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Get an ACME Klein bottle!
ylle writes "I had to laugh when I found this webpage. If I only had found this before Christmas I know what I would have wished for. It's an amazing bargain; "You can convert your Acme Klein Bottle into an astonishing amount of energy, over 1023 ergs! Enough to power a
small city for years. To get you started, we'll supply the necessary equation for free." " I was looking for a zero volume vessel just the other day. Ah well, its just wierd: enjoy it.
It might look like the bottle is INSIDE her, but when you stop to think about it...
There is the theory of the Moebius.. a twist in the fabric of space where time becomes a loop.. time becomes a loop.. time becomes a loop.. time becomes a loop.. time becomes a loop.. time becomes a loop..
:P
What the heck is "ACME" anyway? Half the time it's used as a ficticious company name, yet real products do pop up once in a while bearing the acme name? There's a bizarre history in there, I am sure of it.
So generate your electricity with gasoline engines. Probably not a perfect response, but it does raise another interesting point in favour of electric gadgets...
While using electricity, as you say, "...shift[s] the pollution to the power generation stations," that at least centralizes your work in improving energy generation. Say in ten years we figure out how to power engines with angel sneezes. Would we rather retrofit millions of automobiles, or thousands of power stations?
Electric tools (motors, heaters, lights) are front ends that don't care what their back ends (generators, batteries, fuel cells) are doing. Abstraction in action.
Consider the advantages for cities that are currently pollution-choked due to geography and weather (e.g. atmospheric effects trapping smog in valleys). Magically replace all gasoline-powered cars with electric ones, and then put generation plants sufficient to power them elsewhere, thus reducing the acute human impact of the resulting pollution. Meanwhile, you're working on those angel sneezes...
Mind the Gap
WAY better than Schoolhouse Rock. Plus, it's, well.... ACME.
Or.. in star trek talk.. non-baryonic == anti-matter.
That's a good example of star trek technobabble, since it makes no sense whatsoever. Anti-matter includes types of particles such as anti-protons, anti-neutrons, and positrons, which happen to be baryonic. Non-baryonic matter is simply a simple way of saying "non-proton, non-neutron, and non-electron, except for the antiparticles of the forementioned particles"
Of course I could be exhibiting star trek techno-babble myself, but I think memory serves me right. As it usually tries to do, but occasionally fails (insert humorous quantum physics reference here). :^)
--- Journals are boring; Go to my web page instead
I'm a huge fan of cliff's; saw him recently on cspan debating some big time computer writer on the merits of the web. He was ALL over the place! Dancing atop the podium, wild gesticulation, pure stoll.
He's right about the net/web not being a particularly good place to live one's life. Wetware sytems need intimate contact with other wetware systems to flourish and grow.
Not to mention propagate... 8-p
The site is an excellent read, too. A total hoot!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
I found that bit hilarious myself. Tickled me mauve! You are not alone.
We're everywhere!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
It's a theoretical (?) construct.
A bottle with no inside or outside. Both are the same.
Very useful idea for cosmology and physics.
Reflects reality rather well for certain situations.
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Finally! Someone gets the joke!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
Cliff rocks!
Marketing Klein bottles is so... HIM!
Brak: What's THAT?
Thundercleese: A light switch.. of TOTAL DEVASTATION!
No he meant continuous. Really. The hole means that a line drawn on the surface and then slid around would have a break in it at the hole, thus non-continuous. Math sucks =)
--
$you = new YOU;
honk() if $you->love(perl)
You're probably right, I keep thinking in 3 dimensions... But until they actually make it in 4 dimensions, I stick by the assertion that it holds water.
Design with more than needed: high-end audio equipment, SUV's
Fuel injection can be done without computers, but that doesn't mean the computer can't improve the process.
Oxygen sensors measure the completeness of fuel combustion and the computer improves the process. Why don't you unplug your O sensor and see if your car runs different (check your mpg too). The completeness of combustion varies based on several factors: fuel quality, air/fuel mixture, acceleration, engine load, spark quality, spark timing, ambient air temperature, engine temperature, amount of oil leaking past the seals, amount of oil/gas fumes returned to the mixture from the PCV valve, and probably several other factors I don't know of. The sensor helps the engine run more efficiently and thus cleaner.
Supposedly the same holds true of a person, as long as both their sphincter and mouth are closed.
> soposadaly !?
hahahahaha - that's gotta be the most creative spelling I've ever seen for "supposedly". Thanks for the laugh!
The revolution will NOT be televised.
Plus, in the meantime, it's far easier to control a lot of pollution from a handful of sources than it is to control a little bit of pollution from millions of sources. Convert cars to electricity and put better air scrubbers on your coal-burning power plants (or even gas-burning since there's now a huge surplus of gasoline), and you've just saved a lot of pollution. More, I would expect, than if you retrofitted all cars with air scrubbers.
The problem is, like many other people have said, that there isn't enough public interest.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
I've had one for months. It sits next to the
bronze Buddha on my bookshelf. Never occurred to
me to post about it.
>>esr>>
I don't believe in this conspiracy theory, namely: that electric cars don't exist because it's contrary to interest of car companies / oil companies. Why is it absurd? 1 - the car market is one of the most competitive. When launching a new model, car companies spend BILLIONS (and I'm not exxagerating!) in advertising. Would you believe that if one of them had the drafts to a very efficient revolutionary car they would just brush it off? 2 - If you still insist on that kind of conspiracy, what about all those developed country with more than enough brainpower but no car industry? Canada, Denmark, The Netherlands, Switzerland (look what happened to the Smart), Israel, Belgium, Norway, Finand, etc etc etc ...
It can hold water. The same way you can color a mobius strip. You just cant color one side and not the other. So you can put water in, it will just be inside and outside at the same time. (again, this requires a real 4d kline bottle, not a 3d projection. the 3d project is to a kline bottle as a circle is to a mobius strip).
Mr. Fa-Cha says hello. But he also says "kill many people", so maybe that's someone else I'm hearing.
If you think about it, most high-quality dinnertable glasses and scientific glassware is one-sided, too. I could take a marker and trace a line all around this glass sitting here on my desk. It has a smooth lip so I wouldn't really say that it has one side or the other. Like the Klein bottle, this glass will hold water.
"X equals negative B
Plus or minus the square root
Of B-squared minus four AC
All over two A"
nt, see?
Search first, ask questions later.
- ACME Laboratories
- Acme Express, Inc.
- Acme Technologies
- Acme Markets
- Acme Brick
- Etc etc etc...
Perhaps the Road Runner cartoons used the name because it is so widely used, just like using John Smith for a random name.--
It would be more interesting to ask "how quick would it be to recharge these things?" Seriously.. if you had electrified strips on the freeway or at the "gas" station that refueled the vehicle, could you just get out, insert a credit card, and 5 seconds later be "full" again? If so, more frequent refills might not be such a bad thing...
Currently? If you mass-produced it?
Trust me, you really do want your bong to be orientable.
I've known about this site for over year. And as much as I want a Klein bottle the thing that realy amazed me was who's behind the site.
Dosen't Clifford Stoll ring a bell for anyone else here? Haven't any of you read "The Cuckoos Egg" (Not that I can spell it even though I've read it several times).
If you haven't read this book yet go grab it. It's a great story and it's even more interesting because Cliff is basically an astronomer who got sucked into a life as a "white hat hacker" even though he's never even been that big on computers. It's very interesting reading a technical story told by someone who didn't know much more than how to login to a system but ended up tracking down an international cracker being paied by the KGB to break into US sites.
So, go read his book, marvel at his story. Then go buy one of the cool zero volume bottles he sells
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
Someone didn't pay attention in physics...
Baryonic matter is the sort of matter we find in this universe. i.e. stuff made of protons, electrons and neutrons.
Protons and neutrons are baryons. Electrons are leptons. The difference is that leptons are (as far as we know) irreducible particles, whereas baryons are collections of quarks. Baryons are also susceptible to the strong nuclear interaction, which is why they can form nuclei.
I believe there are six leptons: the electron, muon, and tauon, and a neutrino for each. Each of the above also has an antiparticle. I don't remember how many baryons there are, but it's more than just neutrons and protons. Most of the others are rare and unstable, though.
While using electricity, as you say, "...shift[s] the pollution to the power generation stations," that at least centralizes your work in improving energy generation. Say in ten years we figure out how to power engines with angel sneezes. Would we rather retrofit millions of automobiles, or thousands of power stations?
But you are ignoring a couple of other locations of power loss-- the transmission lines and the battery. I'm no elecrical expert, but I know that electricity loses energy when it travels long distances over wires, and that they lose a *lot* of energy when you stick them in batteries. I don't know how the math works out, but I wouldn't be suprised if these factors added up to a big power hit.
Another type of engine I would've like to have seen made, was a Sterling engine. I believe one manufacturer developed a car that used a Sterling engine.
--
Insert Witty Sig Here
BSDi is closed source.
Finkployd
They are still slashed to dots :-( Why doesnt Slahdot mirror these sites that havent a DS3 line for about 2 days so they wont have the inconvinience of being stormed by hordes of savage slasdotters??
Then they should ask them whether they might mirror the site. Shouldnt be that difficult to do. would take only one E-mail. Then wait half an hour and just link the site without mirroring if there hasnt been a reply.
That's why the web site also includes (non-zero) "displacement" measurements.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Uups, sorry, couldn't get to the artice, my question is answered there but seemingly without explanation...
Just a random data point to show that at least some of the public is getting interested in electric cars: my employer (HP in Cupertino, California) lets people re-charge their electric cars in the parking lot for free.
:)
In about a year, when my current car will most likely be completely dead, I hope to get an electric car myself, probably a hybrid. I'm looking forward to a cheap, pleasant, guilt-free commute.
Seems to me an easy (well, maybe not always practical, but I can't think of much alternative) answer to this would be, in cases where this kind of thing is expected, to have the appropriate sort at Andover contact the site owner ahead of time with some kind of release for short-term mirroring. (Honestly, if you look at it, most of this type of content will keep for a few days before posting anyway, and it saves all manner of sysadmins the headache of scrambling to keep up with the Slashdot effect.)
-Drayke
-Drayke
If all the world's a stage, it must have been an easy audition.
He says they are Acme Klein bottles, so I think they are the same as on www.kleinbottle.com (I couldn't get through to that link).
-Nathan Whitehead
It's the dreaded Slashdot Effect(tm). Coming soon to a webserver near you. Watch out!
/henrik
Yes, joke..visit the webpage, it's quite funny..
ha
ha
ha
JOKE
why wasnt there an explanation of what this was
first so somebody would know what the hell is
being talked about ?
Does NOBODY watch TV anymore? I saw a commercial for the car I must have, the Honda Insight. 71 mpg , for chrissake! The system described above is exactly what it uses. It's a hybrid gas/electric, for sale NOW anywhere. Actually, since Dec 17, I think. www.honda.com, baby.
(Ex-Monash student) :)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Electricity likes the cold - the electrons flow much better. Batteries, however, don't. The cold slows down the chemical process that batteries use to generate electricity (toss a few fresh D-cells in your freezer for a couple hours, put them in a flashlight, and see how bright it is). I read somewhere that the liquid in a fully charged lead/acid car battery will start to crystalize at about -40. A half-charged battery will croak at about 0 F.
Electric cars are a nice idea on paper, but their limitations just don't make them practical for many, many people. Not to mention that my electric company gets me for $0.13/kwh, so that $54/month at $0.08/kwh becomes $88/month. Now I'm saving only $20/month and giving up the performance and capabilities of my truck.
"Very bland Rice Cakes" - you mean it's possible to do worse than rice cakes?
>1) You end up shifting the pollution to the power
>generation stations
Hogwash... most of the polution from ICEs come from when they're warming up, or accelerating. Generators run all of the time, and require less polution to generate the energy to move vehicles than local energy plants in each unit.
>2 They have no range.
This is already improving dramativally. They're already quite usefull for short commutes (to/from work, running errands locally, etc.) You can't drive them out of state yet but for a 2 car family, replacing at least one car with an EV is not unreasonable. And you don't have to waste time as the gas station.
Windows: The operating system built for the internet. Unix: The operating system the Internet was built for.
So do you. By showing that they were using BSDi, he was implying that they are "one of us," as in "also a hippie," as in "fellow open source zealots." :)
Uhhhhhh. Oh yeah.
well if you hit the refresh button once or twice the images will actually appear.....
If a trainstation is the place where trains stop, what is a workstation?
FIA has tacked a lot of restrictions onto F1 racing in order to keep the competition as much with the drivers and not as much with the tech. So no superchargers (hence the way high redlines at 2 to 3 times consumer engines), limitations on fuel mixes, etc. The point is still the same, though. And glow plug engines run on way hotted up mixes, IIRC. Like partly nitrous. That 4hp per cc sounds off, though. Honda are doing well to be getting 240 bhp out of 2 Liters in the S2000 - what horsepower calcuations are being used? And who is making that engine? Is it 4-stroke or two? Turboed? Supered? Running on std. gas, or some sort of alcohol fuel, or a chemists magic recipie?
itachi
Dude, the first electric cars occured before Henry Ford's model T, which is generally agreed to be the first consumer car (sure, you could buy from someone else, but who else was making one every 10 seconds?) Electric cars suck. Really really suck. Slow (ain't no electric car gonna outrun a '68 Dodge Charger 440), short range (that overpowered Charger that gets offensively low mileage has a better range), poor acceleration, and ridiculous expense. Gas powered cars are cheap, light, fast, easy to maintain, and can get usable mileage (20-30 mpg w/15-20 gal. tank gets 300 to 600 miles between refils. vs. 100-150 for modern electrics). Hybrids are the way to go given today's tech - small battery reserve that gets recharged off of the driveshaft during decceleration, gas and electric working together to provide acceptable acceleration while simultaneously allowing for very efficient cruising by shutting down the gas engine and using the electric to provide coasting power - see the ugly Honda Insight that gets 60 mpg city, according to EPA tests. As for your rant, you're wrong. Look at racing engines. At one point in the history of motorsports, this big beast called the Sunbeam was the land speed record-holding machine. 1000 bhp. from a 2700 cubic inch engine. It went a little faster than 200 mph. Now look at modern F1. The limit is 3 liters. Way way way less engine, but due to fancy engineering, they get huge horsepower (think 800 or so). Getting such increased power to displacement ratios is all about tech. Fuel tech, engineering the engine, developing lighter alloys, random stuff like that. Which carries over to consumer cars - check the old Caddy v-16s vs. today's v-6s. Bigger doesn't mean crap in automotive design, but engineering can be everything.
itachi
Are women topologically congruent with Klein bottles? That might explain the geek fascination with them. I think I need to do more research...
i proposed that we could setup an automated mirroring system. say ten min befor the article is posted, the poster could submit the url to a mirroring pool. those of us with spare bandwidth/space could then accept the url and mirror it for them. then they could post links to the mirror(but the mirrors wont actually be on their servers).
this whole process could be automated. to delete the websites from the mirrors after a couple days....
john
-- john
There was a series of six shows on PBS in 1997 called Stephen Hawking's Universe. The missing dark matter is one of the topics they talk about. Quite an interesting program IMHO.
anyone know what baryonic matter is ? see : http://www.kleinbottle.com/specs_for_nice_klein_bo ttl.htm..they claim its made from baryonic matter..
is a real town. There's an Acme in North Carolina. It's near Delco and New Berlin.. just off of I - 87, in Columbus County. It's not far from where I-87 and highway 76 intersect there. In phone books, I think they often clump with in with Delco (re: Acme-Delco) and I think the high school/middle school (whatever they've got) is referred to as Acme-Delco Middle/High school.
just so's you'll know..
Insert mind here.
These Klein bottles are not, in fact, Klein bottles. They are 3-D representations, models, if you will, of a 4-D concept. A real Klein bottle cannot, as far as we are aware, exist in three dimensions.
) ...you don't have enough faith in the market to determine the winner.
So, when one company or type of company has a monopoly on one aspect of the Great Free Market. and the initial costs to get involved are high, clearly the market can still support the better product.
That's why 90+% of the world uses Microsoft, right? Clearly the market picked the best product.
Let me give you an idea of how much energy that is.
It would power a 100 watt light bulb for 1.023 microseconds.
For me to have 1023 ergs of kinetic energy, I would have to move at a whopping 0.1 cm/s.
In other words that would have to be one FREAKY SMALL CITY!
Is it just me, or does this market have some considerable barriers to entry?
actually it's fungicide, to keep them from growing in your packages - probably not going to kill you, but may make your tummy hurt
when we reach that point, whatever happened WILL happen again (when we reach that point, whatever happened WILL happen again)
See, the thing is, a Klein bottle doesn't have a hole in it (well, a /real/ Klein bottle, sadly impossible in 3-d), but it still wouldn't have an inside or outside.
--
"HORSE."
"HORSE."
-Flaming Carrot
It seems to me then, that any surface with a hole in means that it's inside is indistinguishable from it's outside, topologically.
Wouldn't practically every surface imaginable fit into this category (if you count holes at microscopic, molecular and atomic scales)?
Doesn't this then mean that every object we encounter in everyday life has zero volume and could have an 'ACME' label slapped on it and sold at a methematical curiosity?
I gots ta ding a ding dang my dang a long ling long
======
"Rex unto my cleeb, and thou shalt have everlasting blort." - Zorp 3:16
Sacred cows make the best burgers.
on the wall. The page is /.ted at 40 comments. Mirror please!!
I can throw myself at the ground, and miss.
Moderators have no clue? Oddly enough, moderators are posters... which means the posters have no clue (as evidenced by the post you were complaining about). And, therefore, YOU have no clue.. and neither do I.
It is kinda nice to see the quotes, since I can't get to the site right now (/. effect and all). Not worthy of being moderated up, and more suitable on a mirror, but...
I believe that it has to do with the speed at which galaxies are rotating. If the mass of a galaxy were only as much as all of its visible matter, it would fly apart because it is rotating too fast. Hence astronomers have deduced that there must be some "dark matter" adding mass to the galaxy to keep it together. Also I seem to recall something about the mass having to be distributed around the outside edge of the galaxy because of the rotational characteristics, but I can't remember exactly what.
heh - that's funny and ironic - arch-net-Luddite Cliff's not only making money selling stuff on the web but now he's been slashdotted.
...and their solutions leave you where you started...
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
From the hard-to-find Space Child's Mother Goose by Frederick Winsor. This is a hilarious collection of nursery rhymes for scientists.
--
The shareholder is always right.
It would be really neat if they could make one into some sort of uh...waterpipe to smoke er...tobacco in it. It would be fun smoking out of something like that while pondering it's shape.
Is there any practical value in these things? They're zero-volume, but so's a moebius strip...
If it's a joke, I haven't gotten it. They sell real visualizations of klein bottles.
Hope not.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
And as we all know, Tesla also invented antigravity, Free Energy , and electric telepathy, but the damn oil companies bought the rights to his patents and they've never been seen since.
:-)
This is not an urban legend
oh god no.. math poetry... memories.. egads!!
my alg2 teacher would do this to the class. we'd read all this math poetry, and then watch movies. (mirror has two faces, etc) i can almost hear his voice when i read that poem.
mr. fa-cha? are you reading?! i can feel your spirit... hello?!
anyways..
For your edification:
axolotl n. A North American tailed amphibian that retains its external gills and breeds in a larval state. (Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary)
Everything you never wanted to know about Axolotls
--SolidGold
--SolidGold
Everything you know is wrong. Or more accurately, inaccurate.
I see no reason why taxpayers should be forced to pay for research that can and should be done in the private sector.>
Depends on the benefits to society of that research, along with the question as to whether that particular industry is focussed on short-term profit and would benefit from Government-industry partnership.
Since this has not happened, it's obvious that no such technology exists.
Make any calculations you like. With that kind of money, accidents will happen. Nasty accidents.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
1) You end up shifting the pollution to the power generation stations
This is where electric cars work well in France but not in the UK. In the UK this would hold true, but in France around 80% of electricity is generated by nuclear power. The cars can just charge overnight, soaking up excess electricity that would have burned off otherwise.
Phillip.
Property for sale in Nice, France
Oops... well I ate some once, to prove my manhood to some friends, when I was about 15 or so. Didn't taste like much, but they did give me and the other guy (who ate much more than I did) quite an awful stomach ache. I wouldn't doubt if there's something a bit nasty in there, but not poisonous. See other posters comment on fungicide. I'd believe it, based on its effects on me.
Well, our favorite Patent Office lists 149 trademarks on ACME.
Interstingly enough acme.com seems to be owned by yet another nerd from Berkley, who has an interesting solution to the domain-name disputes.
WARNING!! Acme constructs each Klein Bottle from genuine Baryonic matter. Do not allow your Acme Klein Bottle to come in contact with antimatter or unpredictable results may occur. Acme cannot guarantee the dimensionality of the result.
;-)
Although originating in the 4th dimension, Acme Klein Bottles are immersed (not embedded) in 3 dimensions, using special techniques known to students of advanced topology. We strongly recommend that you do not attempt to evade the Pauli Exclusion Principle.
Pretty funny stuff
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
keep clicking the link. As far as I know it's a Nyetscape-specific way of handling some page overloads. Not completely slashdotted though as I was able to get in every link with no more than 4 clicks...
mcrandello@my-deja.com
rschaar{at}pegasus.cc.ucf.edu if it's important.
Definitely! Try plain (not Jell-o(tm)gelatin sometime if you can't get your hands on these packing peanuts.
Meow
Yes, that's really my e-mail. Don't change a thing.
antimatter is made of baryons too. non-baryonic matter is the really weird stuff we only see in high-energy situations, like in particle accelerators. That is all.
I had that damn ACME factory song (you know the one - Wile E.'s building something...) going through my head recently, so I decided to look it up. It's called "Powerhouse", and it was written by a guy named Raymond Scott.
CDs are available, apparently. I'm going to get me one.
--
Mike Hoye
Ah old hat!
One of your countrymen has already been using this for years in a succesful advertising campaign to market his lines of clothing and scents.
This diet is known as the Calvin Klein Bottle diet.
.sig
...and very satisfied with them. I feel sorry for my wife who bought them for me as a present. As a complete non-geek and non-mathematician she had to visit Cliff Stoll's house and put up with 30 minutes of mathematical jokes from someone who seemed to her to be a complete fruitcake making absolutely zero sense whatsoever. Now that's what I call dedication!
-- SIGFPE
Oddly enough, you can eat them. They taste like very bland Rice Cakes. They also dissolve in your mouth nearly instantly, which is kind of like having water evaporating before you can swallow it.
I don't remember why I tasted them. Maybe it was because I was told they were edible. But it's much more fun to put them in the sink and watch them melt.
NEXT: Flavored Corrugated Cardboard! Chocolate and Strawberry available! Also try our mint-scented Bubble-Wrap!
Deary deary me....
===
-Ravagin
Karma: T-rexcellent.
One of my math lecturers knitted a Klein bottle
Without seeing it it is hard to visualize, and even if you DO see it it might not come to you. after looking at it, follow the side through the entire thing. it starts on the outside, but as you follow it into the bottle, it becomes the inside face as well, ergo there is one side to the entire unit. And something with only one side can obviously have no volume.
---------
Thus Spake Dave
Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
To much dismay, a bong requires two holes, and as this has none it is diffucult to move air through it. You could, of course cinsider the "bottom" (the space that appears to be a hole) a hole and then drill another at the "top" of the stem, in which case they would be (at least the basic model) very difficult to hold without placing your balance at risk, or even worse, spilling your smouldering "tobacco" all over the place.
---------
Thus Spake Dave
Meine Hühner lachen Nicht!
He was concerned about performance of batteries in cold weather, not electricity. As far as I know, cold weather has no negative effects on electricty. It does affect batteries quite severely though (if you've ever tried to start your car at -40 you'll know what I'm talking about.) That's why you can buy battery warmers for your car.
what an awesome bong these would make.
Well, google's a search engine, Slashdot's a news site. The code for each site was written for different purposes. As to *why* google caches pages... dunno? As to why Slashdot doesn't... see my previous comment. Let's hope that sometime down the road when the Slashdot coding team have time they look into caching. As someone mentions below a Caching Pool of servers would be one (good, IMHO) solution.
-BK
This was answered once before by the Slashdot team: they do not want to take on any legal responsibility of mirroring other sites content without permission, and getting permission would simply slow down the ability to post articles within a 'reasonable' period of time. Plus the fact that some sites may not be easily mirrorable due to 'hard-links' and other barriers.
-BK
Does anyone else have problems with it? None of the images will load for me ("Document contains no data" lies Netscape) and often I have to click a link twice because Netscape says "document contains no data" the first time...
Devilled Eggs - A disturbing little creation of mine.
The principle is topological, like a moebius strip. A Klein bottle is a construct that has its "inside" joined to its "outside," courtesy of a hole in its surface. The upshot of this is if you made one out of a thin sheet of rubber, one could mark any point on the "outside" and then continuously deform the surface until that same point was on the "inside." If you make the thing out of glass, _of_course_ it's going to take up space in 3D. The joke is that there is no topological way to distinguish the inside from the outside, so there must not be an "inside" to contain volume. By this definition of volume, a coffee cup doesn't have a volume until you put a cover on it.
Humpty Dumpty was pushed.
Have a drink.
Will I retire or break 10K?
what's the density of Alky?
Hidden Win2K Menu
Alchohol powered cars? heh: Cop: Have you been drinking? me: No, it's the car. I *hic* swear.
Make Seven
Username taken, please choose another one.
I had a great limerick to remember the Quadratic equation, but I forgot it. not really Ironic, but pretty close. --
Make Seven
Username taken, please choose another one.
Is it just me, or is the comment about monopoles completely hilarious? If I find a magnetic monopole on one of them, I will claim the nobel prize myself, and certainly not send it back! Not sure how I would detect one though. I couldn't stop laughing at that for half an hour, maybe it comes from being a math and physics double major.... Acrucis
Actually, edges *do* make a difference in topology. A two dimensional surface stretched into weird shapes in three dimensional space and with a hole in it would not have a continuous derivative as you cross over the edge (through the hole) from ones side to the other. This may not mean anything to most people, but it does affect the classification of the surface in topology.... Acrucis
Cue the Urband Legend about puffed-corn packing chips being laced with rat-poison to stop vermin devouring packages.
It can also be filled without cutting it, although it's a little more difficult. If you inverted it, and poured liquid in the bottom, then carefully tilted the bottle round to upright you could actually fill it!
If you can put water in it then it's not zero volume.
I don't have a sig.
nerds like glass pitchers?
To get a Moebius band, you take a strip of paper, give it a half-twist, and tape the ends together to get a loop. Unlike the strip of paper you started out with, it has only one side. A Klein bottle is like that except you tape the edges of the strip together lengthwise too. You get something that looks like a bottle but actually has only one side.
an orbital fan. dig it.
From the photos on YoJ's professor's web page it certainly looks that if you poured water in the bottom and turned it wide side down it would hold water. It's not that it has zero volume but a continuous, unbroken surface. That is, the mouth of the bottle is just a tube sticking out its bottom. Why does that sound like a politician?
It's simply an impractical curiosity, not a revolutionary idea.
Why do we never see these claims along with math? I suppose that training in analytical thought processes actually does help one see the world.
>We would have had cheap, clean, virtually limitless power
Sorry dreamer, but the universe is against you. You cannot really "generate" energy, you can only convert from one form to another. So... what is the source of the power? How efficicent is the conversion process? Where does all the waste heat go?
>...he caused the Tunguska explosion
Ha ha, that's a new one. Calculate the energy released into the atmosphere. Calculate the strength of a magnetic field that would store that much energy. Design a mechanism for producing such a field. Design or demonstrate a means of converting that stored energy into heated, or at least really fast moving air. Show us how to do it quickly enough that the energy release(conversion) mimics an explosion. Show us the records of Tesla's purchases of such hardware or even raw materials. Show us evidence of the simple existance of the raw materials! Show us where he bought so many millions of tons of hay to burn and produce the energy...I grow weary.
>Obviously, if Tesla's, rather than Edison's, paradigm had caught on..."
Incredible, even when real world history supports you, you favor fantasy. Telsa's paradigm DID catch on. It's called AC(that's Alternating Current, not Anon Cow) power distribution and it is used world wide. It is far more efficient than Edison's DC method. Which of course is why it is used, not because of some conspiracy or fantasy.
Finally, a simple fundamental: There Aint No Such Thing As A Free Lunch(TANSTAAFL).
Memorize it, comprehend it, realize it, apply it and you will be relieved of the burden of nonsense such as this.
Good judgement comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgement.
- W. Wriston, former Citibank CEO
It's certainly a nice curiosity. I can't imagine any practical use for the things. Then again, that fact alone makes them the perfect geek gag gift :)
energy content of alcohol 23.4 x 106 J/Liter
from the same paper, for gasoline:
energy produced by combustion of 1.0 L gasoline 32 x 106 J
From the tech newsgroups, Tom Box states:
The composition of gasoline can vary significantly. Assuming for simplicity that it's pure normal octane, then 1,000,000 joules = 20.88 g. At room temperature and pressure, that's 29.7 cm^3. For the metrically challenged, that's about one fluid ounce.
75 kWh corresponds to 8.03 litres of octane, or just over 2 U.S. gallons.
And a word from the top fueler's on how tricky it is to get alcohol to burn like gasoline:
And here's a good discussion how alcohol performs in race cars and why it is used in them rather than by consumers.
I'm sure you would have no problems with electric cars in cold weather. They are also very heavy, which may help out with pushing the tires through the snow.
We use electric cars and trucks at work. They can go for days without a charge while being used non-stop. Granted, these are industrial cars and are not designed go too fast. That doesn't mean they can't. I did get a few of them to go fast enough for the road by weakening the field electromagnets on the motor. That little trick produced some needle pricking speeds and smoke. These cars have no speedometers, so I wouldn't know how fast they were. I do know the brakes had a hard time slowing them down!
Big DC motors are fun. If you ever get to work in an industrial plant, you might have the chance to play with them. They have a rated horsepower, but they can really be abused!
Alchohol has half the energy density as gasoline. Double your fuel tank size and widen the jets on your carb or fuel injectors. So, how much does alchohol cost per gallon?
Well, the problem is that as the battery drains you lose your peak power output
It might be a good idea to size your battery to last longer than what you would find in a race car.
Its not a good idea to extract full power from massive batteries quickly due to the heat generated. Discharge a small automobile battery in one hour and it will become quite hot. A group of batteries discharged in one hour would be hazardous.
Non vented cells, such as alkaline and lithium ion might operate better under long discharge conditions.
What kind of batteries would you be using? Today, lead acid is mighty cheap (but very heavy!) A typical 6 cell lead acid battery has a full charge of 13 volts charged, 12 volts discharged, 12.5 volts halfway, etc... Its internal resistance is very low. Placing a heavy load on a lead acid battery might drop the voltage down to 11 volts. Not much.
The voltage will never drop much below the 12 volts under load until it is completely dead. You can ride a lead acid battery at full power until its drained. I won't mention its a bad idea to drain any lead acid battery below its 50% charge if you value its life.
Would you like a 40 gallon tank of alchohol in your car? My truck currently holds 40 gallons and 80 gallons would really add some weight. Its just interesting to think about.
The guy who made these is the same guy who caught the German hackers who were soposadaly selling secrets to the Russians. As potrayed in the NOVA episode The Coocoos Egg as well as many books on hackers in the 80's.
I must be the only person here who is completely in the dark. I assume a Klein bottle is some theoretical shape/structure that has wierd properties ... ? The site is /.d so I'm SOL, and all the sites I look at say things that are Greek to me, such as "Euler characteristic = 0" or "Möbius bands" or "4-space". Can someone fill the clueless newbie in?
--
I think there is a world market for maybe five personal web logs.
No, more efficient cars aren't around for a very good reason: they make less money for the oil companies and the automobile companies. So they bury the technology or generate FUD about them not being "as efficient". Electrically-driven vehicles can be *very* efficient.. it's just that nobody wants to focus on making them commercially-feasible yet.
Depends on the benefits to society of that research, along with the question as to whether that particular industry is focussed on short-term profit and would benefit from Government-industry partnership.
"Government industry partnership" is a euphamism for corporate welfare, and is also known as fascism. And why would a company focus on "short term profits?" Companies stay in existence for the long term, and it would be stupid of them to focus on short term projects only.
Also, what makes you think governments are immune from the tendency to focus on the near term? What generally happens is that the money goes to successful industry players who don't need it, at the expense of smaller companies with better ideas. The idea that government involvement is going to make for better long-range planning is just plain silly.
Make any calculations you like. With that kind of money, accidents will happen. Nasty accidents.
Exactly what are you saying? That they've sabotaged such projects, and/or killed the inventors? Do you have any evidence for this? And even if this were true, people have been doing research on this stuff for 50 years, and if a good alternative existed, it would've been found several times. Are you now going to tell me that the oil industry is guilty of sabotaging or killing several different research groups, with no one noticing? I think that's bordering on absurd.
I seem to hear this claim about the evil oil industry buying out better technologies a lot, and it is complete hogwash. Let's do the math:
Let's suppose that the oil industry sells 10 billion gallons of gas at a buck a gallon, and it costs 80 cents per gallon to produce that gas. The industry then has an annual profit of 2 billion dollars. Now suppose that a technology comes along that can do the same job, but at a price of 40 cents a share. Let assume that it could do everything exactly as well as gas, so that it will completely supplant gasoline.
What would the patent be worth? Obviously, if you have exclusive control over the technology, and the closest competition is oil, then you can sell your technology at slightly less than a buck a gallon and that gives you 60 per gallon profit. This means that the value of the patent is 6 billion dollars, multiplied times the number of years the patent is in use.
So, the patent is worth more than the entire income of the petroleum industry. Unless the inventor is really stupid, it would be so expensive that it would eat up their entire profit and drive them into debt. The *only* way they could afford to buy it out is if they turned around and started using it.
This sort of analysis can be done on any of the choices that compete with oil, and the conclusion is the same. If a technology were to come out that was cheaper or better than the alternatives, it would be suicide for the oil companies to "buy it out" and sit on it. In fact, the greater profit would be in producing it and growing rich off the fat profit margins. Since this has not happened, it's obvious that no such technology exists.
As for Reagan, this is the kind of ignorant nonsense that gives leftists a bad name. Reagan does not have control over private R & D budgets, and so there's no way he could have killed such a technology. And if he killed government research on the matter, I see that as a good thing. I see no reason why taxpayers should be forced to pay for research that can and should be done in the private sector. If the government had such a hot technology in development, the researchers would have had no problem finding private capital.
No, more efficient cars aren't around for a very good reason: they make less money for the oil companies and the automobile companies. So they bury the technology or generate FUD about them not being "as efficient".
/.
You say that like there is only 1 oil company and one car company. This is simply not the case. If Ford were to come out with a car that had all the characteristics of a current cars except it had twice the range and had fuel that cost half as much, do you really think they'd "bury it?" On the contrary, they'd develop it to take market share from Chevy and GM.
Don't forget foreign car companies. Even if there was a secret agreement between the American oil industry and the auto industry, it is unlikely they could also get control of auto industries in other nations.
Car companies are fighting tooth and nail for market share. The idea that they are going to refrain from adopting a technology because it might hurt their competition or the oil industry is ludicrous. I wish people would think through the economics of a proposition before shooting their mouths off on
It just occured to me that if google is caching every site in the universe, /. could just include a small link to the relevant google site for every link in a story. This could be done with a little word after each link, i.e. link (cached)
These elegant bottles make great gifts, fantastic displays, and inferior mouse-traps.
I can't explain why, but I can't stop laughing at this.
Well, MY day has been made more surreal. Thank you ACME.
Finkployd
The only unfortunate part about these is that they're not usually battery-driven; they have batteries good for short periods, but the main source of power is overhead wires.
cjs
The world's most portable OS: http://www.netbsd.org.
If we could harness the Slashdot effect, instead, we could provide enough energy to power the world's servers.
:)
By the way-- the site is down now.
imagine a diet based on this: You can eat anything you can fit inside it!
My plan is to pimp before they realize I'm a jackass. Hit 'em hard and fast.
it's an engineering mistake to design something with more than needed!
Bullshit! Good engineers design with margins -- margins for peak performance, margins for reliability, margins for safety.
Why do we need computers in cars?! fuel injection is *NOT* that complex. Oxygen sensors?! WHY?!?!?!?!?!? are you going to be driving the thing in the MOUNTAINS?! You'll be at the same elevation for practically the entire life of the car!
Computers in cars satisfy two requirements -- emissions and efficiency. Federal law (and environmental responsibility) requires clean cars that use a minimum of fuel. Consumer demand and safety requires a certain amount of performance at least from time to time. A computer allows the fuel/air mixture to be continually adjusted to meet these conflicting needs for a relatively small cost per vehicle. Rather than being a rantable offense, it's actually a fine application of engineering principles of which you seem to be woefully ignorant.
I have discovered a truly marvelous sig, unfortunately the sig limit is too small to contain i
Also, check out the March 1998 issue of Scientific American. You can get a little preview here.
Actually, there was some scientist who had constructed an apparatus to detect them... (Don't ask me how!) He claimed to have found one, but nobody could reproduce the experiment... Hence the poem.
I think if you look long and hard enough you'll find something about it, it got quite a bit of publicity iirc.
Reminds me of:
"My butter, garcon, is writ large in!"
a diner was heard to be chargin'.
"I HAD to write there,"
exclaimed waiter Pierre,
"I couldn't find room in the margarine."
For more fermat-poems, see:
http://raphael.math.uic.edu/~jeremy/ poetry.htm
"We warrant each Acme Klein Bottle for a period of FIVE YEARS to be absolutely free of any magnetic monopoles. If you discover one, contact us immediately and we will refund your purchase price right after claiming the Nobel Prize."
That reminds me of the valentines day poem:
Roses are red, violets are blue.
The time has come, for monopole two.
Or, the completely non-related poem:
Roses are red, violets are blue.
Space is warped, and so are you.
There are several problems with electic cars.
1) You end up shifting the pollution to the power generation stations. Recent generations of autos have much better pollution controls than ten years ago.
2) They have no range. The energy density of battery systems is just not up to par with the alternatives. You can't use them for long haul of large loads.
3) Gasoline is actually more efficent both energy wise and economy wise. Several studies by notable geeks have proved this. See Don Lancaster's web site for the equations.
Now some good things:
1) Electric works for commuter trains, and smaller short range vehicles.
2) Hybrids are showing promise.
3) Fuel cell technology may make a lot of the problems with internal combustion engines mute.
As far as Reagan, I am more pissed that he killed off the tax credits for engery efficent houses and set solar energy research back ten years.
The rumour that the oil companies have secret caborator designs that allow the average auto to get 110mpg are bunk. Even Honda stuggles to get 60 mpg in a semi-average vehicle. But there are hydroelectric companies that have bought many of the patents on more efficent solar cell designs.
Go figure.
(...and, I suppose, non-nebulae and non-everything-else-we-already-see-up-there)
Dark matter is merely that which can't be seen on the telescopes.
Some theories of what the dark matter is are (and as a certain 6-limbed, 4-eyed bearlike thing once said, may the humans who chose to use these stupid acronyms be made to swim in a river of piss):
MACHOs: Massive Astronomical Compact Halo Objects; a bunch of sub-stars like Jupiter wandering around on their own (seems likely to me; since smaller stars are more common than larger ones, why shouldn't sub-stars be even more common?)
WIMPs: Weakly Interacting Massive Particles; stuff like neutrinos that have a rest mass but you'll have a hell of a time seeing because they can pass through planets without affecting them (I can't really believe these would hang around in the galaxy for long enough to matter, but you never know)
black holes: we'd probably be seeing them from the gravitational lensing and the particles screaming as they fall in (they have a lot of energy at that bottom of that gravity well, and they dump it as X-rays and such before they reach the event horizon), so these aren't too likely
Shifting the pollution from millions of automobiles to hundreds (or thousands) of power plants sounds like a big win in my book. It's a lot easier to regulate stationary power plants than roving ones, and economies of scale tell us that you can do pollution controlling cheaper at large plants.
--The basis of all love is respect
Yes, sterling engines are wonderfully efficient, and I personally find them much sexier than internal-combustion ones. The problem with them is they have especially crappy acceleration. What this means is that they're useless as a drop-in replacement for the internal combustion engine that drives your car -- the alternative is instead you'd have to have a sterling engine constantly running and powering a battery that then drives an electric motor that drives your car. The problem with this is it suffers from all the problems associated with regular battery-powered electric cars.
;-)
And it's really too bad, 'cause the word "sterling" has so much marketing potential.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
That's what a sign on my math profs. door said
Any technology which is distinguishable from magic is not sufficiently advanced.
I've been holding off for a while...perhaps it's the 'shipping shock'. They do look a little more artsy, IMHO, but I've been waiting for that MUG! Practical, yet impossible! ;)
Plus ca change, plus c'est les memes choses.
No, it's perfect: "www.kleinbottle.com: The document contained no data."
-- Openlaw: Fighting for fair use and the public domain
2 is prime. You may be thinking of the confusion surrounding 1, which is not prime even though it fits the "no factors other than 1 and itself" defintion because defining 1 to be prime screws up the concept of a unique prime factorization of any whole number.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
So I guess it's true: One is the loneliest number.
(I am contemplating the percentage of /.'ers who'll look at that and say "Huh?", and feeling old. Wish me a happy 30th birthday tomorrow.)
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
Check out the link to the ACME faq. Look who's running it:
Who's behind Acme Klein Bottle? ...
Just me, Cliff Stoll. Nobody else.
Are you the same guy that
Yep, same guy.
No one knows how Tesla did it? Well, that's not a particularly engrossing mystery, since Electric cars were already some 30-40 odd years old by then. Making one go 60 shouldn't have been a big deal, since Steam cars were already doing over 100.
Your "turn of the century" comment is more amusing than anything else. You don't seem to know much about automotive history here, since back around the turn of the century there was some real competition between electrics, steamers and gasoline engines. Gas engines won the battle then because as their technology matured they became more reliable and longer ranged than their competition. The best technology won out back at the dawn of the 20th century, and the engineers have been working on refining it ever since. (And no, that doesn't mean moden electrics, or fuel cells, or something else, won't be better tomorrow.)
For the record, Wankle style rotaries are mechanically efficient and marvelously smooth, but they're a bitch to get running clean and they're less fuel efficient than a comparable recip. We have computers in cars because carbs and mechanical fuel injectors aren't as readily adjustable as a computer controlled system. O2 sensors and the rest let the computer optimize the fuel mixture for economy, performance, emissions, and reliability, all on the fly. Think carbs are better, faster, and more efficient? Look at the induction system of an F1 motor some time. Heck, look at the whole car. Those things live by their computers.
Mediocracy is the Enemy of Good.
Better is the enemy of Just Good Enough.
Never attribute to malice what can as easily be the result of incompetence...
I saw this link on NTK) last April or May, so when I was in SF last June for JavaOne, I dropped in on Cliff Stoll in Berkeley to pick up a few bottles for my very own. He has a shack behind his house filled with Klein bottles and a bunch of old calculating machines, which he's rebuilding. He regaled me and my buddy for about an hour with stories about the intricacies of glass sculpture and a few other random topics. He was also planning to make knitted Klein bottles with a recently-acquired knitting machine. I was also privileged to receive an old sock sewn into a projective plane! Quite the guy!
From "Chuck Amuck" by Chuck Jones:
The Acme Corporation stemmed from games the Jones tads played in their juvenile dotage. My sister Dorothy fell in love with the title Acme, finding that it was adopted by many struggling and ebmryonic companies because it put them close to the top of their chosen services in the Yellow Pages. Today of course, it is commonplace to see AAAAA Cleaners and Dryers or AABBBBCCCCDDD Drugs, which sounds like a Porky Pig establishment. But in those simple days, such verbal chicanery was unheard of -- Acme was a word; it was that simple.
So, for many years later, it seemed logical to use Acme in our films, from Acme Dancing Academy for Infant Ducks to the Acme Corporation we put on our door when Chuck Jones, Inc., lived on the twelfth floor at Sunset and Vine, followed by our slogan: "We build fine Acmes."
Long before that, however, the Acme Corporation had become the sole supplier to Wile E. Coyote. Whatever his needs were, the Acme Corporation was there to supply. It was a perfect symbiotic relationship; no money was ever involved. The Acme Corporation supplied the Coyote's requirements: Acme Jet-Propelled Roller Skates, Acme Burmese Tiger Trap, Acme Leg Muscle Vitamins, Acme Female Road Runner Costume, Acme Batman Outfit, etc. All of them *almost* perfect. But surely the jet-propulsion group should have eschewed the use of the Acme Little Giant Bobrick, even at the bargain rate of thirty-five cents.
___________________________________
Anyway, your assumption is totally false. No one company has a monopoly on "one aspect of the Great Free Market". What on earth are you talking about? Some company has a monopoly on electric car technology? That's utterly ridiculous. The automobile manufacturers have tried to sell electric cars for at least a couple of decades, and they are just now drawing some real interest. Also, the barriers to entry in the car market are not high at all. There are thousands of companies that have the cash or credit to start such a company. Where do you think new car companies come from? You sound as clueless as a troll, but seem sincere in your ignorance.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Everybody says "it is postulated," but I wonder why it is postulated? Like so much in astrophysics and cosmology, it seems to be a bunch of fancy built on quite a set of presumption, like the descriptions of what the universe was like at age 10E-37 seconds. Does anybody know where this 90% figure comes from that one sees all the time? Sometimes I wish that in my branch (solid state) we had the privelege of having no experimentalists to make fun of our models - ha!
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
I read about a hybrid design that used the brakes to recharge the battery. I doubt it could be used exclusively. That would violate a law of thermodynamics.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
There are points for and against all of these different mechanisms, but you don't have enough faith in the market to determine the winner. If you can build a better car, then go for it. Lot's of people buy them. All the conspiracy theories you are implying about Reagan, the oil companies, and automobile manufacturers just don't have any substance. This is not an Oliver Stone movie.
But your silliest comment is that it is a mistake to design more than what is needed. This same sort of argument would have all of our clothes the same style and color, and our products indistinguishable. On the other hand, it would have saved us from bell-bottoms. :-)
If you don't accept the usefulness of computers in car engines, then choose another automobile. But if you asked an automotive engineer, they would explain all the little adjustments and efficiencies that can be obtained, giving you a more reliable, less-polluting car.
By the way, many of us to change elevation through the life of the car. My dad drives up a couple thousand feet to get to work. But there are a lot of other adjustemnts besides those related to Oxygen. And Oxygen can decreade for other reasons. Old air filters or faulty hoses, driving through tunnels, being in and out of traffic, driving in and out of the city, and yes, changing elevation.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
"CAUTION! Acme Klein Bottles are crafted from glass, a supercooled, inorganic liquid in a solid, non-crystalline state. If dropped, they may shatter, possibly into paired single-sided Möbius loops. But then again, they may not. Other shocks -- including fast decelerations and Republican landslides -- may lead to similar fragmentation."
"During earthquakes, your Acme Klein Bottle may jump off the table, in a mistaken attempt to connect with the 4th dimension. So just before major tremors, apply a dab of quake-putty to hold down your manifold during the Big One."
bye,
-jimbo
Oddly, our zero-volume bottles require shipping boxes of positive volume. To fill the empty space, Acme uses "eco-fill" packing peanuts, made from puffed corn. To get rid of 'em, just toss them on your lawn and squirt with a hose. Or put 'em in a sink under running water. Unlike our manifolds, the packing peanuts dissolve in seconds.
:)
Hmm, if the packing peanuts are made from Puffed Corn then couldn't you just eat 'em instead? Make a nice lite snack
This brings us to the second answer - yes, it was the best - the best decision that they could have made. That last part makes clear something I think you're forgetting; people make choices based on a whole lot of factors, and they have to choose from what's available, based on the plusses and minuses of each; "Utopia is not an option", as they say. People don't need a perfect OS; they need something good enough for their purposes. Choosing something else would very likely involve small marginal gains for large marginal costs. (Terms I wish more people knew, and considered more often!)
Asserting that 90+% of the world chooses the wrong thing is essentially asserting that you're smarter than 90+% of the world and know what they need better than they do. While this is gratifying to think, it's probably not true (for any of us!) Asserting that is asserting that the rest of the world is irrational in what it does - again, gratifying, but hard to believe when you look at what the rest of the world accomplishes.
The people at klien bottles have only specified the height and the diameter. By knowing the diameter, I can calculate the area. So I know three dimension.
However, before I buy the klein bottle, I want to know the 4th Dimension. Because I want to make sure that the klien bottle would fit my patent-pending 4D display case.
[I submitted this a while ago, but for some unforeseen reason, it has not been posted. If it gets posted sometime later ( as it happened twice before, 15 minutes later ), please ignore that ]
I see that they've structured their website to be topologically consistent with the capacity of their Klein bottles: my browser has just returned "Document contains no data".
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
A fellow named Klein once confided
His bottle was not quite one-sided.
But add a dimension
To Felix' invention,
Have mathematicians delighted.
What's a Klein Bottle?
Specs for nice Klein Bottles
--
Check out the 'jigsaw puzzles' for a good guffaw, too.
[If you don't know who Clifford Stoll is, run do not walk to your favorite bookstore, perhaps F atbrain or Amazon.com, and get a copy of The Cuckoo's Egg : Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage. --PSRC]
...
http://www.kleinbottle.com/acme_faq.htm
Who's behind Acme Klein Bottle?
Just me, Cliff Stoll. Nobody else.
Are you the same guy that
Yep, same guy.
Do you make these Klein Bottles yourself?
Not any longer. I tend to overwork the welds and have burnt myself too often. Worse, I take a long time to make a Klein Bottle. To keep prices reasonable, professional glassblowers make these to my specs.
Stupid job ads, weird spam, occasional insight at
The fact that it places the company near the top of an alphabetical list may influence the decision...
I got my teenager an ACME Klein bottle to replace his bulky schoolbag. But when I wrapped it to hide it, the wrapping vanished and I couldn't find the bottle. Maybe I tied the bow in the wrong shape.
Current home electrical systems and power plants would be overwhelmed if everyone ran out and got an electric car today.
OK, I'm bored. Let's do some simple math.
Let's consider the power involved and how much is generated by a typical 150 horsepower engine. That would be 150 horsepower(746watts/1` horsepower) = 112 kilowatts, or about 1017 amps at 110 volts.
Driving down the highway would take, say, 30 horsepower. An hours worth of driving a day would be 30 horsepower(746watts/1 horsepower) = 22280 watts, or a ten hour charge at 110 volts would be (22280 watts/110 volts)/(10 hours) = 20.3 amps. How much would that cost for 30 days of driving at 8 cents per kilowat hour? (22280 watts/0.08 cents per kilowatt hour)(30 days)= $53.47. Ok, not bad. Don't forget industrial electrical rates are far lower at $0.02 cents per kilowatt hour and less!
More seriously... the day somebody comes up with zero energy extraction is likely the same day the oil companies buy it out and don't let anyone else come near it for 50 years. No, I was serious about that - do you honestly think electric cars would NOT be around right now if Reagan (under the pressures of oil lobbying) hadn't pulled the plug (pardon the pun) on electric cars?
http://www.google.com/sea rch?q=cache:www.kleinbottle.com/
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