Books maybe? Set up a foundation to write some textbooks and distribute them. Books cost very little - a lot less than computers.
No, you've got a false economy there. Books need a climate-controlled library to house them. OLPC needs PC in a shack. With a library, you've got one or two copies of a book. Books are stolen, get damaged, or become obsolete all the time. With OLPC, everyone has access to everything at the same time, and no one person would be deprived of access to any text just because someone else lost it.
There's a reason why the US public library system was such a fantastic success -- it gave people access to information and a way to find information needed to solve problems or answer questions. You can't do that with a broadcast.
Check out some of the Africa talks on ted.com for a more realistic look at what Africa really is.
They don't need fucking laptops. They need clean water, food, peace, basic health infrastructure, peace, and educational/vocational/agricultural training.
The question which must be answered is not "what do they need," but "why do they need it?" Why don't places like this have a better standard of living? (I'm not even talking about 'western-style' accouterments, I'm just talking about bog-standard 20th century stuff, like, y'know, managing to eliminate cholera, whildren not working in sweatshops, etc.)
We have sent plenty of money and aid to these countries over the years to build infrastructure, feed the poor, etc. You know what? Except in limited cases (where infrastructure and the ability to feed people has been destroyed by an acute cause, such as war, drought, or blight,) this hasn't worked.
Why hasn't it worked? Because these people are uneducated. Because the money has gone to line the coffers of petty dictators and warlords. Because the food rots in warehouses while people dicker. Because no one has really given the people the information they need to help themselves.
In these countries, there is generally a giant disparity in income and education between the upper and lower classes. It's a cyclical thing; you can't get educated because you're poor and you can't get money because you're not educated.
Once you start educating people, they learn ways to better their life and surroundings, if they're at all motivated. Even small improvements in the local economy -- one successful new business -- can improve the surrounding economic network considerably. It is only when the people know that there are better ways to live and have some way to attain information as to how to better their lot that they actually do.
Guess what- month-old children in Africa don't die from AIDS; they die from diarrhea because of contaminated drinking water
A month-old child is still breastfeeding. They get cholera and dysentery from poor hygine practices, often because the people don't know how disease spreads. If these people knew the value of soap (another thing that's very easy to make even for the utterly dirt-poor, when you know how,) and washing their fucking hands, not to mention not locating places to take a shit next to places to get water, there'd be significantly less disease in these areas. (Note, I'm not saying that these people are stupid. I'm saying that they're so undereducated that the leaders of countries who allow things like this to occur are guilty of crimes against humanity.)
It seems there have been small -- or maybe even strange, impractical -- advances in robotics repeatedly with demonstrations of robots performing a specialized task. Are we merely struggling to hard code each human activity as we strive for an all purpose android? Is there a chance artificial intelligence & robotics will ever become generalized enough to make interaction interesting?"
Most of the times, these small, strange, impractical-on-their-own tasks are not the result of building to that specific task (we need to develop a robot that plays the violin!) but of developing or bettering a technology that's showcased by that task (playing a violin requires relatively high-speed dexterity, timing, and precision, which is something that would, of course, be great to have in a humanoid robot.)
That being said, there isn't going to be a true general-purpose robot until we either a: create an AI sufficiently powerful that it can learn any unprogrammed tasks the same way a human would, through observing others and experimentation, or b: program all those tasks.
The basic claim of the theory is that, over time, changes occur in populations that lead to a population which is significantly different from the ancestor population. A lot has been tacked onto this as a result of exploring this theory, but that's the core of it. Eventually enough changes build up that speciation occurs -- the point where population A would not breed with population B, given the choice. (It doesn't mean that they can't bear offspring, even fertile offspring -- look at wolves versus dogs. I'd actually argue that some of the extremes of dogdom are seperate species, 'cause it sure as heck wouldn't be normal for a great dane to mate with a chihuahua, but enough with the digression.)
This is absurd. Landline systems are obsolete. Yes! Obsolete! I live in Finland and I must say that there are no practical reasons for this 'equality'.
The landline -- good old copper-pair wiring -- is not obsolete. Sure, your cellphone is convenient, and possibly cheaper. But what happens when something happens that wipes out the transmission network? What happens if you lose power for a week and you only had a couple bars of battery left when the power goes?
The reason that landlines aren't obsolete is dependability. You practically never lose phone service to a real copper landline unless a tree's come down in your neighborhood -- and even then, the lines may work. The land-line network practically never gets jammed from too much traffic. I've never had a dropped call. I can run a line and get service anywhere in my house, even the basement.
Yep. It's possible to mess with the machines we use, and if they were messed with, it'd be detectable, or at least would be a major hassle to do, and it would have to be done -after- the fact. (Otherwise, tallies wouldn't match.) With an electronic system, it's -much- easier to automatically cover your tracks and alter the votes pseudorandomly on the fly.
That's the problem exactly. They managed to save some money in one place, and so they find themselves with a surplus near the end of the year and have to blow it quick if they don't want to be penalized next year. It's like some perverted version of bridge.
Speaking of dangerous drivers -- I want to build a HERF gun to disable the cellphones people are using while driving. I've nearly gotten killed by assholes swerving around or not paying attention 'cause they were on a cellphone too many times, now.
The problem with the moon being 'more living space' is that it's seriously lacking in a few parts of the CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen) system that makes organic life possible. There's not that much free carbon, there's some hydrogen in the lunar ice, and except for what is in that ice, most of the oxygen is locked into rocks. Nitrogen's really the big problem, though. You'd have to import that from Earth, and a LOT of it, if you wanted to start exploiting the moon on a grand scale.
Actully, according to what I know on the subject -- yes. It's primarily the tidal forces from the moon that keep it liquid.
Now, in both cases, the moon doesn't -influence- the tides (pelagic or cthonian), it makes it possible to have them, when you combine it with the Earth's rotation. Without a large, nearby, non-geosynchronous body, there'd be no tides, no matter whether the Earth was spinning or not.
Getting it back here is comparatively easy. The moon has much less of a gravity well to work against; you could build The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress-style railguns and just fire the payloads ballisticly back to Earth. (You can make the cargo carriers out of lunar aluminum.) Plus, the moon is a great place for solar power, for half of the month -- plenty of open space, and higher energy-densities than on the surface of the Earth. Once we get the equipment to the moon, energy wouldn't be too much of a problem for a moonbase.
The real key is that you'd have to establish a comprehensive base on the moon with various manufactory capabilities, a real colony, not just one that mines for He3.
...Except it would take exploitation on a ginormous scale in order to 'mar' the moon's beauty. And there's a whole hemisphere of the damned thing we never see.
Additionally, processing the regolith for the helium requires first boiling out all of the gasses by heating the excavated dirt several hundred degrees, then separating the minute fraction of He-3 from all the "waste" gasses. It will be very energy intensive.
This is actually a non-issue. Given the significantly lower gravitational force on the moon, and the complete lack of atmospheric turbulance (that is, wind,) you could easily build gigantic mirrors to focus the sun on the ore you're processing. Sure, you can only do it for half the lunar month, but it's effectively free.
While Sheepweevil makes essentially the same point, you could make the argument that restricting industry on the moon is good from the perspective of preserving natural monuments.
True, but there's a LOT of moon, and very few sites that might be considered 'monuments'. Hell, we never see half of the surface area of the moon; put all the mining there, and no one's got reason to bitch.
Steam requires the game to verify its authenticity every time I play. I hate that. I should not have to phone home every time I want to play a game I paid for on my own computer.
Furthermore, if my Internet connection goes down, I can't play my game. That is completely unacceptable.
Have you actually, y'know, used Steam anytime in the recent (at least since HL2) past?
One of the neater aspects about this project is that you can build it out of trash you have laying around. Salvage magnets from headphones or speakers, salvage magnet wire from a motor, build the frame out of whateverthehell you have laying around, and use a strip of waxed silk or something for the ribbon. You need a little bit more know-how to turn that into DC, but that's also very basic, and the components could also be salvaged from just about anything. Hell, same thing with LEDs. Let's face it, people in the third world are superb scavengers -- look at the sudden proliferation of satellite dishes made from hammered-out cans that popped up in Afghanistan after we toppled their regime.
Yeah, that model he was working with was expensive-lookin, 'cause that's good in something you're trying to sell. However, you could make this out of sticks and parts salvaged from a radio and an electric motor.
Because of the dynamics involved, I think that a larger model will work at a lower wind speed. Because the airfoil (the ribbon) that he's using is relatively small, it needs more power (higher windspeed) to get working. Longer and wider strips should operate at lower frequencies. Also, with a savonius rotor, you've got losses due to the friction in the alternator and such. This eliminates that.
Put a weathercock on top of 'em and give 'em a way to rotate at the base. Done.
Strong winds could be a problem, but these are dead easy to repair. In fact, that's the advantage over a solar cell -- you can literally make these things from junk.
Also, when you're looking at calculations, ignore the frame. The important part is the ribbon, which is acting as an airfoil.
Problems with low wind speeds could actually be helped by making a cone to focus the pressure on a smaller area, thus generating higher windspeeds over the airfoil.
This is doing exactly the same thing but the movement of the magnet is perpindicular to the force exerted, as opposed to being aligned axially. Moving a magnet between coils isn't rocket science.
One could also use a simple air foil which mechanically alters its own pitch (to create a wave motion) and have it pump the shake light magnet up and down... Or the magnet could be lifted up and down thru wave motion and no wind is required at all.
Besides being what this does (the strip being an airfoil which, through harmonics and distortion, sets its own pitch), there's no reason that one of these wouldn't work in moving water, also. Fluids are fluids.
I don't know what's going on, but I don't think it's simple, rational behaviour, as you imply.
It's -complex-, rational behavior.;) Well, mostly-rational; the way it's being applied now I have some problems with, but for the most part, it serves its purpose.
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Books maybe? Set up a foundation to write some textbooks and distribute them. Books cost very little - a lot less than computers.
No, you've got a false economy there. Books need a climate-controlled library to house them. OLPC needs PC in a shack. With a library, you've got one or two copies of a book. Books are stolen, get damaged, or become obsolete all the time. With OLPC, everyone has access to everything at the same time, and no one person would be deprived of access to any text just because someone else lost it.
There's a reason why the US public library system was such a fantastic success -- it gave people access to information and a way to find information needed to solve problems or answer questions. You can't do that with a broadcast.
Check out some of the Africa talks on ted.com for a more realistic look at what Africa really is.
They don't need fucking laptops. They need clean water, food, peace, basic health infrastructure, peace, and educational/vocational/agricultural training.
The question which must be answered is not "what do they need," but "why do they need it?" Why don't places like this have a better standard of living? (I'm not even talking about 'western-style' accouterments, I'm just talking about bog-standard 20th century stuff, like, y'know, managing to eliminate cholera, whildren not working in sweatshops, etc.)
We have sent plenty of money and aid to these countries over the years to build infrastructure, feed the poor, etc. You know what? Except in limited cases (where infrastructure and the ability to feed people has been destroyed by an acute cause, such as war, drought, or blight,) this hasn't worked.
Why hasn't it worked? Because these people are uneducated. Because the money has gone to line the coffers of petty dictators and warlords. Because the food rots in warehouses while people dicker. Because no one has really given the people the information they need to help themselves.
In these countries, there is generally a giant disparity in income and education between the upper and lower classes. It's a cyclical thing; you can't get educated because you're poor and you can't get money because you're not educated.
Once you start educating people, they learn ways to better their life and surroundings, if they're at all motivated. Even small improvements in the local economy -- one successful new business -- can improve the surrounding economic network considerably. It is only when the people know that there are better ways to live and have some way to attain information as to how to better their lot that they actually do.
Guess what- month-old children in Africa don't die from AIDS; they die from diarrhea because of contaminated drinking water
A month-old child is still breastfeeding. They get cholera and dysentery from poor hygine practices, often because the people don't know how disease spreads. If these people knew the value of soap (another thing that's very easy to make even for the utterly dirt-poor, when you know how,) and washing their fucking hands, not to mention not locating places to take a shit next to places to get water, there'd be significantly less disease in these areas. (Note, I'm not saying that these people are stupid. I'm saying that they're so undereducated that the leaders of countries who allow things like this to occur are guilty of crimes against humanity.)
It seems there have been small -- or maybe even strange, impractical -- advances in robotics repeatedly with demonstrations of robots performing a specialized task. Are we merely struggling to hard code each human activity as we strive for an all purpose android? Is there a chance artificial intelligence & robotics will ever become generalized enough to make interaction interesting?"
Most of the times, these small, strange, impractical-on-their-own tasks are not the result of building to that specific task (we need to develop a robot that plays the violin!) but of developing or bettering a technology that's showcased by that task (playing a violin requires relatively high-speed dexterity, timing, and precision, which is something that would, of course, be great to have in a humanoid robot.)
That being said, there isn't going to be a true general-purpose robot until we either a: create an AI sufficiently powerful that it can learn any unprogrammed tasks the same way a human would, through observing others and experimentation, or b: program all those tasks.
The basic claim of the theory is that, over time, changes occur in populations that lead to a population which is significantly different from the ancestor population. A lot has been tacked onto this as a result of exploring this theory, but that's the core of it. Eventually enough changes build up that speciation occurs -- the point where population A would not breed with population B, given the choice. (It doesn't mean that they can't bear offspring, even fertile offspring -- look at wolves versus dogs. I'd actually argue that some of the extremes of dogdom are seperate species, 'cause it sure as heck wouldn't be normal for a great dane to mate with a chihuahua, but enough with the digression.)
How exactly does the evolutionary process explain such diverse yet distinct species?
Quite well. Do not confuse your ignorance on the subject with the idea that the Theory doesn't cover it.
This is absurd. Landline systems are obsolete. Yes! Obsolete! I live in Finland and I must say that there are no practical reasons for this 'equality'.
The landline -- good old copper-pair wiring -- is not obsolete. Sure, your cellphone is convenient, and possibly cheaper. But what happens when something happens that wipes out the transmission network? What happens if you lose power for a week and you only had a couple bars of battery left when the power goes?
The reason that landlines aren't obsolete is dependability. You practically never lose phone service to a real copper landline unless a tree's come down in your neighborhood -- and even then, the lines may work. The land-line network practically never gets jammed from too much traffic. I've never had a dropped call. I can run a line and get service anywhere in my house, even the basement.
Yep. It's possible to mess with the machines we use, and if they were messed with, it'd be detectable, or at least would be a major hassle to do, and it would have to be done -after- the fact. (Otherwise, tallies wouldn't match.) With an electronic system, it's -much- easier to automatically cover your tracks and alter the votes pseudorandomly on the fly.
That's the problem exactly. They managed to save some money in one place, and so they find themselves with a surplus near the end of the year and have to blow it quick if they don't want to be penalized next year. It's like some perverted version of bridge.
Pft, if the IRS spent $6 mil on cocaine and hookers, I'd be much happier at my job.
When the contractors run your systems, build your parts, and provide vital support, well, how's that different from keeping the employees happy?
Speaking of dangerous drivers -- I want to build a HERF gun to disable the cellphones people are using while driving. I've nearly gotten killed by assholes swerving around or not paying attention 'cause they were on a cellphone too many times, now.
The problem with the moon being 'more living space' is that it's seriously lacking in a few parts of the CHON (Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, and Nitrogen) system that makes organic life possible. There's not that much free carbon, there's some hydrogen in the lunar ice, and except for what is in that ice, most of the oxygen is locked into rocks. Nitrogen's really the big problem, though. You'd have to import that from Earth, and a LOT of it, if you wanted to start exploiting the moon on a grand scale.
Actully, according to what I know on the subject -- yes. It's primarily the tidal forces from the moon that keep it liquid.
Now, in both cases, the moon doesn't -influence- the tides (pelagic or cthonian), it makes it possible to have them, when you combine it with the Earth's rotation. Without a large, nearby, non-geosynchronous body, there'd be no tides, no matter whether the Earth was spinning or not.
Getting it back here is comparatively easy. The moon has much less of a gravity well to work against; you could build The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress-style railguns and just fire the payloads ballisticly back to Earth. (You can make the cargo carriers out of lunar aluminum.) Plus, the moon is a great place for solar power, for half of the month -- plenty of open space, and higher energy-densities than on the surface of the Earth. Once we get the equipment to the moon, energy wouldn't be too much of a problem for a moonbase.
The real key is that you'd have to establish a comprehensive base on the moon with various manufactory capabilities, a real colony, not just one that mines for He3.
...Except it would take exploitation on a ginormous scale in order to 'mar' the moon's beauty. And there's a whole hemisphere of the damned thing we never see.
Additionally, processing the regolith for the helium requires first boiling out all of the gasses by heating the excavated dirt several hundred degrees, then separating the minute fraction of He-3 from all the "waste" gasses. It will be very energy intensive.
This is actually a non-issue. Given the significantly lower gravitational force on the moon, and the complete lack of atmospheric turbulance (that is, wind,) you could easily build gigantic mirrors to focus the sun on the ore you're processing. Sure, you can only do it for half the lunar month, but it's effectively free.
While Sheepweevil makes essentially the same point, you could make the argument that restricting industry on the moon is good from the perspective of preserving natural monuments.
True, but there's a LOT of moon, and very few sites that might be considered 'monuments'. Hell, we never see half of the surface area of the moon; put all the mining there, and no one's got reason to bitch.
I dunno. Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxdvGO1oOF0 -- the second and third seconds at least - and tell you wouldn't want to watch that.
Steam requires the game to verify its authenticity every time I play. I hate that. I should not have to phone home every time I want to play a game I paid for on my own computer.
Furthermore, if my Internet connection goes down, I can't play my game. That is completely unacceptable.
Have you actually, y'know, used Steam anytime in the recent (at least since HL2) past?
No, wait, it's obvious you haven't.
I think the magnet placement is a concession to engineering; if it oscillates too much it may not enter the magnet cavity property.
Piezoelectric transducers defeat the beauty of this project, which is that pretty much any component can be replaced by a trip to a trash heap.
One of the neater aspects about this project is that you can build it out of trash you have laying around. Salvage magnets from headphones or speakers, salvage magnet wire from a motor, build the frame out of whateverthehell you have laying around, and use a strip of waxed silk or something for the ribbon. You need a little bit more know-how to turn that into DC, but that's also very basic, and the components could also be salvaged from just about anything. Hell, same thing with LEDs. Let's face it, people in the third world are superb scavengers -- look at the sudden proliferation of satellite dishes made from hammered-out cans that popped up in Afghanistan after we toppled their regime.
Yeah, that model he was working with was expensive-lookin, 'cause that's good in something you're trying to sell. However, you could make this out of sticks and parts salvaged from a radio and an electric motor.
Because of the dynamics involved, I think that a larger model will work at a lower wind speed. Because the airfoil (the ribbon) that he's using is relatively small, it needs more power (higher windspeed) to get working. Longer and wider strips should operate at lower frequencies. Also, with a savonius rotor, you've got losses due to the friction in the alternator and such. This eliminates that.
How do they turn with the wind?
Put a weathercock on top of 'em and give 'em a way to rotate at the base. Done.
Strong winds could be a problem, but these are dead easy to repair. In fact, that's the advantage over a solar cell -- you can literally make these things from junk.
Also, when you're looking at calculations, ignore the frame. The important part is the ribbon, which is acting as an airfoil.
Problems with low wind speeds could actually be helped by making a cone to focus the pressure on a smaller area, thus generating higher windspeeds over the airfoil.
This is doing exactly the same thing but the movement of the magnet is perpindicular to the force exerted, as opposed to being aligned axially. Moving a magnet between coils isn't rocket science.
One could also use a simple air foil which mechanically alters its own pitch (to create a wave motion) and have it pump the shake light magnet up and down... Or the magnet could be lifted up and down thru wave motion and no wind is required at all.
Besides being what this does (the strip being an airfoil which, through harmonics and distortion, sets its own pitch), there's no reason that one of these wouldn't work in moving water, also. Fluids are fluids.
Also:
;) Well, mostly-rational; the way it's being applied now I have some problems with, but for the most part, it serves its purpose.
I don't know what's going on, but I don't think it's simple, rational behaviour, as you imply.
It's -complex-, rational behavior.