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if any of you folks is thinking of adding to BGs wealth, consider donating to this guy, he needs it (or at least he says he does). or you could always buy a mac, they're pretty :D

No it's not. It's operating a regular radio, probably even one that's FCC approved. All radios 'leak' out this form of RF when in use.

Only superheterodyne tuners do this. Regenerative tuners will do this only if they're improperly adjusted. TRF tuners will never do this. I guess that means it's time to break out the old Atwater Kent...

Then he realized that he had presented the problem somewhat incorrectly and grudgingly said, "Well I guess you get that right, since I didn't explain the problem completely." ...Needless to say I was not called back for a second interview.

I don't doubt it. I have heard of a similar MS question involving sinners with marks on their foreheads (or some variation on this).

The correct answer is supposed to be three. I remember reading an interview in which an interviewee got this question correct. Note however that there is no reason to start counting at 1. Why didn't people start noticing the marks on the day when they were put there? The real answer should be two.

Needless to say, I suspect that this is how MS hires C programmers...

I have actually read a lot about this, it's called playing devils advocate in an attempt to get people to not just look at the wow factor and jump all over a project like this, but to try to be realistic, and weigh ALL factors involved.

Generally playing devil's advocate involves formulating an actual, real, plausable scenario contrary to what's being proposed.

Sure, they have done a very good job of explaining away the disaster scenarios that they have come up with, BUT, this cannot solve all possible problems and would be terrible to assume that they can do so. Why? Because, nothing like this has EVER been done before. We only really learn from our mistakes, and why? Because until we make mistakes, we usually fail to see them for mistakes.

Your "devil's advocate" scenario is "What if it falls?" As the review states (and as you mention), the authors of the book do address this question. They address it with actual scientific analysis of the problem and its effects. You say that we have never done anything like this before? Anything like what? Sending stuff to space? Done. Sending tethered stuff to space? (According to the review) Done. Building carbon nanotubes? Done. Building long, strong carbon nanotubes? Theoretical, but testable in the lab before putting it into production. Dropping big, heavy stuff from space? Done. What else could go wrong? The beauty (and the point) of the system is that it's very simple and very cheap. Seriously, what could possibly happen other than the thing falling? Can you think of anything? I can't.

It's just food for thought man, open up a bit.
I do think the idea is way cool, I just want to make sure that that is enough to warrant building it.

I like a good discussion as much as anyone, but let's stick to the facts rather than fear-mongering. When the discussion is over, we have a choice: either do it or not. You are right that we learn from mistakes, so let's make some. At least we're going somewhere, rather than sitting in a hole, paralyzed by theoretical fears.

Was the Atomic Bomb worth building? Debatable yes but millions of deaths would have been avoided if it hadn't been

I'm not really sure what this has to do with anything. The atomic bomb was engineered as a weapon. If we're talking about engineering a space elevator as a weapon, that's a different discussion. Besides, where did you get those numbers? About the only thing I can find on the death count puts the totals at 200,000 in Hiroshima and 140,000 in Nagasaki. Even with deaths possibly attributed to radiation poisoning in the US and Japan, you're still quite a ways from "millions." Besides, how many lives have possibly been saved by the medical and industrial applications of nuclear technology, directly descended from the Manhattan Project?

In conclusion, feel free to play devil's advocate, but throw some real facts in there. The point of a discussion is to separate the good ideas from the bad ones. From a scientific standpoint, this point addresses your question. What more is there to do other than try it?

Fermi's reactor in Chicago (the first) used natural uranium (almost all U-238) as fuel.

There are ways to get energy directly from fission of U-238, but they require very fast neutrons such as are created in a deuterium-tritium fusion reaction.

The Russians, before they got the plans for our reactor, looked at a U-238 design that used heavy water as the moderator...

The test holes were drilled on the ocean floor, where the crust is thinner, by a ship called CUSS I, and the project failed when Texas oil services firm Brown and Root blew all the money granted by NSF.

So, I am not off (your) topic -- mohole would be a perfect description for a diet Nazi.

This is actually a point of some contention - the US military still maintains that the nuclear tests on Bikini Atoll didn't cause the cancer spike in the repopulated residents. There used to be an article on either greenpeace or the union of concerned scientists about fallout from neutron bombs, but now I can't find it.

This which I just found using google says '1/100 of the radioactive fallout' of an "equivalent" fission bomb.

There are people who insist that that level of radiation isn't harmful in the short term (hah.) Suffice to say that *I* wouldn't want to live in such a place a hundred years later.

I'm not a bomb designer either, I'm a biologist. The problem with neutron bombs isn't nixing real estate (which generally goes uninhabited after being bombed to snot, anyway) but releasing radioactive isotopes into the upper atmosphere -> everywhere. They're not nearly as bad as conventional hydrogen bombs, which are a disaster. Two tactical neutron bombs, once per decade, I'd think we could get away with; at a certain point, every neutron bomb you set off kills hundreds+ innocent people, somewhere in the world, from increased incidence of random leukemia (and other forms of cancer). You're never going to know who would have gotten leukemia anyway, of course, but the rate goes up.

The US Military releases a great deal of, frankly lies, about the characteristics of our nuclear arsenal, for both good reasons (necesarry secrecy) and bad (PR). A lot of the sources you read are just quoting the US Military, which has an abysmal record in terms of agreeing with the assessments of independent investigators.

Of course, this isn't why we refrain from using neutron bombs. The Space Shuttles are probably killing hundreds of people from the ozone they deplete ("only" 1% of the total loss, according to this one NASA guy I talked with) and no one cares. The nuclear boogeyman is why we don't use them; but there are good reasons, as well. Now that the non-proliferation treaty is basically dead, though, our best reason for restraint is pretty much nixed.

I myself have made a low velocity coil gun and have a more powerfull one in the planning stages.

On the neutron bomb, for those who don't actually know or remember (me) the details: [http://web2.iadfw.net/myself/secular/writing/n_bo mb.htm]

Candid photo of Adobe CEO. This pretty much sums up the Adobe side of the story.

Is this JonKatz? CmdrTaco? Decide for youself... /. agility test

You need to read this.

Read this.

Why does it piss me off so much when the media continues to misinform the public about this point? Hydrogen is a superior lifting gas, and the airship industry will be much more economically viable when the public becomes educated enough to accept its use. If you want to see these graceful behemoths transporting stuff over your city, get the word out!