather has been shown to be chaotic. Climate may also be chaotic even if the models are not! We don't have the data set to be certain every way. Paleoclimatic data is spotty and uses a lot of assumptions to infer climate conditions from subtle indicators like isotope ratios or tree rings. There are known problems with these inferences, and there may be other problems we are unaware of. For example, tree ring sizes are affected by all sorts of factors - trying to convert them to temperature or precipitation is fraught with potential errors.
For all of these reasons, plus tweak factors (see below), it is quite possible to have models that accurately reflect the "current climate" (to our best estimate) that are wrong in the future. For one thing, they are modelling an atmosphere with CO2 concentrations from about 250-375 ppm up until now, but predicting for higher concentrations. Who is to say that n-th order effects don't become significant at higher levels? I give a trivial example, but there are other more significant issues, such as time scale. The time scale for which we have somewhat accurate climate data is very short, so a high order model can match that climate data and yet be very far off outside of that time range. In fact, the higher order models you use, the more likely this is, because the easier it is to find a match. It is like curve fitting... a trend extrapolated from an average will be a lot less surprising than one derived from an Nth order fit. The latter is much more sensitive to shorter term variations when projected into the future. Or, as a standard statistical rule... don't arbitrarily take a curve fit and extrapolate it outside the sample set and apply meaning to it. Fluid dynamical models are of course vastly more complex, and they have a reason to their projections other than a simple statistical model of the past (i.e. they are based on physical laws, not just statistics), but they are still prone to significant error simply because they do not have enough resolution and historical data to accurate;y grind 100 years into the future!
Assuming that were true [tweak factors](it isn't exactly true of any significant models I know of) that would not constitute a bias in a statistical sense. It would not systematically cause the overestimate or underestimate of any quantity.
Oh please! Of course there are tweak factors although they may have different names.
For example, how do you account for the influence of the Rocky Mountains or the Andes? Do you model every centimeter of them or do you have a factor that allows you to treat them at lower resolution? I am sure you have a factor of some sort - an averaging method, a hard constant altering certain parameters in certain grids, or something!
And of course these factors can systematically cause overestimates or underestimates of specific quantities. If they didn't have any effect, then the model would be insensitive to changes in them, in which case there wouldn't be any point in having them. If they do have an effect, it may be systematically wrong in one direction.
"Not in a consistent direction" is what one would hope for in converging on a complex truth, isn't it?
A field that is converging on accuracy usually converges (dError/dT < 0). A field which is seeking truth but is thrashing around because it is still rapidly changing exhibits less convergence. In other words, from watching the outputs, one can have a lot less confidence in the results.
A lot of faith is being put into complex models, and a lot of effort and brainpower is employed to improve those models. But that doesn't mean the models are right. It doesn't even mean that in theory the phenomenon can be accurately modeled!
An equivalent amount of effort has been put into weather models, which are also highly complex hydrodynamic models which attempt to predict the future. And the state of the art produces models which are useful out to about 5 days, and rapidly deteriorate after that. Climate is the time integral of weather, so for climate models to work, one has to assume that the short term weather effects average out, and do so in such a way that the hydrodynamic equations properly process those averages. That is a pretty strong assumption of mathematical properties of the atmosphere and related systems!
And yet we know that there are extremely nonlinear systems at work. Ocean currents may very rapidly (in climate scales) and change patterns in ways that radically alter heat transport and hence climate. They don't do this in any linear sense... they cruise along until some complex set of conditions is met, and then they hit a positive feedback and simply flip state very quickly. There are other factors that affect climate that are equally non-linear. One that is very hard to forecast is the response of life to these changes, and how that response affects the energy budget and the carbon sequestration cycle (which is very poorly understood now). I could go on, but my point is that the system is way too complex for me to feel at all comfortable with the accuracy or even direction of the models... especially when dealing with major effects from the change of a trace gas in the atmosphere (CO2).
The Constitution requires not signing of the treaty, but ratification by the Senate of the United States. I have seen no information stating that the Senate signed this treaty. OTOH I have seen no information to the contrary.
In the US, signing a treaty is meaningless until it is ratified, as Clinton found out to his dismay.
Use the PREVIEW BUTTON, Luke!
The site selling spam software is:
http://www.marketing-2000.net/
In researching this question, I came across sites that sell software that will do the above. See
Even worse, they will test email addresses against servers they find, locating the valid ones. And, some sell services that will do use this sort of software to send the spam.
Finally, where are most customers located? How about hotmail.com, aol.com and a few others. How hard is it to simply use THEM as the server for all the addresses going to those domains? Then you are not relaying at all. Of course, they may have filters that cut off an SMTP sender after N messages, unless it is a trusted address.
If the previous poster had ever been to the "town" of Mobile, he would realize it had an extremely small population and was out in the middle of nowhere.
Specifically, Mobile is about halfway between the tiny town of Maricopa and the small town of Gila Bend. The location was chosen because it was out in the middle of nowhere, on the railroad line.
Woah! CO2 does not create acid rain or air pollution! So obviously you will have a problem applying "common sense" to this problem. It's role in global warming is in dispute.
Right on. I wonder if they know what the term means!
Power to the.. err... capitalists! That's me!
I think that anyone advocating for 'zero polution' is more than counterbalanced by the companies/lobbists who would like to have 'zero' controls.
Nonsense. Nobody would pay attention to companies/lobbies with such dumb ideas. But people pay a lot of attention to environmentalists whose real goal is zero pollution or even zero technology, but who hide it behind nice platitudes and the very distortions revealed in the book.
"As a side point, if technology/population without pollution is as impossible as you seem to think, then we're probably going to have a really, really hard time with space travel much beyond the orbit of the moon."
It depends on how you define pollution, and what kind of space travel you plan to have. Does the space ship have to be able to produce itself? Does it have to be able to make semiconductors (which you are obviously using in order to have this conversation)?
And of course, there is a huge difference between zero and acceptible. Do you really believe that zero pollution is necessary for space travel? Do you really believe that zero pollution is even possible in any human activity? Do you believe that nature itself doesn't pollute?
Here's a few clues:
Dioxins are produced by lightning induced natural forest fires.
Chlorinated hydrocarbons are produced by some life forms.
CO2 is produced by all animals.
Pesticides are produced by many plants.
Sulfur oxides are produced by volcanoes in huge amounts.
Get it? Zero pollution is not only a silly goal... it is impossible and unnatural!
No, I show that since they are neutral or left establishes their bias. If they were ALL neutral it would not. If they were neutral and left and right it would not.
I use the terms left and right very loosely here, btw.
Never forget that Scientific American has long had a strong left-wing bias. I have read both the Scheptical Environmentalist and the Scientific American attack on it. The only thing interesting about the attack in SA is that they devoted so much space to it.
Scientific American, in addition to its environmental bias, also has very strong biases in the area of arms control. Thus they always publish the most pessimistic scenario about anti-missile defense and related issues.
The fact that all articles they publish are either neutral or tilting towards the left/green establishes without doubt their bias.
The general principal which you advocate is valid, and I wish environmental advocates would use it (but they won't, because it conflicts with their real agenda).
However...
The problem with the IPCC data as fuel to your approach is that the weighted average itself is biased. For one thing, the field has been largely led by climate modelers, even though the validity of the models is highly questionable. Climate models, like weather models, have a lot of "tweak factors" which are used to adjust for factors that the model cannot incorporate. This means that models are tweaked to produce a match to history, and then their forecast is used.
But the historic timeline is too short for statistical valid matching, and as some paleoclimatologist friends of mine have shown, full of very dubious data. On top of that, this approach is based on the same fallacy as that of a successful mutual fund manager: chance predicts that some models will have good historical track records (as it does for mutual fund managers). Selection (publication selection) leads those models to be included as the best forecasters (fund managers are given more money if they have good track records). And yet the underlying physical model (trading theories for the fund managers) are unlikely to be very accurate, and the outcome may be strictly a result of the operations of chance (See Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in the Markets and in Life by Nassim Nicholas Taleb for an odd but insightful look at this).
This is one reason that the IPCC consensus estimate changes significantly (and not in a convergent direction) from one report to the next.
When we add to this the politicization of the field, and the resulting funding and publication bias, the situation gets even worse.
Thus, the weighting factors are very hard to get right.
In addition, a cost/benefit analysis requires a good analysis of the cost of remediation. In the environmental area, most analysis goes towards the "benefit" (degrees of avoided warming per century, or in your case, avoided economic losses from pessimistic outcomes). But little focus is given to the cost (economic impact with trickle-down costs). Since the economic system seems to be as hard to predict as the climate, this means that we need to take the most pessimistic views of the economic cost of remediation into our cost benefit analysis also!
BTW... most of the better arguments I have seen against CO2 reductions are not by free market extremists, and I think you mischaracterize those of us who end up siding with the corporations. All but a very few free market advocates understand that there are externalities - costs which are passed outside the market system with no corresponding cost inside the system, and that the market does not deal well with externalities (unless they can be internalized). Thus we know that invoking the wisdom of the market to solve some economic goals is just as silly as invoking the wisdom of environmental absolutism.
BTW... it might surprise you to know that there is a lot of big corporate support for CO2 remediation. For example, Enron tried to get the bush administration to *support* the Kyoto Protocol (fortunately they got nothing for their money). Other companies have done the same. The reason is simple self interest - they see an advantage for themselves in the post-Kyoto environment. In the case of Enron, they wanted to trade in emissions credits, which Kyoto would greatly increase. They also had lower carbon fuels in their inventory than many competitors, which gave them a competitive advantage.
An acquaintance of mine, who stopped researcher and started business as a Global Warming consultant to business, recently was lamenting that nobody wanted to hear his anti-Kyoto message any more becaus they had figured out how to profit from Kyoto. So those who imagine that big business is killing Kyoto in the US are not well informed.
There are ways in which the market can help, however. For example, privately owned forest land is definitely treated better than public forest land, because the owner has a long term investment in it. This is a market "solution" to some environmental issues (not including biodiversity on that land). Likewise, both sides have recognized that tradeable emission rights are a good way to reduce emissions if reducing emissions is really worth the cost of the program.
On a side note, most environmentalists do not get up in arms against farming unless it is "corporate farming" or uses "nasty chemicals." And yet, farming has transformed the landscape of the northern hemisphere more than any other act of man, and smaller farms requires more land per amount of crop produced than the more-efficient larger (often corporate) farms! Framing has destroyed (transformed?) huge swaths of environment. This bias shows the marxist viewpoint of much of the environmental movement.
In fact, this principle is starting to be used by environmentalist to justify all sorts of policies that they otherwise cannot support with evidence.
The problem with this principal is that in an uncertain, complex system, your actions to mitigate harm may themselves cause harm. Environmentalists have a narrow definition of harm - for example they rarely recognize that their actions may harm or even result in the death of those people who are at the edge of existence economically. The banning of DDT is one example - with the death rate from maliaria around a million a year now, when it was much lower before. Did anybody do a "least harm" analysis there?
Furthermore, it is unscientific in the sense that it is really saying "We don't have proof of X, but we are going to act as if X is true, and take actions that force people to change their behavior as a result."
For example, if in fact the costs of CO2 mitigation are high, they may lead to significant damage to third world economies. This would lead to increased environmental damage in the third world areas as those people are more desperate and less able to import what they need... so they strip more forests, overfish more fish, etc. They also have more kids - the greater the uncertainty of survival of kids, the more kids people have. The result: population growth.
The correct thing to do is do a cost benefit analysis (a phrase detested by environmentalists), and to account for these uncertainties.
The other important thing to realize is that we have greatly reduced the amount of most pollutants (with the exception of CO2 if one buys the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis). But environmentalists are pushing for zero pollution (which means zero technology which means zero population).
The biggest problem with the environmental movement is that it is not satisfied with success. You don't need to go to "The Skeptical Environmentalist" to find out that pollution in many areas is vastly decreased from previous levels. Another problem is that the environmental movement invariable sees progress and capitalism as the villain. As a result it is blind to the fact that increased prosperity leads to decreased birth rate (one of the main goals of environmentlaists), and that it leaves society with the option of considering environmental choices without killing people in the process
Another problem with the environmentalist movement is that much of it has been hijacked by extremists who use it as a weapon against capitalism. Thus we have every project obstructed by these "environmentalists." For example, here in Arizona there was a project to build a toxic waste incinerator (a *good* thing for the environment since it would destroy most of the toxicity). Greenpeace sent agitators down to block the project, and it was ultimately shelved. That incinerator would have been out in the middle of the Sonoran Desert ( a *good* place - far from people).
Finally, I would comment that most environmentalists in this day and age cannot do a good job of answering the question of "why preserve the environment?" Or more directly, "why preserve this particular aspect of the environment?" One tends to get answers that imply that it is an absolute good (essentially in a religious sense) to preserve the environment. But that sort of reasoning gives no guidance as to how to do that (other than the mass elimination of the human race - also advocated by some environmentalists). Also, the *good* that can come from environmental change is always discounted. I have friends who research the beneficial effects of increased CO2 on plants. They have trouble getting funding due to the politicization of the global warming issue. Nobody wants to find good outcomes!
Nor can they define what a desirable environment is. Some want us to go back to the hunter gatherer days (ignoring the fact that those hunter gatherers caused major species extinctions and major environmental change). Some simply want us to freeze and preserve the current environment in whatever state it is (ignoring Darwin essentially). Others want man to have no impact on the environment. A few want to preserve the environment for the future (I would call the more reasonable of these "conservationists" as opposed to environmentalists).
Almost none recognize that man *is* part of the environment and the actions of *man* are by definition "natural." Recognizing that allows more rational choices to be considered. It leads us to force a definition of goals for the environment, and that can allow us to do benefit/harm analysis (called cost-benefit analysis technically but that term is hated by many environmentalists, probably because of both their anti-capitalist feelings and their absolutism).
There is an enormous amount of informatino available on this. I recommend a recent book - "The Skeptical Environmentalist" which gives a lot of the history.
As per the specifics of your post... There were both petitions. In both cases, most of the signers were not experts in the appropriate field (climatology).
There is no dispute that global warming has occurred in the last century. There is significant dispute as to whether mankind is to blame for that dispute, although the "anti" side is frequently suppressed in the popular media. It is also true that the earth is coming out of a temporary cooling period, and that it is (by historical standards) in a short warming period between ice ages. It is also true that there was a big scare in the late 1970's where "scientists" were saying that the next ice age was about to strike.
I suggest you read up on this subject. The information isn't hard to find, although you want to be sure to read both sides of the debate.
The trouble with PGP is: Once it becomes so widespread that the government has to fear loss of face in front of a court, other countries will do the same as the UK: Pass a law that requires you to hand over the key, or else...
IANAL, but in the US, if the message is part of an investigation, they could get a warrant requiring you to turn over the key. No new law needed.
It sounds like the regulations were well intentioned but poorly designed - a common problem with regulation! In addition, the phone companies have non-regulated businesses in which they would rather invest.
I personally believe that monopolies (whether RBOC's or water companies or M$FT) should be forced to divest themselves of all other businesses. You are either a monopoly or not. If you are a monopoly, all of your business is subject to public utility regulation. If you are not, you aren't. The current approach is to allow monopolies to also engage in non-monopoly businesses, so they screw their monopoly customers in order to invest in their other businesses, or use their guaranteed monopoly-based cash flows to subsidize unfair competition in other areas (a la Microsoft).
BTW, someone asked about the Powell name. Yes, Michael Powell is the son of Colin Powell.
Renraku emitted:
Any kind of light ultimately damages the eye
So what are we to do? Apparently we must keep our eyes tightly shut, from birth, except in complete darkness. Otherwise the light will damage them!
Sigh!
My company is using Postgresql in a traditional OLTP context, and we would very much like to have the point in time recovery. At some point it could make the difference between us continuing in the open source mode or switching to (ugh) Oracle!
I do understand that PIT recovery is being worked on. I wish I had time to help!
Those were just the bugs they were supposed to find. The others....
The reason that actors and other performers are often very highly paid is because the constitute a marketing brand. It is the brand that has the value (and brands DO have a very marketable value). But you can't separate the brand from the person, so the person ends up commanding big bucks.
But of course! I used to fly on the P-3 orion.
If it works, don't fix it!
The major advances in aviation in the 1950's were sufficient to provide a number of platforms that are so cost effective as to not be worth replacing. B-52's and P-3's are examples.
Most ham radio today requires no morse code testing. The technical tests are relatively easy to master and don't require hundreds of hours of studying. There are classes in most areas for prospective hams, or you can buy test study books and cram for them.
Very few hams have tens of thousands of dollars in equipment. You can get on VHF/UHF radio for a few hundred dollars (less if you buy surplus at a hamfest swapmeet). Add to that a $100 packet controller and you have digital modes. HF gear (where you operate by either ground-wave or ionospheric propagation) is more expensive, but you can definitely get a complete station for under $1000.
Or you could really get into the spirit of ham radio and build your own - although I would not recommend building a receiver unless you have a lot of time and expertise. But transmitters (except for SSB) are easy to build. I built my first transmitter.
The ham bands above the shortwave spectrum are perhaps a more interesting target, until you consider that many of them are shared (900 MHZ, parts of the 75cm band) and others are tiny (The most popular 2 meter band is only 4 MHz wide).
The ham radio bands are scattered through the spectrum (to allow for experimentation at different wavelengths) and thus do not represent any contiguous chunk of bandwidth.
Finally, ham radio has a number of justifications - often more important than the desire for bandwidth by internet nerds to be first to reply to a
You may think that the latter is superfluous, but it is still very useful. For example, the Hurricane Watch Net (www.hwn.org) provides valuable assistance to the National Hurricane Center and has been given awards by them and other organizations. Why? Because we communicate with people who do not have sat-phones and whose cell-phones (if they have any) have been disabled by the hurricane. We provide a central communications frequency for those who need to coordinate information on a hurricane - we have had rescue helicopters, warships, hurricane hunter aircraft, ships-in-distress, government research organizations and state department entities contact us in emergencies (contact with non-ham entities is only legal in an emergency). They wouldn't do that if they had the sort of communications you envision.
Likewise, the Skywarn organizations provides invaluable life-saving data to the NWS through ham radio. Why ham radio and not cell phone? Ham radio provides trained operators that filter information for NWS. It also provides a controlled shared frequency for coordinating communications among the many spotters. NWS invests significant resources to train and operate the spotter networks.
Hams help with many other disasters - partly because we can deploy equipment in unplanned for situations, partly because we have redundant and highly varied communications assets, and partly because we often become an inter-organizational communications mechanism for organizations that don't have interoperability.
Ham radio also provides a last-ditch communications method. When your phones are overloaded, or your other methods are out, the *simplest* transmitter to construct or own (if you are poor in the third world) is a CW (morse code) transmitter. All it requires is an oscillator that can be turned on and off, and an easily made antenna.
Ham radio also helps young people learn useful technical and organizational skills.
My father started his electronics interest with ham radio, went on to invent the VLF submarine antenna (his doctoral thesis) and is a respected scientist.
I started with an interest in ham radio. It led me to jobs (while in high school and college) as a broadcast engineer. When I joined the Navy, I was already a trained radio operator, and thus was able to become an airborne radio operator without going to a one year school for it. I got into engineering in college because of ham radio, and that let me into computers, and hence 35 years of computer geekdom. A person met through ham radio led me to group of computer geeks whom I have worked with for the last 30 years. Through ham radio contacts, I have met people in many interesting positions, making friends and also getting personal tours of such places as the Stanford Linear Accelerator and the Multiple Mirror Telescope. Ham radio led me to start my current company, which originally made embedded controller based ham radio repeater controllers. Ham radio has led to adventures including a NASA research expedition, disaster relief in Mexico City after the earthquake, and various other things.
Ham radio operators have developed new technology for use in ham radio, and even in this age of electronic engineering continue to do so. For example, extremely high altitude remote sensing balloons are currently a favorite hobby of some ham nerds.
As requested by Kevin, who wrote the original article, I am posting my email to him that originally replied to this article.
>You're making my column oversimplistic by oversimplifying it.
>My main argument is not that we can "prevent interference." It's the following, quoting from the piece:
>In practice, there are still limits on how many users can communicate effectively, depending on available frequencies, power, competing uses and the design of >transmitters and receivers. The benefit of open spectrum is that it's more efficient than the traditional licensing model, and that gap will widen over time.
>
There's much more detail in the issue of Release 1.0 [release1-0.com] that the column was based on (though unfortunately it's not available for free).
>And no, I don't claim to be an engineer... which is why I rely on engineers like David Reed, Tim Shepard and Dewayne Hendricks who've done work in this area (both >theory and practice).
First of all, I apologize for the tone (the attack on non-engineers). As a piece of technical writing, your article is quite good IMHO. And the subject is a good one and I am glad you brought it up. It is certainly true that spectrum regulation could use the sorts of changes proposed.
I have seen way too much truly ignorant writing on technical topics, and yours does not fall into that category.
I was, however, concerned about the impression many readers might get, and which I got (from a not overly careful reading), and it is that which I was trying to deal with.
I just reread your article. It seems to argue for fully open spectrum, which I still think is impractical. I think it leaves non-engineers with the idea that if we just did away with all this regulation, wonderful stuff would happen. I realize that is not exactly what you are saying, but I think that is what some readers would get out of it. It also has some oversimplistic quotes (perhaps from real experts in the field) that lend to that impression. It is not so much what you are saying, but what I feared people who did a quick read might come away wait.
The quotes that leave a dangerous impression range from highly insightful (but not exactly correct) to just plain wrong.
These are:
Benkler summarizes open spectrum's most startling claim: "Bandwidth is just a parameter in an equation; it's not a naturally bounded resource."
This really is not true. Bandwidth *is* a naturally bounded resource. There is only so much to go around at any location and point of time for a given need. For example, ionospheric bounce radios ("short wave") can only operate in a small part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and for communications between specific points, that are shrinks even further. If one needs that form of communication, there are HARD (natural) limits on the bandwidth availble. What he should have said is that bandwidth is one of the parameters, not the only parameter, to be considered in spectrum regulation and engineering design.
Communication is inherently an exercise in computation.
This is insightful, but easily leads one to assume that the Moore's Law rule of computation can be applied to communication. In fact, computation is only a part of the equation, but one which has risen from almost none of the process to significant part. I tried to point out limits that cannot be overcome by improved computation. I believe that in the last 10 years we have seen most of the improvement that computation can bring to communications. However, creating larger unlicensed bands would certainly allow those improvements to be applied in a way that adds a lot of transmission capability compared to the current system.
One variant, called ultra-wideband, uses such low power that it can share frequencies with licensed services, because to them it is indistinguishable from background noise.
This statement, which the promoters of UWB keep making, is really not true at all. UWB is, as you (unlike most other commentators) note, is a variant of spread spectrum, and as such it has the same limitations. The main practical difference is that it operates over a very wide spectrum (higher processing gain) so it produces *less* interference than any other system - all other variables held constant.
Overall, I think your article was a good public service.
John