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Nobody is talking about dissolving states' self-determination, only making individuals' votes count equally in national elections.
Thus making mob rule easier.

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This is a fantastic idea which seems to have the ability to cut down on red tape
You misspelt "a barrier to mob rule"

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Obviously he meant powered phones as opposed to paper cup phones.

Turbine-electric is an idea I've been considering for a while now, but as somebody else has pointed out, on a small scale they aren't fuel-efficient so much as weight-efficient. It's true that a lot of powerplants generate their power with gas turbines, but they're usually combined-cycle turbines that pair a gas turbine with a steam turbine which recycles the waste heat. I think that the best hybrid concept out there would actually be a Stirling-Turbine-Electric hybrid. If you aren't familiar with them, Howstuffworks has a great article on how Stirling Engines work. The short explanation is that the Stirling Engine is a sealed body which generates linear motion through the rapid expansion and compression of an internal working gas (like Hydrogen or Helium), due to a heat differential between two sides of the engine.

I want to point out (as you probably already know, but for the benefit of others) that turbines can run on just about any liquid or gaseous fuel. Unleaded, Diesel, Jet Fuel, Ethanol, Propane, Methane, you name it and a turbine will burn it and harness the energy. In the same vein, a Stirling Engine works on a heat differential, so it doesn't matter what you're burning in order to get the hot side of the engine hot, it just matters that it gets hot.

I also want to describe the research and development performed by NASA back in the period from 1978 to 1988 on Stirling Engines for direct-drive automotive use. Under the name "Automotive Stirling Program" the research was initiated due to the 1978 passage of Public Law 95-238, the Automotive Propulsion Research & Development Act, which directed the DOE to develop more efficient automotive engines. The DOE delegated technical project management to NASA's Lewis Research Center. At the inception of the program in 1978, their baseline engine had net efficiency of 31 percent, whereas at the project's culmination, their prototype Mod II engine was at 40 percent efficiency and optimized for fuel economy. One of the major accomplishments of this program was the elimination of Cobalt (a "strategic" element for which the USA relies upon imports for the significant majority of its consumption) from the engine design and the formation of new high-temperature alloys (XF818 and CG27) for the engine components (another alloy, NASAUT-4GA1 has been developed but was not tested due to budget priorities). As of April 1987, over 25,000 test hours had been logged for the various prototype engines (P40, Mod I & Mod II) and over 2000 of those hours had been performed in actual vehicles. The Mod I engine was tested with a variety of different fuels: Diesel, Kerosene, JP4, various alcohols, broad-base petroleum distilled fuels, and simulated shale oil. The results of these fuel tests noted that engine power, efficiency and exhaust emissions were similar among all fuels. The Mod II installation in a Chevy Celebrity had nearly identical acceleration and power characteristics compared to the standard spark-ignition Celebrity, while achieving more than 30 percent greater fuel efficiency. For more information please head to the NASA Technical Reports Server and search for "Automotive Stirling Engine" in order to see some of the reports (Progress reports, materials analysis, alloy development, etc) produced during the course of this program. I highly recommend reading everything available, it is incredibly enlightening stuff.

With all of this said, I think that a turbine-stirling combination could be the most efficient and versatile powerplant available for a fuel-electric hybrid. Utilizing a multi-piston stirling engine equipped with a linear alternator (one per piston) and a turbine engine equipped with a rotary alternator and providing the ultimate in fuel-flexibility, such a hybrid seems to be the best idea in modern automotive engineering. Using back-of-the-envelope calculations, a possible 60% net fuel efficiency is possible, if not even more. A transmiss

Got that backwards.

Legally a vegetable, technically a fruit.

http://home.howstuffworks.com/question143.htm

I'm pretty sure the Shuttle has always had solid rocket boosters, in addition to a hydrogen-oxygen main engine. The external fuel tank holds both hydrogen and oxygen. http://science.howstuffworks.com/space-shuttle.htm

Why does the comment that it was for the oil cause you to think that prices of petrol would be lowered?.

Simple. Less supply = higher prices.

See here.

Quoth the article:

When OPEC wants to raise the price of crude oil, it simply reduces production. This causes gasoline prices to jump because of the short supply, but also because of the possibility of future reductions. When oil production dips, gas companies get nervous. The mere threat of oil reductions can raise gas prices.

It's safe to assume the opposite. That is, greater supply = lower prices. I could search for something stating as much, but am feeling lazy.

"The soloution, then, is to rework the transport infrastructure so you are railing cargo in containers for any distance greater than @100+ miles. Then you can power the *trains* with electricity. That is OldTech. The main reason the electrification was pulled out on the railroad from Chicago to Seattle, USA was that the company that owned the line was doing poorly in the 1970s recession." Um, aren't most current trains already electric (using diesel generators)?!?!? http://travel.howstuffworks.com/diesel-locomotive. htm

How about animated tattoos? I know it's a coupla rednecks who put this together (and filed a patent), but I didn't quite think they put together a flexible LCD by themselves...

Set as: allows you to set the MP3 as an alarm tone. MP3 files with DRM (Digital Rights Management) can also be used as a ringtone and a caller ringtone, while files without DRM can only be used as an alarmtone.

though i just found this discussion on a workaround i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to use my device. in the past drm has been invisible. (being forced to watch previews on dvds sucks too btw. now i just pop in the disc and do something for 5 or 10 minutes.)

it is the engine design on a harley that is patented (i think) and makes the signature sound.

My first thought was that of an optical mouse or something like it.

they aren't encrypting anything here's how it works http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/gps1.htm

http://home.howstuffworks.com/question446.htm

Yes, the frequencies are different. Technically, there is a gap of frequency ranges between channel 6 and channel 7 on broadcast TV, but cable TV doesn't have that restriction and can use those frequencies. More here

Growing up, I was ravaged by mosquitoes daily in the summers. There were years when they were particularly bad and they would literally swarm you. They were huge too. If you think it's cold in Minnesota and we don't have mosquitoes, you're wrong. They just had to be that much bigger and drink that much more blood to survive. You would be out playing baseball and three of them would hold you down while another worked his proboscis through your breastplate directly into your heart. Often times there wouldn't be much left of me but skin and bones when I got home. And that was if you were lucky. If there were six or more, oftentimes they'd just grab your shoulders and carry you back to their nest and you'd never be seen again.

If you have someone that loves "all of God's creatures" then you should throw them in pond filled with mosquitoes and see how long it takes them to become a killing machine. Not very long I'd wager. In fact, mosquitoes are pretty good proof that there is no god. Why would a being of infinite good unleash such a horrible plague upon man?

It seemed that the people who produced the most sweat and breathed the hardest were the most attractive. These features seem to come hand in hand with being overweight but I never really bought the idea that overweight people's blood tasted better. If that were true, all the mosquitoes would have moved to Wisconsin.

Instead, you'd have mosquitoes buzzing around your mouth & ears. Why? Because I guess they are attracted to carbon dioxide big time. You accumulate natural carbon dioxide in the wells of your ears and it pours out of your mouth. They also somehow detect lactic acid which you'll find about large animals.

For those of you who don't know, mosquitoes breed in water (when the eggs hatch, they look like this). Not moving water, but standing water. One of the tasks I used to have was laying silage down, putting a tarp over it and weighting the tarp down with old tires. Invariably, rainfall would fill the insides of the tires with just enough water to make them each a breeding well for mosquitoes. It's not a fun job but you have to make sure that all that old scummy water is emptied out otherwise you'd find yourself engulfed with mosquitoes at the end of the summer.

I've never underestimated mosquitoes, I think they need to be very good at detecting carbon dioxide, scents, heat & water vapor in order to successfully find food for their eggs and lay them. This is quite a task considering what they've got and I think that it's amazing they manage to reproduce at all. I dream of the day when mosquitoes are endangered organisms.

*mental note* Do not hold Olympic summer games in Athens, Greece.

Of course I did, even though it doesn't mean much because I am not a constituent of Alaska. But my message read "I was disturbed by your explanation of how the internet works and thought I could provide a resource where perhaps you could gain a better understanding. http://computer.howstuffworks.com/internet-infrast ructure.htm" Hopefully its not delayed by an enomorous ammount of material

You're thinking of the Digiscents iSmell:

http://www.howstuffworks.com/internet-odor1.htm

Folded in April 2001:

http://www.thestandard.com/article/0,1902,23654,00 .html

If every kilogram of extra weight costs a tonne of fuel, and the entire US fleet added the 100 kilos of equipment required, that would be 30,000 gallons of fuel times by 1600 aircraft that is 48,000,000 gallons of fuel per year, CO2 straight into the stratosphere, so you can get wifi?

And if every kilogram of extra weight costs eight tons of fuel, and the equipment required was 500 kilograms, then that would be two billion gallons of fuel.

The problem with made-up numbers is that they're made up. It doesn't cost a ton of fuel to move a kilogram; if it did, a 300-person plane with people at an average of 90 kg per person would need 27,000 tons of fuel. Planes actually get much better gas mileage per person than cars do. Back in reality, planes get about 1/5 mpg.

Also, if you really think a transponder weighs 400 pounds, I don't know what to tell you. They're more like 3 pounds, including the aiming assembly.

The eye has around a hundred million nerve inputs, so the per frame resolution can't be higher than that. However, the real resolution of that is actually considerably lower (the signals are essentially downsampled on their way into the brain).

A high speed head mounted display (sufficiently close to the eyes) with only 2-3 megapixels would probably be sufficient to completely satisfy your eyes.

http://health.howstuffworks.com/eye2.htm

Not at all true. Soap by itself is just a surfactant. While that does a good job removing bacteria (because they're a foreign body just like a dirt particle), some bacteria (and dirt) remains. Anti-bacterial soaps typically contain triclosan, which is a bona-fide bactericide. It may kill some of what's left, but in doing so it breeds resistance because no bactericide is 100% effective, and triclosan does not kill "on contact" so is therefore even less effective in typical use of anti-bacterial soap.

Several.
The one I would use for this would be my Franchi 48 /al 12-gauge; used with flechette ammo, available at several places. Note I would never, ever use these hunting or against anything living, even a home invader; that is what my .40 is for.

And the Maximum effective range is 300 meters, or 328 yards, for flechette ammo.

If you happen to be in the central Tennessee area, a demonstration could be arranged.

However, since you don't know about the increased range availability from shotgun sabot rounds, I would tend to think you most likely don't live in a firearms-friendly location.

Apparently Pioneer are working on an ultra violet technology, with discs capable of holding 500gb of data.

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/blu-ray4.htm

In Nasa's latest tests, a 12ft-wide dish was used to concentrate the sun's rays on to 100g of a substance similar to Moon soil. After a few hours, one fifth of the substance had turned into oxygen.

...if you wanted to "save power" in a watch, you would just build a simple accellerometer into the device to turn the watch on (for say 30 seconds) when you move it (a simple mercury or mass/spring switch would be the cheapest way).

They're called "self-winding watches", and they've been around for decades :-)
http://www.nextag.com/Watches--a-Watch+Features-_- Self-Winding--zz2702409zB4z5---html

How they work:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/question285.htm
(includes link to video)

Antibacterial soaps are a marketing ploy and nothing more

Bzzt. Wrong.

Many antibacterial soaps contain additives such as triclosan or triclocarbon. Both the AMA and the CDC have recommended against the use of antibacterial soaps vs. regular soaps. The antibacterial soaps themselves don't seem to save you from any cough, colds and flus as at least one study published in Annals of internal medicine shows.

As for just being marketting, manufacturers would be at risk of false advertising, violations of which are the domain of the FTC

These particular antibiotic additives are effective in controlled settings (eg. hospitals) with proper application, but indescriminate use at home doesn't seem provide benefits, and in fact raises concerns about the development of resistant strains of bacteria.

Plasma gas leaks over time causing dulling - replace your TV time.

What? No. Plasma displays use phosphors to generate color, just like a CRT. Also, just like a CRT, those phosphors decay over time. They're prone to burn-in, just like a CRT. Think of a plasma display like a mix between CRT and LCD. You have a grid of individual subpixels just like an LCD, but those sub pixels are are made up of light-emitting phosphors just like a CRT. How those phosphors are energized is different (that's where the plasma comes in to play), but the ultimate effect is the same -- the set is generating color through the use of a consumable substance, and over time that substance will be consumed. ("consumable" isn't the right word, but it gets the idea across.)

If plasma displays use the same technology as CRTs, why do they have a much shorter half-life? I don't know, but I would suspect the main culprit is user error. You'll get very long life with no risk of burn-in if you properly calibrate a CRT (get it out of the factory-default torch-mode contrast, if nothing else), and I suspect you'd get the same from a plasma. However, proper calibration tends to mute brightness and colors (actually bringing them down to correct, realistic levels), and that's the last thing a new plasma owner wants if he was sold on the "vibrant" and "rich" color of the display (never mind that it's all way overblown and needs to be adjusted down to look good, never mind for the health of the display).

Note that this will drain your battery life in this configuration.

Convert the bicycle into a generator.

http://www.amasci.com/amateur/coilgen.html
http://computer.howstuffworks.com/question658.htm

...from http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/dsl.htm

"Fiber-optic cables - ADSL signals can't pass through the conversion from analog to digital and back to analog that occurs if a portion of your telephone circuit comes through fiber-optic cables."

Steve, you might enjoy these two links as well.

http://auto.howstuffworks.com/quasiturbine.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quasiturbine

I suspect these storys are planted in the media to worry unfriendly countrys, just like the star wars program that never had a chance of working or the rediculous story I saw in a newspaper a couple of years ago about missiles that can burrow into the ground and destroy a shelter 150feet down.

• They can make the weapon heavier. More weight gives the bomb more kinetic energy when it hits the target.
• They can make the weapon smaller in diameter. The smaller cross-sectional area means that the bomb has to move less material (earth or concrete) "out of the way" as it penetrates.
• They can make the bomb faster to increase its kinetic energy. The only practical way to do this is to add some sort of large rocket engine that fires right before impact.

I perfected a handless input device years ago. Its a foot long dowl rod ducked taped to the head. I got the idea by watching a dippy bird - http://science.howstuffworks.com/question608.htm

http://science.howstuffworks.com/dirty-bomb.htm

Of course, the radiation would stick around and people couldn't live there for a while until all the radioactive material is either cleaned up or has deteriorated. But that's not too big of a deal - at least the people will stay alive.

Well this site indicates ABS isn't helping to reduce the number of accidents, even in wet weather. (Insurance Institute for Highway Safety)

Oddly enough, this writeup, referencing an IIHS study, mentions that cars with ABS actually have a higher fatality rate in single-vehicle collisions. The AAA Foundation for Highway Safety sheds more light on this issue.

Here is the NHTSA study. I'm too tired to look any more, but from what I've seen, I'm just as well off without ABS.

> a locked tire will slow you down faster than ABS in many circumstances.

Not only wrong, but dangerously wrong. This is the kind of incorrect belief that can get people killed.

For car tires, static friction (i.e., when the tire is rolling) is almost always significantly higher than dynamic friction (i.e., when the tire is skidding). In other words, skidding tires brake slower than rolling tires.

ABS makes your car more controllable; it also makes your car stop faster. This is, in almost all situations, not a tradeoff---ABS is simply flat-out better than non-ABS in all meaningful ways.

Hey dumbass, way to show your mastery of irony. You slam an entire country, larger than most others in population, racial diversity, and square mileage, for rash generalization. Do I need to point your rash generalization out? WTG Idiot.

Further Marshmallows are not an american creation.

Look it up before you open your filthy, ignorant, cake hole.

S-F-B.

http://home.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=qu estion128.htm&url=http://www.faqs.org/faqs/food/ca ndy/peeps/section-12.html

http://home.howstuffworks.com/question128.htm

Hey dumbass, way to show your mastery of irony. You slam an entire country, larger than most others in population, racial diversity, and square mileage, for rash generalization. Do I need to point your rash generalization out? WTG Idiot.

Further Marshmallows are not an american creation.

Look it up before you open your filthy, ignorant, cake hole.

S-F-B.

http://home.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=qu estion128.htm&url=http://www.faqs.org/faqs/food/ca ndy/peeps/section-12.html

http://home.howstuffworks.com/question128.htm

Man, some people just don't get why something is "expensive". Why does an iPod cost 60x more than a cassette walkman? I'm pretty sure that they make more iPods than tape players these days. Maglev requires the entire track to consist of large, powerful electromagnets. This just isn't going to be cheap, or energy efficient, irrespective of production volume. What's cheaper to make, two steel rails, or this concrete monstrosity?

For those of you that do not know what an OLED is, or want an better explanation of 'em: http://science.howstuffworks.com/oled.htm

How Stuff Works

This part is amusing:
"Air Force crews at Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland carefully inspect the plane, and the runway, before every flight."

I guess they missed the part where Richard Marcinko and his Red Cell SEAL Team managed to put fake IEDs on Air Force One in the hangar.

Also, here are the anti-missile defenses courtesy of Cryptome, who's really fast on the draw at saving info before it vanishes:
Air Force One Defenses and also here about the Air Force One rescue system (the "oxygen bottles" everyone is afraid some sniper will blow up.)

(They won't concede the point, of course, but it's fun to watch them backpedal, spin, skid, etc.)

A pure Fuel cells system is in the order of 70-80% Combined with an average 80% motor, you have 50-60% efficiency.

OTH, if use a reformer rather than a regular storage system, you lose the bulk of the efficiency (lowers you to 30-40%). Combine that with the 80% motor, and you are in the 24-32% efficiency.

Sadly, an autmobile is around 20% efficiency. And that is only from the Gas forward. It does not include the previous inefficiencies.

Basically, we are using one of the worse systems possible. It just got developed and marketed first.

A pure Fuel cells system is in the order of 70-80% Combined with an average 80% motor, you have 50-60% efficiency.

OTH, if use a reformer rather than a regular storage system, you lose the bulk of the efficiency (lowers you to 30-40%). Combine that with the 80% motor, and you are in the 24-32% efficiency.

Sadly, an autmobile is around 20% efficiency. And that is only from the Gas forward. It does not include the previous inefficiencies.

Basically, we are using one of the worse systems possible. It just got developed and marketed first.

Rupert Murdoch paid $580mil for it... he thought it was cool.

Myspace as of Feb. 2006 has 54mil accounts.

180k more accounts daily...

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/myspace.htm (yeah whateva, thats my source)

Anyways... yes. The internet is changing, as users are given the ability to share opinions more freely and the average user begins to value those opinions more and more, the internet effectively becomes more human.

After all, an article posted by a professor is a bit more raw than one shoved past the noses of countless editors at MSN.

A crank for a modern laptop would be great (I love the idea), but it isn't feasible until there is a reduction in power consumption on the laptop side. A laptop usually draws about 15-30 watts, more for high-end ones. A typical laptop powersupply brick is rated at 65 watts or so, peak. A non-athlete adult can generate 75W on a stationary bicycle without much struggle (see here for a nice graph), but to keep up 150W is more of a struggle. If you've been to a science museum with one of those light arrays powered by a stationary, you'll know what I mean. So a hand crank generates significantly less than a stationary bicycle, so don't hold your breath for a hand crank that can generate even 30 watts. There are hand crank (or squeeze) chargers for cell phones, but that is a much lower draw than laptops that Slashdotters are likely to tote.

... are HERE .

Thank you very much for that, very interesting.

http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/perfect-sto rm.htm
http://entertainment.howstuffworks.com/perfect-s torm1.htm

That is what I am drawing my information from on them... that and their main site of course. The Mask was 1993 btw... Habib Zargarpour was the Technical Director for it at ILM at the time, and earned the nickname "Particle-Man". Yada yada yada...

Your behind the times by five years:

Face Recognition at Florida Superbowl


A ticket to Super Bowl XXXV in Tampa Bay, Florida, didn't just get you a seat at the biggest professional football game of the year. Those who attended the January 2000 event were also part of the largest police lineup ever conducted, although they may not have been aware of it at the time. The Tampa Police Department was testing out a new technology, called FaceIt, that allows snapshots of faces from the crowd to be compared to a database of criminal mugshots.


And the results:
The Register on Face Recognition software

By leveraging the Florida open-records law, the watchdog organization obtained system logs proving that the Visionics contraption has thus far failed to identify one single crook or pervert listed in the department's photographic database, while falsely identifying 'a large number' of innocent citizens.

"The earliest logs provided by the department show activity for July 12, 13, 14, and 20, 2001. On those dates, the system operators logged fourteen instances in which the system indicated a possible match. Of the fourteen matches on those four days, all were false alarms," the ACLU notes.

The Tampa coppers started using the system in June of this year, and abandoned it in August.

http://science.howstuffworks.com/question150.htm Hahaha! Flour! Sugar too!

the teacher misses the best way to keep laptops out of the classroom:

hold class in a swimming pool.

the second best way would be to have several very, very large van de graaff generators running unchecked throughout the classroom.

the third best way is to teach something that requires concentration and attention to be learned, and to fail the students that do not learn it.