Besides a few cameras and clocks in orbit, what else can you do with space?
"What have the Romans ever done for us?"
I never know what these supposedly clever replies from Space Nutters are supposed to mean.
It's a Monty Python reference (Life of Brian, to be specific). Reg gives a revolutionary speech asking, "What have the Romans ever done for us?" at which point the listeners outline a long list of benefits brought by the Romans.
Turn in your nerd badge as you leave, please; it's obvious you're in the wrong place.
If you read the article in detail, the energy cost for a DVD rented or purchased by mail is pretty much identical to that of one streamed (figure 4.)
The purported energy cost difference between DVD and streaming is entirely due to the fact that they assume you drive to the store to buy or rent the DVD. (In fact, there is actually a tiny bit more carbon emitted if you stream instead of rent or buy by mail, if you look at the right image on figure 4).
I assume if you buy or rent from a store you're going to visit anyway, this differnce vanishes
The singularity, of course, is defined as the point where the function and all its derivatives approach infinity. There is another way to think of a singularity. If you are extrapolating a function based on a power series around a point, you can only expand that power series as far as the closest singularity ("pole") in the complex plane (the "radius of convergence"). You can't extrapolate further than that with a simple power series, even if you aren't trying to solve for the function at the pole itself.
So, thinking science fictionally, we can't extrapolate the future based on the present any further than the distance to the singularity, even if our actual future doesn't in fact pass through the singularity.
So, don't think of the technological singularity as a time when life for humans ends, and robots/artificial intelligences/transcended humans take over. Think of it as time scale beyond which we can't extrapolate the future based on what we know now.
lpress wants a Kindle, but with "speech recognition for commands and text entry, a well-designed database for marginal notes and annotations, and integration with laptop and desktop computers."
That's not a Kindle, which is a single-purpose machine for reading; that is a general purpose machine. Apple already makes the machine desired: it's the iPad.
Handwriting as an input method would be nice too
Ah, now you're re-inventing the late lamented "Newton", not to mention the Palms of yesteryear (where the "handwriting" had to be in their unique graffiti alphabet)
The energy density of gasoline is higher than with ethanol, so the more ethanol you add the more you "dilute" the energy contained in a particular volume.
Yes; logically they should sell fuel at a dollars per kilojoule price, not a dollars per gallon (or Euros per liter). But of course they don't.
At the moment E85 is cheaper than pure gasoline (avarage price May 2014 $3.05 for E85; $3.71 for gasoline), but since both oil prices and ethanol prices fluctuate separately, this can change.
And couldn't you actually post what it stands for instead of linking to some other site?!
I would, but since the article didn't ever say what it stands for, I don't actually know what it stands for.
"Superconducting Supercollider" is my best guess. Why they call it that is a mystery to me. Maybe because they're both expensive high-tech things that are go round in circles in a desert.
Better yet. I just logged in and I cannot find where to change my password.
See where it says "Hi, [yourname]!" at the top left? Click it, then Account Settings -> Personal Information -> "Edit" on the Password line.There, was that so hard?
Yes. That's a stupid place to hide it. Clicking "Hi [username]" is not an obvious place to look-- to me, this counts as "hide this menu item as far away from the user as possible". I did in fact find it, but "just keep clicking menu and submenu and sub-submenu items at random and eventually you'll get there" is not really a good user interface strategy. (although it seems to be a very common user interface strategy).
I've only written one novel, Mars Crossing, so if you want to read one of my novels, the choice is easy. Currently out of print, but in this modern world of internet bookstores, it's still easy to find.
In Africa I see waves of ethnic turmoil coupled with basic infrastructure problems, all played by the governments to keep a few powerful folks in power.
Yes, it apparently is hard for Americans to understand that Africa is a continent, with many countries (48 of them, actually), and that they're all different.
Baloney. What a stupid argument. Here is it, summarized: 1. Here is one mathematical model of a way that memories could work. 2. This method would be computable. 3. But that would mean memories degrade the more you remember them 4. But memories don't degrade the more you remember them. 5. Therefore memories are not computable.
Assignment for the student: find the flaw in this argument.
You can't predict anything meaningful or useful. Telling me next year will have a spring and summer isn't useful, it's a given....
The statement I was responding to was "No one can predict the future." Not "predictions of the future aren't meaningful or useful."
However, I will state that my prediction that summer will follow spring and will be warmer than winter is useful, in that it tells me that I should plant my tomatoes in spring, rather than in autumn. Predictions of the future are, in fact, very useful, and we make them all the time.
The other commenter wasn't predicting anything of consequence. On the contrary, he was simply extrapolating from the past. Those are two very different things. Extrapolating from known cyclical behavior can indeed be useful, but as a "prediction" it's pretty much a joke.
Extrapolating from the past is one way to predict the future, yes; I'm not sure why you think it's a "joke".
Extrapolating from the past is a much better way to predict the future if you have a good statistical data set to base your prediction on, and understand the statistics and error margin.
Extrapolating from the past is a much much better way to predict the future if in addition you have a well-validated model that allows you to understand the behavior of the system, as well as a base of observed data. When I predict that the sun will rise tomorrow, for example, I am not merely extrapolating from the fact that the sun rose today, and yesterday, but I have knowledge of the law of conservation of angular momentum, and an understanding of the dynamics of the solar system. This is a pretty solid prediction....and, since I made that prediction yesterday, it was proven correct. I not only can predict the future, I did predict the future.
As I said: We can't predict everything. That doesn't mean we can't predict anything.
RTFA. The guy had no gun in the car (he'd left it locked up in FL), but the MD cops knew he had a CCW permit even though he was a FL resident . . . how is that possible?
From the article: "By statute, records regarding which Floridians have been issued permits are available in a searchable database to out-of-state law enforcement. "
Just the other day I was walking to my car at my university parking lot, and I noticed some unidentified civilian vehicle with scanners mounted front and back slowly driving by all the parked cars.
Exactly. The article says that they can GET to Mars... in ensporulated (inactive) form. I can even believe that they can survive on Mars... in inactive form. But can they metabolize and reproduce and spread once they get to Mars?? That's a lot harder. Mars is cold. Mars is dry. Mars is irradiated with UV. I could imagine that some organisms that are simultaneously extreme cryophiles, and halophiles (any water that is liquid is going to be very saline) and also radiation tolerant might survive... but these organisms aren't likely to be the ones contaminating spacecraft, unless we assemble spacecraft in Antarctica.
Devil's Advocate here: Last I checked, Al Gore wasn't a professor.
Last I checked, Al Gore wasn't relevant in any way. It is only the climate change deniers that are interested in Al Gore-- but they seem to be completely obsessed with him. He's not a scientist, he hasn't written or contributed to any of the papers laying out the science behind anthropogenic climate change, he is not part of the scientific literature. If he didn't exist, the climate models, the analysis of climate data, and the conclusions would be unchanged.
If you're talking about Al Gore, you're really not talking about science. At best, he's a popularizer.
Slashdot Mirror
Besides a few cameras and clocks in orbit, what else can you do with space?
"What have the Romans ever done for us?"
I never know what these supposedly clever replies from Space Nutters are supposed to mean.
It's a Monty Python reference (Life of Brian, to be specific). Reg gives a revolutionary speech asking, "What have the Romans ever done for us?" at which point the listeners outline a long list of benefits brought by the Romans.
Turn in your nerd badge as you leave, please; it's obvious you're in the wrong place.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
Well, the National Space Society already has a space roadmap:
http://www.nss.org/settlement/...
I will also unapologetically list my twenty-some-year old Footsteps to Mars, presented at Case for Mars V, Boulder CO, 26-29 May 1993.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com/...
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/f...
If you read the article in detail, the energy cost for a DVD rented or purchased by mail is pretty much identical to that of one streamed (figure 4.)
The purported energy cost difference between DVD and streaming is entirely due to the fact that they assume you drive to the store to buy or rent the DVD. (In fact, there is actually a tiny bit more carbon emitted if you stream instead of rent or buy by mail, if you look at the right image on figure 4).
I assume if you buy or rent from a store you're going to visit anyway, this differnce vanishes
The singularity, of course, is defined as the point where the function and all its derivatives approach infinity. There is another way to think of a singularity. If you are extrapolating a function based on a power series around a point, you can only expand that power series as far as the closest singularity ("pole") in the complex plane (the "radius of convergence"). You can't extrapolate further than that with a simple power series, even if you aren't trying to solve for the function at the pole itself.
So, thinking science fictionally, we can't extrapolate the future based on the present any further than the distance to the singularity, even if our actual future doesn't in fact pass through the singularity.
So, don't think of the technological singularity as a time when life for humans ends, and robots/artificial intelligences/transcended humans take over. Think of it as time scale beyond which we can't extrapolate the future based on what we know now.
lpress wants a Kindle, but with "speech recognition for commands and text entry, a well-designed database for marginal notes and annotations, and integration with laptop and desktop computers."
That's not a Kindle, which is a single-purpose machine for reading; that is a general purpose machine. Apple already makes the machine desired: it's the iPad.
Handwriting as an input method would be nice too
Ah, now you're re-inventing the late lamented "Newton", not to mention the Palms of yesteryear (where the "handwriting" had to be in their unique graffiti alphabet)
The energy density of gasoline is higher than with ethanol, so the more ethanol you add the more you "dilute" the energy contained in a particular volume.
Yes; logically they should sell fuel at a dollars per kilojoule price, not a dollars per gallon (or Euros per liter). But of course they don't.
At the moment E85 is cheaper than pure gasoline (avarage price May 2014 $3.05 for E85; $3.71 for gasoline), but since both oil prices and ethanol prices fluctuate separately, this can change.
http://www.e85prices.com/
And couldn't you actually post what it stands for instead of linking to some other site?!
I would, but since the article didn't ever say what it stands for, I don't actually know what it stands for.
"Superconducting Supercollider" is my best guess. Why they call it that is a mystery to me. Maybe because they're both expensive high-tech things that are go round in circles in a desert.
http://www.acronymfinder.com/S...
Couldn't they mention what they are talking about in the first sentence or two of the summary?
Better yet. I just logged in and I cannot find where to change my password.
See where it says "Hi, [yourname]!" at the top left? Click it, then Account Settings -> Personal Information -> "Edit" on the Password line.There, was that so hard?
Yes. That's a stupid place to hide it. Clicking "Hi [username]" is not an obvious place to look-- to me, this counts as "hide this menu item as far away from the user as possible". I did in fact find it, but "just keep clicking menu and submenu and sub-submenu items at random and eventually you'll get there" is not really a good user interface strategy. (although it seems to be a very common user interface strategy).
just logged into my ebay acct. and there's NOTHING in the communications there either.
Yes, I just logged on and don't see anything on their login page. Odd; you'd think that this would be the first place they'd put a note.
It's also very obscure how to change your e-bay password. You can do it... but it's buried way down in menus inside menus.
Maybe they're waiting until they can rewrite their login page to put the "change password" menu somewhere that an average user can actually FIND it.
[offtopic]
Thanks!
I've only written one novel, Mars Crossing, so if you want to read one of my novels, the choice is easy. Currently out of print, but in this modern world of internet bookstores, it's still easy to find.
with many countries (48 of them, actually)
(I should add: that's for the mainland, not counting the island nations, and not counting several disputed states.)
In Africa I see waves of ethnic turmoil coupled with basic infrastructure problems, all played by the governments to keep a few powerful folks in power.
Yes, it apparently is hard for Americans to understand that Africa is a continent, with many countries (48 of them, actually), and that they're all different.
This might help a little:
http://africa.dlora.nl/mapverg...
Yes, it was a trick question. The answer is that there was not one flaw in their logic.
Yes, you're right; I eliminated a lot of their initial "making it sound plausible" steps in order to summarize the path of their logic.
To cover the part you mentioned, add step 0 to my list of their steps:
0. They make a number of assertions about the nature of memory.
Based on these assertions, they propose:
1. Here is one mathematical model of a way that memories could work....
Baloney. What a stupid argument. Here is it, summarized:
1. Here is one mathematical model of a way that memories could work.
2. This method would be computable.
3. But that would mean memories degrade the more you remember them
4. But memories don't degrade the more you remember them.
5. Therefore memories are not computable.
Assignment for the student: find the flaw in this argument.
You can't predict anything meaningful or useful. Telling me next year will have a spring and summer isn't useful, it's a given....
The statement I was responding to was "No one can predict the future." Not "predictions of the future aren't meaningful or useful."
However, I will state that my prediction that summer will follow spring and will be warmer than winter is useful, in that it tells me that I should plant my tomatoes in spring, rather than in autumn. Predictions of the future are, in fact, very useful, and we make them all the time.
The other commenter wasn't predicting anything of consequence. On the contrary, he was simply extrapolating from the past. Those are two very different things. Extrapolating from known cyclical behavior can indeed be useful, but as a "prediction" it's pretty much a joke.
Extrapolating from the past is one way to predict the future, yes; I'm not sure why you think it's a "joke".
Extrapolating from the past is a much better way to predict the future if you have a good statistical data set to base your prediction on, and understand the statistics and error margin.
Extrapolating from the past is a much much better way to predict the future if in addition you have a well-validated model that allows you to understand the behavior of the system, as well as a base of observed data. When I predict that the sun will rise tomorrow, for example, I am not merely extrapolating from the fact that the sun rose today, and yesterday, but I have knowledge of the law of conservation of angular momentum, and an understanding of the dynamics of the solar system. This is a pretty solid prediction. ...and, since I made that prediction yesterday, it was proven correct. I not only can predict the future, I did predict the future.
As I said: We can't predict everything. That doesn't mean we can't predict anything.
I can predict everything!
Oh, you wanted predictions that come true. Carry on....
Well played, Sir Hotspur.
You probably should read this book.
Or this: http://fivethirtyeight.com/fea...
I've said it before and I'll say it again:
No one can predict the future.
I predict that the sun will rise tomorrow, and also the next day.
I predict the average temperature where I live will be warmer in August, and it will be cooler in January.
I predict a full moon on May 14, and a partial solar eclipse on October 23.
I predict that next year's calendars will (in America) mostly bear the year "2015".
I predict that in 2015 the Earth's atmosphere will still contain about 78% nitrogen.
I predict that, this coming June, elephants will be unable to fly under their own power, but sparrows will.
Of course people can predict the future. We can't predict everything. That doesn't mean we can't predict anything.
RTFA. The guy had no gun in the car (he'd left it locked up in FL), but the MD cops knew he had a CCW permit even though he was a FL resident . . . how is that possible?
From the article: "By statute, records regarding which Floridians have been issued permits are available in a searchable database to out-of-state law enforcement. "
Just the other day I was walking to my car at my university parking lot, and I noticed some unidentified civilian vehicle with scanners mounted front and back slowly driving by all the parked cars.
Probably the repo men, scanning to find vehicles to reposess.
http://betaboston.com/news/201...
Of course, they share their info with the police, too.
http://www.theblaze.com/storie...
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/ot...
They sign extensive NDA's and "must" deny any and all usage of stingray cell phone "dummy tower" interception devices also - why?
Yep:
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/s...
http://www.wired.com/2014/03/h...
or, if you prefer your news from /., there's this
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/...
Exactly.
The article says that they can GET to Mars... in ensporulated (inactive) form.
I can even believe that they can survive on Mars... in inactive form.
But can they metabolize and reproduce and spread once they get to Mars?? That's a lot harder. Mars is cold. Mars is dry. Mars is irradiated with UV.
I could imagine that some organisms that are simultaneously extreme cryophiles, and halophiles (any water that is liquid is going to be very saline) and also radiation tolerant might survive... but these organisms aren't likely to be the ones contaminating spacecraft, unless we assemble spacecraft in Antarctica.
Devil's Advocate here: Last I checked, Al Gore wasn't a professor.
Last I checked, Al Gore wasn't relevant in any way. It is only the climate change deniers that are interested in Al Gore-- but they seem to be completely obsessed with him. He's not a scientist, he hasn't written or contributed to any of the papers laying out the science behind anthropogenic climate change, he is not part of the scientific literature. If he didn't exist, the climate models, the analysis of climate data, and the conclusions would be unchanged.
If you're talking about Al Gore, you're really not talking about science. At best, he's a popularizer.