Number of legit websites censored: 1 Number of abused children saved: 0
Score one for the child abusers!
Everyone here knows the cracking of software is not driven by supply and demand, games would be cracked even if no one played them. So how many of you think that child pornography is driven by supply and demand? Do you think less children will be abused if spreading pictures of it is harder? I doubt it.
Someone has forgotten to think of the children when they were shouting "Think of the children!"
And speaking of aluminium smelters, I read there advanced plans of building an aluminium smelter in the capital of Greenland. Apparently, Greenland has many unexploited rivers that could get dams at the same time as the smelter was built.
I suppose weak internet connection is the reason why we're not seeing google setting up their stuff in Greenland right now, but in 20 years, who knows? Cooling is becoming more and more important, while the climate in turn is slowly warming, which means the rivers in greenland will produce more energy, while energy in the rest of the world is becoming more expensive due to lack of oil. Kinda cool to see humans adapting to new situations.
Hehe, I know, I know. I do it sometimes just to show that I know its supposed to be capitalized, but often skip it because, quite frankly, I think its a waste of energy to move my finger to the shift key.
Which is exactly why we need to be sure there is no life there now. Once we start sending humans there, steralizing will be impossible, so any finds from that point on (if not sooner) wouldnt really prove anything.
There is a difference here though. The swiss have always been europeans, the Mexicans have never been americans. Before anyone declared independence in america, the europeans over there were called spaniards, brits, french, etc. Then the US became independent, and they were thus refered to americans, since they could not be called brits anymore. At that point they were actually the only americans, the Mexicans were still spaniards, the canadians were still brits. When the mexicans got their independence, they became Mexicans. Thus, they were never refered to as americans.
And besides, the be honest, "European" is more and more starting to become "Citizen of the EU". Not so much in Europe, but in the rest of the world. Too bad for the swiss, norwegians and some others, but they are in fact an insignificant minority, thats the price you pay for staying independent.
Well, most people are just joking around, but you seem to be serious, so let me just put this clearly:
When it comes to fuel, any oil on titan is completely worthless. First, the reason why there's so much oil there is because of the lack of oxygen. Without oxygen, you can't use oil for fuel. Secondly, lifting the oil off of this moon will never become economically feasible because oil is so incredibly cheap compared to its weight in this context. As of right now, it wouldn't even be profitable to go there if the surface was covered in gold.
No, don't get your hopes up, no forseeable advances in space craft design will change this, nor will any likely oil price increases. We're hundreds of years away from importing stuff from space, other than for science and novelty.
A very good point. But consider this: For something as expensive as maglev, tunneling is relatively cheap. Where as regular railroad might become 10 times more expensive if you do it underground, maglev might only becomes twice as expensive. And because of the great speed, the average number of passengers going through that tunnel will be many times higher than ordinary subway, so it might actually be economically feasible.
Also, since maglev requires a very, very straight path to go fast, you will almost never see it going flat on the ground. If you don't build a tunnel, you will have to build bridges everywhere, thats part of the reason why maglev is so expensive.
Well, in Europe there have recently been two huge infrastructure projects:
One is the Chunnel between England and france. It has very few commuters because even though it connects Paris to London, its too far to make travel time short enough. 8 million passengers per year. It does not make profit.
The other is the Øresund bridge, going from Malmõ, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark. These cities are much smaller than both Paris and London, yet they are closer, so the travel time allows commuters. 25 million passengers per year. It does make a profit.
Crossing Øresund isn't cheap, but the much higher wages in Copenhagen still makes it profitable to do the commuting. For a 10% higher wage, you can pay a lot to live on one side and work on the other. Besides, the usual solution is to let regular commuters pay only a fraction of what irregular travellers pay.
For a similar connection between cities like Washington and New York, you could probably expect 10 times more travellers. Thats 250 million in a year, and that doesn't even include people from Baltimore and Philly. If the fare is at 10 dollars per passenger, that means 25 billion in 10 years. If the article is right about 70 Billion for a connection to LA, 25 billion ought to be enough in this case. I don't think it is though, but in 25 years or something like this, this would easily be profitable.
New York - LA is not a good idea. The thing is, a Maglev could support a very large number of passengers per year, but its also very expensive, so it needs those passengers. To get so many passengers, you can't cater primarily to travellers, you need to cater to commuters, who will only start appearing if the travel time is less than one hour or something like that.
But a maglev from Washington to New York via Baltimore and Philadelphia would be just over 200 miles, so a maglev going at 300 mph could easily do that in one hour. This would effectively tie these cities together and going between them could become an every day habit for millions. It would make the region the largest metropolitan area in the world and completely transform it.
It also depends on what sacrifices you want to make. If this arm should be able to do pretty much everything a normal hand can, its very unlikely that it would be stronger than a normal arm. But theoretically, you could make it much, much stronger in a certain situations. For example, the fingers lose power when the wrist is in a certain position, this could easily be done differently in a mechanical arm, but it probably would have its disadvantages.
The fact they have some perticular programmed positions shows that some movements are of much higher priority than others, so its quite possible this arm will completely skip some ranges of motion, and that will free up room for strength in other areas.
A perfect example is the athlete slashdot recently had an a story about, who had mechanical legs that were deemed more efficient than human legs. They were great for running, but worthless for anything else.
Well, it's not so obvious when considering that the earth is round and that the countries in question are almost exactly on oposite sides.
Its like being in Australia and saying that Greenland is on the other side of India. It makes you go "wtf has India got to do with greenland and australia?"
If they don't keep a stored reserve for emergencies like this, they deserve to be frustrated. With HDDs so cheap these days, there's no excuse for not having a few gigs of porn.
On large ships, other kinds of weapons are preferable.
This will be more like a traditional gunboat, carrying only one primary gun. Also, as it says in the article, the recoil makes it unlikely that this gun will fire many shots in one battle.
I think this will be a bit like a naval sniper, aiming to destroy major vessels command center before its even detected, and then leave the area quickly and let the big ships take over.
So we won't see many ships with this configuration, but in certain situations, it could probably end a battle before it even gets started. That is, as we all know, the best way to win battles.
I've been considering this for a while now, with oil recently hitting 100 USD.
Modern cargo ships are very efficient, and their fuel is very cheap compared to other costs actually. Building and maintaining the ship is probably the biggest cost. Nuclear ships would make the ship more expensive, would require a better educated and more expensive crew, while potentially making the fuel cheaper.
Now, lets say that oil went up to 1000 USD per barrel. The problem is that nuclear power is a good on a large scale, and the largest ships are tankers. With oil so expensive, it will probably be so rare that the demand for new tankers is very low.
Also, there are trains that already run on "nuclear power". They are usually many times faster than cargo ships, and time is money in transportation. If oil gets more expensive, we'll probably see more transportation on rail rather than nuclear cargo ships. So yeah, more bridges and tunnels for trains is probably the more likely effect in a world where nuclear power gets more common while oil gets more expensive.
Its sad that people still don't quite grasp the effects of living on a round planet. The bering strait bridge seems completely useless to people, but its actually the straightest path between china and america. The fact that its very desolate is just an advantage for goods transportation.
If you are unsure what to put on your plutonium when in a foreign country, it might seem like a good idea to have both water and sodium, just to be safe. But that would be considered very offensive, especially among educated people. People might even run away in horror.
You, and many others, take the word stepping stone too literally. The idea is not to launch a mars mission from the moon, that would be stupid. Its a stepping stone in technology, organization, infrastructure and stuff.
And also, but this isn't mentioned very often, in order to get and keep funding in a democracy, you need to frequently prove that you're making progress. On top of that you have to prove it to people who actually have no idea what you're really doing and what it is good for. They can't spend 10 years doing hard science on earth, and then send out a mission to mars, that will never get them enough money. They need to constantly remind people what they're doing. "Today, we found this interesting rock. Tomorrow we'll start installing this new solar panel", you know.
Thats the point of the moon. To make science exciting and interesting, even to those who don't care about science.
I think you're underestimating how dedicated most pro athletes are. They wouldn't think twice about cutting of their legs if thats what it took.
Many of them actually have constant pain that they just ignore because the doc told them it won't get worse. Its a fact that they get much shorter lives than other people. They start at a very young age, and have no "normal" life from that point on. I could go on, but the point is that what makes them different from the rest of us is not their bodies, but their minds. They are very often psychos. Try getting their honest opinion on politics and you'll realize that.
Ever since I tried Eve, I've wanted a similar game but set in our solar system with most events still happening around earth and maybe 50-100 years from now.
Also, it would be cool if it had an unlimited research system, so that it was player based research that allowed access to new, more distant places.
Students posting photos of themselves? Due to the way cameras usually work, the one who OWNS the pictures is rarely the one IN the pictures.
Maybe these pictures were posted by the students themselves, but not posting pictures of yourself does nothing to protect you from this shit.
The problem simply lies in the students underestimating the level of surveilance in our society. It isn't spy satellites or cameras on roofs, its just other people. If someone can see or hear you, they can record it without you even noticing. Incidentally, this is very much how people are opressed in dictatorships. Everyone can be reporting to the government, so there is no one you can really trust, which prevents all kinds of illegal organization.
There's no one to blame, just a new order to get used to.
Come on, what's holding them back? There are already warehouse trucks that drive automatically, avoiding obsticles, making cars do it is only a public awareness campaign away. With Galileo completed in 2013, I'd say thats a perfect year for this too. Maybe not in city streets, but on highways, why not? The technology is already there, we've see articles for years showing how it would work, and we already have cars with parts of these systems.
Just make the system, prove in some spectacular way how safe it is, and then sell it. I can't wait to see the movies where cars are pushed to their absolute limit to avoid a whole series of accidents, all of it happening too fast for a human to register.
Obviously, most countries will initially make sure this is illegal, but there will always be some small country that goes the other way just to be different, and the first manufacturer of these cars for that country will get some major publicity.
Plenty of my friends don't use computers as part of their employment (concrete workers, fitters etc) but are quite capable of basic computer tasks like email, web, games etc. So they are in fact experienced computer users but have non-geek jobs? Yo don't have to work with computer to know how to use them. You do, however, have to be somewhat interested, and most people are not, not even the tiniest bit. If you're not interested, you will not change OS (or grasp what an OS is, most of my friends do not).
3. This will in part be a reply to you, but also to the others replying to you.
Current consumption of uranium as I understand it is 70 000 tonnes per year. Current known reserves are 40 million tonnes, including "reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction". For those of you who don't know, uranium mining is not very profitable today, so these figures aren't all that reliable, there just isn't much incentive to really figure out how much uranium there is.
But nuclear power is also only 6% of world consumption. If it was more like 60% (meaning a world based on mostly nuclear power but also wind, solar, hydro where it's profitable), these reserves would last 60 years. Obviously, this could easily translate to 120 years or 180 years before we reach a peak, but it gives you an idea. So it's pretty comparable to oil in that way.
The ocean reserves would last thousands of years, assuming no increase in power consumption (haha) with 60% comming from nuclear power. Infact, rivers bring new uranium to oceans all the time. It's unrealistic to imagine taking all uranium out of the oceans, but 10 000 years worth of current consumption is not at all unlikely.
But while this may seem like a long time, it's anything but infinate! If there's anything fossil fuels have taught us, its that it's very easy to increase consumption 10 or even 100 times if supply is high. Within a lifetime, uranium could go from being seemingly infinate to only lasting a few more decades. If nuclear power had continued increasing as much as it did between 1975 and 1985, we could have been consuming maybe 5 to 10 times more uranium today! Another 50 years of increase like that, and peak uranium would be only a century or so away, even with oceans included.
So lets make 3 paths, includiing half of the uranium content of oceans (might be bad to take all of the for ecological reasons, who knows at this point?), and assuming that peak happens when half of the reserves have been consumed:
Keep production like it is today or lower it: Uranium peak after 15 000 years or more. Let all the world enjoy the same amounts of energy as todays western europeans, 50% or more coming from nuclear power: Uranium peak within 5000 years. 2500 years if we live like Americans. Let supply and demand rule, anyone who wants energy and can afford it buys it, nuclear plants are built as soon as they become profitable: Uranium peak in 200-500 years.
Note that this is all based on the idea that uranium will not be used more efficiently than it is today, which is of course not too realistic. But on the other hand, I doubt more efficient use will lead to less consumption, it usually doesn't work like that. Oil consumption has not dropped because cars now consume one tenth of what they used to 70 years ago, people just drive more instead because they can afford it.
Slashdot Mirror
You can't see the difference between making closed source operating systems obsolete and making closed source software obsolete?
Can you see the difference between making SUVs obsolete and making automobiles obsolete?
Number of legit websites censored: 1
Number of abused children saved: 0
Score one for the child abusers!
Everyone here knows the cracking of software is not driven by supply and demand, games would be cracked even if no one played them. So how many of you think that child pornography is driven by supply and demand? Do you think less children will be abused if spreading pictures of it is harder? I doubt it.
Someone has forgotten to think of the children when they were shouting "Think of the children!"
And speaking of aluminium smelters, I read there advanced plans of building an aluminium smelter in the capital of Greenland. Apparently, Greenland has many unexploited rivers that could get dams at the same time as the smelter was built.
I suppose weak internet connection is the reason why we're not seeing google setting up their stuff in Greenland right now, but in 20 years, who knows? Cooling is becoming more and more important, while the climate in turn is slowly warming, which means the rivers in greenland will produce more energy, while energy in the rest of the world is becoming more expensive due to lack of oil. Kinda cool to see humans adapting to new situations.
Hehe, I know, I know. I do it sometimes just to show that I know its supposed to be capitalized, but often skip it because, quite frankly, I think its a waste of energy to move my finger to the shift key.
Which is exactly why we need to be sure there is no life there now. Once we start sending humans there, steralizing will be impossible, so any finds from that point on (if not sooner) wouldnt really prove anything.
There is a difference here though. The swiss have always been europeans, the Mexicans have never been americans. Before anyone declared independence in america, the europeans over there were called spaniards, brits, french, etc. Then the US became independent, and they were thus refered to americans, since they could not be called brits anymore. At that point they were actually the only americans, the Mexicans were still spaniards, the canadians were still brits. When the mexicans got their independence, they became Mexicans. Thus, they were never refered to as americans.
And besides, the be honest, "European" is more and more starting to become "Citizen of the EU". Not so much in Europe, but in the rest of the world. Too bad for the swiss, norwegians and some others, but they are in fact an insignificant minority, thats the price you pay for staying independent.
Well, most people are just joking around, but you seem to be serious, so let me just put this clearly:
When it comes to fuel, any oil on titan is completely worthless. First, the reason why there's so much oil there is because of the lack of oxygen. Without oxygen, you can't use oil for fuel. Secondly, lifting the oil off of this moon will never become economically feasible because oil is so incredibly cheap compared to its weight in this context. As of right now, it wouldn't even be profitable to go there if the surface was covered in gold.
No, don't get your hopes up, no forseeable advances in space craft design will change this, nor will any likely oil price increases. We're hundreds of years away from importing stuff from space, other than for science and novelty.
A very good point. But consider this: For something as expensive as maglev, tunneling is relatively cheap. Where as regular railroad might become 10 times more expensive if you do it underground, maglev might only becomes twice as expensive. And because of the great speed, the average number of passengers going through that tunnel will be many times higher than ordinary subway, so it might actually be economically feasible.
Also, since maglev requires a very, very straight path to go fast, you will almost never see it going flat on the ground. If you don't build a tunnel, you will have to build bridges everywhere, thats part of the reason why maglev is so expensive.
Well, in Europe there have recently been two huge infrastructure projects:
One is the Chunnel between England and france. It has very few commuters because even though it connects Paris to London, its too far to make travel time short enough. 8 million passengers per year. It does not make profit.
The other is the Øresund bridge, going from Malmõ, Sweden to Copenhagen, Denmark. These cities are much smaller than both Paris and London, yet they are closer, so the travel time allows commuters. 25 million passengers per year. It does make a profit.
Crossing Øresund isn't cheap, but the much higher wages in Copenhagen still makes it profitable to do the commuting. For a 10% higher wage, you can pay a lot to live on one side and work on the other. Besides, the usual solution is to let regular commuters pay only a fraction of what irregular travellers pay.
For a similar connection between cities like Washington and New York, you could probably expect 10 times more travellers. Thats 250 million in a year, and that doesn't even include people from Baltimore and Philly. If the fare is at 10 dollars per passenger, that means 25 billion in 10 years. If the article is right about 70 Billion for a connection to LA, 25 billion ought to be enough in this case. I don't think it is though, but in 25 years or something like this, this would easily be profitable.
New York - LA is not a good idea. The thing is, a Maglev could support a very large number of passengers per year, but its also very expensive, so it needs those passengers. To get so many passengers, you can't cater primarily to travellers, you need to cater to commuters, who will only start appearing if the travel time is less than one hour or something like that.
But a maglev from Washington to New York via Baltimore and Philadelphia would be just over 200 miles, so a maglev going at 300 mph could easily do that in one hour. This would effectively tie these cities together and going between them could become an every day habit for millions. It would make the region the largest metropolitan area in the world and completely transform it.
It also depends on what sacrifices you want to make. If this arm should be able to do pretty much everything a normal hand can, its very unlikely that it would be stronger than a normal arm. But theoretically, you could make it much, much stronger in a certain situations. For example, the fingers lose power when the wrist is in a certain position, this could easily be done differently in a mechanical arm, but it probably would have its disadvantages.
The fact they have some perticular programmed positions shows that some movements are of much higher priority than others, so its quite possible this arm will completely skip some ranges of motion, and that will free up room for strength in other areas.
A perfect example is the athlete slashdot recently had an a story about, who had mechanical legs that were deemed more efficient than human legs. They were great for running, but worthless for anything else.
Well, it's not so obvious when considering that the earth is round and that the countries in question are almost exactly on oposite sides.
Its like being in Australia and saying that Greenland is on the other side of India. It makes you go "wtf has India got to do with greenland and australia?"
If they don't keep a stored reserve for emergencies like this, they deserve to be frustrated. With HDDs so cheap these days, there's no excuse for not having a few gigs of porn.
You'd think so, but I'm not so sure...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxdGnvjfJ_g
Thats what I suspected.
On large ships, other kinds of weapons are preferable.
This will be more like a traditional gunboat, carrying only one primary gun. Also, as it says in the article, the recoil makes it unlikely that this gun will fire many shots in one battle.
I think this will be a bit like a naval sniper, aiming to destroy major vessels command center before its even detected, and then leave the area quickly and let the big ships take over.
So we won't see many ships with this configuration, but in certain situations, it could probably end a battle before it even gets started. That is, as we all know, the best way to win battles.
I've been considering this for a while now, with oil recently hitting 100 USD.
Modern cargo ships are very efficient, and their fuel is very cheap compared to other costs actually. Building and maintaining the ship is probably the biggest cost. Nuclear ships would make the ship more expensive, would require a better educated and more expensive crew, while potentially making the fuel cheaper.
Now, lets say that oil went up to 1000 USD per barrel. The problem is that nuclear power is a good on a large scale, and the largest ships are tankers. With oil so expensive, it will probably be so rare that the demand for new tankers is very low.
Also, there are trains that already run on "nuclear power". They are usually many times faster than cargo ships, and time is money in transportation. If oil gets more expensive, we'll probably see more transportation on rail rather than nuclear cargo ships. So yeah, more bridges and tunnels for trains is probably the more likely effect in a world where nuclear power gets more common while oil gets more expensive.
Its sad that people still don't quite grasp the effects of living on a round planet. The bering strait bridge seems completely useless to people, but its actually the straightest path between china and america. The fact that its very desolate is just an advantage for goods transportation.
If you are unsure what to put on your plutonium when in a foreign country, it might seem like a good idea to have both water and sodium, just to be safe. But that would be considered very offensive, especially among educated people. People might even run away in horror.
You, and many others, take the word stepping stone too literally. The idea is not to launch a mars mission from the moon, that would be stupid. Its a stepping stone in technology, organization, infrastructure and stuff.
And also, but this isn't mentioned very often, in order to get and keep funding in a democracy, you need to frequently prove that you're making progress. On top of that you have to prove it to people who actually have no idea what you're really doing and what it is good for. They can't spend 10 years doing hard science on earth, and then send out a mission to mars, that will never get them enough money. They need to constantly remind people what they're doing. "Today, we found this interesting rock. Tomorrow we'll start installing this new solar panel", you know.
Thats the point of the moon. To make science exciting and interesting, even to those who don't care about science.
I think you're underestimating how dedicated most pro athletes are. They wouldn't think twice about cutting of their legs if thats what it took.
Many of them actually have constant pain that they just ignore because the doc told them it won't get worse. Its a fact that they get much shorter lives than other people. They start at a very young age, and have no "normal" life from that point on. I could go on, but the point is that what makes them different from the rest of us is not their bodies, but their minds. They are very often psychos. Try getting their honest opinion on politics and you'll realize that.
Ever since I tried Eve, I've wanted a similar game but set in our solar system with most events still happening around earth and maybe 50-100 years from now.
Also, it would be cool if it had an unlimited research system, so that it was player based research that allowed access to new, more distant places.
Students posting photos of themselves? Due to the way cameras usually work, the one who OWNS the pictures is rarely the one IN the pictures.
Maybe these pictures were posted by the students themselves, but not posting pictures of yourself does nothing to protect you from this shit.
The problem simply lies in the students underestimating the level of surveilance in our society. It isn't spy satellites or cameras on roofs, its just other people. If someone can see or hear you, they can record it without you even noticing. Incidentally, this is very much how people are opressed in dictatorships. Everyone can be reporting to the government, so there is no one you can really trust, which prevents all kinds of illegal organization.
There's no one to blame, just a new order to get used to.
Come on, what's holding them back? There are already warehouse trucks that drive automatically, avoiding obsticles, making cars do it is only a public awareness campaign away. With Galileo completed in 2013, I'd say thats a perfect year for this too. Maybe not in city streets, but on highways, why not? The technology is already there, we've see articles for years showing how it would work, and we already have cars with parts of these systems.
Just make the system, prove in some spectacular way how safe it is, and then sell it. I can't wait to see the movies where cars are pushed to their absolute limit to avoid a whole series of accidents, all of it happening too fast for a human to register.
Obviously, most countries will initially make sure this is illegal, but there will always be some small country that goes the other way just to be different, and the first manufacturer of these cars for that country will get some major publicity.
Well, it doesn't have to be that detailed. We just have to hack it to give us a lower resolution copy.
3. This will in part be a reply to you, but also to the others replying to you.
Current consumption of uranium as I understand it is 70 000 tonnes per year. Current known reserves are 40 million tonnes, including "reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction". For those of you who don't know, uranium mining is not very profitable today, so these figures aren't all that reliable, there just isn't much incentive to really figure out how much uranium there is.
But nuclear power is also only 6% of world consumption. If it was more like 60% (meaning a world based on mostly nuclear power but also wind, solar, hydro where it's profitable), these reserves would last 60 years. Obviously, this could easily translate to 120 years or 180 years before we reach a peak, but it gives you an idea. So it's pretty comparable to oil in that way.
The ocean reserves would last thousands of years, assuming no increase in power consumption (haha) with 60% comming from nuclear power. Infact, rivers bring new uranium to oceans all the time. It's unrealistic to imagine taking all uranium out of the oceans, but 10 000 years worth of current consumption is not at all unlikely.
But while this may seem like a long time, it's anything but infinate! If there's anything fossil fuels have taught us, its that it's very easy to increase consumption 10 or even 100 times if supply is high. Within a lifetime, uranium could go from being seemingly infinate to only lasting a few more decades. If nuclear power had continued increasing as much as it did between 1975 and 1985, we could have been consuming maybe 5 to 10 times more uranium today! Another 50 years of increase like that, and peak uranium would be only a century or so away, even with oceans included.
So lets make 3 paths, includiing half of the uranium content of oceans (might be bad to take all of the for ecological reasons, who knows at this point?), and assuming that peak happens when half of the reserves have been consumed:
Keep production like it is today or lower it: Uranium peak after 15 000 years or more.
Let all the world enjoy the same amounts of energy as todays western europeans, 50% or more coming from nuclear power: Uranium peak within 5000 years. 2500 years if we live like Americans.
Let supply and demand rule, anyone who wants energy and can afford it buys it, nuclear plants are built as soon as they become profitable: Uranium peak in 200-500 years.
Note that this is all based on the idea that uranium will not be used more efficiently than it is today, which is of course not too realistic. But on the other hand, I doubt more efficient use will lead to less consumption, it usually doesn't work like that. Oil consumption has not dropped because cars now consume one tenth of what they used to 70 years ago, people just drive more instead because they can afford it.