When you think that NASA spent countless $$$ to come up with a pen that would work in space (in a zero grav environment) to come up with a very expensive system (involving ink being put under pression) where each pen would cost over $10,000.
When the obvious solution (used by the Russians) was to use a pencil...
This urban legend has been thoroughly debunked. NASA didn't spend a dime developing the space pen. They were completely developed by a private company. You can even buy them for $40.
That's still not much evidence. Your 2nd link has Post-Nuke as the first result.
The third link is just plain strange! How did it get up there?
Re:20,000 miles of fibre optic and taxpayer money
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do we, as taxpayers, help foot the bill for this infrastructure? And if not, WHY not? This is vital infrastructure just as highways and power lines are, and really shouldn't be completely controlled by the "evil" mega-companies.
Power and phone lines in the US aren't taxpayer funded (thank God). They're owned and run by corporations, and paid for by user fees.
I don't want the government to mismanage anything else. They're already overreaching the powers granted in the Constitution.
Re:Reminds me of mobiles here in Europe
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In Europe the fact that I don't have a landline (Mobile and Cable) is not special or out of the ordinary. Mobile coverage is almost 100% across the continent. And it boils down to one thing really: Standards. I think in the US you have three competeing standards. Here in Europe it's just GSM(slowly GPRS as well).
I don't think that's the biggest factor. There are two reasons I think are more important than standards:
South Koreans are early adopters of new technology. I lived in South Korea from 96-98. Before I moved there from CA, not many people had cell phones. However, everybody walking around in Korea had a cell phone, a much higher percentage than the US even today.
The US had lots of infrastructure already in place. It was common even 15 years ago for American households to have 2 or more landlines. My sister was on the phone so much as a teenager, my parents forced her to help pay for her own line.
I think competing standards are a good thing. Let the market sort it out.
Re:It's called Leapfrogging.
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Speaking of oligopolic defense contractors, they're merging Boeing's space and military divisions and kicking out the exec who was behind pushing unmanned planes. It seems that manned aircraft make Boeing more money, so that's what they're going to focus on providing to the US Govt.
It doesn't matter what Boeing wants to sell the military, only what they're willing to buy. Talk to any military brass, and they see a future with much of the combat flying left to UAVs. They were already starting to head this direction anyway, but the recent operations in Afghanistan have convinced even the skeptics.
Re:It's called Leapfrogging.
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Yeah, well, the system worked very differently in the sixties and the seventies:
Actually, the 50s & 60s. Take fighters for example: in each of those decades we fielded half a dozen new fighters. By the end of the 60s, the DOD was being pushed hard to reduce spending. One way they tried was joint acquisitions, which they weren't quite ready for yet, witness the F-111 fiasco.
the specification for the Blackbird was a single sheet of paper, as opposed to the specification for the C130 which filled six crates.
I've never heard this anecdote, but it sounds about right, except for one minor detail. I think you mean the C-17. The C-130 is 10 years older than the SR-71.
You seem to know something about PHP-Nuke, so maybe you can you answer this question. What's with this incredibly bold, unsubstantiated claim in the original story:
...
the most used GPL'd software for the Web...
First, it would be almost impossible to prove. Second, PHP-Nuke isn't used on any sites I regularly visit, but several of its workalikes are. Finally, although I've checked it out & know what it is, I'd bet 99.9% of web users have never heard of it.
No kidding. Scientists have been studying this for over 20 years, say it will be safe for at least 10,000 years, and recommended using it to store waste. Politicians in Nevada were the ones trying to block it. It just took some more politicians in D.C. to override them.
Remember who trained al-Queda: US special forces and CIA agents.
The CIA trained the Mujahedin, which although somewhat overlapping, is not the same group as Al Qaeda. Besides, they didn't train them to anywhere near the standards of any of our special ops forces. They were being trained for a specific mission: desert guerilla warfare against Soviet tactics.
Plus al-Queda are experienced in fighting Soviet Spetsnaz (special forces) troops who, while not as glamorous as the Navy SEALs, are probably comparable in terms of skill.
They may have fought against some Spetznaz troops, but their opponents were mostly light & mechanized infantry, in helicopters & armored vehicles. Being the indigenous people, they were trained to use the native mountainous terrain to their advantage. Instead of trying to confront the Soviets in a futile head-on battle, they staged low-risk raids & ambushes, i.e. assymetric warfare.
Thinking of them as half-assed amateurs from the mountains will only breed complacency.
Fortunately, most of them are, or rather were, amateurs. Without their training camps constantly turning out newly trained terrorists & much of their funding dried up, it would be much harder to mount any serious operation in the US.
There are radioactive waste shipments traveling around the US every day already. So far nothing's happened to them (knock on wood).
90 miles from a city of 1+ million is as desolate as you can get? Hardly.
Sure it is. It's the middle of the desert, near where they used to test nuclear detonations. There are lots of mountains between Las Vegas & the Yucca Mountain site.
Of course, I've made no claim of being green. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of people that buy electric cars, claiming it helps reduce pollution.
You're ignoring one very special case where EVs (and some hybrids) consume less resources (and generate less pollution) than gas vehicles: when they're sitting in traffic.
Correct, in some short distance, stop-n-go traffic situations, electric cars might consume less resources. However, sitting idle doesn't get you anywhere. Per distance travelled, internal combustion powered cars are much more efficient than electric cars, and they get there much faster.
Not to mention, you could always get your power from renewable sources (like solar or hydro). Practically speaking though, Nuclear or hydro are really the only ways to supply the power needs of the future, problem is that both are hotly opposed by environmentalists...
That's the main problem. Greens (or whatever they want to be called) want to reduce pollution, but don't want to let us replace fossil fuel burning power plants with safe, modern nuclear plants. So-called renewable power, like wind & solar, will never be economically feasible.
I would guess that the amount of fossil fuel expended to produce the power at a central facility and to distribute the power to the vehicle is less (and with better control mechanisms) than the pollution generated by an internal combustion engine used in a vehicle with similar performance characteristics plus the pollution generated in the distribution of the petroleum on which it runs.
Actually, with equal distance travelled, the fossil fuels burned to power the electric car will produce more pollution.
Your gasoline engine is a very good engine indeed if it achieves 20% efficiency.
Most modern internal combustion engines are about 25% efficient. This includes: heat loss, friction loss, loss associated with translating the lateral movement of pistons into rotational movement, etc.
In contrast, the electric motor(s) that power your EV are more along the lines of 80% efficient.
Only when you use the immediate mechanical power output of the electric motor over electrical power applied to it. If you factor in power plant efficiency, transmission loss, battery efficiency, friction loss, etc. electric cars are much less efficient than any gasoline powered car, per distance traveled.
I've been to various places in the 'bread basket' of the US. Kansas, Nebraska, etc. Lots of wide open land. Are installations of solar farms in these areas as disruptive? Are they disruptive?
They can be disruptive. Especially if they're placed in the path of migratory birds (which is most of the midwest). The main issue with wind power is that there isn't always enough wind velocity to turn the turbines. It just isn't economically feasible for most places in the world. The US Dept of Energy has a pretty good FAQ on wind power.
The best source of renewable energy I've heard about is the article on/. a couple months ago about using solar panels on the moon & using microwave to transmit it down here.
It is disappointing that electric cars are not yet economically viable.
Electric cars will never be more economically viable than internal combustion powered ones. They're simply less efficient, but still rely on fossil fuels (from power plants).
So that column of smoke rising from the power plant doesn't count as emissions? Electric cars still rely on fossil fuel, & they're much less efficient than internal combustion powered cars.
I think you may miss my point. I just want to point out cheap PC's price is on par of the Simputer. That does not really make sense to ship assembled PC from US. Most PC components (mobo, case, keyboard etc) are manufactured in some part of Asia anyway. Of course, if the price difference is due to tariff, talk to their govt instead..
Most PC components are built in Taiwan, China, Japan, & Korea. These countries don't trade much with India. If they were to buy PC components straight from manufacturers the prices they'd be offered would not be favorable, as their market for PCs is orders of magnitude less than the US. Lower volume=higher prices.
Power supply voltage (110 vs 220 V, 50 vs 60Hz) is not at all a problem, any manufacturer can supply both spec. If an organisation like simputer.org can figure out how to design a PDA, I don't think they will have any trouble sort these out when ordering parts.
What about the 1000s of villages with no electrical power? They'd need lots of hamster wheels to generate enough electricity. The Simputer runs on 2 AA batteries.
But if you read the article, it says the Simputer is 1/4 the cost of a PC in India. The prices you're quoting are only valid if you're in the US. There are several different languages spoken in India, some with different alphabets/characters. Also, shipping a US computer over there would be expensive & they may have different power requirements (I have no idea if India is 110 or 220 V & 50 or 60 Hz & so on.)
There is very little question the US could afford to do it. Would it be expensive? Sure. But it could easily be done. The only reason we don't is because we have a bunch of troglodytes running who (correctly) realize that even though converting to SI has advantages, the current system actually does work fine. Don't get me wrong, I'd love for the US to go metric but it isn't going to happen anytime soon. There is no compelling polital need or will to do so.
There would be absolutely no practical advantages to switching to the SI system. It would be wasting money for no reason at all.
The US does the SI system in certain, limited areas. All my engineering classes use both SI & imperial units, which is easy enough to learn.
I've lived in Europe & Asia besides the US, so I've used the SI system on a daily basis before. However, I see absolutely no reason for the US to change, ever.
Slashdot Mirror
Here's a story about it from Air Force News.
That's still not much evidence. Your 2nd link has Post-Nuke as the first result.
The third link is just plain strange! How did it get up there?
I don't want the government to mismanage anything else. They're already overreaching the powers granted in the Constitution.
South Koreans are early adopters of new technology. I lived in South Korea from 96-98. Before I moved there from CA, not many people had cell phones. However, everybody walking around in Korea had a cell phone, a much higher percentage than the US even today.
The US had lots of infrastructure already in place. It was common even 15 years ago for American households to have 2 or more landlines. My sister was on the phone so much as a teenager, my parents forced her to help pay for her own line.
I think competing standards are a good thing. Let the market sort it out.
There are radioactive waste shipments traveling around the US every day already. So far nothing's happened to them (knock on wood).
I'm pretty sure I first saw the reference on /. but a search didn't help. Anyway, here's the source article on ABC News.
50% coal
30% hydro
10% nuclear
10% incinerated garbage
Of course, I've made no claim of being green. I'm just pointing out the hypocrisy of people that buy electric cars, claiming it helps reduce pollution.
The best source of renewable energy I've heard about is the article on
But if you read the article, it says the Simputer is 1/4 the cost of a PC in India. The prices you're quoting are only valid if you're in the US. There are several different languages spoken in India, some with different alphabets/characters. Also, shipping a US computer over there would be expensive & they may have different power requirements (I have no idea if India is 110 or 220 V & 50 or 60 Hz & so on.)
The US does the SI system in certain, limited areas. All my engineering classes use both SI & imperial units, which is easy enough to learn.
I've lived in Europe & Asia besides the US, so I've used the SI system on a daily basis before. However, I see absolutely no reason for the US to change, ever.