If all hammers were the same price, I'd pick the sledge hammer.
For some jobs, you need a tack hammer, even if it costs the same as a sledgehammer. And sometimes you want a nail gun. It's good that we've got a lot of tools to choose from.
Seriously, though, there's no way New York City itself could be evacuated without something on the scale of Dunkirk.
Actually, it would be more than 20 times the size of Dunkirk. And that took 9 days. Hopefully there won't be anyone shooting at us, though, if it comes to that.
Contrary to what some have speculated, this is not just science by press conference. There is an actual paper out today in Science magazine (subscription only, but a summary is here). It is speculative, but not of the "arsenic life" or "bacteria in a Mars meteorite" variety.
in short - go and look at a breakdown of resource usage by task, and compare the best plausible or cutting-edge now tech in 20 years, as it could be implemented. There are _huge_ savings to be made.
That's true, and we will no doubt end up using many of these efficiencies. But in the long run, history shows that as we run out of a resource and find a more efficient way to provide the benefits we had gotten from it, our overall increase in consumption swamps those efficiency increases. We were using whale oil at an unsustainable rate in the 19th century, luckily we found a petroleum alternative to allow our standard of living to continue to increase, but our per capita consumption of petro oil now is far larger than it ever was for whale oil. As is our overall energy consumption, and just about any broader measure of consumption.
I'm not saying we couldn't do it, I'm just saying that (apart from short term deviations brought on by shocks like the 1970s oil crisis, wars or depressions), we have never shown that we will choose to do so.
The most common liquid component of planet earth by a long way is magma. The solid rock crust and liquid water in the seas is so insignificant by comparison it is surprising we even bother to talk about it.
The Earth's mantle is a crystalline solid, with only tiny isolated pockets of magma. There is no vast magma ocean. The lower mantle is subjected to pressures that can keep it solid well above 2000 degree C. Much of the mantle deforms over millions of years, but it is not liquid.
The biggest liquid component of the Earth is undoubtedly the outer core, which is mainly molten iron.
The question is not whether transparency is in Google's interest (they certainly think that it is). The question is whether transparency is in the interest of Mozilla/Firefox, and ultimately of its users.
Legal issues aside, 2 reasons not to use P2P instead:
- Quality sucks (on average) - It would take you, if not more time than to rip them, at least a significant amount of time to find decent versions of all your CDs, complete tracks, etc.
The national deficit is at around 7 trillion dollars.
That is the national debt. The deficit is the annual difference between government revenue and spending, which was $412 billion in 2004. The deficit is the amount we are increasing the debt annually.
Just to nit-pick your nit-pick, a difference of 1.0 on the Richter scale (or, more precisely, in moment magnitude) is actually a factor of 32 in energy. It is a factor of 10 in amplitude, which translates to a factor of 10^(1.5)=31.6.
There's only one country in the world that uses that format for telephone numbers.
Well, more than one (plus some territories):
the United States and its territories, Canada, Bermuda, Anguilla, Antigua & Barbuda, the Bahamas, Barbados, the British Virgin Islands, the Cayman Islands, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Grenada, Jamaica, Montserrat, St. Kitts and Nevis, St. Lucia, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Trinidad and Tobago, and Turks & Caicos.
Only if you like and will listen to every single song on that hypothetical CD. If you'd rather pick and choose every track to make sure there's no dead weight that you'll always skip over, then $1 is a perfectly good price point.
But you're not buying the song for $1, you're getting certain rights to use it on certain devices. You have waived the rights you have under fair use to do whatever you want with music that you buy on CD. I can rip my CD and reencode it to whatever format I want, play it on any device I want, as many devices as I want. A song I "buy" on iTMS can only be used with a computer running iTunes (Mac, Windows, or now Linux i386 w/Crossover plugin) or an iPod. Nothing else, without violating the terms of use you agree to when "purchasing" the song on iTMS. I've got CDs that still play that are 15 years old. I can legally make backup copies, and listen to ripped and encoded tracks from it on devices that hadn't been dreamed of in 1989. What are the chances you'll still be listening to your $1 song in 2019?
Spend $1 each on songs if you want, just don't fool yourself by thinking that you're "buying" them. You're renting.
As for societies that run journals, remember that the journals are probably the major fund raisers for those societies. Take away their ability to make money from journals, and you take away the existence of the society. Which is not a good thing for scientists.
The other big money-maker is often meetings. These can be expensive, but they seem to get the incentives right. You pay a (fairly large) fee to attend the meeting, and that gives you free access to all the content of the meeting. You pay a (somewhat smaller) fee to present something at the meeting. Obviously meetings lack the peer review process of journals (not counting shouting matches during the question-and-answer period).
But maybe professional societies shouldn't be making their money in ways that are contrary to the interests of scientists (by restricting access to journals and charging large subscription fees). Maybe we, as members, should be insisting on open access.
I'd be in favor of a pay-to-play system which might have a seperate system for free research posting. It could be set up such that people could "sponsor" a work to be placed in the main system. I think you'll find that such a system would promote high-quality research while not leaving poorly funded research completely by the wayside.
I agree. I think the journals with the best systems now are non-profit professional society based, that have page charges for the authors. They are still having trouble figuring out what to charge for institutional electronic access, as fewer people want or care about the paper copy. Trying to keep individual subscription prices low while finding a fair price for library access is a problem that many are having (e.g., AGU). But access is still more restricted than the scientists would like.
Scientific publishing is a standout example of how skewed the incentives can be in copyright law. Typically, the scientist(s) publishing a paper signs over the copyright to a journal (which may be for- or non-profit), which often charges a fee to the author for the priviledge (and especially for extras like color figures). Thereafter, the interests of the author to have the paper as widely distributed as possible is in direct conflict with the journal's interests in earning fees for access to the content. Regardless of how many people read the paper, the author receives no royalties on it. Many journals now give the author permission to redistribute electronic & paper copies of the article (gee, thanks!), but since these are not linkable by standard databases or the journal's own web page, they have limited value. You can search for them on Google, maybe you'll get lucky. Scientists sign over their rights (and often pay a fee) to have paper published under a prestiguous journal name, and to have the paper peer reviewed (NB: the peer reviewers are not paid either).
It is so obviously in the interests of scientists to have truly open journal access, it is amazing it is taking so long. Especially since many of the top journal publishers are professional scientific societies, ostensibly representing the interests of the scientists.
Well, there is no "Big Bang" the way most people think. But spacetime is finite. If it wasn't, why is the sky not completely filled (white) with all the galaxies? Why can I only see a finite universe? If it is infinite in space, it probably means it is infinite is time (you can't get to infinite size with finite steps in a finite amount of time).
The sky is completely "filled" with radiation from the early universe, it's just that it's been redshifted to the microwave band. Stars and galaxies have not existed for long enough to fill the sky to "white", and even if they had, they would be redshifted out of the visible as well.
And there's no reason that the universe can't be infinite in space but have a finite beginning in time (the big bang). The universe is not expanding from a point, the fabric of space itself is expanding, and many cosmological models allow for it to be infinite in extent.
Well, scientifically Venus is at least as intriguing as Mars, at least in terms of the big picture. It is much closer in size & mass to Earth, and so would be expected to evolve geologically in a very similar way. From what we know, Venus does not seem to work like Earth at all, with no signs of plate tectonics. Why not? Was it different in the past? Is it due to the different surface conditions (temperature, presence of water)?
The planet is thought to have been completely resurfaced around 500 million years ago, with relatively little geological activity since then. Why?
And the biggest question of all, how did the atmosphere & surface temperature of Venus evolve? Was it ever a place that had Earth-like surface conditions (liquid water)? Could it ever have supported life? Was a runaway greenhouse effect an inescapable consequence of receiving ~2x the solar radiation of Earth, or did Earth escape that fate due to the fact that biological activity has been sequestering CO2 for hundreds of millions of years?
In terms of planetary evolution, Venus, Mars & Earth seem to be the too hot, too cold, just right examples. Is the hospitibility of our planet due completely to the luck of its position at 1 AU from the sun, or did other factors come into play (stabilization of Earth's rotation & climate by our large Moon, for example)?
There's a lot we still don't know about our solar system, and Venus is a vital piece of that puzzle. If it's all about resources or human habitation, no, Venus isn't an attractive destination. But scientifically, it is key.
Wrong. Zero dB is just an arbitrary choice and a sound at 0 dB has nonzero amplitude. In air the reference pressure is normally 20 micropascals. The previous poster is correct, the decibel scale is relative, and negative infinity dB is truly silent.
Slashdot Mirror
For some jobs, you need a tack hammer, even if it costs the same as a sledgehammer. And sometimes you want a nail gun. It's good that we've got a lot of tools to choose from.
Actually, it would be more than 20 times the size of Dunkirk. And that took 9 days. Hopefully there won't be anyone shooting at us, though, if it comes to that.
Contrary to what some have speculated, this is not just science by press conference. There is an actual paper out today in Science magazine (subscription only, but a summary is here). It is speculative, but not of the "arsenic life" or "bacteria in a Mars meteorite" variety.
That's true, and we will no doubt end up using many of these efficiencies. But in the long run, history shows that as we run out of a resource and find a more efficient way to provide the benefits we had gotten from it, our overall increase in consumption swamps those efficiency increases. We were using whale oil at an unsustainable rate in the 19th century, luckily we found a petroleum alternative to allow our standard of living to continue to increase, but our per capita consumption of petro oil now is far larger than it ever was for whale oil. As is our overall energy consumption, and just about any broader measure of consumption.
I'm not saying we couldn't do it, I'm just saying that (apart from short term deviations brought on by shocks like the 1970s oil crisis, wars or depressions), we have never shown that we will choose to do so.
Or the fact that major components have to be built in every state with a powerful Senator?
Not "literally" true, a Mac mini would do both just fine. I assume you meant, "for less than $699."
As seen on Ogle Earth, Google Earth 5 is available for download. Includes the new Ocean layer.
Isn't that pretty much how the first half of the 20th century was determined?
Some better quality videos available directly from the Department of Defense.
The Earth's mantle is a crystalline solid, with only tiny isolated pockets of magma. There is no vast magma ocean. The lower mantle is subjected to pressures that can keep it solid well above 2000 degree C. Much of the mantle deforms over millions of years, but it is not liquid.
The biggest liquid component of the Earth is undoubtedly the outer core, which is mainly molten iron.
The question is not whether transparency is in Google's interest (they certainly think that it is). The question is whether transparency is in the interest of Mozilla/Firefox, and ultimately of its users.
Legal issues aside, 2 reasons not to use P2P instead:
- Quality sucks (on average)
- It would take you, if not more time than to rip them, at least a significant amount of time to find decent versions of all your CDs, complete tracks, etc.
20 billion here, 20 billion there, pretty soon you're talking about real money.
(paraphrase of Senator Everett Dirksen)
That is the national debt. The deficit is the annual difference between government revenue and spending, which was $412 billion in 2004. The deficit is the amount we are increasing the debt annually.
Just to nit-pick your nit-pick, a difference of 1.0 on the Richter scale (or, more precisely, in moment magnitude) is actually a factor of 32 in energy. It is a factor of 10 in amplitude, which translates to a factor of 10^(1.5)=31.6.
Well, more than one (plus some territories):
from About the North American Numbering Plan.
Of course, at MIT, 1 MITGB=1 54.
(The Green Building is building 54. Everything at MIT has a number.)
Only if you like and will listen to every single song on that hypothetical CD. If you'd rather pick and choose every track to make sure there's no dead weight that you'll always skip over, then $1 is a perfectly good price point.
But you're not buying the song for $1, you're getting certain rights to use it on certain devices. You have waived the rights you have under fair use to do whatever you want with music that you buy on CD. I can rip my CD and reencode it to whatever format I want, play it on any device I want, as many devices as I want. A song I "buy" on iTMS can only be used with a computer running iTunes (Mac, Windows, or now Linux i386 w/Crossover plugin) or an iPod. Nothing else, without violating the terms of use you agree to when "purchasing" the song on iTMS. I've got CDs that still play that are 15 years old. I can legally make backup copies, and listen to ripped and encoded tracks from it on devices that hadn't been dreamed of in 1989. What are the chances you'll still be listening to your $1 song in 2019?
Spend $1 each on songs if you want, just don't fool yourself by thinking that you're "buying" them. You're renting.
But they didn't. They lived on hardtack and salted meat.
The other big money-maker is often meetings. These can be expensive, but they seem to get the incentives right. You pay a (fairly large) fee to attend the meeting, and that gives you free access to all the content of the meeting. You pay a (somewhat smaller) fee to present something at the meeting. Obviously meetings lack the peer review process of journals (not counting shouting matches during the question-and-answer period).
But maybe professional societies shouldn't be making their money in ways that are contrary to the interests of scientists (by restricting access to journals and charging large subscription fees). Maybe we, as members, should be insisting on open access.
I agree. I think the journals with the best systems now are non-profit professional society based, that have page charges for the authors. They are still having trouble figuring out what to charge for institutional electronic access, as fewer people want or care about the paper copy. Trying to keep individual subscription prices low while finding a fair price for library access is a problem that many are having (e.g., AGU). But access is still more restricted than the scientists would like.
Scientific publishing is a standout example of how skewed the incentives can be in copyright law. Typically, the scientist(s) publishing a paper signs over the copyright to a journal (which may be for- or non-profit), which often charges a fee to the author for the priviledge (and especially for extras like color figures). Thereafter, the interests of the author to have the paper as widely distributed as possible is in direct conflict with the journal's interests in earning fees for access to the content. Regardless of how many people read the paper, the author receives no royalties on it. Many journals now give the author permission to redistribute electronic & paper copies of the article (gee, thanks!), but since these are not linkable by standard databases or the journal's own web page, they have limited value. You can search for them on Google, maybe you'll get lucky. Scientists sign over their rights (and often pay a fee) to have paper published under a prestiguous journal name, and to have the paper peer reviewed (NB: the peer reviewers are not paid either).
It is so obviously in the interests of scientists to have truly open journal access, it is amazing it is taking so long. Especially since many of the top journal publishers are professional scientific societies, ostensibly representing the interests of the scientists.
The sky is completely "filled" with radiation from the early universe, it's just that it's been redshifted to the microwave band. Stars and galaxies have not existed for long enough to fill the sky to "white", and even if they had, they would be redshifted out of the visible as well.
And there's no reason that the universe can't be infinite in space but have a finite beginning in time (the big bang). The universe is not expanding from a point, the fabric of space itself is expanding, and many cosmological models allow for it to be infinite in extent.
Well, scientifically Venus is at least as intriguing as Mars, at least in terms of the big picture. It is much closer in size & mass to Earth, and so would be expected to evolve geologically in a very similar way. From what we know, Venus does not seem to work like Earth at all, with no signs of plate tectonics. Why not? Was it different in the past? Is it due to the different surface conditions (temperature, presence of water)?
The planet is thought to have been completely resurfaced around 500 million years ago, with relatively little geological activity since then. Why?
And the biggest question of all, how did the atmosphere & surface temperature of Venus evolve? Was it ever a place that had Earth-like surface conditions (liquid water)? Could it ever have supported life? Was a runaway greenhouse effect an inescapable consequence of receiving ~2x the solar radiation of Earth, or did Earth escape that fate due to the fact that biological activity has been sequestering CO2 for hundreds of millions of years?
In terms of planetary evolution, Venus, Mars & Earth seem to be the too hot, too cold, just right examples. Is the hospitibility of our planet due completely to the luck of its position at 1 AU from the sun, or did other factors come into play (stabilization of Earth's rotation & climate by our large Moon, for example)?
There's a lot we still don't know about our solar system, and Venus is a vital piece of that puzzle. If it's all about resources or human habitation, no, Venus isn't an attractive destination. But scientifically, it is key.
Wrong. Zero dB is just an arbitrary choice and a sound at 0 dB has nonzero amplitude. In air the reference pressure is normally 20 micropascals. The previous poster is correct, the decibel scale is relative, and negative infinity dB is truly silent.