Yes, there appears to be an increase in the amount of plant growth, measured in a Gabon rain forest, which will help greatly in giving us more time to prepare: http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0218-forest_carbon.html The way to understand an incredibly complex system, is to first start with first principles, making a crude model, seeing if it fits the data, and then gradually refining the model by adding more complex interactions and factors. The basic idea was already documented in 1906 in a popular scientific work by Svante Arrhenius (yes *1906*) so his hunch about the CO2 variable was pretty much right. You're deluding yourself.
I'm not sure, but I think those fossil fuels are used to manufacture ammonia via the Haber-Bosch process. This is endothermic, i.e. it needs a lot of energy to keep it going. And the ammonia in turn is used to make nitrogen fertiliser.
Wikipedia quote:
"Fertilizer generated from ammonia produced by the Haber process is estimated to be responsible for sustaining one-third of the Earth's population.[6] It is estimated that half of the protein within human beings is made of nitrogen that was originally fixed by this process; the remainder was produced by nitrogen fixing bacteria and archaea.[7]"
So from the 3 kinds of fertiliser (potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen) one would become a lot more expensive after Peak Oil, the other two indirectly (transport costs go up and mining costs go up).
On the other hand, there are areas of the globe that have been cultivated for more than 5000 years, and that proves that with manure and compost you can stick enough nutrients back in the ground to keep going forever. But not at current "green revolution" yields of course, no...
Keep your compost, and grow clover and beautiful lupine on the bits of your plot that are fallow, and some beans or peas amongst your other veggies:-)
I thought that supernovas were only necessary for elements heavier than iron. I thought even our sun is making a tiny bit of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen right now: CNO cycle.
I don't know if it's because Slashdot is an American forum, but has everyone already forgotten the experiments of dr. Valeri Polyakov on himself during his 14 month stay on Mir?
Mind you our TV news showed him looking quite weak when he got out of the Soyuz. I think he needed to be carried (don't remember that well).
And how about last year's Russian-ESA-Chinese Mars 500 psychological isolation experiment, that was fascinating to follow as well, and those men *knew* they were just sitting in a tin can in Moscow, which must surely have made the psychological pressure even harder. Imagine eating Russian canned food for 500 days (and a few fresh vegetables, thank Bog) while you *know* that you could sneak out for a quick pint and meal somewhere in Moscow instead.
I don't mean to be trolling, but it seems sometimes that if something is not done in the USA, it is off the radar of the American public and/or swept under the carpet as "yes, but WE are going to do it MORE and BETTER after we have secured the funding".
Be glad some poor sods from other countries have already done these kinds of experiments for you!!
Let us all pray that Brassica Chinensis grows well on a spaceship.
A similar plan called "Mars Direct" is outlined in Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars". It's a fun read!
The idea is to use a simple factory to make the return fuel in situ. Then when the factory reports after a few years that the return fuel storage tanks are full, you launch the actual mission, knowing that the crew can probably return safely once they make it to the first Mars landing site.
I don't like their idea of using some kind of nuclear power plant for the compressor and Sabatier process, surely it can be done with solar power, it will just take several years longer. Their idea is to "bring your own" hydrogen, compress Mars air of 95% CO2, and make water, methane, and oxygen. It sounds simple and brilliant.
And I think that they should park another factory next to it to manufacture solar cells from doped amorphous silicon:-)
Absolutely, especially if they want to simulate a brain disease (how does the mechanism change if one area is diseased), or chemical gradients (if I'm tired and can think even worse than usual, some of my neurons may experience a lack of glucose).
You'd imagine they'd make some kind of combined model: detailed models of single-neuron, massively parallel, and then laid on top of that a very coarse location-based "chemical gradient field" that tweaks the single neuron parameters a bit. Can any neuroscientist please inform us here?
The humanbrainproject url clearly states it seeks to discover the brains "design secrets" ????
Are these scientists or intelligent design types???
And no religion and science are not compatable.
Surely they are both, and their religion and science are compatible as well.
<fictional_example>
It can be argued that the zealous dr. Frankenstein was both a scientist, and an intelligent designer </fictional_example>
a nice quote from the same time period, from Anatole France:
"The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich and the poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." (Le Lys Rouge)
My knowledge of steel making stops at the 19th century Bessemer process:-)
But that's not what I meant; I said it too cryptically. What I meant was: to build infrastructure that can facilitate our descent into 21st century living conditions (probably better than 19th century but worse than 20th century energy abundance), we'd better use the cheap electricity we have at the moment.
We need electricity in the coming centuries. Fossil fuels are finite, coal may last 300 years but even then we want to minimize CO2 production because the greenhouse effect is going to be bad enough as it is (see Directive on Electricity Production from Renewable Energy Sources).
I know that Aluminium production is done with electrolysis so uses a fuck lot of electricity; as you say steelworks can use natural gas to keep the steel hot, but I bet a factory like Hoogovens/Corus/Tata Steel Europe in IJmuiden uses a fuck lot of electricity as well.
The point I tried to unsuccessfully make is, that since we need a lot of metal to build electricity generating infrastructure (wind turbine pylons, solar troughs, you name it), and since the production of that lot of metal itself uses up a metric fuckload of electricity, the long term most efficient strategy (we're talking 300 years or so here) must surely be to produce that lot of metal (precursor materials for future energy generating infrastructure) in the time that we have left while the current infrastructure based on fossil fuels and nuclear fission is still operational and provides cheap and plentiful electricity.
The only alternative is to wait until we have to smelt all that metal with renewable electricity, but that would just be more expensive.
Or if you make it large you will require a LOT of rock, making it expensive
You don't need rock (see example (Palm Jumeira)). Sand is O.K. and easier to handle. The "low lands" Belgium and Netherlands have some experience handling sand.
Phew that one was difficult to read.. my semiotics is not up to scratch:-)
I liked the quote from Collins:
"T]he semiotic framework suggests that the Federal Circuit should reconsider the routine patentability of newly invented computer models. When addressing computer models, the Federal Circuit today elides the sign-vehicle with the sign and therefore commits a classic semiotic error: it inappropriately reifies a newly invented semiotic meaning into a new intrinsic property of a tangible, extra-mental artifact. As a result, it sanctions a patent on a meaningful thing even when the only invention at issue resides in the mind of the person who understands the thing's newly invented semiotic meaning. Claims to newly invented computer models literally describe a programmed computer (a sign-vehicle), yet the only inventive aspect of the claimed technology may be a new mental state in the mind of a computer user (an interpretant). "
I'll risk sounding like a pedantic arrogant asshole and i'll point out that the word "reifies" means: to believe an abstract thought to be something material, real, tangible (tangible means that you can touch it). From the Latin res, thing.
<offtopic>P.S. Reading this reminded me of Umberto Eco's book on semiotics, which in turn reminded me of The Name of The Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Ain't woolgathering fun! </offtopic>
"Software Patents
Here are some of the articles Groklaw has published on software patents, particularly in support of the claim that software is mathematics and hence unpatentable subject matter."
A few days ago, the Daily Slashdot Quote said "Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy".
(I totally agree with that quote BTW)
Can anyone say where that quote was from and whether robotic toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Robot Lord of Entropy, too?? Inquiring minds want to know...
The issue is, that you are assuming that the buyer is informed beforehand about what it is that they buy.
Currently, you can buy a thing called "a computer" in a shop, and it will (99% probability) have MS Windows on it, and if you want to run Linux instead, you can (painfully) try to get a refund of the software, but in any case you can install Linux on it as well (dual-boot) or exclusively.
That means that it has become the expectation that you can do this, get somebody clever to install a different OS, on a computer that you bought. You (the buyer) are assuming that it is a general-purpose computer, because *they all are*.
What if the buyer only finds out after 30 days or 90 days or whatever that he/she can't dual-boot anymore, when it is too late to return it to the shop for a refund because it is "not fit for purpose"?
I believe we need a consumer protection law soon that clearly labels computer-looking objects as "not a general purpose computer", a bit like the Unilever smearable fat product "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!(TM)" is not allowed to claim that it is real butter.
I assemble computers myself but I'd like my family members, friends etc. to be able to purchase a beige heavy box in a whitegoods store and spy the big fat warning sticker "I Can't Believe It's Not A Computer!" before deciding whether to spend their hard-earned money on that thing or not (or, ask their Friendly Computer Nerd(TM) first what it means, etc. etc.).
I tried to put this as a question to RMS when we Slashdotters were allowed to interview him, but I haven't seen the Slashdot article yet where he answers some of the asked questions.
You knew the pages were glued together ahead of time (in a valid analogy)
So, the book was sold with a large ugly sticker "Warning: this is not a general purpose book like you are used to. This is a SpecialBook(TM) where the pages have enhanced attraction to each other. Your lousy government forces us to stick this unseemly sticker on our beautiful SpecialBook(TM). Please lobby with us to have the non-general-purpose-book-sticker laws repealed."
Interesting. Is that why nobody is ever talking about VASIMR anymore. It was going to be tested on the ISS and it looked very promising (I'm not a plasma or microwave physicist-- in fact I'm not even a physicist). Maybe the USA has all gone "shut up about it and make a military implementation first". Or we have to wait for the Costa Rica Space Organization (if any) to launch something to test it.
Some Chilean biologist/philosophers called that idea autopoiesis.
I can't find the book anymore in my library:-( but the example I remember best was of the humble earth worm.
Earth worms eat the soil they live in and digest the humus in it (organic detritus). Soil with sharp bits of sand is of course not nice for the beast's stomach. But as everybody with a garden knows, if you have worms they make the soil looser and better aerated. They can also transport humus throughout the soil (from in front of the worm to pooed out of the worm). And maybe after several generations the soil becomes a bit more rounded too as thousands of worm-stomachs blunted it a bit. All these things have two side effects: 1. the plants find it easier to grow roots in non-sharp well-aerated soil (so they can dig deeper and pull up more minerals and when they die they leave more humus in the soil) and 2. the worms find it easier to live in soil where plants live and where worms have lived before.
It's a loop where you end up with soil very well suited to both plants and worms.
Can you comment on those fake Majorana particles that could be induced in the material; if that would work, would it be easier to make them than on a superconducting wire as I read somewhere?
(I guess on a wire you can only make two and on a surface you can make many more)
My second quantization-fu isn't really up to scratch.. but if this would make quantum computers easier to mass produce it would be a game changer.
Slashdot Mirror
I grew up eating asparagus for weeks when it was asparagus season, you insensitive clod!!one!1!!
Luckily my parents bought a freezer at one point.
Yes, there appears to be an increase in the amount of plant growth, measured in a Gabon rain forest, which will help greatly in giving us more time to prepare: http://news.mongabay.com/2009/0218-forest_carbon.html
The way to understand an incredibly complex system, is to first start with first principles, making a crude model, seeing if it fits the data, and then gradually refining the model by adding more complex interactions and factors. The basic idea was already documented in 1906 in a popular scientific work by Svante Arrhenius (yes *1906*) so his hunch about the CO2 variable was pretty much right. You're deluding yourself.
So from the 3 kinds of fertiliser (potassium, phosphorus and nitrogen) one would become a lot more expensive after Peak Oil, the other two indirectly (transport costs go up and mining costs go up). :-)
On the other hand, there are areas of the globe that have been cultivated for more than 5000 years, and that proves that with manure and compost you can stick enough nutrients back in the ground to keep going forever. But not at current "green revolution" yields of course, no...
Keep your compost, and grow clover and beautiful lupine on the bits of your plot that are fallow, and some beans or peas amongst your other veggies
I thought that supernovas were only necessary for elements heavier than iron. I thought even our sun is making a tiny bit of carbon, oxygen and nitrogen right now: CNO cycle.
Good point :-)
I don't know if it's because Slashdot is an American forum, but has everyone already forgotten the experiments of dr. Valeri Polyakov on himself during his 14 month stay on Mir?
Mind you our TV news showed him looking quite weak when he got out of the Soyuz. I think he needed to be carried (don't remember that well).
And how about last year's Russian-ESA-Chinese Mars 500 psychological isolation experiment, that was fascinating to follow as well, and those men *knew* they were just sitting in a tin can in Moscow, which must surely have made the psychological pressure even harder. Imagine eating Russian canned food for 500 days (and a few fresh vegetables, thank Bog) while you *know* that you could sneak out for a quick pint and meal somewhere in Moscow instead.
I don't mean to be trolling, but it seems sometimes that if something is not done in the USA, it is off the radar of the American public and/or swept under the carpet as "yes, but WE are going to do it MORE and BETTER after we have secured the funding".
Be glad some poor sods from other countries have already done these kinds of experiments for you!!
Let us all pray that Brassica Chinensis grows well on a spaceship.
Hmm... stir-fried Chinese cabbage...
A similar plan called "Mars Direct" is outlined in Robert Zubrin's "The Case for Mars". It's a fun read! :-)
The idea is to use a simple factory to make the return fuel in situ. Then when the factory reports after a few years that the return fuel storage tanks are full, you launch the actual mission, knowing that the crew can probably return safely once they make it to the first Mars landing site.
I don't like their idea of using some kind of nuclear power plant for the compressor and Sabatier process, surely it can be done with solar power, it will just take several years longer. Their idea is to "bring your own" hydrogen, compress Mars air of 95% CO2, and make water, methane, and oxygen. It sounds simple and brilliant.
And I think that they should park another factory next to it to manufacture solar cells from doped amorphous silicon
Here, read this: http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-html-admin/2013Feb/0137.html, this person puts it very clearly: WTF is the W3C doing trying to *hinder* an open accessible web? DRM is against what their purpose in life as an organisation is.
Did "the Director" die, or something??
Absolutely, especially if they want to simulate a brain disease (how does the mechanism change if one area is diseased), or chemical gradients (if I'm tired and can think even worse than usual, some of my neurons may experience a lack of glucose).
You'd imagine they'd make some kind of combined model: detailed models of single-neuron, massively parallel, and then laid on top of that a very coarse location-based "chemical gradient field" that tweaks the single neuron parameters a bit. Can any neuroscientist please inform us here?
Surely they are both, and their religion and science are compatible as well.
<fictional_example>
It can be argued that the zealous dr. Frankenstein was both a scientist, and an intelligent designer
</fictional_example>
My knowledge of steel making stops at the 19th century Bessemer process :-)
But that's not what I meant; I said it too cryptically. What I meant was: to build infrastructure that can facilitate our descent into 21st century living conditions (probably better than 19th century but worse than 20th century energy abundance), we'd better use the cheap electricity we have at the moment.
We need electricity in the coming centuries. Fossil fuels are finite, coal may last 300 years but even then we want to minimize CO2 production because the greenhouse effect is going to be bad enough as it is (see Directive on Electricity Production from Renewable Energy Sources).
I know that Aluminium production is done with electrolysis so uses a fuck lot of electricity; as you say steelworks can use natural gas to keep the steel hot, but I bet a factory like Hoogovens/Corus/Tata Steel Europe in IJmuiden uses a fuck lot of electricity as well.
The point I tried to unsuccessfully make is, that since we need a lot of metal to build electricity generating infrastructure (wind turbine pylons, solar troughs, you name it), and since the production of that lot of metal itself uses up a metric fuckload of electricity, the long term most efficient strategy (we're talking 300 years or so here) must surely be to produce that lot of metal (precursor materials for future energy generating infrastructure) in the time that we have left while the current infrastructure based on fossil fuels and nuclear fission is still operational and provides cheap and plentiful electricity.
The only alternative is to wait until we have to smelt all that metal with renewable electricity, but that would just be more expensive.
Did I make more sense this time? Thx.
You don't need rock (see example (Palm Jumeira)). Sand is O.K. and easier to handle. The "low lands" Belgium and Netherlands have some experience handling sand.
That is the most insightful posting I've read about renewable energy in a long while.
It's much cheaper to smelt the steel for the turbine towers using coal-electricity than using wind-electricity, so it must be built *RIGHT NOW*.
Well, maybe Benoît Mandelbrot..
I liked the quote from Collins:
I'll risk sounding like a pedantic arrogant asshole and i'll point out that the word "reifies" means: to believe an abstract thought to be something material, real, tangible (tangible means that you can touch it). From the Latin res, thing.
<offtopic>P.S. Reading this reminded me of Umberto Eco's book on semiotics, which in turn reminded me of The Name of The Rose and Foucault's Pendulum. Ain't woolgathering fun! </offtopic>
Really? Oh.
Here are a whole bunch of them, each one carefully reasoned out and commented on:
http://www.groklaw.net/staticpages/index.php?page=Patents2
A few days ago, the Daily Slashdot Quote said "Toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Lord of Entropy".
(I totally agree with that quote BTW)
Can anyone say where that quote was from and whether robotic toddlers are the stormtroopers of the Robot Lord of Entropy, too?? Inquiring minds want to know...
The real Bede looks much meaner.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Nuremberg_Chronicle_Venerable_Bede.jpg, though I'm sure he could comment on the Bible like no one's business..
The issue is, that you are assuming that the buyer is informed beforehand about what it is that they buy.
Currently, you can buy a thing called "a computer" in a shop, and it will (99% probability) have MS Windows on it, and if you want to run Linux instead, you can (painfully) try to get a refund of the software, but in any case you can install Linux on it as well (dual-boot) or exclusively.
That means that it has become the expectation that you can do this, get somebody clever to install a different OS, on a computer that you bought. You (the buyer) are assuming that it is a general-purpose computer, because *they all are*.
What if the buyer only finds out after 30 days or 90 days or whatever that he/she can't dual-boot anymore, when it is too late to return it to the shop for a refund because it is "not fit for purpose"?
I believe we need a consumer protection law soon that clearly labels computer-looking objects as "not a general purpose computer", a bit like the Unilever smearable fat product "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!(TM)" is not allowed to claim that it is real butter.
I assemble computers myself but I'd like my family members, friends etc. to be able to purchase a beige heavy box in a whitegoods store and spy the big fat warning sticker "I Can't Believe It's Not A Computer!" before deciding whether to spend their hard-earned money on that thing or not (or, ask their Friendly Computer Nerd(TM) first what it means, etc. etc.).
I tried to put this as a question to RMS when we Slashdotters were allowed to interview him, but I haven't seen the Slashdot article yet where he answers some of the asked questions.
So, the book was sold with a large ugly sticker "Warning: this is not a general purpose book like you are used to. This is a SpecialBook(TM) where the pages have enhanced attraction to each other. Your lousy government forces us to stick this unseemly sticker on our beautiful SpecialBook(TM). Please lobby with us to have the non-general-purpose-book-sticker laws repealed."
Interesting. Is that why nobody is ever talking about VASIMR anymore. It was going to be tested on the ISS and it looked very promising (I'm not a plasma or microwave physicist-- in fact I'm not even a physicist). Maybe the USA has all gone "shut up about it and make a military implementation first". Or we have to wait for the Costa Rica Space Organization (if any) to launch something to test it.
Some Chilean biologist/philosophers called that idea autopoiesis. :-( but the example I remember best was of the humble earth worm.
I can't find the book anymore in my library
Earth worms eat the soil they live in and digest the humus in it (organic detritus). Soil with sharp bits of sand is of course not nice for the beast's stomach. But as everybody with a garden knows, if you have worms they make the soil looser and better aerated. They can also transport humus throughout the soil (from in front of the worm to pooed out of the worm). And maybe after several generations the soil becomes a bit more rounded too as thousands of worm-stomachs blunted it a bit. All these things have two side effects: 1. the plants find it easier to grow roots in non-sharp well-aerated soil (so they can dig deeper and pull up more minerals and when they die they leave more humus in the soil) and 2. the worms find it easier to live in soil where plants live and where worms have lived before.
It's a loop where you end up with soil very well suited to both plants and worms.
Conclusion: put a compost heap in your garden.
Can you comment on those fake Majorana particles that could be induced in the material; if that would work, would it be easier to make them than on a superconducting wire as I read somewhere?
(I guess on a wire you can only make two and on a surface you can make many more)
My second quantization-fu isn't really up to scratch.. but if this would make quantum computers easier to mass produce it would be a game changer.