we can further simplify our phrase by simply stating "10 Gm/h".
To further simplify it I would suggest that you use the SI base unit for time. That means your 10 would become 2,777,777.7... m/s of course, I think we should consider significant figures here, and assuming only 2 significant figures then you end up with 2.8 Mm/s
Of course, given that in my normal day-to-day conversations I use m/s as the preferred metric of measuring speed, I'm quite comfortable using this as a comparative measurement. 'Why Jim, did you see how fast that car was going? It must have been doing at least 45 m/s in that 50 kph zone!' So always use base unit SI when discussing anything and it will be completely understandable to the reader of the article.
Actually some do. My parents bought a safe with a digital lock that requires batteries to power the lock and retract the deadbolt in the doors. When it locks all their stuff in I'm just gonna say "told you so."
Oh I don't disagree that some safes can use batteries in their design, what I meant by requirement is that it isn't some rule written in stone that a safe must use batteries.
The catch with smart gun tech is that I don't see how it can work without some sort of energy storage medium. It's either batteries, long lasting capacitors, or something to store the energy necessary to perform the computation necessary to verify the user and validate their use of the firearm.
The only alternative I could see being a possible alternative to persistent energy storage is kinetic to inductive charging, like those flashlights you shake that charges a capacitor. That said, I don't think having to vigorously shake a firearm before it boots up it's verification circuitry is a good design.
But what cools the air cooling fins? (Don't say, "Moving air", because that doesn't work. Proof? Your muffler is very hot even after driving very fast.)
So your proof that cooling fins won't work is something that doesn't have cooling fins...
Also, did you ever wonder how hot your muffler would be if it wasn't exposed to moving air?
Old military bases would be great for future industrial development, but using them as the base for a new residential community should come with some extreme reservations.
While a military base built after 1990 and decommissioned might be ok, most of our older bases have severe problems with hazardous materials. It isn't just a case of going through the records, mapping out the locations of old dumps and excavating the contaminated soil, many times there is no record of where the soil has been contaminated, and you often don't know until someone starts excavating a foundataion and pulls up a rusty 55gal drum.
If you are lucky, the drum contains waste oil from the motor pool repair facility. But the point is that there are plenty of 'buried treasures' on old military bases. I'd be very nervous about planning a community on a former base. A new industrial area, or a shopping center? Sure, but not residential.
That's the nice thing about a sample return mission like the one that's been proposed. It'll confirm your above opinion of the evidence. Something that looks like gypsum sand to a rover, may well be. But if it looks like gypsum sand in a lab on Earth, then that's a vastly more definitive piece of evidence.
That's not really necessary as your situation isn't really possible.
Crystals/chemicals/etc don't really have many options to form 'differently'. When they form differently, they aren't the same. Sure you can get some isomers, but even then those don't necessarily have the same properties.
For your premise, that all of those minerals formed via some process other than one that involves water, would require a huge coincidence that the rover could somehow find all of these minerals which happened to form without water even though all of our experience tells us is unlikely.
A lot of schools used to do that here in the US. However, after much pearl clutching by gunphobic parents and political opportunists, these places where children could learn gun safety in controlled environments were systematically dismantled.
How does transcribing dialogue from a movie, translating it, and publishing the result differ from translating a book and publishing the result?
Not that I agree with the rationale of the person you responded to, but I think that there is some original interpretation that must occur during the transcribe/translate phase.
With a book, typically what is produced is a gramatical and syntatical translation.
I would argue that in the process of translating audio dialog into text and into another language, there is a nontrivial amount of effort that is put into the semantic translation. The text of a book must describe exactly what the author wishes to convey. However there is a lot of unspoken information communicated in an audo/visual medium and that information must be captured and translated itself. Thus in addition to the grammar and syntax, the semantics must be processed in a manner which isn't as simple as a dictionary word or rule switch.
You are not correct. You misunderstand the concept of consent. As a concept, it ceases to exist when applied to non-sentient things. Consent is concept which only exists if the entities involved are considered to be sentient. I like to make a point of this partially from an academic interest, but it is critically important to understand the concept if you are to justify any legal premise which concerns interactions between entities.
Why is it important to realize that you cannot use consent as an argument for/against laws concerning the interaction between a sentient and non-sentient? You use the example that you cannot do something to a plant, because the plant cannot legally consent. Such an argument sounds plausible, but in reality it is nonsense. If imposition of a sentient's will on a non-sentient required consent, then you would never be able to interact with the non-sentient at all. You might argue that consent is only required when the interaction might be harmful, but that would be nonsense as well.
We don't require the consent of wheat to harvest it. We don't even require the consent of animals when we decide to kill them. The reason is that when it comes to property, consent is a concept which simply doesn't exist.
You can argue that something isn't property(the current benchmark is sentience), you can argue that property must be handled in a particular manner (animal cruelty laws for example) but you can't argue that actions taken against property is subject to the concept of consent.
But a boycott isn't censorship or refusal to engage. If someone disagrees with a work's message, they can (a) not buy it, and (b) encourage others not to buy it.
That is true, but I thought that part of the reason this is being discussed is because the message people are trying to boycott isn't in 'Ender's Game'. So you aren't disagreeing with a work's message, you are disagreeing with the politics of the IP owner of the work.
Even though I disagree with Card's politics, I don't think we should be so eager to attach political baggage to creative works unless that creative work is intentionally political.
As a society, that's dangerous because we will end up with publishers favoring one work over another because of the potential loss of profit associated with the politics of the author and not the actual merits of the work itself. There was recently discussion about how the lack of female POV characters in video games is due to publisher fears that it won't maximize the potential market.
Consider the political opinions of George Orwell. Do you think the world would be better if he was unable to get his stories to market because the publishers feared a boycott?
and that bit about jailing more people than China.... actually we jail a larger percentage of our population than any government in the history of the world.
Also don't forget that we don't get enough exercise either!
(Unless they were proposing a national prison on the moon, your point isn't exactly relevant to this discussion)
Not particularly, and that was never the case anyway. It was always a space race, an attempt to beat Cold War enemies
Yes, and that goal was set because it was achievable, but a difficult (ie hard) goal to achieve.
The motivating force might have been to ultimate-one-up the Soviets, but for it to be a true 'win' that goal had to be hard. Otherwise, it wouldn't be as significant as it was.
Like water, for instance. Most animals have no trouble identifying and finding water even in a new environment. I don't think there are examples of humans that can do this - not by smell alone.
Blindfold me and take me to within 500 meters of a lake, pond, or small river. Assuming a natural environment and that I'm downwind, I'd lead you in a beeline right to the water source. It's nothing amazing, it's just being familiar with the scents associated with bodies of water. I'd wager anyone with an average sense of smell could do the same.
It's not literally H2O that you can smell, but byproducts of the chemistry of a natural water source that you can smell. It is those secondary smells that allow animals to 'smell water'. Any advantage animals have is only in the level of sensitivity for detecting those secondary odors. (ie: anything a dog can smell, very likely a human can smell if you sufficiently increase the concentration) So the only difference you might notice for animals is the distance by which they can detect the odors associated with water.
The thing that boggled my mind about this plane was, why build a plane with a basically unlimited endurance, and then burden it with a pilot, who can't possibly last very long? The plane can only travel 1700 km per 24 hours.
Rough guess? Weight and complexity.
I don't have the plans in front of me, but I'd wager that there wasn't very much in terms of 'controls' of this aircraft. It is very likely mechanically controlled rather than fly-by-wire or even electrically assisted. Basically a system of pulleys and wires. It may not seem futuristic, but it is light, simple, and well understood.
To fly the aircraft by computer, every single control surface would have to be hooked up to an electric motor. You wouldn't save weight there as control and power wiring would have to be run through the fuselage and wings. The wire would weigh at least as much as the wire used to mechanically control the surfaces. The combined weight of the motors would probably get close to the weight of the pilot. Your flight control system would require feedback from the motors and sensors, and the FCS in itself would be rather weighty, relatively speaking.
All these electrical devices require power to operate, and as you might guess, the prime, number one, do not waste, absolute critical resource of this aircraft is power. Every watt is precious, and navigation/flight calculation is not computationally inexpensive.
You might try to save some weight by having the aircraft be piloted remotely, but that just introduces another weighty, power consuming component: the radios needed to receive commands and transmit position/feedback/video/etc. I'd wager that there are few commercial radios available today which could handle the data requirements of a drone aircraft. (not my area of expertise, but most voice radios aren't rated for much more than 20% transmit duty cycles.) Even so, you don't want to transmit more than the absolute minimum in order to minimize energy consumption. A drone aircraft radio must transmit more often than a regular ATC voice radio. (minimumATC voice + minimumDroneResponse will always be more than just minimumATC voice)
Do you trust your design? That would be an expensive and public crash if your flight control system had a bug that didn't consider that your air pressure sensor was clogged (see B-2 crash in Guam)
Then comes the regulatory hurdles. If you designed your own flight control system, you are going to be hard pressed to get the FAA to approve your aircraft for flight anytime soon. Are they even approving civilian drones yet? Let alone autonomous systems.
So basically it boils down to this:
A pilot is a well understood control system as it pertains to aircraft and regulatory approval. The pilot and his gear will weigh less than 100kg. Included in that 100kg is everything you need to control an aircraft for a significant chunk of the aircraft's endurance of 36 hours. The cost is known, the design is proven, the regulatory approval process is effectively nil.
One person's scent of smashed peanut powder is another person's death. Hacking a scent generator seems both easy, and protections dubious at best.
Q: You know what's easier than hacking a scent generator in a hope that it will generate a facsimile close enough to peanuts such as to produce an allergic reaction?
A: Throwing a handful of peanuts at the guy.
Oh wait, you wanted it to be covert?
A: Soak a letter in a solution of peanut butter and water. Dry. Mail letter.
I'm not mocking peanut allergies here, I'm trying to point out that anaphylaxis isn't exactly something that only Rube Goldberg could trigger.
There is a world of difference between flying at night and your scenario. The reason is that your scenario was written to be intentionally constructed to be outside of the CONOPS for a solar-powered drone. Just because you can't completely obsolete a device in all scenarios doesn't mean your new device isn't more useful overall. A mule is much more useful for transport over mountainous walking paths than a jeep, but that doesn't make a jeep useless in mountainous terrain.
You follow up with the statement that 'mil-spec equipment has to work no matter what the conditions are' is false. Not all equipment must work under all conditions, and very frequently in the design of military equipment there will be waivers to the MIL-SPEC when meeting the spec would be cost more than the benefit is worth given the CONOPS.
Of course, you don't have to take my word for it:
MIL-STD-810G section 4.1.2 Guidance to Program Managers:...DoD 5000-series documents call for a total systems approach through systems engineering, considering all life cycle needs, including storage, transport, and operation in natural environments (DoDD 5000.1). Specifically, they call for a description of how performance in natural environmental conditions representative of the intended area of operations will be tested...T he environmental tailoring process shown... use systems engineering approaches, helping to ensure that system design and test criteria are tailored to environmental conditions within which materiel systems are to operate and that total ownership costs are reduced.
Translated: Don't try to get your equipment to work for all environmental conditions. Figure out what your equipment will be subjected to, and plan to test those conditions so you don't waste a ton of money designing an office wastepaper bin that can withstand hail and salt-fog.
Last thing before washing: The faucet handle First thing after: The paper towel I prepared for drying my hands, turning off the faucet, and opening the restroom door.
Or in the case of my current office: The paper towel I prepared for drying my hands as the faucet is automatic, and the door opens out and has a kickplate.
Clever janitors have realized that most people do this, and have placed a wastebin next to the restroom exit door for 'door opener towels'
I wonder then, why are there so many instances of insulin deprived individuals exhibiting uncharacteristically violent/aggressive behaviors, or slipping into comas.
Something as simple as an over/underactive pancreas can dramatically alter the behavior of a person. Last I checked, that organ wasn't located in the brain.
Last I checked my biology text book, the Internet was not one of the requirements for life.
Last I checked my biology text book, it gave me a one time code and directed me to the publisher's website. Unfortunately, the code was used so I can't confirm your claim.
Slashdot Mirror
we can further simplify our phrase by simply stating "10 Gm/h".
To further simplify it I would suggest that you use the SI base unit for time. That means your 10 would become 2,777,777.7... m/s of course, I think we should consider significant figures here, and assuming only 2 significant figures then you end up with 2.8 Mm/s
Of course, given that in my normal day-to-day conversations I use m/s as the preferred metric of measuring speed, I'm quite comfortable using this as a comparative measurement. 'Why Jim, did you see how fast that car was going? It must have been doing at least 45 m/s in that 50 kph zone!' So always use base unit SI when discussing anything and it will be completely understandable to the reader of the article.
Actually some do. My parents bought a safe with a digital lock that requires batteries to power the lock and retract the deadbolt in the doors. When it locks all their stuff in I'm just gonna say "told you so."
Oh I don't disagree that some safes can use batteries in their design, what I meant by requirement is that it isn't some rule written in stone that a safe must use batteries.
The catch with smart gun tech is that I don't see how it can work without some sort of energy storage medium. It's either batteries, long lasting capacitors, or something to store the energy necessary to perform the computation necessary to verify the user and validate their use of the firearm.
The only alternative I could see being a possible alternative to persistent energy storage is kinetic to inductive charging, like those flashlights you shake that charges a capacitor. That said, I don't think having to vigorously shake a firearm before it boots up it's verification circuitry is a good design.
Either way I'd quite like $5000 for work I did last year.
Last year? Don't copyrights last 150 years now?
But what cools the air cooling fins? (Don't say, "Moving air", because that doesn't work. Proof? Your muffler is very hot even after driving very fast.)
So your proof that cooling fins won't work is something that doesn't have cooling fins...
Also, did you ever wonder how hot your muffler would be if it wasn't exposed to moving air?
Truly, you have a dizzying intellect.
Old military bases would be great for future industrial development, but using them as the base for a new residential community should come with some extreme reservations.
While a military base built after 1990 and decommissioned might be ok, most of our older bases have severe problems with hazardous materials. It isn't just a case of going through the records, mapping out the locations of old dumps and excavating the contaminated soil, many times there is no record of where the soil has been contaminated, and you often don't know until someone starts excavating a foundataion and pulls up a rusty 55gal drum.
If you are lucky, the drum contains waste oil from the motor pool repair facility. But the point is that there are plenty of 'buried treasures' on old military bases. I'd be very nervous about planning a community on a former base. A new industrial area, or a shopping center? Sure, but not residential.
That's the nice thing about a sample return mission like the one that's been proposed. It'll confirm your above opinion of the evidence. Something that looks like gypsum sand to a rover, may well be. But if it looks like gypsum sand in a lab on Earth, then that's a vastly more definitive piece of evidence.
That's not really necessary as your situation isn't really possible.
Crystals/chemicals/etc don't really have many options to form 'differently'. When they form differently, they aren't the same. Sure you can get some isomers, but even then those don't necessarily have the same properties.
For your premise, that all of those minerals formed via some process other than one that involves water, would require a huge coincidence that the rover could somehow find all of these minerals which happened to form without water even though all of our experience tells us is unlikely.
So, we went from a point of having 0 people, to having 1000 people, with no intermediate stage? Please explain the science of that.
Triplets.
2 + 3 = 5 . There might never have been just 4 people.
They train people to responsibly own and use guns
A lot of schools used to do that here in the US. However, after much pearl clutching by gunphobic parents and political opportunists, these places where children could learn gun safety in controlled environments were systematically dismantled.
A safe is a hell of a lot less complicated than 'smart gun' technology. Safes don't require batteries to work.
More people die on I-35 in Oklahoma in a single year. How much is the economic value of I-35 worth to you? How many deaths per dollar?
Because allowing creators and owners of things to profit frm them is EVIL and a BAD THING.
If profit is used as the only consideration for granting copyright? Then yes, it is a bad thing because it is not neutral and provides no benefit.
One-time-pad-language?
How does transcribing dialogue from a movie, translating it, and publishing the result differ from translating a book and publishing the result?
Not that I agree with the rationale of the person you responded to, but I think that there is some original interpretation that must occur during the transcribe/translate phase.
With a book, typically what is produced is a gramatical and syntatical translation.
I would argue that in the process of translating audio dialog into text and into another language, there is a nontrivial amount of effort that is put into the semantic translation. The text of a book must describe exactly what the author wishes to convey. However there is a lot of unspoken information communicated in an audo/visual medium and that information must be captured and translated itself. Thus in addition to the grammar and syntax, the semantics must be processed in a manner which isn't as simple as a dictionary word or rule switch.
You are not correct. You misunderstand the concept of consent. As a concept, it ceases to exist when applied to non-sentient things. Consent is concept which only exists if the entities involved are considered to be sentient. I like to make a point of this partially from an academic interest, but it is critically important to understand the concept if you are to justify any legal premise which concerns interactions between entities.
Why is it important to realize that you cannot use consent as an argument for/against laws concerning the interaction between a sentient and non-sentient? You use the example that you cannot do something to a plant, because the plant cannot legally consent. Such an argument sounds plausible, but in reality it is nonsense. If imposition of a sentient's will on a non-sentient required consent, then you would never be able to interact with the non-sentient at all. You might argue that consent is only required when the interaction might be harmful, but that would be nonsense as well.
We don't require the consent of wheat to harvest it. We don't even require the consent of animals when we decide to kill them. The reason is that when it comes to property, consent is a concept which simply doesn't exist.
You can argue that something isn't property(the current benchmark is sentience), you can argue that property must be handled in a particular manner (animal cruelty laws for example) but you can't argue that actions taken against property is subject to the concept of consent.
But a boycott isn't censorship or refusal to engage. If someone disagrees with a work's message, they can (a) not buy it, and (b) encourage others not to buy it.
That is true, but I thought that part of the reason this is being discussed is because the message people are trying to boycott isn't in 'Ender's Game'. So you aren't disagreeing with a work's message, you are disagreeing with the politics of the IP owner of the work.
Even though I disagree with Card's politics, I don't think we should be so eager to attach political baggage to creative works unless that creative work is intentionally political.
As a society, that's dangerous because we will end up with publishers favoring one work over another because of the potential loss of profit associated with the politics of the author and not the actual merits of the work itself. There was recently discussion about how the lack of female POV characters in video games is due to publisher fears that it won't maximize the potential market.
Consider the political opinions of George Orwell. Do you think the world would be better if he was unable to get his stories to market because the publishers feared a boycott?
and that bit about jailing more people than China.... actually we jail a larger percentage of our population than any government in the history of the world.
Also don't forget that we don't get enough exercise either!
(Unless they were proposing a national prison on the moon, your point isn't exactly relevant to this discussion)
Not particularly, and that was never the case anyway. It was always a space race, an attempt to beat Cold War enemies
Yes, and that goal was set because it was achievable, but a difficult (ie hard) goal to achieve.
The motivating force might have been to ultimate-one-up the Soviets, but for it to be a true 'win' that goal had to be hard. Otherwise, it wouldn't be as significant as it was.
Like water, for instance. Most animals have no trouble identifying and finding water even in a new environment. I don't think there are examples of humans that can do this - not by smell alone.
Blindfold me and take me to within 500 meters of a lake, pond, or small river. Assuming a natural environment and that I'm downwind, I'd lead you in a beeline right to the water source. It's nothing amazing, it's just being familiar with the scents associated with bodies of water. I'd wager anyone with an average sense of smell could do the same.
It's not literally H2O that you can smell, but byproducts of the chemistry of a natural water source that you can smell. It is those secondary smells that allow animals to 'smell water'. Any advantage animals have is only in the level of sensitivity for detecting those secondary odors. (ie: anything a dog can smell, very likely a human can smell if you sufficiently increase the concentration) So the only difference you might notice for animals is the distance by which they can detect the odors associated with water.
The thing that boggled my mind about this plane was, why build a plane with a basically unlimited endurance, and then burden it with a pilot, who can't possibly last very long? The plane can only travel 1700 km per 24 hours.
Rough guess? Weight and complexity.
I don't have the plans in front of me, but I'd wager that there wasn't very much in terms of 'controls' of this aircraft. It is very likely mechanically controlled rather than fly-by-wire or even electrically assisted. Basically a system of pulleys and wires. It may not seem futuristic, but it is light, simple, and well understood.
To fly the aircraft by computer, every single control surface would have to be hooked up to an electric motor. You wouldn't save weight there as control and power wiring would have to be run through the fuselage and wings. The wire would weigh at least as much as the wire used to mechanically control the surfaces. The combined weight of the motors would probably get close to the weight of the pilot. Your flight control system would require feedback from the motors and sensors, and the FCS in itself would be rather weighty, relatively speaking.
All these electrical devices require power to operate, and as you might guess, the prime, number one, do not waste, absolute critical resource of this aircraft is power. Every watt is precious, and navigation/flight calculation is not computationally inexpensive.
You might try to save some weight by having the aircraft be piloted remotely, but that just introduces another weighty, power consuming component: the radios needed to receive commands and transmit position/feedback/video/etc. I'd wager that there are few commercial radios available today which could handle the data requirements of a drone aircraft. (not my area of expertise, but most voice radios aren't rated for much more than 20% transmit duty cycles.) Even so, you don't want to transmit more than the absolute minimum in order to minimize energy consumption. A drone aircraft radio must transmit more often than a regular ATC voice radio. (minimumATC voice + minimumDroneResponse will always be more than just minimumATC voice)
Do you trust your design? That would be an expensive and public crash if your flight control system had a bug that didn't consider that your air pressure sensor was clogged (see B-2 crash in Guam)
Then comes the regulatory hurdles. If you designed your own flight control system, you are going to be hard pressed to get the FAA to approve your aircraft for flight anytime soon. Are they even approving civilian drones yet? Let alone autonomous systems.
So basically it boils down to this:
A pilot is a well understood control system as it pertains to aircraft and regulatory approval. The pilot and his gear will weigh less than 100kg. Included in that 100kg is everything you need to control an aircraft for a significant chunk of the aircraft's endurance of 36 hours. The cost is known, the design is proven, the regulatory approval process is effectively nil.
One person's scent of smashed peanut powder is another person's death. Hacking a scent generator seems both easy, and protections dubious at best.
Q: You know what's easier than hacking a scent generator in a hope that it will generate a facsimile close enough to peanuts such as to produce an allergic reaction?
A: Throwing a handful of peanuts at the guy.
Oh wait, you wanted it to be covert?
A: Soak a letter in a solution of peanut butter and water. Dry. Mail letter.
I'm not mocking peanut allergies here, I'm trying to point out that anaphylaxis isn't exactly something that only Rube Goldberg could trigger.
There is a world of difference between flying at night and your scenario. The reason is that your scenario was written to be intentionally constructed to be outside of the CONOPS for a solar-powered drone. Just because you can't completely obsolete a device in all scenarios doesn't mean your new device isn't more useful overall. A mule is much more useful for transport over mountainous walking paths than a jeep, but that doesn't make a jeep useless in mountainous terrain.
You follow up with the statement that 'mil-spec equipment has to work no matter what the conditions are' is false. Not all equipment must work under all conditions, and very frequently in the design of military equipment there will be waivers to the MIL-SPEC when meeting the spec would be cost more than the benefit is worth given the CONOPS.
Of course, you don't have to take my word for it:
MIL-STD-810G section 4.1.2 Guidance to Program Managers: ...DoD 5000-series documents call for a total systems approach through systems engineering, considering all life cycle needs, including storage, transport, and operation in natural environments (DoDD 5000.1). Specifically, they call for a description of how performance in natural environmental conditions representative of the intended area of operations will be tested...T he environmental tailoring process shown ... use systems engineering approaches, helping to ensure that system design and test criteria are tailored to environmental conditions within which materiel systems are to operate and that total ownership costs are reduced.
Translated: Don't try to get your equipment to work for all environmental conditions. Figure out what your equipment will be subjected to, and plan to test those conditions so you don't waste a ton of money designing an office wastepaper bin that can withstand hail and salt-fog.
Last thing before washing: The faucet handle
First thing after: The paper towel I prepared for drying my hands, turning off the faucet, and opening the restroom door.
Or in the case of my current office: The paper towel I prepared for drying my hands as the faucet is automatic, and the door opens out and has a kickplate.
Clever janitors have realized that most people do this, and have placed a wastebin next to the restroom exit door for 'door opener towels'
This does not mean the drug changes who I am.
I wonder then, why are there so many instances of insulin deprived individuals exhibiting uncharacteristically violent/aggressive behaviors, or slipping into comas.
Something as simple as an over/underactive pancreas can dramatically alter the behavior of a person. Last I checked, that organ wasn't located in the brain.
Last I checked my biology text book, the Internet was not one of the requirements for life.
Last I checked my biology text book, it gave me a one time code and directed me to the publisher's website. Unfortunately, the code was used so I can't confirm your claim.
Won't the Andromeda galaxy collide with the Milky Way Galaxy much earlier than 44B years?
Seems prudent to just wait the whole thing out.