Actually I believe the flight path of the Voyager probes and possibly Pioneer 10 and 11 took them past Venus. This was done to "slingshot" them out to Jupiter.
The thing is when it comes time to "throw the bastards out" as it were, the instigators are going to be very glad the Founding Fathers had the forsight to put the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. It is there for a reason, and not one having to do with frontiers or hunting or killing natives. If you don't believe me read the Federalist Papers. For additional supporting evidence note that most tyrannical governments throughout history have attempted to limit private possesion of weapons.
I agree there has to be some sort of sucker punch coming from M$. Some possiblities:
Refuse logo certification for vendors who ship a Linux version or provide Linux drivers.
Refuse to provide OEM licences to any hardware vendor who supports or pre-installs Linux on any of their hardware.
EULA changes for individual and corprate users such as prohibiting the installation of any non-M$ OS on hardware that came pre-installed with Windows or site-license agreements that make it VERY expensive to be anything but a 100% M$ shop.
Frankly I don't think fear of violating anti-trust laws is going to slow them down any, if anything the result of the DOJ lawsuit has made M$ believe they are above the law. At this point I don't think anything short of spectacular failure in the market or revoking their corprate charter is going have an effect.
Can someone explain where the hydrogen comes from for these fuel cells? I've heard a variety of things, but no one seems to commit to anything.
One possibility is that it comes from oil, which seems like a wash. It could come from plant products, but if ethanol is any indication, that's an even bigger wash (i.e., you use more energy in farming than you get from the product -- maybe hydrogen production is more efficient, but I doubt it's that much more productive).
I don't think ethanol is a good model for fuel cell cars, a much better model is probably biodeisel which is basicly just vegatable oil. Biodeisel, compressed methane, or methanol will probably prove to be a better hydrogen storage method for vehicle use than any methods of storing pure H2. Crop based biomass is just another form of solar energy using a plant as a solar collector. Another possiblity would be methane from sources such as landfils and sewage treatment plants. Would it be produced from water or other plentiful sources, using electricity, at power plants? This would be useful for unreliable power sources, like wind, which could just produce as much H as they possible, without having to meet instantaneous demand. But would this hydrogen really be efficient? How much more power would we have to produce to power all these fuel cells? And will this distribution network be any more efficient than the current power grid?
Hydrogen and fuel cells are already being used in commercial electric power production as a way of storing energy from off peak periods for use during peak periods. As you point out this is useful with sources such as wind and solar. I doubt making, trasporting, and using hydrogen at the point of power consumption will replace the current electric power grid in developed countries. Hydrogen does make sense however where you need power off the grid or in a mobile form such as remote areas or vehicles.
I'm not saying that there's no room for innovation in car design, but there's a reason cars are the way they are. If you have to make the car weigh 500 pounds to match the performance of a gasoline vehicle, you are doing something wrong. If you have to use bicycle tires because normal tires create too much friction, you are doing something wrong.
I suspect a 500 lb. car with bicycle tires and 4 high-torque electric motors in each wheel would probably perform like a Formula-1 race car. Sports cars and race cars perform like they do due to very high power to weight ratios. Such a car probably wouldn't use bicycle tires due to the size of the contact patch limiting the acceleration, braking, and turning ability. There is a reason most race cars have big wide tires, rolling resistance be damned.
I bet you never take your SUV on a gravel or dirt road much less truly off-road. Truth be told most SUV drivers are terrified to take them off the pavement for fear they will get their $50,000 trucks dirty, or heaven forbid, get a chip in the paint.
The Military has been using fly-by-wire systems in aircraft for at least 25 years. As far as I know all Airbus aircraft are fly-by-wire with no mechanical or hydralic controls. The Boeing 777 is fly-by-wire as well.
The technology for making extremely reliable electronic control systems exsists and is fairly well understood. In theory as long as you had electrical power of some sort you should have control over the vehicle. Remember the cars GM is thinking about are very simple, fuel storage, fuel cell, and electric motors in all of the wheels.
We replaced the halon system at work with a FM-200 system. Pretty much the same properties as halon except it reqires a larger tank and is much nicer to the ozone. BTW in the 6+ years I've worked at locations with real computer room fire suppression systems, none of them have been required to do a full discharge test on either the halon or the FM-200. I suspect since many fire supression systems use chemicals that aren't too friendly to the environment (CFC, HCFC, HFC, etc.), most fire marshals are willing to accept the sort of testing and checking they do for regular sprinkler systems.
WorldCom should go under "criminal skills" too... for that matter they should classify www.nasdaq.com, www.nyse.com, www.sec.gov, the remaining big 4 accounting firms, and every publicly traded company in the Fortune 1000 as "criminal".
I doubt any terrorist with half a brain would want to use spent fission reactor fuel for a dirty bomb. There are plenty of nasty radioactive isotopes out there used for all sorts of things including glow-in-the-dark clock faces, smoke detectors, food irriadiation, various medical uses, etc. Most of these would be far nastier if spread over a populated area than spent fuel rods, these materials are also generally far less controled than reactor waste is. The reason nuclear waste from reactors is such a PITA to deal with is the relatively long half-life of uranium, not because it is more radioactve than other isotopes.
Hydrogen is a really nifty way of storing energy from solar cells or wind farms, it also provides a good method of moving the energy from point A to point B.
Imagine solar-thermal or solar-electric plants in the the Mojave or wind farms on Altmont pass or the Great Plains. As for water to crack into hydrogen you can use seawater, untreated sewage, or other sources not suited for drinking or agriculture. Also liquid O2 is a somewhat valuible commodity and can be sold.
The problem isn't NASA's will to do it. It's funding and the laws of physics. The laws of physics make it extremely difficult to protect astronauts from radiation well enough to keep them healthy on such a trip, which would involve several years coasting in interplanetary space.People also don't realize how debilitating long periods in zero-g are. They often have to carry astronauts away in wheelchairs when they come back from a long period in orbit.
There are already some interesting ideas for providing radiation shielding during a long-duration trip that wouldn't require a big heavy shield over the entire hab module.
As for long periods in zero-g, there are a number of ways to manage the problem. A good diet with mineral suppliments seems to help quite a bit during long-duration missions, as does exercise. Many of the Mars mission craft ideas involve spinning the craft to provide simulated gravity. In other words they put the engines+fuel+lander on one end of a tether and the hab module on the other and spin the whole thing.
The spyware piece of Comet Cursor is installed whenever you install Real Player, at least with IE and Windows. Search your registry for "comet cursor" before and after installing Real Player. Apparently whatever it does to windows allows the full version of Comet Cursor to install itself without prompting later. Comet Cursor IS spyware I have watched a packet sniff of this POS trying to "phone home".
Actually any company that's smart will have an analog trunk for each of it's major incoming numbers such as the main number, sales, customer service, tech support, etc. coming into their PBX. These lines are usually set up with forward on busy to numbers on the T1 or PRI trunks and you can program the PBX to treat the call the same if it comes in on the analog trunk or the digital.
Why would you want to do this? Disaster recovery. At least with our ILEC they can't do remote call forward or put a voicemail box on a number associated with a incoming T1 or PRI but they can with numbers on analog lines. If corprate HQ is a smoking pit in the ground you can have your ILEC forward your important business numbers to another facility, employee home number, cell phone, or voice mail. Also works when there is a cable cut and the ILEC claims it's going to be 3 days before you have phone service back in your building.
I suspect so since the licence terms seem to imply that any system you access an XP system from must have either a XP or 2000 licence. Of course this would mean you couldn't access a XP system using Microsoft's own RDP client for WinCE.
For those of you who don't know RDesktop is a nifty little open source RDP (Terminal Services) client for UNIX.
... they lost money on every sale but made up for it in volume
I ordered a computer for Christmas for my Mom back in November 1999 from one of these losers. I was looking for something cheap but serviceable for her. I found the e-tailer on one of the online price checking services. They shipped me the computer promptly but never did get around to billing my credit card. It appears they went out of business sometime in late 2000.
Since then I've had a few online stores do this, they either get around to billing me months later or never bill at all. It's no wonder outfits that can't be bothered to bill for goods they shipped tend to drop like flies.
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Actually I believe the flight path of the Voyager probes and possibly Pioneer 10 and 11 took them past Venus. This was done to "slingshot" them out to Jupiter.
The thing is when it comes time to "throw the bastards out" as it were, the instigators are going to be very glad the Founding Fathers had the forsight to put the Second Amendment in the Bill of Rights. It is there for a reason, and not one having to do with frontiers or hunting or killing natives. If you don't believe me read the Federalist Papers. For additional supporting evidence note that most tyrannical governments throughout history have attempted to limit private possesion of weapons.
- Refuse logo certification for vendors who ship a Linux version or provide Linux drivers.
- Refuse to provide OEM licences to any hardware vendor who supports or pre-installs Linux on any of their hardware.
- EULA changes for individual and corprate users such as prohibiting the installation of any non-M$ OS on hardware that came pre-installed with Windows or site-license agreements that make it VERY expensive to be anything but a 100% M$ shop.
Frankly I don't think fear of violating anti-trust laws is going to slow them down any, if anything the result of the DOJ lawsuit has made M$ believe they are above the law. At this point I don't think anything short of spectacular failure in the market or revoking their corprate charter is going have an effect.Given that Trolltech's HQ is in Norway, I would suspect that KDE's support for Norwegian would be fairly good.
Can someone explain where the hydrogen comes from for these fuel cells? I've heard a variety of things, but no one seems to commit to anything.
One possibility is that it comes from oil, which seems like a wash. It could come from plant products, but if ethanol is any indication, that's an even bigger wash (i.e., you use more energy in farming than you get from the product -- maybe hydrogen production is more efficient, but I doubt it's that much more productive).
I don't think ethanol is a good model for fuel cell cars, a much better model is probably biodeisel which is basicly just vegatable oil. Biodeisel, compressed methane, or methanol will probably prove to be a better hydrogen storage method for vehicle use than any methods of storing pure H2. Crop based biomass is just another form of solar energy using a plant as a solar collector. Another possiblity would be methane from sources such as landfils and sewage treatment plants.
Would it be produced from water or other plentiful sources, using electricity, at power plants? This would be useful for unreliable power sources, like wind, which could just produce as much H as they possible, without having to meet instantaneous demand. But would this hydrogen really be efficient? How much more power would we have to produce to power all these fuel cells? And will this distribution network be any more efficient than the current power grid?
Hydrogen and fuel cells are already being used in commercial electric power production as a way of storing energy from off peak periods for use during peak periods. As you point out this is useful with sources such as wind and solar. I doubt making, trasporting, and using hydrogen at the point of power consumption will replace the current electric power grid in developed countries. Hydrogen does make sense however where you need power off the grid or in a mobile form such as remote areas or vehicles.
Only if it runs Windows. Didn't MS want to use CE in applications like vehicle computers?
I'm not saying that there's no room for innovation in car design, but there's a reason cars are the way they are. If you have to make the car weigh 500 pounds to match the performance of a gasoline vehicle, you are doing something wrong. If you have to use bicycle tires because normal tires create too much friction, you are doing something wrong.
I suspect a 500 lb. car with bicycle tires and 4 high-torque electric motors in each wheel would probably perform like a Formula-1 race car. Sports cars and race cars perform like they do due to very high power to weight ratios. Such a car probably wouldn't use bicycle tires due to the size of the contact patch limiting the acceleration, braking, and turning ability. There is a reason most race cars have big wide tires, rolling resistance be damned.
I bet you never take your SUV on a gravel or dirt road much less truly off-road. Truth be told most SUV drivers are terrified to take them off the pavement for fear they will get their $50,000 trucks dirty, or heaven forbid, get a chip in the paint.
I dunno, solar panels on the roof maybe?
The Military has been using fly-by-wire systems in aircraft for at least 25 years. As far as I know all Airbus aircraft are fly-by-wire with no mechanical or hydralic controls. The Boeing 777 is fly-by-wire as well.
The technology for making extremely reliable electronic control systems exsists and is fairly well understood. In theory as long as you had electrical power of some sort you should have control over the vehicle. Remember the cars GM is thinking about are very simple, fuel storage, fuel cell, and electric motors in all of the wheels.
I would if my ISP could figure out how to use ntpd properly. A depressingly large number of ISPs can't seem to get this right.
We replaced the halon system at work with a FM-200 system. Pretty much the same properties as halon except it reqires a larger tank and is much nicer to the ozone. BTW in the 6+ years I've worked at locations with real computer room fire suppression systems, none of them have been required to do a full discharge test on either the halon or the FM-200. I suspect since many fire supression systems use chemicals that aren't too friendly to the environment (CFC, HCFC, HFC, etc.), most fire marshals are willing to accept the sort of testing and checking they do for regular sprinkler systems.
WorldCom should go under "criminal skills" too ... for that matter they should classify www.nasdaq.com, www.nyse.com, www.sec.gov, the remaining big 4 accounting firms, and every publicly traded company in the Fortune 1000 as "criminal".
I find it very amusing that most spelling or grammar flames I've seen on the net contain at least one spelling or grammatical error.
I doubt any terrorist with half a brain would want to use spent fission reactor fuel for a dirty bomb. There are plenty of nasty radioactive isotopes out there used for all sorts of things including glow-in-the-dark clock faces, smoke detectors, food irriadiation, various medical uses, etc. Most of these would be far nastier if spread over a populated area than spent fuel rods, these materials are also generally far less controled than reactor waste is. The reason nuclear waste from reactors is such a PITA to deal with is the relatively long half-life of uranium, not because it is more radioactve than other isotopes.
Well most of the ideas I've seen involve a cable and a counterwieght. You don't need a big wheel for simulated gravity.
How long before the BSA, RIAA, and MPAA convince lawmakers that piracy==terrorism?
Aqua - Barbie Girl
It was a fairly cool song and major bonus points for Mattel's clueless lawsuit.
Hydrogen is a really nifty way of storing energy from solar cells or wind farms, it also provides a good method of moving the energy from point A to point B.
Imagine solar-thermal or solar-electric plants in the the Mojave or wind farms on Altmont pass or the Great Plains. As for water to crack into hydrogen you can use seawater, untreated sewage, or other sources not suited for drinking or agriculture. Also liquid O2 is a somewhat valuible commodity and can be sold.
The problem isn't NASA's will to do it. It's funding and the laws of physics. The laws of physics make it extremely difficult to protect astronauts from radiation well enough to keep them healthy on such a trip, which would involve several years coasting in interplanetary space.People also don't realize how debilitating long periods in zero-g are. They often have to carry astronauts away in wheelchairs when they come back from a long period in orbit.
There are already some interesting ideas for providing radiation shielding during a long-duration trip that wouldn't require a big heavy shield over the entire hab module.
As for long periods in zero-g, there are a number of ways to manage the problem. A good diet with mineral suppliments seems to help quite a bit during long-duration missions, as does exercise. Many of the Mars mission craft ideas involve spinning the craft to provide simulated gravity. In other words they put the engines+fuel+lander on one end of a tether and the hab module on the other and spin the whole thing.
The spyware piece of Comet Cursor is installed whenever you install Real Player, at least with IE and Windows. Search your registry for "comet cursor" before and after installing Real Player. Apparently whatever it does to windows allows the full version of Comet Cursor to install itself without prompting later. Comet Cursor IS spyware I have watched a packet sniff of this POS trying to "phone home".
Actually any company that's smart will have an analog trunk for each of it's major incoming numbers such as the main number, sales, customer service, tech support, etc. coming into their PBX. These lines are usually set up with forward on busy to numbers on the T1 or PRI trunks and you can program the PBX to treat the call the same if it comes in on the analog trunk or the digital.
Why would you want to do this? Disaster recovery. At least with our ILEC they can't do remote call forward or put a voicemail box on a number associated with a incoming T1 or PRI but they can with numbers on analog lines. If corprate HQ is a smoking pit in the ground you can have your ILEC forward your important business numbers to another facility, employee home number, cell phone, or voice mail. Also works when there is a cable cut and the ILEC claims it's going to be 3 days before you have phone service back in your building.
I suspect so since the licence terms seem to imply that any system you access an XP system from must have either a XP or 2000 licence. Of course this would mean you couldn't access a XP system using Microsoft's own RDP client for WinCE.
For those of you who don't know RDesktop is a nifty little open source RDP (Terminal Services) client for UNIX.
There is a RDP client for UNIX/Linux. It's called RDesktop and it works quite well.
http://www.rdesktop.org for more info.
I ordered a computer for Christmas for my Mom back in November 1999 from one of these losers. I was looking for something cheap but serviceable for her. I found the e-tailer on one of the online price checking services. They shipped me the computer promptly but never did get around to billing my credit card. It appears they went out of business sometime in late 2000.
Since then I've had a few online stores do this, they either get around to billing me months later or never bill at all. It's no wonder outfits that can't be bothered to bill for goods they shipped tend to drop like flies.