> The greatest attrocities in mankind's history > have been in the name of religion.
What religion was Stalin acting in the name of?
Or Hitler?
Or Pol Pot?
Or Mao?
Or the settlers who killed most of the Native Americans?
Or...
Blind faith that all the world's problems have been caused by religion is even less rational than blind faith in religion. A fundamentalist extremist is a nutjob, regardless of whether he's a religious nutjob or an atheistic nutjob; take care you don't edge into the latter.
>>> Did you vote? > >Spoken like someone who has never voted before themselves.
Spoken like someone who's just received a solid hit to a sensitive nerve.
> Maybe wherever you are it's normal to hear mortar fire at night and > have a differnt President get overthrown every nine months, or have > friends die fighting the police
Would you mind explaining how you got from "did you vote?" to a coup d'etat?
Your response to the poster's quite reasonable questions is, sadly, all too typical of discourse in America today: everything is blown to a ridiculous extreme, and middle ground or compromise be damned.
You want to know why the political landscape is in such terrible trouble here? Look in the mirror - if a man can't ask a simple question about political participation without someone ranting about mortar fire in the streets, how are the real questions like redistricting, safety vs. checks-and-balances, and budget balancing going to even be addressed in a sensible manner?
You want better government? Get off your ass! Don't fly off the handle into kneejerk ranting every time you disagree with something, and don't accept that response from others, especially your representatives. Educate yourself about the issues, and what your representatives are doing about them. Educate your friends and assosciates. Write dead-tree letters to your representatives - real ones, not form letters - and encourage your friends to do the same (each such letter is assumed to stand for 1000 people too lazy to write in; how else do you think tiny special-interest groups get things done?).
You want someone to give you an easy way to do this, and to stop spouting the "every blizzard starts with a single snowflake" you can do it! platitudes?
Tough luck, buddy - they're right. Moaning that you can't change everything is no excuse for not trying to change anything. And, deep down, I bet you know that, and I bet that's why you went off on the parent poster.
News to ya - hiding from the problem only makes you feel worse; it'll only feel better when you start fixing the problem. Even if you fail.
> I would see it as the world "catching up" in what will > potentially be a "win-win" scenario for all involved players.
That's exactly how I see it. The links I gave note that research output has increased substantially in all three regions, just faster in some than in others. In terms of research especially, the rest of the world catching up just means more advances for everyone.
> * Americans produce 44% of the most frequently cited articles
The more-detail article I linked says articles from the US are cited 33% more than average, suggesting that they are responsible for about 44% of overall cites. Note entirely surprising, I guess, that these percentages are about the same, since they measure similar things.
Also not surprising when one takes into account the quality of research institutions in the US and the intense pressure to produce at the higher-end ones - the US still does more cutting-edge research than its population share, or even its GDP share, would suggest. (That being said, some of your indicators also suggest declining domination - Nobel prize winners, for example, are typically so for work done decades in the past, and their overwhelming presence at US institutions suggests that the US was more dominant at the time their work was done.)
If the question is whether the US is losing its tech edge, I think available evidence strongly points to "yes". While the reason - other areas catching up with the US's research output - is a very good thing in terms of the pace at which science advances (and all the resulting benefits), it may not be such a good thing when viewed strictly from the point of view of the US economy. At a guess, that's the primary reason why it's a concern to Americans.
> And you can thank politic's alone for that number!
I strongly suspect the effect is due to development, not politics. Most of the rest of the world - especially Asia - is playing catch-up with the US in terms of economic development (due to many factors, such as WWII). And, since they're playing catch-up, they'll tend to expand more quickly, which means their expenditures on research will expand more quickly, which means their share of publications will go up.
AFAICT, all this means is that the rest of the world is catching up to the US in terms of industrialization. With 5% of the population, one would expect the US to slowly move towards publishing 5% of the scientific papers, which is pretty much what we see.
> He said "by country" The EU is a large collection of countries.
And if I had ever said otherwise, you might have a point.
> You have not shown that his comment is wrong nor outdated.
He said that the US published 60% of scientific papers. I showed that not only does the US publish much, much less than that, it hasn't published anywhere near 60% of scientific papers in decades, and its share of world publications is dropping while other major publishers have their shares increasing.
Were you to read and understand my post, you'd find that you're arguing against things I've never said. While I'll admit that's easier than arguing against what I have said, it's rather less useful.
>>> he has to call every prisoner in an arbitrary number of times. > > the king can call any nominated leader/counter the maximum number of times
False
There is no "maximum number of times" - arbitrary means just that, arbitrary. You want 50 times? 100? 1000? 6023*10^23? The king must give you any of those.
In particular, that means each prisoner will be called in after each other prisoner has been called in an arbitrary number of times, leading to the simple counting solution most people come up with. (Proof: suppose otherwise---i.e., there exists a prisoner A and a prisoner B such that A is not called in after B has been called in P times. Once B has been called in for the Pth time, A has been called in N_a times. However, A must be called in an arbitrary number of times; in particular, he must be called in N_a+1 times. Thus, A must be called in again. Contradiction. Therefore, there cannot exist such a pair of prisoners A,B---i.e., there are no two prisoners such that the first only sees the second called in a fixed number of times.)
The key is to have a correct understanding of what "an arbitrary number of times" means in math-speak.
> The problem has 3 parameters...a, the arbitrary number of > times the king must call each prisoner.
There is no such "a". In mathematical parlance, "an arbitrary number of times" doesn't correspond to any particular number - it means that all numbers must be considered. In other words, "a" is not a parameter of the game, and hence your equation---k > n * a---makes no sense (unless k is infinite).
The problem is simple if k is known to the prisoners, and verifiably impossible if k is unknown to them.
The solution (when k is known) has been given by others (hint: counting). The refutation (when k is unknown) is information-theoretic. Any valid prisoner-decision algorithm must be finite, and so must terminate after receiving at most A bits of information. All bits of information must be transmitted through the chalice. The king can invalidate up to k bits of information by cleverly flipping the chalice (i.e., since he knows the prisoners' algorithm, he can just randomize the chalice every time it's about to transmit a bit). Thus, if k >= n*A, the prisoners' algorithm must terminate before any valid information has been received by any prisoner, and hence cannot guarantee the required result. Since k is unknown when choosing A, no algorithm can be devised which will always succeed.
> Maybe there was some deeper stuff in there and it was > the greatest love story since Romeo and Juliet
The notion that it was supposed to be a love story didn't even occur to me until days later when I read someone complaining about that in a movie review.
IMHO, the movie was not a love story at all, but was a character piece---an examination of two people who feel lost, both within their lives and between cultures. I didn't feel any romantic tension between the two main characters, at all---they were two lost souls tossed together by the tumultuous waves of their lives, finding (in that brief moment before life pulled them apart again) a sense of understanding and companionship that people rarely find, and that steadied them through some particularly rough seas.
For that, the movie was brilliant. But if you were watching it as a love story, then, yeah, it was bad - it sucked as a love story because it wasn't one.
> Don't you mean to say "Come upstairs from the basement?"
No, actually - some of us do indeed have apartments, jobs, girlfriends, and lives. I hope knowing we're out there gives you enough hope to keep trying!
> - Some evidence tend to show that sterile environnement *may* be bad for allergy. > Because allergy is a form of immune system malfunction, and in non sterile > environnement you keep one's immune system busy with other things, therefor > preventing allergy to happen in those people who have such allergic immune system.
Apropos anecdote: I'm allergic to my mother's pets. If I get a cold while I'm visiting home, I have almost no allergic reactions until the cold is pretty much gone.
While "law of conservation of misery" seems like an appealing theory, "an immune system busy with real things will have fewer resources free to overreact to allergens" seems much more likely.
>>> cruise destinations in the pacific get flooded > > So relax, the Pacific islands aren't going anywhere.
But anything built on them or growing on them will be going away if/when they get flooded.
The islands may indeed catch up to even something like a 5m rise in sea level, but even if it's in such a ridiculously short time as 100 years, that means (a) they cease to exist as islands for the near future, (b) they're scoured of all terrestrial life, and (c) all buildings and equipment on the islands are destroyed.
In other words, the islands are gone, at least as far as current human use of them is concerned. Witness what 5m of flooding did to New Orleans in just 3 weeks.
> Why do people discard rational thought when discussing the Kyoto treaty?
> Last time I looked the US was the 1st on the list of scientific > papers published by countries with more than 60% of the papers.
Then you must not have looked since about 1960. As of 2005, the US published only 33% of world science papers, significantly less than the EU (38%) and only half again more than Asia-Pacific (25%). source, more detail
What's interesting to note is that the EU's share of world publications has increased by almost 20% in the last 20 years (from 32%) and Asia's by almost 100%, but the USA's has fallen by almost 20% (from 40% to 33%).
In other words, the US has been losing its tech edge for at least the last 20 years.
> "To have only one price point is not fair to our artists, and I dare say not appropriate to consumers"
Interesting. While I suppose some would argue that the music industry is ever "fair" to artists, even Bronfman doesn't seem willing to suggest that the music industry is "fair" to customers.
"Appropriate" isn't how you treat customers; it's how you manage a resource, like a school of fish or a flock of sheep. Interesting to hear that difference in a single sentence.
> i am also way more likely to die of cancer, or a car accident, or a
> lightning strike, or a shark attack, then a terrorist incident
>
> all of these things are nameless and faceless and to some extent utterly beyond my control
Shark attacks? Not at all - just don't go swimming in waters known to have shark attacks---they're really quite spatially clustered.
Lightning strikes? Not at all - just don't be out in the open without tall, grounding objects nearby while there's a storm on.
Car accident? Not at all - drive at a safe speed, obey traffic laws, and never drive after drinking.
Cancer? Not at all - eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, don't smoke, exercise three times a week.
Terrorist attacks? You, personally, have very little control over those, and even major governments have proven to be very poor at reducing the risk by clamping down.
> here it is, in case you missed it: i make myself busy with what i can
> control, and i ignore what i cannot control, even if it is way more dangerous
>
> it's a simple bit of wisdom, use it
Yes, you might like to try.
Of all the things you listed, terrorist attacks are probably the one you personally have the least control over. If that's where you're spending your time and energy, you're being rather less rational than you seem to believe.
> the guy did have some previous (albeit circumstantial) incidents in his record
No he did NOT - RTFA.
The "previous incidents" were things that other people at the company he worked for had done. Are you guilty because someone in your building that you may never have met did something questionable?
> The British justice system does not have an automatic presumption of innocence
British Common Law is the source of the US's "innocent until proven guilty" approach to legal cases. You may be thinking of Roman-derived Civil Law, which does not have that presumption, and holds in many other parts of Europe.
> It would be fortunate if he hadn't been under suspicion
For what?
From TFA, they considered him suspicious because:
- other people entered the public transit station at the same time. Had he waited until nobody else was about to enter, he'd be "suspicious" for entering when nobody else did.
- he didn't leave his backpack unattended. Had he done so, he'd have been suspicious for leaving an unattended bag.
- he looked at other people. Oh no!!
- he didn't look at officers. Is he supposed to look or not?
He wasn't "suspicious" for anything he was doing, and he wasn't "suspicious" for anything he had done (unless you have information not contained in the article). Considering how bad your information was about British law and and how your version of events bears very little resemblance to the happenings in the article, I can't help but wonder if you even read the damn thing, or just started making stuff up.
"There are significant differences between the Apollo of yesteryear and the NASA plan of today, Spudis said.
In the first place, the systems making up the vehicles are being designed for maximum leverage: long-life, cryogenic-based propulsion, with potential reuse in space, Spudis explained.
Secondly, the mission is different.
"In Apollo, the mission was to prove we could land on the moon and return safely to Earth. In this case, the mission is to determine the best site to collect and use the resources of the moon and to emplace the necessary infrastructure to do so," Spudis said....
In point of fact, Spudis continued, "Apollo, for all its beauty, was essentially a technical dead-end... one-use systems, storable propellants, a paradigm of launching everything from Earth."
Spudis told Space.com that this system, as blueprinted by NASA, is designed from the beginning to adapt to a different paradigm: the use of off-planet resources -- lunar-manufactured propellants -- to create a permanent transportation infrastructure in cislunar space, the territory between Earth and the orbit of the moon."
> See? So even you admit it's possible. Maybe it'll turn out it isn't.
> But the potential rewards suggest it's worth finding out.
And it's theoretically possible that putting a billion spare parts in a box and shaking it could create a replacement for the Shuttle, but it ain't very likely.
The mere fact that "it might be possible" is no reason to devote vast quantities of money to it, much less start relying on it over other, more sure, means of accomplishing our goals. Without some notion of how probable an outcome it, saying "it's possible, so it's worth it!" is nonsense. It's possible that giving that nice Nigerian man your bank account information will mean he wires US$25M into it and give you 20%, but is it probable enough to be worth the risk?...
(FWIW, IMHO nanotubes are worth investing significant R&D dollars into, but the technical challenges we would need to overcome to build a space elevator makes it simply irresponsible to factor them into any of our realistic plans yet.)
> For example, there is talk of going back to the Moon. Why the pick for?
From a quick Google for stories on the NASA press release:
1) To test the technology needed for a manned mission to Mars. 2) To test fuel-extraction and lunar-mining technology. 3) To develop the capability to land at all lunar locations and determine which would be best for mining or a base (likely the poles, which the Apollo program could not reach). 4) To provide an immediate impetus for development of a heavy-lift vehicle, which would be necessary for any more ambitious missions of any significance.
Basically, Apollo was merely to get there; the goal of this is to determine how to exploit the Moon's resources. Kinda like Columbus got to the New World, but it was only later explorers who exploited its resources and opened it up for exploitation by their funding governments.
> What I'm saying is that using a relatively small amount of money to
> pursue a promising technology makes more sense than investing tens of
> billions building lots of our current technologies, to pull off a
> one-time stunt.
a) If you've read anything about the plans, you'd know this isn't intended to be "a one-time stunt". Re-usability is one of the significant design considerations of the new project.
b) You claim it makes more sense, but don't back that up with any evidence. You can't back that up with evidence, because that evidence doesn't exist---I doubt you could find anyone who could give you a credible estimate of the chances of having the requisite nanotube technology by 2018.
A gamble is all about risk vs. reward, and---for good reasons---humanity tends to be risk-averse. In other words, if it costs $10B to get a 1% chance at something that would be 10x as good as the current $100B plan, we would still (quite rationally) strongly prefer the current plan.
Even worse, if the time, cost, and chance of success of a project is almost totally unknown, it's hard to see how relying on that to achieve a goal "makes more sense" than relying on known quantities.
Besides, much of the work being planned in the $100B lunar missions would still be necessary even if space elevators were developed---basically, everything outside of geosynch orbit (lunar transit vehicle, lander, etc.). At best, the requisite pixiedust nanotube technology magically appearing tomorrow would lower the costs involved by a factor of 5 or so. Now, factor in R&D costs to come up with the tech needed for the pixiedust nanotube elevator, the delays and redesigns needed to retarget the other parts of the system to work with an as-yet-wholly-unknown system, and the fact that the low costs quoted are wild guesses and probably rather overly optimistic, and it's not at all clear that such a system "makes more sense" if your goal is exploring the moon for resource exploitation.
Don't get me wrong---I think funding nanotube research is a great idea, for possible space elevators as well as a whole host of other applications. I just think the odds of it producing a space elevator by 2020, even given loads of funding, is low enough that we shouldn't hold our breath waiting.
> The local winds wouldn't have enough kinetic force to move the cable much.
The design in TFA is a 1m-wide, paper-thin ribbon. A structure like that would be easily buffetted by a hurricane's 200mph gusts, causing it to rapidly twist and turn.
The problem is that nanotubes undergo buckling under torsional stress, which is exactly what that kind of twisting and snapping back and forth in strong, gusty winds would do. Worse, hurricanes can spawn tornados (waterspouts), which would place very high torsional stresses on the elevator.
Contrary to what you say, hurricanes and the intense torsional stresses they could apply to a thin, stretched ribbon might be a very serious problem for a space elevator.
(This is why plans for an elevator stick it in the eastern half of an ocean, since hurricanes and typhoons move east-to-west as they build. Regardless, this could be a potential problem, even for the weaker storms such areas get.)
> Hmm, well, I have a BS in Physics and Mathematics, double major, so I'm not just assuming "there must be an answer,
> and someone smarter than me will know it". If you were as smart as you seem to think, you would realize that looking
> in on a problem from an essentially layman point of view (which both you and I have) doesn't give you the vantage
> point to argue what complex engineering processes can't do.
And neither does it give you the vantage point from which to argue what complex engineering processes can do, yet that doesn't seem to have stopped you.
The grandparent poster---who, for all you know, does have the materials-science credentials to be making exactly this argument---isn't saying what you think he's saying. He's not saying "oh, it'll never work!"---he's saying "it may never work, and basing our entire space program on something that may never work is very foolish."
And, you know what---he's right. If research into nanotubes turns out like you hope, great; if it doesn't, though, and come 2020 we have no 70GPa macro-ribbons, no space elevator, and no functional space program, then what? Keep throwing time and money at nanotubes because "it'll work reeeal soon now"?
If you're going to put all your eggs in one basket, make sure the basket has a bottom first.
> Basically what we have is a difference of attitude. I see "we have the engineering figured out for using 65 GPa
> ribbons for a space elevator, and we can produce material now that could almost theoretically have that strength,
> and in theory we could produce materials almost twice as strong" and I think, this is something that needs
> research.
That's not a difference of attitude; that's a difference of facts:
1) The GP poster appears unconvinced that we have the engineering for 65GPa ribbons "figured out".
Sure, this is something that needs research, and something that holds great promise. You're wildly underplaying the challenges involved, though.
> You see the same statements, and throw up your hands saying we can't do it....
>
> * you don't even seem to be arguing that we can't do it
Maybe that's because he's not arguing we can't do it?
You seem to have seriously misunderstood what the GP poster was saying; most of your complaints are against things he hasn't said. He's not saying it's impossible, just that it might be impossible, and that we aren't nearly as close as you suggest.
> we could almost do it with the materials we have now, on a 15 year old technology, if we had the right compositing process
"Compositing process" is technology. i.e., we don't have the technology yet
> Assuming that you know more than the researchers dedicating themselves to this research is ridiculous.
As is assuming that's what he's doing.
Pretty much every problem he's pointed out is pretty well-known, and examined in the Wikipedia article on space elevators I've linked above. You might want to read that before you bash the GP poster anymore.
> Assuming science and engineering will go backward rather than forward is demonstrably false.
Where, pray tell, did he do this? (Hint: "Since we've started messing with nanotubes, our expectations of their physical strength has gone *down*, not up." is not "science going backwards"; it's "science finding a
> I once read an interesting article on cluster computing
I once read an interesting article on computing. It pointed out that computing has advanced hugely faster than almost any other field---the typical comparison is how battery energy density has only gone up a small amount in the last few decades---and extrapolating from the increases seen in computing power to any other field is hopelessly naive.
I'm thinking you didn't read that article. You might want to. It strongly suggests that "magic pixie dust" is not going to be as forthcoming in more physically-limited fields. In particular, there is no guarantee carbon nanotubes---or anything, for that matter---will ever provide the required strength-to-mass ratio, much less rapidly enough to provide a viable replacement for NASA's current space capabilities.
Yeah, a space elevator would be spiffy, but would it be quite as spiffy if it took 50 years of research, leaving the US "space" program grounded for 40 years? NASA and the government want a replacement for the Shuttles they're pretty sure they can rely on coming online largely on-time, leading to a minimal space-capability gap. Space elevators do not provide that functionality; for all their coolness, they don't fulfill the program requirements.
Sure, I think we should look into 'em, but "kewl" doesn't trump "does what we need".
> Sklyarov was arrested in America for breaking American laws (the DMCA)
> in Russia. Not for making said software advailble to Americans because he
> was not the distributor of the software.
You clearly did not so much as glance at the links I provided:
"Dmitry Sklyarov and ElcomSoft face five criminal charges in the indictment: four counts of circumvention offenses, and aiding and abetting circumvention offenses, under section 1201 of the DMCA, and one charge of conspiracy.
The first count is a charge of conspiracy to traffic in technology primarily designed to circumvent, and marketed for use in circumventing technology that protects a right of a copyright owner (under section 1201(b)(1)(C) of the US Copyright Act, 17 USC, which was made law by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the DMCA), and 18 USC 371). The second and third counts allege trafficking in technology primarily designed to circumvent technology that protects a right of a copyright owner (under 17 USC 1201(b)(1)(A)) and aiding and abetting (under 18 USC 2). The fourth and fifth counts allege trafficking in technology marketed for use in circumventing technology that protects a right of a copyright holder (under 17 USC 1201(b)(1)(C)) and aiding and abetting (under 18 USC 2). Basically, they were charged with distributing software that can read encrypted Adobe ebooks in a manner not intended by the publishers. Under the charges, Dmitry faced up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $2,250,000, and ElcomSoft, as a corporation, faces a penalty of $2,500,000."
Please, don't "correct" people unless you know what you're talking about.
> Just ask Dmitry Sklyarov. He did something in Russia that was
> perfectly legal in Russia, but got arrested when he visited the U.S.
> because it was claimed he broke the U.S. DMCA.
By offering ebook-cracking software for sale to Americans in America, he was breaking American law[1]. That someone who was breaking American law was arrested when he came to America is not entirely surprising.
Now, I'll grant you that it's not a good law, but at the time of his arrest, selling this kind of circumvention software was a crime in the US, and offering it for sale to Americans inside America---regardless of whether that selling was over the web or not---meant that he was breaking an American law.
Sklyarov's case isn't about over-reaching jurisdiction---he was arrested in the US for breaking a US law in the US---it's about bad laws. Muddying the waters by confusing the two just helps divert attention away from (possible or real) problems due to each of these (different) phenomena.
[1] It's questionable whether Dmitry was actually in violation of any US laws, since it is claimed that he had nothing to do with the distribution of the program inside the US. Nevertheless, that is what he was arrested for and charged with, so he was indeed arrested for and charged with committing a crime (distribution of circumvention software) against US law in the US (Washington State-based server, US clients). That he may well have been innocent of those charges does not make them "overreaching their jurisdiction" any more than any other innocent man in the US being charged with a crime involves overreaching jurisdiction.
> Do you really think corporations would sell moon ore cheaper,
> especially since their costs are *inherently* higher
Not for orbital delivery, they're not.
Earth has a MASSIVE gravity well---for every kilo you send up to orbit, you burn about 20 of fuel. Send that kilo up from the moon, and you hardly pay a thing.
If you want to build large structures anywhere other than Earth's surface---orbital manufacturing plant, Mars colony materials, etc.---then you may well save money by setting up a mining operation outside Earth's gravity well first. Sure, it's expensive, but getting building materials into high orbit from Earth is $20,000 per kilo. Even if new ships magically give you an order of magnitude improvement on that---tricky prospect---everything you launch into orbit STILL costs five times its weight in gold.
The Saturn V rocket weighed 2,800,000kg---building something like that in orbit (such as for a trip to Mars, or an estimate of a manufacturing plant's weight) would cost $46 billion in launch costs alone. Any significant presence in space becomes much cheaper without that launch overhead.
Of course, you might question whether we even want to be in space in the first place, rather than spending our money on causes you deem more worthy, to which there are two points:
1) Yes, we do want to be in space - look at the comments in this thread.
2) If you want to spend our money on causes that you want, then the onus is on you to convince us.
Clearly, you think spending our money otherwise is a moral imperative; however, some people think spending our money on space is a moral imperative, so the mere strength of your convinctions is not sufficient. You might be right, but you'll have to be articulate and convincing to get listened to.
> The same thing we would get by doing it in the first place.
>
> ABSOLUETLY NOTHING
Say it again, y'all!
Uh-huh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for Absolutely nothing
Say it aga...
Er... *heh*
Dammit, make me feel old, why don't you?...
(Not to mention curmudgeonly---need I mention the economic benefits from the spin-offs of NASA's last lunar program, or the potential for a quantum leap forward in our space program based on building from low-gravity-well lunar-sourced materials, or how this is a stepping stone to the resource-rich asteroid belt, or how the tectonically-stable, light-shielded dark side of the moon would be a spectacular place for large telescopes capable of doing research that no Earth-based 'scope could hope to, or...
There are good reasons to do this; it's just not clear whether there are good reasons to do this quickly.)
Slashdot Mirror
> The greatest attrocities in mankind's history
> have been in the name of religion.
What religion was Stalin acting in the name of?
Or Hitler?
Or Pol Pot?
Or Mao?
Or the settlers who killed most of the Native Americans?
Or...
Blind faith that all the world's problems have been caused by religion is even less rational than blind faith in religion. A fundamentalist extremist is a nutjob, regardless of whether he's a religious nutjob or an atheistic nutjob; take care you don't edge into the latter.
>
>Spoken like someone who has never voted before themselves.
Spoken like someone who's just received a solid hit to a sensitive nerve.
> Maybe wherever you are it's normal to hear mortar fire at night and
> have a differnt President get overthrown every nine months, or have
> friends die fighting the police
Would you mind explaining how you got from "did you vote?" to a coup d'etat?
Your response to the poster's quite reasonable questions is, sadly, all too typical of discourse in America today: everything is blown to a ridiculous extreme, and middle ground or compromise be damned.
You want to know why the political landscape is in such terrible trouble here? Look in the mirror - if a man can't ask a simple question about political participation without someone ranting about mortar fire in the streets, how are the real questions like redistricting, safety vs. checks-and-balances, and budget balancing going to even be addressed in a sensible manner?
You want better government? Get off your ass! Don't fly off the handle into kneejerk ranting every time you disagree with something, and don't accept that response from others, especially your representatives. Educate yourself about the issues, and what your representatives are doing about them. Educate your friends and assosciates. Write dead-tree letters to your representatives - real ones, not form letters - and encourage your friends to do the same (each such letter is assumed to stand for 1000 people too lazy to write in; how else do you think tiny special-interest groups get things done?).
You want someone to give you an easy way to do this, and to stop spouting the "every blizzard starts with a single snowflake" you can do it! platitudes?
Tough luck, buddy - they're right. Moaning that you can't change everything is no excuse for not trying to change anything. And, deep down, I bet you know that, and I bet that's why you went off on the parent poster.
News to ya - hiding from the problem only makes you feel worse; it'll only feel better when you start fixing the problem. Even if you fail.
> I would see it as the world "catching up" in what will
> potentially be a "win-win" scenario for all involved players.
That's exactly how I see it. The links I gave note that research output has increased substantially in all three regions, just faster in some than in others. In terms of research especially, the rest of the world catching up just means more advances for everyone.
> * Americans produce 44% of the most frequently cited articles
The more-detail article I linked says articles from the US are cited 33% more than average, suggesting that they are responsible for about 44% of overall cites. Note entirely surprising, I guess, that these percentages are about the same, since they measure similar things.
Also not surprising when one takes into account the quality of research institutions in the US and the intense pressure to produce at the higher-end ones - the US still does more cutting-edge research than its population share, or even its GDP share, would suggest. (That being said, some of your indicators also suggest declining domination - Nobel prize winners, for example, are typically so for work done decades in the past, and their overwhelming presence at US institutions suggests that the US was more dominant at the time their work was done.)
If the question is whether the US is losing its tech edge, I think available evidence strongly points to "yes". While the reason - other areas catching up with the US's research output - is a very good thing in terms of the pace at which science advances (and all the resulting benefits), it may not be such a good thing when viewed strictly from the point of view of the US economy. At a guess, that's the primary reason why it's a concern to Americans.
> And you can thank politic's alone for that number!
I strongly suspect the effect is due to development, not politics. Most of the rest of the world - especially Asia - is playing catch-up with the US in terms of economic development (due to many factors, such as WWII). And, since they're playing catch-up, they'll tend to expand more quickly, which means their expenditures on research will expand more quickly, which means their share of publications will go up.
AFAICT, all this means is that the rest of the world is catching up to the US in terms of industrialization. With 5% of the population, one would expect the US to slowly move towards publishing 5% of the scientific papers, which is pretty much what we see.
> He said "by country" The EU is a large collection of countries.
And if I had ever said otherwise, you might have a point.
> You have not shown that his comment is wrong nor outdated.
He said that the US published 60% of scientific papers. I showed that not only does the US publish much, much less than that, it hasn't published anywhere near 60% of scientific papers in decades, and its share of world publications is dropping while other major publishers have their shares increasing.
Were you to read and understand my post, you'd find that you're arguing against things I've never said. While I'll admit that's easier than arguing against what I have said, it's rather less useful.
>>> he has to call every prisoner in an arbitrary number of times.
>
> the king can call any nominated leader/counter the maximum number of times
False
There is no "maximum number of times" - arbitrary means just that, arbitrary. You want 50 times? 100? 1000? 6023*10^23? The king must give you any of those.
In particular, that means each prisoner will be called in after each other prisoner has been called in an arbitrary number of times, leading to the simple counting solution most people come up with. (Proof: suppose otherwise---i.e., there exists a prisoner A and a prisoner B such that A is not called in after B has been called in P times. Once B has been called in for the Pth time, A has been called in N_a times. However, A must be called in an arbitrary number of times; in particular, he must be called in N_a+1 times. Thus, A must be called in again. Contradiction. Therefore, there cannot exist such a pair of prisoners A,B---i.e., there are no two prisoners such that the first only sees the second called in a fixed number of times.)
The key is to have a correct understanding of what "an arbitrary number of times" means in math-speak.
Unfortunately, your proofs are both flawed:
> The problem has 3 parameters...a, the arbitrary number of
> times the king must call each prisoner.
There is no such "a". In mathematical parlance, "an arbitrary number of times" doesn't correspond to any particular number - it means that all numbers must be considered. In other words, "a" is not a parameter of the game, and hence your equation---k > n * a---makes no sense (unless k is infinite).
The problem is simple if k is known to the prisoners, and verifiably impossible if k is unknown to them.
The solution (when k is known) has been given by others (hint: counting). The refutation (when k is unknown) is information-theoretic. Any valid prisoner-decision algorithm must be finite, and so must terminate after receiving at most A bits of information. All bits of information must be transmitted through the chalice. The king can invalidate up to k bits of information by cleverly flipping the chalice (i.e., since he knows the prisoners' algorithm, he can just randomize the chalice every time it's about to transmit a bit). Thus, if k >= n*A, the prisoners' algorithm must terminate before any valid information has been received by any prisoner, and hence cannot guarantee the required result. Since k is unknown when choosing A, no algorithm can be devised which will always succeed.
> Maybe there was some deeper stuff in there and it was
> the greatest love story since Romeo and Juliet
The notion that it was supposed to be a love story didn't even occur to me until days later when I read someone complaining about that in a movie review.
IMHO, the movie was not a love story at all, but was a character piece---an examination of two people who feel lost, both within their lives and between cultures. I didn't feel any romantic tension between the two main characters, at all---they were two lost souls tossed together by the tumultuous waves of their lives, finding (in that brief moment before life pulled them apart again) a sense of understanding and companionship that people rarely find, and that steadied them through some particularly rough seas.
For that, the movie was brilliant. But if you were watching it as a love story, then, yeah, it was bad - it sucked as a love story because it wasn't one.
No, actually - some of us do indeed have apartments, jobs, girlfriends, and lives. I hope knowing we're out there gives you enough hope to keep trying!
> - Some evidence tend to show that sterile environnement *may* be bad for allergy.
> Because allergy is a form of immune system malfunction, and in non sterile
> environnement you keep one's immune system busy with other things, therefor
> preventing allergy to happen in those people who have such allergic immune system.
Apropos anecdote: I'm allergic to my mother's pets. If I get a cold while I'm visiting home, I have almost no allergic reactions until the cold is pretty much gone.
While "law of conservation of misery" seems like an appealing theory, "an immune system busy with real things will have fewer resources free to overreact to allergens" seems much more likely.
>>> cruise destinations in the pacific get flooded
>
> So relax, the Pacific islands aren't going anywhere.
But anything built on them or growing on them will be going away if/when they get flooded.
The islands may indeed catch up to even something like a 5m rise in sea level, but even if it's in such a ridiculously short time as 100 years, that means (a) they cease to exist as islands for the near future, (b) they're scoured of all terrestrial life, and (c) all buildings and equipment on the islands are destroyed.
In other words, the islands are gone, at least as far as current human use of them is concerned. Witness what 5m of flooding did to New Orleans in just 3 weeks.
> Why do people discard rational thought when discussing the Kyoto treaty?
A fine question indeed.
> Last time I looked the US was the 1st on the list of scientific
> papers published by countries with more than 60% of the papers.
Then you must not have looked since about 1960. As of 2005, the US published only 33% of world science papers, significantly less than the EU (38%) and only half again more than Asia-Pacific (25%). source, more detail
What's interesting to note is that the EU's share of world publications has increased by almost 20% in the last 20 years (from 32%) and Asia's by almost 100%, but the USA's has fallen by almost 20% (from 40% to 33%).
In other words, the US has been losing its tech edge for at least the last 20 years.
Interesting. While I suppose some would argue that the music industry is ever "fair" to artists, even Bronfman doesn't seem willing to suggest that the music industry is "fair" to customers.
"Appropriate" isn't how you treat customers; it's how you manage a resource, like a school of fish or a flock of sheep. Interesting to hear that difference in a single sentence.
> lightning strike, or a shark attack, then a terrorist incident
>
> all of these things are nameless and faceless and to some extent utterly beyond my control
Shark attacks? Not at all - just don't go swimming in waters known to have shark attacks---they're really quite spatially clustered.
Lightning strikes? Not at all - just don't be out in the open without tall, grounding objects nearby while there's a storm on.
Car accident? Not at all - drive at a safe speed, obey traffic laws, and never drive after drinking.
Cancer? Not at all - eat plenty of fruits and vegetables, don't smoke, exercise three times a week.
Terrorist attacks? You, personally, have very little control over those, and even major governments have proven to be very poor at reducing the risk by clamping down.
> here it is, in case you missed it: i make myself busy with what i can
> control, and i ignore what i cannot control, even if it is way more dangerous
>
> it's a simple bit of wisdom, use it
Yes, you might like to try.
Of all the things you listed, terrorist attacks are probably the one you personally have the least control over. If that's where you're spending your time and energy, you're being rather less rational than you seem to believe.
No he did NOT - RTFA.
The "previous incidents" were things that other people at the company he worked for had done. Are you guilty because someone in your building that you may never have met did something questionable?
> The British justice system does not have an automatic presumption of innocence
Yes it DOES.
British Common Law is the source of the US's "innocent until proven guilty" approach to legal cases. You may be thinking of Roman-derived Civil Law, which does not have that presumption, and holds in many other parts of Europe.
> It would be fortunate if he hadn't been under suspicion
For what?
From TFA, they considered him suspicious because:
- other people entered the public transit station at the same time. Had he waited until nobody else was about to enter, he'd be "suspicious" for entering when nobody else did.
- he didn't leave his backpack unattended. Had he done so, he'd have been suspicious for leaving an unattended bag.
- he looked at other people. Oh no!!
- he didn't look at officers. Is he supposed to look or not?
He wasn't "suspicious" for anything he was doing, and he wasn't "suspicious" for anything he had done (unless you have information not contained in the article). Considering how bad your information was about British law and and how your version of events bears very little resemblance to the happenings in the article, I can't help but wonder if you even read the damn thing, or just started making stuff up.
> an ego-boosting "been there, done that" trip to the Moon
We're not.
"There are significant differences between the Apollo of yesteryear and the NASA plan of today, Spudis said.
In the first place, the systems making up the vehicles are being designed for maximum leverage: long-life, cryogenic-based propulsion, with potential reuse in space, Spudis explained.
Secondly, the mission is different.
"In Apollo, the mission was to prove we could land on the moon and return safely to Earth. In this case, the mission is to determine the best site to collect and use the resources of the moon and to emplace the necessary infrastructure to do so," Spudis said....
In point of fact, Spudis continued, "Apollo, for all its beauty, was essentially a technical dead-end ... one-use systems, storable propellants, a paradigm of launching everything from Earth."
Spudis told Space.com that this system, as blueprinted by NASA, is designed from the beginning to adapt to a different paradigm: the use of off-planet resources -- lunar-manufactured propellants -- to create a permanent transportation infrastructure in cislunar space, the territory between Earth and the orbit of the moon."
> But the potential rewards suggest it's worth finding out.
And it's theoretically possible that putting a billion spare parts in a box and shaking it could create a replacement for the Shuttle, but it ain't very likely.
The mere fact that "it might be possible" is no reason to devote vast quantities of money to it, much less start relying on it over other, more sure, means of accomplishing our goals. Without some notion of how probable an outcome it, saying "it's possible, so it's worth it!" is nonsense. It's possible that giving that nice Nigerian man your bank account information will mean he wires US$25M into it and give you 20%, but is it probable enough to be worth the risk?...
(FWIW, IMHO nanotubes are worth investing significant R&D dollars into, but the technical challenges we would need to overcome to build a space elevator makes it simply irresponsible to factor them into any of our realistic plans yet.)
From a quick Google for stories on the NASA press release:
1) To test the technology needed for a manned mission to Mars.
2) To test fuel-extraction and lunar-mining technology.
3) To develop the capability to land at all lunar locations and determine which would be best for mining or a base (likely the poles, which the Apollo program could not reach).
4) To provide an immediate impetus for development of a heavy-lift vehicle, which would be necessary for any more ambitious missions of any significance.
Basically, Apollo was merely to get there; the goal of this is to determine how to exploit the Moon's resources. Kinda like Columbus got to the New World, but it was only later explorers who exploited its resources and opened it up for exploitation by their funding governments.
> What I'm saying is that using a relatively small amount of money to
> pursue a promising technology makes more sense than investing tens of
> billions building lots of our current technologies, to pull off a
> one-time stunt.
a) If you've read anything about the plans, you'd know this isn't intended to be "a one-time stunt". Re-usability is one of the significant design considerations of the new project.
b) You claim it makes more sense, but don't back that up with any evidence. You can't back that up with evidence, because that evidence doesn't exist---I doubt you could find anyone who could give you a credible estimate of the chances of having the requisite nanotube technology by 2018.
A gamble is all about risk vs. reward, and---for good reasons---humanity tends to be risk-averse. In other words, if it costs $10B to get a 1% chance at something that would be 10x as good as the current $100B plan, we would still (quite rationally) strongly prefer the current plan.
Even worse, if the time, cost, and chance of success of a project is almost totally unknown, it's hard to see how relying on that to achieve a goal "makes more sense" than relying on known quantities.
Besides, much of the work being planned in the $100B lunar missions would still be necessary even if space elevators were developed---basically, everything outside of geosynch orbit (lunar transit vehicle, lander, etc.). At best, the requisite pixiedust nanotube technology magically appearing tomorrow would lower the costs involved by a factor of 5 or so. Now, factor in R&D costs to come up with the tech needed for the pixiedust nanotube elevator, the delays and redesigns needed to retarget the other parts of the system to work with an as-yet-wholly-unknown system, and the fact that the low costs quoted are wild guesses and probably rather overly optimistic, and it's not at all clear that such a system "makes more sense" if your goal is exploring the moon for resource exploitation.
Don't get me wrong---I think funding nanotube research is a great idea, for possible space elevators as well as a whole host of other applications. I just think the odds of it producing a space elevator by 2020, even given loads of funding, is low enough that we shouldn't hold our breath waiting.
The design in TFA is a 1m-wide, paper-thin ribbon. A structure like that would be easily buffetted by a hurricane's 200mph gusts, causing it to rapidly twist and turn.
The problem is that nanotubes undergo buckling under torsional stress, which is exactly what that kind of twisting and snapping back and forth in strong, gusty winds would do. Worse, hurricanes can spawn tornados (waterspouts), which would place very high torsional stresses on the elevator.
Contrary to what you say, hurricanes and the intense torsional stresses they could apply to a thin, stretched ribbon might be a very serious problem for a space elevator.
(This is why plans for an elevator stick it in the eastern half of an ocean, since hurricanes and typhoons move east-to-west as they build. Regardless, this could be a potential problem, even for the weaker storms such areas get.)
> and someone smarter than me will know it". If you were as smart as you seem to think, you would realize that looking
> in on a problem from an essentially layman point of view (which both you and I have) doesn't give you the vantage
> point to argue what complex engineering processes can't do.
And neither does it give you the vantage point from which to argue what complex engineering processes can do, yet that doesn't seem to have stopped you.
The grandparent poster---who, for all you know, does have the materials-science credentials to be making exactly this argument---isn't saying what you think he's saying. He's not saying "oh, it'll never work!"---he's saying "it may never work, and basing our entire space program on something that may never work is very foolish."
And, you know what---he's right. If research into nanotubes turns out like you hope, great; if it doesn't, though, and come 2020 we have no 70GPa macro-ribbons, no space elevator, and no functional space program, then what? Keep throwing time and money at nanotubes because "it'll work reeeal soon now"?
If you're going to put all your eggs in one basket, make sure the basket has a bottom first.
> Basically what we have is a difference of attitude. I see "we have the engineering figured out for using 65 GPa
> ribbons for a space elevator, and we can produce material now that could almost theoretically have that strength,
> and in theory we could produce materials almost twice as strong" and I think, this is something that needs
> research.
That's not a difference of attitude; that's a difference of facts:
1) The GP poster appears unconvinced that we have the engineering for 65GPa ribbons "figured out".
2) About 50 people have pointed out that we can not "produce material" in the 60GPa range at anything remotely like the scales needed for any macroscopic construction, much less a space elevator. A micron-long 60GPa nanotube does not create a 36,000km-long ribbon, and "Even the strongest fiber made of nanotubes is likely to have notably less strength than its components."
Sure, this is something that needs research, and something that holds great promise. You're wildly underplaying the challenges involved, though.
> You see the same statements, and throw up your hands saying we can't do it....
>
> * you don't even seem to be arguing that we can't do it
Maybe that's because he's not arguing we can't do it?
You seem to have seriously misunderstood what the GP poster was saying; most of your complaints are against things he hasn't said. He's not saying it's impossible, just that it might be impossible, and that we aren't nearly as close as you suggest.
> we could almost do it with the materials we have now, on a 15 year old technology, if we had the right compositing process
"Compositing process" is technology. i.e., we don't have the technology yet
> Assuming that you know more than the researchers dedicating themselves to this research is ridiculous.
As is assuming that's what he's doing.
Pretty much every problem he's pointed out is pretty well-known, and examined in the Wikipedia article on space elevators I've linked above. You might want to read that before you bash the GP poster anymore.
> Assuming science and engineering will go backward rather than forward is demonstrably false.
Where, pray tell, did he do this? (Hint: "Since we've started messing with nanotubes, our expectations of their physical strength has gone *down*, not up." is not "science going backwards"; it's "science finding a
I once read an interesting article on computing. It pointed out that computing has advanced hugely faster than almost any other field---the typical comparison is how battery energy density has only gone up a small amount in the last few decades---and extrapolating from the increases seen in computing power to any other field is hopelessly naive.
I'm thinking you didn't read that article. You might want to. It strongly suggests that "magic pixie dust" is not going to be as forthcoming in more physically-limited fields. In particular, there is no guarantee carbon nanotubes---or anything, for that matter---will ever provide the required strength-to-mass ratio, much less rapidly enough to provide a viable replacement for NASA's current space capabilities.
Yeah, a space elevator would be spiffy, but would it be quite as spiffy if it took 50 years of research, leaving the US "space" program grounded for 40 years? NASA and the government want a replacement for the Shuttles they're pretty sure they can rely on coming online largely on-time, leading to a minimal space-capability gap. Space elevators do not provide that functionality; for all their coolness, they don't fulfill the program requirements.
Sure, I think we should look into 'em, but "kewl" doesn't trump "does what we need".
> in Russia. Not for making said software advailble to Americans because he
> was not the distributor of the software.
You clearly did not so much as glance at the links I provided:
"Dmitry Sklyarov and ElcomSoft face five criminal charges in the indictment: four counts of circumvention offenses, and aiding and abetting circumvention offenses, under section 1201 of the DMCA, and one charge of conspiracy.
The first count is a charge of conspiracy to traffic in technology primarily designed to circumvent, and marketed for use in circumventing technology that protects a right of a copyright owner (under section 1201(b)(1)(C) of the US Copyright Act, 17 USC, which was made law by the 1998 Digital Millennium Copyright Act (the DMCA), and 18 USC 371). The second and third counts allege trafficking in technology primarily designed to circumvent technology that protects a right of a copyright owner (under 17 USC 1201(b)(1)(A)) and aiding and abetting (under 18 USC 2). The fourth and fifth counts allege trafficking in technology marketed for use in circumventing technology that protects a right of a copyright holder (under 17 USC 1201(b)(1)(C)) and aiding and abetting (under 18 USC 2). Basically, they were charged with distributing software that can read encrypted Adobe ebooks in a manner not intended by the publishers. Under the charges, Dmitry faced up to 25 years in prison and a fine of up to $2,250,000, and ElcomSoft, as a corporation, faces a penalty of $2,500,000."
Please, don't "correct" people unless you know what you're talking about.
> perfectly legal in Russia, but got arrested when he visited the U.S.
> because it was claimed he broke the U.S. DMCA.
By offering ebook-cracking software for sale to Americans in America, he was breaking American law[1]. That someone who was breaking American law was arrested when he came to America is not entirely surprising.
Now, I'll grant you that it's not a good law, but at the time of his arrest, selling this kind of circumvention software was a crime in the US, and offering it for sale to Americans inside America---regardless of whether that selling was over the web or not---meant that he was breaking an American law.
Sklyarov's case isn't about over-reaching jurisdiction---he was arrested in the US for breaking a US law in the US---it's about bad laws . Muddying the waters by confusing the two just helps divert attention away from (possible or real) problems due to each of these (different) phenomena.
[1] It's questionable whether Dmitry was actually in violation of any US laws, since it is claimed that he had nothing to do with the distribution of the program inside the US. Nevertheless, that is what he was arrested for and charged with, so he was indeed arrested for and charged with committing a crime (distribution of circumvention software) against US law in the US (Washington State-based server, US clients). That he may well have been innocent of those charges does not make them "overreaching their jurisdiction" any more than any other innocent man in the US being charged with a crime involves overreaching jurisdiction.
> especially since their costs are *inherently* higher
Not for orbital delivery, they're not.
Earth has a MASSIVE gravity well---for every kilo you send up to orbit, you burn about 20 of fuel. Send that kilo up from the moon, and you hardly pay a thing.
If you want to build large structures anywhere other than Earth's surface---orbital manufacturing plant, Mars colony materials, etc.---then you may well save money by setting up a mining operation outside Earth's gravity well first. Sure, it's expensive, but getting building materials into high orbit from Earth is $20,000 per kilo. Even if new ships magically give you an order of magnitude improvement on that---tricky prospect---everything you launch into orbit STILL costs five times its weight in gold.
The Saturn V rocket weighed 2,800,000kg---building something like that in orbit (such as for a trip to Mars, or an estimate of a manufacturing plant's weight) would cost $46 billion in launch costs alone. Any significant presence in space becomes much cheaper without that launch overhead.
Of course, you might question whether we even want to be in space in the first place, rather than spending our money on causes you deem more worthy, to which there are two points:
1) Yes, we do want to be in space - look at the comments in this thread.
2) If you want to spend our money on causes that you want, then the onus is on you to convince us.
Clearly, you think spending our money otherwise is a moral imperative; however, some people think spending our money on space is a moral imperative, so the mere strength of your convinctions is not sufficient. You might be right, but you'll have to be articulate and convincing to get listened to.
>
> ABSOLUETLY NOTHING
Say it again, y'all!
Uh-huh
War, huh, yeah
What is it good for
Absolutely nothing
Say it aga...
Er... *heh*
Dammit, make me feel old, why don't you?...
(Not to mention curmudgeonly---need I mention the economic benefits from the spin-offs of NASA's last lunar program, or the potential for a quantum leap forward in our space program based on building from low-gravity-well lunar-sourced materials, or how this is a stepping stone to the resource-rich asteroid belt, or how the tectonically-stable, light-shielded dark side of the moon would be a spectacular place for large telescopes capable of doing research that no Earth-based 'scope could hope to, or...
There are good reasons to do this; it's just not clear whether there are good reasons to do this quickly.)