You're totally right.
Companies consist of basically good humans. But a good human within a corporation does not always do the right thing. The bottom line is so overly encompassing. It becomes commonplace to put the bottom line above morality because not choosing the best economic option will get you no end of grief from your fellow bean counters. Much more grief than some consumer down the line, some small company in another state, somebody who's life is not connected to yours. It becomes so easy to hide your face behind the corporate trademark.
From 'The Corporation'
Vandana Shiva: A corporation is not a person. It doesn't think. People in it think and for them it is legitimate to create terminator technology, so that farmers are not able to save their seeds. Seeds that will destroy themselves through a suicide gene. Seeds that are designed to only produce crop in one season. You really need to have a brutal mind. It's a war against evolution to even think in those terms. But quite clearly profifs are so much higher in their minds.
I have a question along similar lines. What motivation do spammers have for designing spam that gets around the filters? If I implemented a filter to get rid of viagra ads, what is the likelihood that I will buy it? Sure. Maybe the 'enter your bank password here' scams need to get around the filters. But if I haven't responded to the first thousand viagra ads, you really aren't gaining anything by sending me more.
Heck. Spam MIGHT be tolerable if like snail mail ads, they're done tastefully, done well and in moderation.
Take home message. I really wish they wouldn't compromise my filters... Thunderbird lets in half of the spam these days because they're all images over top a page from a novel. My sysadmin doesn't have time to implement server side filtering. I'm just swimming in spam. Help!
Yes, this would increase the cost on the utility side of the equation. Depending on the value you put on emissions. There's still no chance that this kind of power generation is economic though. Grandparent is correct that maintenance costs for green energy trump all else, and weren't considered here at all.
Also, I have to point out that electric solar cells aren't that great for the environment. A semiconductors professor once told me that it takes a huge amount of electricity to fabricate these (close to their lifetime output depending ofcourse on how much you're willing to pay for them) Aha. Wikipedia agrees with me.
There is a common conception that solar cells never produce more energy than it takes to make them. While the expected working lifetime is around 40 years, the energy payback time of a solar panel is anywhere from 1 to 20 years (usually under five) depending on the type and where it is used (see net energy gain). This means solar cells can be net energy producers and can "reproduce" themselves (from just over once to more than 30 times) over their lifetime.[2][3]
This is disputed, however, by some researchers who object that such analysis doesn't take into account waste, inefficiency, and related energy costs that would come with a real-world solar cell.[4]
Although what you say makes sense at first. If terrorists are able to get to the airport tower past all the security with enough 'stuff' to destroy the anti IR rocket battery there. Then they don't need IR shoulder launched rockets to get at the planes. They can just climb the stairs on the outside of the terminal up to the loading gates.
Perhaps a ground based system doesn't have good enough range.
Yes Yes Yes!!! As a kid studying to be a scientist. I can't agree more. The amount of politics in science alone is staggering.
Do you guys remember learning about the scientific method in middle school? Basically states that you can not use observation to prove something. You can only use observation to disprove something. Then, (and only after then) are we suppose to apply Occam's razor and select the simplest model to use as a useful description.
I haven't seen this at all. Though perhaps, it isn't that big of a deal.
That number came from the fact people pee 1-2L of urine in a day. So some bright dude said, well if you urinate 5-8 cups of water per day, then it must be essential to drink that much. Then some one else read something this dude wrote and misquoted CUPS for GLASSES. And then some other group thought... Well, more is better right? So we'll quote 8 glasses of water.
You're right about the coke. Though a sport drink like gatoraid would be better. Mind you, not every glass, or you'll be getting too much sodium. Your body only needs that amount of electrolytes if you're sweating up a storm. (cause your sweat is salty)
I am surprised the group running the competition didn't have rehydration salts. I think they should be investigated for criminal negligence. They probably shouldn't be charged though.
I'm confused. How does this particular case imply that the courts are behind the times?
I thought the way the american legal system works is the court would call an expert witness to the stand and his opinion would be admitted as fact. So the defense asks computer expert 'in your expert opinion, do you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the illegal content on so and so's computer placed there by so and so?"
Yeah, but this actually makes good sense. Because the second was defined before the atomic clock. And now that we have a more precise measure of time we upgrade the definition of a second without changing it.
Hmmm. Apple has something of an ethos. They prefer dependency to functionality. To have a device that simply WORKS and that can't be fiddled with in a way to make it stop working is a big deal. More so for the non slashdot types.
A similar example that might be easier to relate to. A super car with all the gadgets and dohickies is really cool, but of limited use on your daily commute. Expecially if you have to spend several hours a week under the hood. Now, there are a lot of people who like it under there. But I prefer a vehicle that gets me from point A to point B with as infrequent and inexpensive upkeep as possible.
So, a civilization that maintained a golden age for 2000 years? I wonder if that is possible.
As for the quote. Sol is a third generation star. And there are huge variations between the ages of such stars. So it is possible for an alien race to be several billion years ahead in the physical evolution race as well. Billion. Kinda scary hun?
But I'm assuming there are migration paths which end up at Australia. There are a whole lot of islands to stop at along the way. Could a large bird carry mammal bones in its gut for the duration of the migration?
Anyways, they say the fossils are unlike any others. So that does support the idea that it lived in Australia and evolved there.
For an intelligent (rather than instinctual) species like the dolphin. You have a very very good point.
Mind you, perhaps this would only increase the minimum sustainable population size. So, rather than needing 25 dolphins to have a chance at survival, you'd need 250 and no boats. Anywho, saving the DNA wouldn't be pointless. 25 test tubes at liquid nitrogen temperatures probably don't cost much upkeep either.
People will walk through the museum. See dinosaurs playing with humans, and since it looks so gosh darn natural believe it without a doubt. Just like everyone in my class believes that wave mechanics can be used to describe very small simple harmonic oscillators. I'm not saying that it doesn't. But we sure as hell (heh) haven't been given enough empirical evidence to form opinions on the validity of the model. What we did have was a professor who seemed to know what he was talking about, with a pretty movie of a probability distribution function sweeping back and forth and some ancient book written by a dead guy (textbook) that agreed with everything he said.
I'm doing my masters in fusion. Grandparent is indeed correct. The reason being, the products of the fusion reaction are regular helium, and neutrons. The neutrons will activate the building which is the source of the low level waste. So we just keep things that get really hot out of the reactor design.
Right now, after ITER's 10 year lifetime, the only components that will need to be considered nuclear waste is are the tungsten components of the first wall (the wall facing the plasma) The products of activated tungsten have a very short half life, so after a year or so, the copper heat sinks will be the hottest components, and they'll be cooler than the tonnes of medical nuclear waste that gets shipped in and out of hospitals every year. There will be no leakage as neither tungsten nor copper are water soluble. The bigger risk is a steam explosion, which has the potential to release some tritiated water and maybe some tungsten oxide (some of which would have been activated by the neutrons) into the local community. But ITER is designed, that in the worst case scenario, there would be no need for evacuation. http://www.iter.org/a/index_faq.htm Choose the safety bullet to read about this. The worst case scenario is assuming the worst possible weather conditions, and that 100% of anything radioactive that could possibly be in the reactor becomes airborne and ingestible.
which, were we smart, would involve putting them in the Marianas trench and folding them back into the earth's mantle to be reprocessed
The trench is an interesting idea. Mind you, the really hot nuclear waste (spent fission fuel rods) are packed full of useable uranium. They can be re-refined and used again. We just... don't yet.
Aha. Costs. I was just at a conference where they were discussing the finer points of ITER. Trust me. International funding sources + over 10 years of them bickering over costs. Decommissioning costs have been included right down to the cardboard boxes for the scientists to pack up their offices.
I agree that for the most part, a high school grad, and a university grad (4 years older) both head out looking for work, and end up making pretty darn close to the same thing. (not talking about specialized degrees) If you were to look at both groups again 10 years down the line, I think the picture would be a little different though. Jobs that require university degrees don't really start out much better, but they tend to have more growth potential.
If school ain't your thing. I would HIGHLY suggest trade school. The business school you're going to is probably just as good. They immediately increase your wage.
As for savings bonds at your age. I completely disagree. You're right that saving now is important (before you get spoiled by money and can't anymore) Being young, you can afford a little risk (as compared say, to someone with kids) Furthermore, the absolute best investment you can make right now is to build up a down payment on a house. (not that you can't do that with savings bonds) The reason being, once you get a mortgage, monthly payments are about the same as rent, except that you're paying yourself, and not some scummy land lord. It feels like the money is going in the same black hole. But in 5-10 years time, you'll be able to use it.
We know he is 'guilty' of sending nude photos of himself to a 40 year old deputy. We can infer that given the opportunity, he would do the same for a 13 year old. But we do not have proof that he sent illicit material to a 13 year old. Shouldn't he be convicted of a lesser crime?
For instance. If I was trying to shoot someone, and they were clever enough to replace this person with a rubber mannequin which I then shot in the head. I would be guilty of attempted murder, rather than 1st degree murder. Am I right?
Why inject sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere? Surely there is a mass produced gas that will preferentially reflect visible light that doesn't result in acid rain.
The article actually goes into Hubbert's peak and the lower 48 states in quite a bit of detail. The conclusion is that while the peak was accurately predicted within 2 years, the declining side of the curve does not match. (There's a nice graph, but ignore the red dots to the right of the peak. They represent production for the whole of the US, which is not what the trend line is predicting)
Anywho, oil production in the lower 48 declined more slowly than predicted, and today is a full 60% above Hubbard's prediction.
When 42 guys in suits go walking, someone's gonna die. Once upon a time, Al "Scarface" Capone was arrested for tax evasion. But that isn't why he went to jail. '42 guys in suits' is the name of a song written about the accountants who were used to prove this case.
For someone to be arrested for such a small crime, his neighbor had to be annoyed to the point of calling the police (cause they don't go around looking for war drivers) and the police had to of had an interest in this guy for some other reason. (More or less, don't quote me on this)
So I would infer that this is not the case where someone was logging into an unsecured wireless broadcast, as people are complaining about. He probably hacked into his neighbor's wireless and refused to stop when his neighbor found out. Even at that point, the police probably wouldn't arrest him (do people get arrested for noise complaints?) I suspect he was also doing something illegal which he was masking using the wireless access, and the police did not have enough evidence to prove it was him. So they grabbed him using what they could.
Though the alternative is funny. One day Cedric's laptop which is turned on in his backpack connects to an unsecured wireless network as he is walking through the park. The SWAT team jumps out from the surrounding bushes and trees and throws him groundward at gunpoint. He is sentenced to one year hard labor at the local quarry and his laptop is confiscated. Sadly the locker which it is stored in is adjacent to a coffee shop with unsecured wireless, and thus Cedric's sentence increases to the point where the government decided to send him to the gallows. Cedric's will then bestows the laptop to his mother...:D
A lot of people are saying hubble should simply be replaced. Hubble IS being replaced. Work is currently underway on the James Webb Space Telescope. The trouble is that it isn't due for launch until 2011.
I'm a soft squishy environmentalist, but I felt the need to point out an exaggeration in the article.
From the article:
"That means that further global warming of 1 degree Celsius defines a critical level.... if further global warming reaches 2 or 3 degrees Celsius, we will likely see changes that make Earth a different planet than the one we know. The last time it was that warm was in the middle Pliocene, about three million years ago, when sea level was estimated to have been about 25 meters (80 feet) higher than today."
What the article fails to mention is that the entire human contribution to global warming is about half a degree Celsius. (0.48 C http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2004/) So we have a ways to go before everyone dies.
The problem is that this system has a bit of momentum to it. Currently we're on a train barreling down the tracks and some guy with binoculars has just told us the bridge is out ahead, and we're still pushing forward. But we're not pushing quite as hard as we were, and that seems like progress to me.
Have a look at this graph. There's a lot of noise. If you were to look at 3 years in a row, it's pretty much impossible to guess what the temperature will be in the next year. But if you look at the whole graph, then it's pretty clear that things are on the whole getting hotter. Notice especially how fast the heating trend is in the last 10 years (9 of which are the hottest years ever recorded)
It's actually easier to predict things in the long term (given enough data) than it is to say, predict the weather in a week's time. Random fluctuations tend to even themselves out given enough time. That being said, the graph above isn't really enough data to show conclusively what is going to happen.
IIRC, criminal background checks are only appropriate for positions where you are acting as a primary care giver. I had to file police check to work at a summer camp for instance. In fact, I believe it is illegal to withhold a job from someone simply because they have a criminal record.
Mind you, this is in Canada. Is it any different in the states?
Slashdot Mirror
From 'The Corporation'
I have a question along similar lines.
What motivation do spammers have for designing spam that gets around the filters? If I implemented a filter to get rid of viagra ads, what is the likelihood that I will buy it? Sure. Maybe the 'enter your bank password here' scams need to get around the filters. But if I haven't responded to the first thousand viagra ads, you really aren't gaining anything by sending me more.
Heck. Spam MIGHT be tolerable if like snail mail ads, they're done tastefully, done well and in moderation.
Take home message.
I really wish they wouldn't compromise my filters... Thunderbird lets in half of the spam these days because they're all images over top a page from a novel. My sysadmin doesn't have time to implement server side filtering. I'm just swimming in spam.
Help!
Also, I have to point out that electric solar cells aren't that great for the environment. A semiconductors professor once told me that it takes a huge amount of electricity to fabricate these (close to their lifetime output depending ofcourse on how much you're willing to pay for them) Aha. Wikipedia agrees with me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_cell#Solar_cel
More importantly, gallium arsenide is one of the main ingredients in solar cells. This stuff is absolutely horrible for the environment.
Active solar panels and fuel cells are poster children for environmental. But neither one of them shows much real benefit.
Errr...
Although what you say makes sense at first. If terrorists are able to get to the airport tower past all the security with enough 'stuff' to destroy the anti IR rocket battery there. Then they don't need IR shoulder launched rockets to get at the planes. They can just climb the stairs on the outside of the terminal up to the loading gates.
Perhaps a ground based system doesn't have good enough range.
Yes Yes Yes!!!
As a kid studying to be a scientist. I can't agree more. The amount of politics in science alone is staggering.
Do you guys remember learning about the scientific method in middle school? Basically states that you can not use observation to prove something. You can only use observation to disprove something. Then, (and only after then) are we suppose to apply Occam's razor and select the simplest model to use as a useful description.
I haven't seen this at all. Though perhaps, it isn't that big of a deal.
That number came from the fact people pee 1-2L of urine in a day. So some bright dude said, well if you urinate 5-8 cups of water per day, then it must be essential to drink that much. Then some one else read something this dude wrote and misquoted CUPS for GLASSES. And then some other group thought... Well, more is better right? So we'll quote 8 glasses of water.
You're right about the coke. Though a sport drink like gatoraid would be better. Mind you, not every glass, or you'll be getting too much sodium. Your body only needs that amount of electrolytes if you're sweating up a storm. (cause your sweat is salty)
I am surprised the group running the competition didn't have rehydration salts. I think they should be investigated for criminal negligence. They probably shouldn't be charged though.
Hmmm. Well said.
I'm confused. How does this particular case imply that the courts are behind the times?
I thought the way the american legal system works is the court would call an expert witness to the stand and his opinion would be admitted as fact. So the defense asks computer expert 'in your expert opinion, do you believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the illegal content on so and so's computer placed there by so and so?"
Yeah, but this actually makes good sense.
Because the second was defined before the atomic clock. And now that we have a more precise measure of time we upgrade the definition of a second without changing it.
Hmmm. Apple has something of an ethos. They prefer dependency to functionality.
To have a device that simply WORKS and that can't be fiddled with in a way to make it stop working is a big deal. More so for the non slashdot types.
A similar example that might be easier to relate to.
A super car with all the gadgets and dohickies is really cool, but of limited use on your daily commute. Expecially if you have to spend several hours a week under the hood. Now, there are a lot of people who like it under there. But I prefer a vehicle that gets me from point A to point B with as infrequent and inexpensive upkeep as possible.
So, a civilization that maintained a golden age for 2000 years? I wonder if that is possible.
As for the quote. Sol is a third generation star. And there are huge variations between the ages of such stars. So it is possible for an alien race to be several billion years ahead in the physical evolution race as well. Billion. Kinda scary hun?
Hmmm. You seem to know what you're talking about.
But I'm assuming there are migration paths which end up at Australia. There are a whole lot of islands to stop at along the way. Could a large bird carry mammal bones in its gut for the duration of the migration?
Anyways, they say the fossils are unlike any others. So that does support the idea that it lived in Australia and evolved there.
For an intelligent (rather than instinctual) species like the dolphin. You have a very very good point.
Mind you, perhaps this would only increase the minimum sustainable population size. So, rather than needing 25 dolphins to have a chance at survival, you'd need 250 and no boats. Anywho, saving the DNA wouldn't be pointless. 25 test tubes at liquid nitrogen temperatures probably don't cost much upkeep either.
Then it's easy to believe.
People will walk through the museum. See dinosaurs playing with humans, and since it looks so gosh darn natural believe it without a doubt. Just like everyone in my class believes that wave mechanics can be used to describe very small simple harmonic oscillators. I'm not saying that it doesn't. But we sure as hell (heh) haven't been given enough empirical evidence to form opinions on the validity of the model. What we did have was a professor who seemed to know what he was talking about, with a pretty movie of a probability distribution function sweeping back and forth and some ancient book written by a dead guy (textbook) that agreed with everything he said.
I'm doing my masters in fusion. Grandparent is indeed correct. The reason being, the products of the fusion reaction are regular helium, and neutrons. The neutrons will activate the building which is the source of the low level waste. So we just keep things that get really hot out of the reactor design.
Right now, after ITER's 10 year lifetime, the only components that will need to be considered nuclear waste is are the tungsten components of the first wall (the wall facing the plasma) The products of activated tungsten have a very short half life, so after a year or so, the copper heat sinks will be the hottest components, and they'll be cooler than the tonnes of medical nuclear waste that gets shipped in and out of hospitals every year. There will be no leakage as neither tungsten nor copper are water soluble. The bigger risk is a steam explosion, which has the potential to release some tritiated water and maybe some tungsten oxide (some of which would have been activated by the neutrons) into the local community. But ITER is designed, that in the worst case scenario, there would be no need for evacuation. http://www.iter.org/a/index_faq.htm Choose the safety bullet to read about this. The worst case scenario is assuming the worst possible weather conditions, and that 100% of anything radioactive that could possibly be in the reactor becomes airborne and ingestible.
The trench is an interesting idea. Mind you, the really hot nuclear waste (spent fission fuel rods) are packed full of useable uranium. They can be re-refined and used again. We just... don't yet.
Aha. Costs. I was just at a conference where they were discussing the finer points of ITER. Trust me. International funding sources + over 10 years of them bickering over costs. Decommissioning costs have been included right down to the cardboard boxes for the scientists to pack up their offices.
ITER is designed to output 10 times it's energy input, and they'll try to push it up from there.
I am also Canadian.
I agree that for the most part, a high school grad, and a university grad (4 years older) both head out looking for work, and end up making pretty darn close to the same thing. (not talking about specialized degrees) If you were to look at both groups again 10 years down the line, I think the picture would be a little different though. Jobs that require university degrees don't really start out much better, but they tend to have more growth potential.
If school ain't your thing. I would HIGHLY suggest trade school. The business school you're going to is probably just as good. They immediately increase your wage.
As for savings bonds at your age. I completely disagree. You're right that saving now is important (before you get spoiled by money and can't anymore) Being young, you can afford a little risk (as compared say, to someone with kids)
Furthermore, the absolute best investment you can make right now is to build up a down payment on a house. (not that you can't do that with savings bonds) The reason being, once you get a mortgage, monthly payments are about the same as rent, except that you're paying yourself, and not some scummy land lord. It feels like the money is going in the same black hole. But in 5-10 years time, you'll be able to use it.
Cheers
I agree.
We know he is 'guilty' of sending nude photos of himself to a 40 year old deputy. We can infer that given the opportunity, he would do the same for a 13 year old. But we do not have proof that he sent illicit material to a 13 year old.
Shouldn't he be convicted of a lesser crime?
For instance. If I was trying to shoot someone, and they were clever enough to replace this person with a rubber mannequin which I then shot in the head. I would be guilty of attempted murder, rather than 1st degree murder. Am I right?
Anyone know the answer to this one?
Why inject sulfur dioxide into the atmosphere? Surely there is a mass produced gas that will preferentially reflect visible light that doesn't result in acid rain.
The article actually goes into Hubbert's peak and the lower 48 states in quite a bit of detail. The conclusion is that while the peak was accurately predicted within 2 years, the declining side of the curve does not match. (There's a nice graph, but ignore the red dots to the right of the peak. They represent production for the whole of the US, which is not what the trend line is predicting)
Anywho, oil production in the lower 48 declined more slowly than predicted, and today is a full 60% above Hubbard's prediction.
When 42 guys in suits go walking, someone's gonna die.
:D
Once upon a time, Al "Scarface" Capone was arrested for tax evasion. But that isn't why he went to jail. '42 guys in suits' is the name of a song written about the accountants who were used to prove this case.
For someone to be arrested for such a small crime, his neighbor had to be annoyed to the point of calling the police (cause they don't go around looking for war drivers) and the police had to of had an interest in this guy for some other reason. (More or less, don't quote me on this)
So I would infer that this is not the case where someone was logging into an unsecured wireless broadcast, as people are complaining about. He probably hacked into his neighbor's wireless and refused to stop when his neighbor found out. Even at that point, the police probably wouldn't arrest him (do people get arrested for noise complaints?) I suspect he was also doing something illegal which he was masking using the wireless access, and the police did not have enough evidence to prove it was him. So they grabbed him using what they could.
Though the alternative is funny. One day Cedric's laptop which is turned on in his backpack connects to an unsecured wireless network as he is walking through the park. The SWAT team jumps out from the surrounding bushes and trees and throws him groundward at gunpoint. He is sentenced to one year hard labor at the local quarry and his laptop is confiscated. Sadly the locker which it is stored in is adjacent to a coffee shop with unsecured wireless, and thus Cedric's sentence increases to the point where the government decided to send him to the gallows. Cedric's will then bestows the laptop to his mother...
A lot of people are saying hubble should simply be replaced. Hubble IS being replaced. Work is currently underway on the James Webb Space Telescope. The trouble is that it isn't due for launch until 2011.
From the article:
What the article fails to mention is that the entire human contribution to global warming is about half a degree Celsius. (0.48 C http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2004/) So we have a ways to go before everyone dies.
The problem is that this system has a bit of momentum to it. Currently we're on a train barreling down the tracks and some guy with binoculars has just told us the bridge is out ahead, and we're still pushing forward. But we're not pushing quite as hard as we were, and that seems like progress to me.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instrumental_Te mperature_Record.png
Have a look at this graph. There's a lot of noise. If you were to look at 3 years in a row, it's pretty much impossible to guess what the temperature will be in the next year. But if you look at the whole graph, then it's pretty clear that things are on the whole getting hotter. Notice especially how fast the heating trend is in the last 10 years (9 of which are the hottest years ever recorded)
It's actually easier to predict things in the long term (given enough data) than it is to say, predict the weather in a week's time. Random fluctuations tend to even themselves out given enough time. That being said, the graph above isn't really enough data to show conclusively what is going to happen.
Ced
IIRC, criminal background checks are only appropriate for positions where you are acting as a primary care giver. I had to file police check to work at a summer camp for instance. In fact, I believe it is illegal to withhold a job from someone simply because they have a criminal record.
Mind you, this is in Canada. Is it any different in the states?