_EVERY_ time somebody says "There's nothing new to be learned", within a few years we discover that there are vast realms of reality that we had never suspected might exist. Between "string theory" and "dark matter" and "dark energy", there are enough assumptions and hand-waving to make me think that we're about at that stage again.
"Real Soon Now", we're going to discover that the current generations of physics professors have been chasing after imaginary rabbits and that reality is very different. Our understanding of the universe will be completely changed - again - and we'll be in for a new era of discovery. Where that will lead, I can barely guess.
Then quit and switch to a better company, or found your own. The West isn't perfect - but it's better than any place else. If you think someplace else is better.... well, that's why the USA invented airplanes and airlines. Pick a place that you think is better, and go there. The chances are pretty high that you'll fly there in either a Boeing (made in America) or an Airbus (made in Europe). And the Ilyushins that serve the tiny remainder of the world were designed using stolen American technology.
But please don't beg for a handout from American and European farmers.
Bullshit. The rest of the world owes the US and Europe every bit of technology they ever had beyond the simple wheel. Nobody beyond the Europeans had practical ocean-going ships; the Chinese junks and Polynesian twin-hulled canoes were primitive by comparison. Asian wheels were crude, "BC" cartoon quality.
This smacks of "Gimme, gimme, gimme!" from cultures that produce nothing.
Any major change in rain patterns will likely cause water shortages in SOME places and water surpluses in others.The desert Southwest of the United States was probably fertile and green 700 years ago; after all, the Anasazi had a civilization of SOME sort then, and there hasn't been any water around in the last few hundred. Everything goes in cycles; don't expect that every change will be a bad one.
There will never be (until the "Revolution" collapses and the Castros have attained room temperature) any wireless service that isn't aimed squarely at the tourist market. No Cuban who isn't a government agent will ever use it.
When I lived in the Philippines, most Filipinos around the major military bases all spoke English to each other, because they were from many different Philippine provinces and islands, most of which each have their own (mutually incomprehensible) dialects of Tagalog.
The "traditional" joke concerning computer translation is about 30 years old - at least, because I've been telling it that long, and I heard it from somebody else.But it's still a classic.
The original translating computer wasn't voice-recognition; you had to type in your statement in English, and it would be translated to Chinese on the screen. So in order to demonstrate how good it was with colloquial English, the programmer typed in a common saying, "Out of sight, out of mind". The computer whirred and chirped for a couple of minutes, and a column of Chinese characters appeared. The Chinese operator looked quite puzzled, but to play along, he typed (in Chinese characters) exactly what he had read on his screen.
Chirp, whirr, beep, and the machine produced the translation back into English.
Public transit assumes that you work in a single location, with regular hours, and don't need to carry a lot of stuff. It also takes a LOT longer than driving. Here in Sacramento, CA, it would take me 90 minutes and would involve 3 bus changes to get from home to my regular office; driving takes 30 minutes normally, 45 minutes if traffic is bad. But I frequently visit customers in other parts of town, and taking public transit would take a LONG time.
Here in Sacramento, we have a fairly good "light rail" system that moves people from the suburbs to downtown, and back. Our "downtown" is substantially government workers, so our public "light rail" system primarily shuffles government workers to and from work. Light rail does not go to the shopping malls, or to the university (although there is one stop only 5 blocks away) or to the business office parks. It doesn't go to the airport (although they've been promising that "Real Soon Now" for the last 15 years) and shuts down completely at about 11PM, before the downtown bars and theaters close.
Like all such rail systems, it operates at a stiff loss, and is paid for by the transportation taxes that auto drivers pay. Even when I was working downtown, the only way rail made any financial sense was when the city jacked up parking rates, so that the daily parking was substantially more expensive than the rail ticket.
The basic concept is similar to Freeman Dyson's Project Orion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which makes any patent subject to prior art claims. If they're patenting a specific technique, then good for them!
Re:The problem is that landfills are too cheap
on
Recycling Is Dying
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· Score: 1
Penn & Teller had a great segment on "BULLSHIT!" about recycling. Like most of their stuff, they started with a "reasonable" approach and expanded it to the realm of "ridiculous".
The problem is that recycling costs money, and doesn't really save the environment. We aren't running out of landfill space; at worst, we're running out of landfill space that's a short driving distance from big cities.
If it's in Outlook, save everything in a PST file. Burn the PST file to a DVD, and tell your boss (before you leave) "Bob, eventually you're going to want this stuff. Here you go, and think of me when you open it." Give him the DVD, smile, shake hands, and sail off into the sunset. If Bob gives the DVD to whoever inherits your job, then the knowledge transfer will have been accomplished.
If you're in California, drop me a line; my company sells document management systems. We may be able to hook you up.:-)
I certainly agree that history, philosophy, English Literature, Art and all that are important - but the purpose of a UNIVERSITY-level education is to make you a productive member of society. Everything else should contribute to that goal. Anybody can read books; libraries are free, and has thousands of them. Many museums are free, especially while you're in college. Programs like Khan Academy and its many imitators can provide distance learning for virtually any topic on the internet, for the cost of your internet connection.
Most people who ended up with Philosophy of Art History degrees and $250K in debt spent their nights drinking and partying rather than actually STUDYING the philosophy of the history of artists. They took brain-dead simple courses that they could sleep through, because SOMEBODY told them that a degree was a ticket to the corporate high life - and it wasn't true.
I agree with the Instapundit Glenn Reynolds that college loans should be dischargeable in bankruptcy - but that the degree-granting institution should be on the hook for 50% of the loan amounts. That would give them some incentive to cut their OWN costs, and to properly determine if a student would have any chance of paying back a proposed loan. As it is, the Federal government is a giant loan shark, granting easy credit to people who never had a prayer of earning enough to pay it back.
"So why was all the intelligence about Iraq wrong? That is an unanswered question. The Republican controlled Congress never stepped up to the plate to ask any hard questions. Gosh, I wonder why? "
WTF are you talking about? EVERY nation's intelligence service agreed that Saddam was working to obtain nuclear weapons, and everybody ALREADY KNEW that he had chemical weapons - because he had already USED them, in Iran and on his own people.
I wonder if perhaps the fact that there are VOLCANOES in Antarctica might have anything to do with it? Perhaps they might be supplying a little un-accounted-for heat into the model?
Not because I have any particular expertise in ice or in Antarctica; my degree is in physics, not climatology - but because NONE of these quasi-apocalyptic predictions are true, or have ever come true. Not when predicted, and not after. We were supposed to have been swarmed by a billion starving climate refugees by now. It didn't happen. The Arctic Ocean was supposed to be ice free, and the snows of Kilimanjaro were supposed to all have melted by now. Didn't happen. The snows of the Himalayas were supposed to be melting, and gone completely by 2035; not happening. Not one single climate prediction has come true, and I don't think this one will, either.
Science fiction writers Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven often have "real scientists" run the numbers on their stories. Pournelle believes that a big enough laser could launch satellites from the ground into orbit.
Only part of the thrust would be light pressure; a volatile "fuel core" being vaporized by the ground-based laser would provide much of the blast-off thrust. But you'd still have the advantage of having your "engine" here on Earth, being able to repair or replace it as needed, and eliminating having to boost your engine to orbital velocity.
With Moon-based lasers (several of them spaced around the Moon) you could push a lightsail-powered probes to interplanetary distances, and perhaps even to the stars. This is one of the plot elements of the Niven & Pournelle story "The Mote In God's Eye".
The story was a good one and was anthologized in several collections. But Clarke was a real genius, where Sagan only talked a good game. If Clarke had patented all the innovative ideas that he wrote stories about - like geosynchronous communications satellites or ground-controlled approaches in bad weather - he'd have been richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined.
With a 1963 SF story in the Scouting magazine "Boy's Life", I believe that Arthur C. Clarke beat Carl Sagan to the "solar sail" idea by a decade or so.
By 1995, most of the "many jobs in your working lifetime" had already happened. The "one or two employers from age 22 to age 65" was in the 1960-1990 timeframe, where it was, if not universally true, at least more common then than now.
Indian and Chinese tech workers are often excellent technically, but run into road blocks trying to talk to Americans over the phone, because their accents are sometimes horrendous. One of our vendor companies has offshored their technical support to India. He was trying to help me with the problem on a remote connection and on the phone, and I couldn't understand 2/3 of what he said. Finally I hung up the phone, opened a Notepad window, and typed "Sorry, my phone just died. We'll have to chat this way." The Indian tech could TYPE English perfectly well - he just couldn't SPEAK it.
Get a job, or enter a career that require that YOUR HANDS touch the hardware. If you can use Skype, Webex, LogMeIn or TeamViewer to do your work, your job can be outsourced to India or the Philippines. (The Philippines are taking online-support work away from India because Filipinos often speak excellent English, while Indian and Chinese accents are sometimes unintelligible.)
For example, I work for a document management company that started as a copier company. Our copier techs drive to the customer's location and repair and maintain the machines onsite. I work remotely, but in close consultation with the on-site technicians.
A person can read the "tells", or body language and mannerisms, of another player. The computer cannot. Presumably the computer has no "tells" of its own, but an experienced player should usually win - because poker isn't a game of math, it's a game of psychology. Or rather, it's only PARTLY a game of mathematics and probability.
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_EVERY_ time somebody says "There's nothing new to be learned", within a few years we discover that there are vast realms of reality that we had never suspected might exist. Between "string theory" and "dark matter" and "dark energy", there are enough assumptions and hand-waving to make me think that we're about at that stage again.
"Real Soon Now", we're going to discover that the current generations of physics professors have been chasing after imaginary rabbits and that reality is very different. Our understanding of the universe will be completely changed - again - and we'll be in for a new era of discovery. Where that will lead, I can barely guess.
Then quit and switch to a better company, or found your own. The West isn't perfect - but it's better than any place else. If you think someplace else is better.... well, that's why the USA invented airplanes and airlines. Pick a place that you think is better, and go there. The chances are pretty high that you'll fly there in either a Boeing (made in America) or an Airbus (made in Europe). And the Ilyushins that serve the tiny remainder of the world were designed using stolen American technology.
But please don't beg for a handout from American and European farmers.
Bullshit. The rest of the world owes the US and Europe every bit of technology they ever had beyond the simple wheel. Nobody beyond the Europeans had practical ocean-going ships; the Chinese junks and Polynesian twin-hulled canoes were primitive by comparison. Asian wheels were crude, "BC" cartoon quality.
This smacks of "Gimme, gimme, gimme!" from cultures that produce nothing.
So you're saying that government is the major impediment to progress? I agree!
Any major change in rain patterns will likely cause water shortages in SOME places and water surpluses in others.The desert Southwest of the United States was probably fertile and green 700 years ago; after all, the Anasazi had a civilization of SOME sort then, and there hasn't been any water around in the last few hundred. Everything goes in cycles; don't expect that every change will be a bad one.
There will never be (until the "Revolution" collapses and the Castros have attained room temperature) any wireless service that isn't aimed squarely at the tourist market. No Cuban who isn't a government agent will ever use it.
All _good_ humor has some basis in reality. It's the unexpected disconnections that make humor funny.
When I lived in the Philippines, most Filipinos around the major military bases all spoke English to each other, because they were from many different Philippine provinces and islands, most of which each have their own (mutually incomprehensible) dialects of Tagalog.
The "traditional" joke concerning computer translation is about 30 years old - at least, because I've been telling it that long, and I heard it from somebody else.But it's still a classic.
The original translating computer wasn't voice-recognition; you had to type in your statement in English, and it would be translated to Chinese on the screen. So in order to demonstrate how good it was with colloquial English, the programmer typed in a common saying, "Out of sight, out of mind". The computer whirred and chirped for a couple of minutes, and a column of Chinese characters appeared. The Chinese operator looked quite puzzled, but to play along, he typed (in Chinese characters) exactly what he had read on his screen.
Chirp, whirr, beep, and the machine produced the translation back into English.
It said "Invisible Insanity".
Public transit assumes that you work in a single location, with regular hours, and don't need to carry a lot of stuff. It also takes a LOT longer than driving. Here in Sacramento, CA, it would take me 90 minutes and would involve 3 bus changes to get from home to my regular office; driving takes 30 minutes normally, 45 minutes if traffic is bad. But I frequently visit customers in other parts of town, and taking public transit would take a LONG time.
Here in Sacramento, we have a fairly good "light rail" system that moves people from the suburbs to downtown, and back. Our "downtown" is substantially government workers, so our public "light rail" system primarily shuffles government workers to and from work. Light rail does not go to the shopping malls, or to the university (although there is one stop only 5 blocks away) or to the business office parks. It doesn't go to the airport (although they've been promising that "Real Soon Now" for the last 15 years) and shuts down completely at about 11PM, before the downtown bars and theaters close.
Like all such rail systems, it operates at a stiff loss, and is paid for by the transportation taxes that auto drivers pay. Even when I was working downtown, the only way rail made any financial sense was when the city jacked up parking rates, so that the daily parking was substantially more expensive than the rail ticket.
The basic concept is similar to Freeman Dyson's Project Orion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... which makes any patent subject to prior art claims. If they're patenting a specific technique, then good for them!
Penn & Teller had a great segment on "BULLSHIT!" about recycling. Like most of their stuff, they started with a "reasonable" approach and expanded it to the realm of "ridiculous".
The problem is that recycling costs money, and doesn't really save the environment. We aren't running out of landfill space; at worst, we're running out of landfill space that's a short driving distance from big cities.
If it's in Outlook, save everything in a PST file. Burn the PST file to a DVD, and tell your boss (before you leave) "Bob, eventually you're going to want this stuff. Here you go, and think of me when you open it." Give him the DVD, smile, shake hands, and sail off into the sunset. If Bob gives the DVD to whoever inherits your job, then the knowledge transfer will have been accomplished.
If you're in California, drop me a line; my company sells document management systems. We may be able to hook you up. :-)
I certainly agree that history, philosophy, English Literature, Art and all that are important - but the purpose of a UNIVERSITY-level education is to make you a productive member of society. Everything else should contribute to that goal. Anybody can read books; libraries are free, and has thousands of them. Many museums are free, especially while you're in college. Programs like Khan Academy and its many imitators can provide distance learning for virtually any topic on the internet, for the cost of your internet connection.
Most people who ended up with Philosophy of Art History degrees and $250K in debt spent their nights drinking and partying rather than actually STUDYING the philosophy of the history of artists. They took brain-dead simple courses that they could sleep through, because SOMEBODY told them that a degree was a ticket to the corporate high life - and it wasn't true.
I agree with the Instapundit Glenn Reynolds that college loans should be dischargeable in bankruptcy - but that the degree-granting institution should be on the hook for 50% of the loan amounts. That would give them some incentive to cut their OWN costs, and to properly determine if a student would have any chance of paying back a proposed loan. As it is, the Federal government is a giant loan shark, granting easy credit to people who never had a prayer of earning enough to pay it back.
"So why was all the intelligence about Iraq wrong? That is an unanswered question. The Republican controlled Congress never stepped up to the plate to ask any hard questions. Gosh, I wonder why? "
WTF are you talking about? EVERY nation's intelligence service agreed that Saddam was working to obtain nuclear weapons, and everybody ALREADY KNEW that he had chemical weapons - because he had already USED them, in Iran and on his own people.
And this is so much different in what the NYT did when they did the same thing to Palin's STOLEN emails..... how, exactly?
I wonder if perhaps the fact that there are VOLCANOES in Antarctica might have anything to do with it? Perhaps they might be supplying a little un-accounted-for heat into the model?
I've got five dollars that says it won't.
Not because I have any particular expertise in ice or in Antarctica; my degree is in physics, not climatology - but because NONE of these quasi-apocalyptic predictions are true, or have ever come true. Not when predicted, and not after. We were supposed to have been swarmed by a billion starving climate refugees by now. It didn't happen. The Arctic Ocean was supposed to be ice free, and the snows of Kilimanjaro were supposed to all have melted by now. Didn't happen. The snows of the Himalayas were supposed to be melting, and gone completely by 2035; not happening. Not one single climate prediction has come true, and I don't think this one will, either.
Science fiction writers Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven often have "real scientists" run the numbers on their stories. Pournelle believes that a big enough laser could launch satellites from the ground into orbit.
Only part of the thrust would be light pressure; a volatile "fuel core" being vaporized by the ground-based laser would provide much of the blast-off thrust. But you'd still have the advantage of having your "engine" here on Earth, being able to repair or replace it as needed, and eliminating having to boost your engine to orbital velocity.
With Moon-based lasers (several of them spaced around the Moon) you could push a lightsail-powered probes to interplanetary distances, and perhaps even to the stars. This is one of the plot elements of the Niven & Pournelle story "The Mote In God's Eye".
The story was a good one and was anthologized in several collections. But Clarke was a real genius, where Sagan only talked a good game. If Clarke had patented all the innovative ideas that he wrote stories about - like geosynchronous communications satellites or ground-controlled approaches in bad weather - he'd have been richer than Bill Gates and Warren Buffet combined.
With a 1963 SF story in the Scouting magazine "Boy's Life", I believe that Arthur C. Clarke beat Carl Sagan to the "solar sail" idea by a decade or so.
By 1995, most of the "many jobs in your working lifetime" had already happened. The "one or two employers from age 22 to age 65" was in the 1960-1990 timeframe, where it was, if not universally true, at least more common then than now.
Indian and Chinese tech workers are often excellent technically, but run into road blocks trying to talk to Americans over the phone, because their accents are sometimes horrendous. One of our vendor companies has offshored their technical support to India. He was trying to help me with the problem on a remote connection and on the phone, and I couldn't understand 2/3 of what he said. Finally I hung up the phone, opened a Notepad window, and typed "Sorry, my phone just died. We'll have to chat this way." The Indian tech could TYPE English perfectly well - he just couldn't SPEAK it.
Get a job, or enter a career that require that YOUR HANDS touch the hardware. If you can use Skype, Webex, LogMeIn or TeamViewer to do your work, your job can be outsourced to India or the Philippines. (The Philippines are taking online-support work away from India because Filipinos often speak excellent English, while Indian and Chinese accents are sometimes unintelligible.)
For example, I work for a document management company that started as a copier company. Our copier techs drive to the customer's location and repair and maintain the machines onsite. I work remotely, but in close consultation with the on-site technicians.
A person can read the "tells", or body language and mannerisms, of another player. The computer cannot. Presumably the computer has no "tells" of its own, but an experienced player should usually win - because poker isn't a game of math, it's a game of psychology. Or rather, it's only PARTLY a game of mathematics and probability.