Yeah, no kidding! They've been touting their awesome robotics breakthroughs for years, but when it's crunch time apparently it takes a couple of months before they can even get one on the scene. Whoops!
TFA doesn't really say much about the cost, but if they follow the general trend of high-tech gizmos, they'll probably be as cheap as peanuts in a few years, if not sooner. As for the FOV, you could put a dozen of these in an array, like an insect eye, and then construct a high-res image in software. As a bonus, you'd also get some range info and limited 3D possibilities.
Given how little we still know about the deep ocean, I wouldn't be surprised if Branson's efforts uncover more new questions than they answer. But it's nice to see techno-rich folks (such as Branson, Musk, etc) doing something useful with their megabucks.
Yeah, it's called the "scientific method" and it's what sets scientific "belief" apart from it's faith-based counterpart.
I may not have mastered all the necessary disciplines to *really* know that e=mc^2, but I know enough to follow along as a real expert explains it. Whereas with religion, you very quickly get to the "and then a miracle occurs" stage of discourse.
In a way, it's sorta like using Linux vs. MSWin, etc... I may not be a kernel guru, but if I have a problem that requires a bit of hacking, I know (from long experience) that I can usually find the answer to my problem if I put in the time to study it.
I guess you could say this is a "meta" version of the scientific method... meaning that my personal experimentation always tends to affirm the claims of science (or Linux) when I bother to test them. This in turn strengthens my trust in the scientific method. Whenever I bother to "test" science, science always proves itself. Whenever I "test" religious ideas, I rapidly bump into the wall of "miraculous" assertions.
Zactly! I had been using Kubuntu until KDE4 came out. That's why I switched to Ubuntu. Now I'm going to install Xubuntu rather then upgrade to the new Gnome. Bleh.
Re:I feel more respected already!
on
GNOME 3 Released
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· Score: 1
The magnitude of this thing defies description. A lot of us in the outside world look on with with admiration as the Japanese people pull together and "work the problem" in their particular way.
My Japanese is near non-existent, so apologies if this is out of place, but...
The trouble is, our lifestyle is SO over-built around petroleum and cheap energy. The whole "suburban sprawl" paradigm is so ubiquitous and wasteful that it will take a long time and a lot of investment to retool. We can't even get people to agree on something as obvious as evolution, and the whole climate change debate is so polluted with BS (mostly on one side)... it's not easy to see the necessary political consensus developing anytime soon for such a major shift in the way we do things. But a couple of modest adjustments come to mind which could help.
1. Open Fuel Standards Act: a law which would require automakers to include a certain percentage of flex-fuel cars in their fleet offerings. We already have something like this, but it only applies to E85 ethanol, and only for a small percentage of cars on the road. The OFSA would allow any kind of alcohol (not just ethanol) in any mix ratio you want.
2. Walkable Communities: Adjust zoning ordinances to allow for limited retail business in residential areas. So instead of driving a couple of miles each way to pick up a gallon of milk, you could just walk down the street and get it.
There are lots of good ideas like this floating around, but thus far I still don't see enough awareness of the problem, let alone consensus, to achieve even these modest steps.
Surely you didn't think you owned your private parts, did you?! Those are the property of the telephone company! Any unauthorized tampering or manipulation carries a hefty penalty.
That's the critical failure point we're dealing with now, which makes this a design flaw IMO. Backup power to the pumps should have been more robust. A few possibilities come to mind...
1. Provide battery backup sufficient to run the pumps long enough to cool the residual heat. 2. Don't site the diesel generators a few km away, keep them nearby. (If you can build a quake&tsunami-proof containment for the RV, why not do the same for the generators?) 3. Allow some method of of using the residual heat to generate electricity for the pumps, or simply use steam-power (mechanically) to drive the pumps.
I'm sure it would be more complicated/expensive than it sounds, but those extra costs would be a bargain compared to the cost of cleaning up this mess.
Because natural gas is still a single (ie: "non-flex") fuel. Also, butanol can be made from nat-gas VERY cheaply and easily, so it makes more sense to use it in that form anyway. It takes advantage of existing fuel delivery infrastructure.
I don't think the mobile carriers care much about what OS your phone is running, or could do much about it if they did care.
The difference I see between the current situation and 30yrs ago is that there's no behemoth like IBM to roll out their version of the iPad/iPhone/iEtc... Microsoft would have been just another mediocre OS if not for IBM. When Apple-II came out, they ruled the market for a few years, but most "serious" business types were waiting for IBM to come out with their own PC (back then "PC" simply meant personal computer, regardless of brand). Once IBM launched it's "PC" brand, they quickly crushed Apple's market share, and Microsoft just rode IBM's coattails to the top.
Another key element then was IBM's decision to license their architecture to other manufacturers -- something that Apple has always refused to allow -- which played a major role in the IBM/MS platform's dominance by making "commodity" hardware cheap and ubiquitous.
Google/Android has the second advantage (openness) but not the first. There's no 800lb gorilla like IBM waiting in the wings. In this case, Apple IS the 800lb gorilla...
At the moment, "flex-fuel" cars are available, but in limited supply. And they only work with E85 mix. A true flex-fuel car can use any combination of ethanol, butanol, methanol, gasoline, etc.. It doesn't solve the problem, obviously, but it does give us more OPTIONS when the petroleum supply gets tight.
You can convert an existing car for a few hundred bucks. But if they are built that way at the factory, the flex-fuel option only adds about $100 to the price of the vehicle.
Actually, landing on Mars is much more difficult. Yes, the atmosphere is barely thick enough to allow air-braking, but it's way too thin for a conventional parachute landing. That's why most Mars landers use rockets in the final descent. Also, the atmosphere is too thin for airplane-style flight, but just thick enough play havoc with navigation. There was something about this on/. some years ago, but I'm too lazy to dredge it up. However, google offers up this piece in the same vein: engineeringchallenges.org/cms/7126/7622.aspx
Not sure it's necessarily bad for the US if China has this technology. The more energy they get from nukes, the less China will compete for oil on the int'l market.
Slashdot Mirror
I was wondering if it would be strong enough to hold Gort. After all, "KL93" was also supposed to be stronger than steel.
When I saw your subject line I was expecting to see something about a "Bowelwulf Cluster" of these...
Hope he covered his tracks well. Not sure how useful Cisco hacking skills would be in prison.
Yeah, no kidding! They've been touting their awesome robotics breakthroughs for years, but when it's crunch time apparently it takes a couple of months before they can even get one on the scene. Whoops!
TFA doesn't really say much about the cost, but if they follow the general trend of high-tech gizmos, they'll probably be as cheap as peanuts in a few years, if not sooner. As for the FOV, you could put a dozen of these in an array, like an insect eye, and then construct a high-res image in software. As a bonus, you'd also get some range info and limited 3D possibilities.
Obligatory: "I for one welcome our new deep-sea overlords."
Cool. Hadn't heard of that before, thanks.
Given how little we still know about the deep ocean, I wouldn't be surprised if Branson's efforts uncover more new questions than they answer. But it's nice to see techno-rich folks (such as Branson, Musk, etc) doing something useful with their megabucks.
Yeah, it's called the "scientific method" and it's what sets scientific "belief" apart from it's faith-based counterpart.
I may not have mastered all the necessary disciplines to *really* know that e=mc^2, but I know enough to follow along as a real expert explains it. Whereas with religion, you very quickly get to the "and then a miracle occurs" stage of discourse.
In a way, it's sorta like using Linux vs. MSWin, etc... I may not be a kernel guru, but if I have a problem that requires a bit of hacking, I know (from long experience) that I can usually find the answer to my problem if I put in the time to study it.
I guess you could say this is a "meta" version of the scientific method... meaning that my personal experimentation always tends to affirm the claims of science (or Linux) when I bother to test them. This in turn strengthens my trust in the scientific method. Whenever I bother to "test" science, science always proves itself. Whenever I "test" religious ideas, I rapidly bump into the wall of "miraculous" assertions.
Zactly! I had been using Kubuntu until KDE4 came out. That's why I switched to Ubuntu. Now I'm going to install Xubuntu rather then upgrade to the new Gnome. Bleh.
That made me LOL. Thanks. ;-)
Exactly. When they devote that much space to the titlebars, what's the point of ditching the min/max buttons? It doesn't save any space.
The magnitude of this thing defies description. A lot of us in the outside world look on with with admiration as the Japanese people pull together and "work the problem" in their particular way.
My Japanese is near non-existent, so apologies if this is out of place, but...
Ganbatte kudasai!
Oh, there you go making sense again.
The trouble is, our lifestyle is SO over-built around petroleum and cheap energy. The whole "suburban sprawl" paradigm is so ubiquitous and wasteful that it will take a long time and a lot of investment to retool. We can't even get people to agree on something as obvious as evolution, and the whole climate change debate is so polluted with BS (mostly on one side)... it's not easy to see the necessary political consensus developing anytime soon for such a major shift in the way we do things. But a couple of modest adjustments come to mind which could help.
1. Open Fuel Standards Act: a law which would require automakers to include a certain percentage of flex-fuel cars in their fleet offerings. We already have something like this, but it only applies to E85 ethanol, and only for a small percentage of cars on the road. The OFSA would allow any kind of alcohol (not just ethanol) in any mix ratio you want.
2. Walkable Communities: Adjust zoning ordinances to allow for limited retail business in residential areas. So instead of driving a couple of miles each way to pick up a gallon of milk, you could just walk down the street and get it.
There are lots of good ideas like this floating around, but thus far I still don't see enough awareness of the problem, let alone consensus, to achieve even these modest steps.
Surely you didn't think you owned your private parts, did you?! Those are the property of the telephone company! Any unauthorized tampering or manipulation carries a hefty penalty.
That's the critical failure point we're dealing with now, which makes this a design flaw IMO. Backup power to the pumps should have been more robust. A few possibilities come to mind...
1. Provide battery backup sufficient to run the pumps long enough to cool the residual heat.
2. Don't site the diesel generators a few km away, keep them nearby. (If you can build a quake&tsunami-proof containment for the RV, why not do the same for the generators?)
3. Allow some method of of using the residual heat to generate electricity for the pumps, or simply use steam-power (mechanically) to drive the pumps.
I'm sure it would be more complicated/expensive than it sounds, but those extra costs would be a bargain compared to the cost of cleaning up this mess.
From what I heard, the diesel backup generators were flooded by the tsunami.
Because natural gas is still a single (ie: "non-flex") fuel. Also, butanol can be made from nat-gas VERY cheaply and easily, so it makes more sense to use it in that form anyway. It takes advantage of existing fuel delivery infrastructure.
I don't think the mobile carriers care much about what OS your phone is running, or could do much about it if they did care.
The difference I see between the current situation and 30yrs ago is that there's no behemoth like IBM to roll out their version of the iPad/iPhone/iEtc... Microsoft would have been just another mediocre OS if not for IBM. When Apple-II came out, they ruled the market for a few years, but most "serious" business types were waiting for IBM to come out with their own PC (back then "PC" simply meant personal computer, regardless of brand). Once IBM launched it's "PC" brand, they quickly crushed Apple's market share, and Microsoft just rode IBM's coattails to the top.
Another key element then was IBM's decision to license their architecture to other manufacturers -- something that Apple has always refused to allow -- which played a major role in the IBM/MS platform's dominance by making "commodity" hardware cheap and ubiquitous.
Google/Android has the second advantage (openness) but not the first. There's no 800lb gorilla like IBM waiting in the wings. In this case, Apple IS the 800lb gorilla...
Yes, and pedantically griping over the use of a harmless cliche is not childish at all! ;-)
Here's something we could do right now, that would make a big difference at minimal cost: pass the Open Fuel Standards Act.
http://www.setamericafree.org/wordpress/?p=485
At the moment, "flex-fuel" cars are available, but in limited supply. And they only work with E85 mix. A true flex-fuel car can use any combination of ethanol, butanol, methanol, gasoline, etc.. It doesn't solve the problem, obviously, but it does give us more OPTIONS when the petroleum supply gets tight.
You can convert an existing car for a few hundred bucks. But if they are built that way at the factory, the flex-fuel option only adds about $100 to the price of the vehicle.
How about we declare "eminent domain" over their IP, since it's a "critical" need for national security?
Actually, landing on Mars is much more difficult. Yes, the atmosphere is barely thick enough to allow air-braking, but it's way too thin for a conventional parachute landing. That's why most Mars landers use rockets in the final descent. Also, the atmosphere is too thin for airplane-style flight, but just thick enough play havoc with navigation. There was something about this on /. some years ago, but I'm too lazy to dredge it up. However, google offers up this piece in the same vein: engineeringchallenges.org/cms/7126/7622.aspx
Not sure it's necessarily bad for the US if China has this technology. The more energy they get from nukes, the less China will compete for oil on the int'l market.
Clearly you know too much. Good thing you posted as AC. Hopefully that will make it harder for the lizard people to track you down.
What if the government actually didn't take on debt?
What if the government didn't BORROW our entire money supply (at interest) from a private bank? It's a sucker's game.
Check out "Money As Debt."
--jrd