Jane's "interest" in that NAS report evaporated after I showed that Jane had been fooled by "Steven Goddard" once again. So let's return to Jane's confusion about basic thermodynamics.

But net radiative power out of a boundary around the source = "radiative power out" minus "radiative power in", so the equation Jane just described also says:

NO!!!!! As I have explained to you innumerable times now, you can also consider your heat source, by itself, that "sphere". The only NET radiative power out comes from the electrical power in. Further, the cooler walls do not contribute any of that NET power out. That's what net means. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-12-16]

I've already pointed out that Jane's hopelessly confused about the word "net", but that's just one of the mistakes Jane packed into these few sentences.

Jane's also wrong to imply that energy conservation across one choice of boundary could somehow contradict energy conservation across another boundary choice. That's impossible. Many boundary choices are inconvenient but they all have to be consistent. Otherwise, how could we possibly tell which boundary choice was correct?

So Jane can't object to the simple energy conservation equation I derived by claiming that some other boundary choice would somehow contradict my equation. That's completely impossible, and if Jane doesn't understand that point then he should learn about conservation of energy: example (backup), example (backup), example (backup).

As you can tell after reading those introductions, here's how to apply conservation of energy. Draw a boundary around the heat source:

power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from the heat source

Since power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing:

electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source

I put the boundary around the heat source so the boundary is in vacuum. That's because radiation can't travel through opaque solids like the heat source. So the only way to obtain an energy conservation equation with radiative terms is to place the boundary around the heat source.

For example, I calculated the enclosing shell's inner temperature by drawing the boundary within the enclosing shell. This boundary was inside aluminum, so heat transfer through it was by thermal conduction, not radiation. Notice that even this boundary choice leads to a conduction equation where electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. That's because all boundary choices have to be consistent. They can't contradict each other unless one of them is wrong.

After I asked Jane to explain exactly where his boundary would be drawn, Jane replied:

... You can draw the boundary right around the heat source. Electric power comes in, radiative power goes out. There is no contradiction, and no inconsistency. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

Nonsense. I've repeatedly explained that my boundary is drawn around the heat source, so it's in vacuum and therefore contains radiative terms both for radiation going out and radiation going in.

Choosing to put the boundary somewhere else, like inside the heat source, leads to an energy conservation equation with conduction rather than radiative terms. But even those conduction equations agree that electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. They can't contradict each other. Putting the boundary somewhere else might be inconvenient, but it couldn't possibly contradict the fact that electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature.

My energy conservation equation is this: electrical power in = (epsilon * sigma) * T^4 * area = radiant power out [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-08]

Once again, Jane's wrong. There is literally no choice of boundary which will lead to his absurd equation. Once again, it really sounds like Jane opened a textbook and found "radiative power out per square meter = (e*s)*T^4" and simply assumed that "radiative power out" is just a fancy way of saying "electrical heating power".

At least, that's the most charitable explanation. Once again, I'm trying to rule out less charitable explanations like the disturbing possibility that Jane isn't honestly confused about basic thermodynamics. Maybe Jane/Lonny Eachus has simply betrayed humanity by deliberately spreading civilization-paralyzing misinformation.

Jane/Lonny Eachus could help convince posterity that he was just honestly confused by thinking carefully about conservation of energy, explaining exactly where his boundary lies, and carefully listing all the power going in and out of that boundary.

Or Jane/Lonny Eachus could help convince posterity that he's betrayed humanity by continuing to spread civilization-paralyzing misinformation.

Jane's "interest" in that NAS report evaporated after I showed that Jane had been fooled by "Steven Goddard" once again. So let's return to Jane's confusion about basic thermodynamics.

But net radiative power out of a boundary around the source = "radiative power out" minus "radiative power in", so the equation Jane just described also says:

NO!!!!! As I have explained to you innumerable times now, you can also consider your heat source, by itself, that "sphere". The only NET radiative power out comes from the electrical power in. Further, the cooler walls do not contribute any of that NET power out. That's what net means. [Jane Q. Public, 2014-12-16]

I've already pointed out that Jane's hopelessly confused about the word "net", but that's just one of the mistakes Jane packed into these few sentences.

Jane's also wrong to imply that energy conservation across one choice of boundary could somehow contradict energy conservation across another boundary choice. That's impossible. Many boundary choices are inconvenient but they all have to be consistent. Otherwise, how could we possibly tell which boundary choice was correct?

So Jane can't object to the simple energy conservation equation I derived by claiming that some other boundary choice would somehow contradict my equation. That's completely impossible, and if Jane doesn't understand that point then he should learn about conservation of energy: example (backup), example (backup), example (backup).

As you can tell after reading those introductions, here's how to apply conservation of energy. Draw a boundary around the heat source:

power in = electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls
power out = radiative power out from the heat source

Since power in = power out through any boundary where nothing inside is changing:

electrical heating power + radiative power in from the chamber walls = radiative power out from the heat source

I put the boundary around the heat source so the boundary is in vacuum. That's because radiation can't travel through opaque solids like the heat source. So the only way to obtain an energy conservation equation with radiative terms is to place the boundary around the heat source.

For example, I calculated the enclosing shell's inner temperature by drawing the boundary within the enclosing shell. This boundary was inside aluminum, so heat transfer through it was by thermal conduction, not radiation. Notice that even this boundary choice leads to a conduction equation where electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. That's because all boundary choices have to be consistent. They can't contradict each other unless one of them is wrong.

After I asked Jane to explain exactly where his boundary would be drawn, Jane replied:

... You can draw the boundary right around the heat source. Electric power comes in, radiative power goes out. There is no contradiction, and no inconsistency. ... [Jane Q. Public, 2014-09-15]

Nonsense. I've repeatedly explained that my boundary is drawn around the heat source, so it's in vacuum and therefore contains radiative terms both for radiation going out and radiation going in.

Choosing to put the boundary somewhere else, like inside the heat source, leads to an energy conservation equation with conduction rather than radiative terms. But even those conduction equations agree that electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature. They can't contradict each other. Putting the boundary somewhere else might be inconvenient, but it couldn't possibly contradict the fact that electrical heating power depends on the cooler chamber wall temperature.

My energy conservation equation is this: electrical power in = (epsilon * sigma) * T^4 * area = radiant power out [Jane Q. Public, 2014-10-08]

Once again, Jane's wrong. There is literally no choice of boundary which will lead to his absurd equation. Once again, it really sounds like Jane opened a textbook and found "radiative power out per square meter = (e*s)*T^4" and simply assumed that "radiative power out" is just a fancy way of saying "electrical heating power".

At least, that's the most charitable explanation. Once again, I'm trying to rule out less charitable explanations like the disturbing possibility that Jane isn't honestly confused about basic thermodynamics. Maybe Jane/Lonny Eachus has simply betrayed humanity by deliberately spreading civilization-paralyzing misinformation.

Jane/Lonny Eachus could help convince posterity that he was just honestly confused by thinking carefully about conservation of energy, explaining exactly where his boundary lies, and carefully listing all the power going in and out of that boundary.

Or Jane/Lonny Eachus could help convince posterity that he's betrayed humanity by continuing to spread civilization-paralyzing misinformation.

What you're missing is the depth of the investigation. There are plenty of reasons to believe HSBC execs should have known the money was dirty, it sinply wasn't investigated deeply enough.

Some do have that special bone but I think it's in their head actually...

It'll be interesting to see how they choose to go. Perhaps they'll actually get something set up that is owned by the people, as their social system alleges a strong preference for.

It'd be fascinating to see how it works without big corporations in there making choices for them on a constant basis, if they can manage to avoid that.

Somehow, though, I keep coming back to the fact that no socialist or communist system has ever been seriously tried without some kind of de-facto dictatorship making the end goal impossible to reach. Equality is fine until the idiots who disagree want to be equal, too... All systems seem to have that particular fundamental problem. Equal unless different, otherwise ostracized.

My cynical side tells me palms will be greased, corporations will heavily engage, and your Cuban surfer will have a pretty typical bill to pay. Be delighted to be proven wrong, though.

Yes there are good reasons for going to Mars. Greatest among them is to safeguard the species from any catestrophic impacts on Earth they would extinguish us.

No potential impact to Earth would render it less hospitable to life than Mars is. For speicies survival a set of fortified underground bunkers/mini-cities would be far more practical -- and unlike Mars, we do have the tech to do that.

The suggestion that we currently have the technology to colonize Mars is, in brief, ridiculous. No human has been move than 500 miles from Earth's surface in over four decades, and the farthest we've ever sent a human is under 250,000 miles; at its closest, Mars is 38,000,000 miles away. We do not know how to safely get a human being that distance through interplanetary space, and the first few people we try to send are quite likely to die.

That investment of blood and treasure might be worthwhile if there was something useful for humans to do when they got there, but there isn't. We'll get better scientific results by building and sending better robots.

There is no practical reason to send humans to Mars in the near-term -- say, next five centuries. Especially not when all of our resources are needed over the next century or so to put human civilization on a sustainable footing. We can probably do some useful stuff with humans in Earth orbit and maybe on Luna, but deep space is for robots.

The only justification to put humans on Mars is some vague hand-waving about "inspiration" -- i.e., it's a huge performance art project. Maybe someday humanity can afford that. But not now.

It has been well known that all Corporate IT security is a complete joke. CIO refuses to spend the money on it, COO refuses to make users actually follow real security procedures, and the CFO loves the "it wont happen to us" line that means they will not have to actually spend money on real IT security.

This is not new, I'm just glad that it's happening in a very public way so that maybe the worthless executives out there will actually listen to their IT experts about the fact that we NEED to spend the money to try and keep the bad guys out.

The old guy there was trying to get internet to the island and they threw him in jail. Let's start with forcing the Cuban Government to take bi-polar meds first?

But let's suppose you're right for a moment. This is your shell game. These are companies responding to the incentives you put in place. This is your supposed problem that you created. You have two choices as I see it: eliminate the welfare that leads to these alleged subsidies or suck it up.

I am right. But it's not my shell game, although it certainly is a problem that affects me. You naively assume that I, or more generally, the voting public, have control. I/we do not. First, we cannot craft legislation. This is not a democracy. It is, nominally in form at least, a republic. So we can only vote for representatives. However, the great majority of representatives are immediately and completely suborned and corrupted by corporate influence in the form of campaign support, straight-up bribes, assurances of employment, special deals, speaking engagements, and so on. The companies and other rich, well-connected entities actually set the rules. It is their shell game. It's a shell game called oligarchy masquerading as a republic-in-place. Only the politically naive still believe that it works by shuffling the representatives around. If it affects corporate earnings in any significant way, the tiller is taken from the representative's hands, and the course is set by the corporations themselves. That's how it actually works. I appreciate the warmness and fuzziness that might be grasped by imagining that the government is operating as a republic, but it just isn't so.

I think this is the most obnoxious part of the welfare state. The tool that created the unintended consequence gets used again and again, creating more and more unintended consequences as it goes. There never is any learning from failure by the masters of the tool of welfare. It's always the fault of all those counterrevolutionaries/greedy corporations/Tea Baggers/whatever who don't behave the way they're supposed to behave.

You think this because you subscribe to an illusory model of how things work. Until you become aware of the actual levers and forces of power that are in operation in and upon our government, the actual causes and effects, you will remain bewildered by the surface picture.

If the minimum wage were raised. (1) Business profits will drop -- as they should. (2) Government assistance will drop -- as it should. (3) The real costs of goods would be exposed -- as they should be. (4) The ability to lower taxes arises -- as it should.

Here's the problem: (1) will never be allowed to happen due to (2) (and the actual execution of (4) isn't very likely either.) The reason 1 will never be allowed to happen is that everything from lobbyists to "fact-finding" trips to post-political career sweeteners and far-flung friends and relatives and purveyors of opportunity will be sudden winners in the game of luck, all working to enrich the legislator. They will almost all fold, just as they always do, and the corporate choices become the legislator's choices. And in the process, a great hue and cry will arise from the bewildered, such as yourself, crying "throw the bums out", completely oblivious to the fact that the next set will act exactly the same, because the incentives being offered amount, in the end, to the ability grasp great wealth and power through the auspices of the corporations. There are very few poor legislators by the time their time in congress is over. This is why. Aside from internal corruption like voting themselves the ability to engage in insider trading, of course.

We can't change the game and we can't quit. The finger pointing between left and right is no more than a source of amusement to the corporations. Unless it's a purely social issue, they own enough of the playing field to positively control it. Should it happen that they don't, they will acquire more. They are rich and can concentrate their efforts. We cannot. We have nothing to offer that is legal other than election (generally from pre-selected party members, worse yet), and should we try to play it their way, enriching them and empowering them, even assuming we could, we'd be meeting the FBI immediately.

As I understand it, the damage was indirect. The software was left in such a state that the furnace was at the time undamaged but could not be properly shut down. That left only the emergency shutdown procedure which was the cause of the damage.

The real failure was not being able to physically operate the controls to at least manage a clean shutdown.

The root cause of the problem is a yellow too short to allow every car in motion to either clear the intersection of stop safely before the red. Once the light traps you in that situation it's just a matter of choosing your risk.

Throwing an unfair fine into the mix can lead to poor decisions.

It is unfortunate that the millions of Fox News viewers on Dish were used as pawns by their provider. Hopefully they will vote with their hard earned money and seek another one of our other valued distributors immediately.

Stop being their pawns, do our bidding! Choke their cannon with your dead! And peel us some grapes!

If "production networks" cannot be rendered totally secure, they should not exist. Moreover, if they do exist they should be wholly insulated from the Internet

There's always a connection to the Internet. Sometimes it is sneakernet, sometimes it uses photonic information dellivery to bio-ocular scanning device, which uses cranial data storage and processing, and meatfingers to transmit the data through an array of buttons commonly called a "keyboard"; but there is always a connection. Hacking airgapped networks (which are still networks, just with some strange hops through biochemical computers) is just another stop on the path. If we can trick a computer into accepting a "dangerous" value, we can do the same for humans. If we can train humans to reject those values, we can train computers to do the same.

Humans are just another kind of programmable machine on the network we call Earth, with different kinds of exploitable flaws. Right now we trust the machines more than we should so their security is weaker than the humans in many cases, and so the machines are the targets. But that will change though hard experience.

Not trying to contradict you, just noodling on the nature of being a node on a network.

It's still not theft. If you were stealing someone's creative work you would be going to where they keep their source materials and removing them, depriving the creator of access to their work. What you are doing when you pirate something is experiencing the work without remunerating the creator.

These are two separate and distinct acts, with entirely different consequences. Not giving something to someone is not the same as taking something away from someone. Now you can argue that both situations are equally reprehensible if that is your judgement. But they are not synonymous. There are subtle but important differences that underpin the whole argument, and coherent discussion can't proceed unless you appreciate this difference.

Precise use of language is important, as it reduces muddled thinking and enables a clear argument to be made. Banging out the word "theft" at every opportunity as an appeal to your own emotional response to the injustice you perceive is preventing you from understanding the other side of the argument.