As far as I'm aware, the only way of reusing a steel-reinforced concrete structure is as hardcore in the footings of another building. There's no reason why plastic wouldn't be just as good - if all you're after is a load of rubble to pack down hard, big chunks of plastic would be just as good. The steel is so tightly bound with the concrete that extracting it for reuse is significantly more expensive than mining and processing some more. Ditto with concrete - to reuse it, you'd basically need to grind the entire building into rubble. Digging some more sand and gravel is a damn sight cheaper.
But they *do* get new generations of customers. There's only a finite market if people stop having kids, or (more likely, sadly) those kids stop getting into roleplaying.
I second the Samsung option. The cheapest Samsung over in the UK is £80 (so around $150) although it's often on offer - a friend got one for £40 last year.
For "networkable" though, just find an old 486 and hook it up as a print server. People are practically throwing them away, so check Ebay, MicroMart in the UK (I presume there's a US equivalent), or anywhere else likely to do them. If it costs more than £20 ($30) then you've been ripped off.
That's not original though - that's standard foley work and has been since Foley invented the concept. It was well-established before Lucas could read and write, never mind hold a camera. Check the LotR making-of stuff, and they're still doing the same today.
As bad as the violence is in the Middle East, a surprisingly few percent of people have had a family member killed in conflict with the US or with Israel
If you take the Middle East as one whole entity, that's absolutely right. But if you narrow in, you'll find a few areas with high loss of family members and friends. Palestine and Lebanon, it's almost guaranteed. And also there's the perception of self-defence amongst people from other countries (eg. Syria and Iran) where the US and/or Israel have threatened invasion, so it's reasonable for them to go and prolong the fighting in Lebanon or Iraq when you know that your country won't be attacked before the existing wars have ended.
The oddballs are people from Saudi and similar places fighting the US. They've already *got* as much material wealth as they can take, and their country isn't under threat, so I can only assume they really do believe in their cause. Which makes them dangerous, because nothing you can do will change their minds.
You're right that economic factors can cause wars if they're serious enough. The French and Russian revolutions were driven by the grinding poverty of the average worker. And the German invasion of Europe was as much about revenge against the countries which subjugated Germany in the 1920s as anything else. But I think it needs to be *really* bad before this kind of thing would take hold. And there are very few places where things are this bad. Palestine is one; Lebanon was another until they rebuilt, and now it is again. Iran certainly isn't though, and nor is Iraq.
I guess there's another primary reason as well, which is loss of home or land, or loss of control over it. This isn't just an economic thing - for hereditary farmers it's a part of who they are. Again, this is another reason why the Palestinians are so pissed off with Israel. And it's also the main reason for the American War of Independence and Civil Wars - the upper classes may have been doing it for a cause, but the poor whites who were the cannon-fodder were mostly just doing it because they didn't want someone from outside telling them what to do.
You're right that economics is *a* factor. It may even be the major factor for the people at the top of these organisations. But it's not a cause that they could ever get an army behind.
What inspires people to fight is a reason that's personal to them. The most common personal reason is revenge from a previous attack, and the next most common is the fear that someone's going to attack you first. The former is what GWB used as the justification for invading Afghanistan (even though I remember a news article fully two weeks before 9/11 talking about the US seriously considering sending troops into Afghanistan to protect US companies' investment in an oil pipeline), and the latter was used for Iraq. The former is what drives the Palestinians and Lebanese, and the latter is what causes Syrians, Iranians and other Muslims to head across the borders to join the fight. You can bet your life that most of them don't give a shit about 70-however-many virgins, but they *do* give a shit about their mother and kid sister who had a bomb dropped on them last month. The latter reason is also why the Israelis have been attacking in such strength, but this then leads to a self-fulfilling prophesy of violence, like the old quote about the lion: "This animal is dangerous; it defends itself when attacked".
Way back when, when weapons were relatively cheap to make and armies didn't take vast amounts of training, they could have taken on their opponents with swords, cannons and muskets. The American revolutionaries did it, and so did the French. Your average Palestinian kid can't afford a cruise missile or an F16 though, so they're in the position of a 140lb lightweight taking on a 300lb heavyweight. You can't even make a dent by standing toe-to-toe like that, so they don't - they try to stay out of range, draw them in, and hit them where they can when they get an opportunity. You're right that this kind of fighting is a permanent byproduct, but it's a permanent byproduct of a military system that's escalated beyond what a civilian can lay their hands on.
It's also not necessarily terrorism, and the actions of a formal army can just as easily be terrorism too. Blowing up a bus full of kids - yes. Demolishing civilian buildings and infrastructure - yes. Launching rockets at places housing troops - no. Taking enemy soldiers captive - no. Taking anyone captive and torturing them - yes.
Excuse me, but the real reason we don't have another Hunter S Thompson is because the first one was a self-centred dipshit with a pathological need for fame. "Wow dude, I go out and take tons of drugs and make up stories about it, PH34R M3!!!" Yeah right, you sad loser.
All HST was was a freak show. We've got Jerry Springer and Big Brother already, why would we need another one?
There are, unfortunately, far more Muslims who are at least sympathetic to terrorism than there are religionists of any other persuasion.
You mean, "religionists" like, say Christians? I give you Rwanda, Northern Ireland, the USA (anti-abortion campaigners) and Serbia. All lovely folks who I'm sure you want inside your borders... Or Israel, which at the last count has managed to kill 600 "non-believers" in 2 weeks? Please get the reality, that religion really doesn't matter a damn.
The simple fact is that "the only way to fight Islamic terrorism" is to stop doing things that piss off the citizens of those countries, such as bombing civilians. Currently the US and the UK have royally fucked up Iraq to the extent of allowing a civil war to take place, Afghanistan is still in the shitter, and they're providing military and financial support for Israel while it bombs civilians and other non-military targets in Lebanon and Palestine. Meantime, George Bush is busy pointing the finger at Syria and Iran as the next targets, because they sponsor terrorism.
Hmm, a state which sponsors terrorism? How's about the USA? For US-supported countries whose governments actively terrorised their citizens, or where the US supported terrorist activities against the government, or where the US actively attacked/invaded to try and establish a government favourable to them, I give you: Cuba, Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Argentina, Guatemala, Panama, Chile, Guyana, Angola... And that's just the ones I can remember easily.
Given how successful all this intervention has been (every single one of the examples above has been an unmitigated failure), an awful lot of people wish that the US would keep well out of international affairs, because the US government and the CIA clearly couldn't find their ass with both hands. And if they stopped fucking up other people's countries, maybe the citizens of those countries (and others) would feel more kindly towards the US.
I'm almost amused when I hear Americans saying how big a deal 9/11 was. In Iraq alone, that's about 2 weeks worth of civilian casualties (according to the most *optimistic* casualty figures). If you can imagine 9/11 happening every fortnight, maybe you will then understand why the US is not exactly appreciated abroad.
Nope, you're confusing the phenomena with the method.
Suppose you're watching a cardsharp. He has you extract all the queens, put them back in the deck, then he shuffles it and the queens appear on the top. How did he do that?! Buggered if I know. This doesn't mean that it's "unproved" that a cardsharp can do that, bcos we've seen it happen. All it means is that we don't know the method yet.
Now telepathy. Can someone read someone else's mind? It's really a very simple test - do they continuously get it right more often than random chance would allow? If they do, then telepathy is happening, and it's been proven. What the method is, well that's up for grabs, but the fact that it happened would be indisputable.
Sadly that's not the case, and all those people who spent years of their lives investigating this have come back with nothing more than a big fat zero. At some point, a smart person has to realise that there's a reason they're not finding things...
Too true. From about 1988 to 1991/2, the Amiga pwned everyone. The only reason it died was the internal politicking which killed the parent company (Commodore), and it took a good 3-4 years for PCs to catch up to where the Amiga had been, graphics- and sound-wise. The Amiga could have run a Quake-like game easily; it wasn't until 1996/7 that the PC had similar capabilities, and in fact Quake was the reason it *got* those capabilities.
The Amiga is one of the rare examples of a platform which died through outside causes, rather than through obsolescence or insufficient features to compete effectively. Sad really.
I was the same, but I get *bad* hayfever. It didn't come on until age 4, during a camping holiday, when I'd been playing in a field and the other kids brought me back to the tent screaming because I literally couldn't see, my eyes were so swollen.
Interestingly though, there was some study that says living on a farm with animals (especially cows) reduces allergies - but only if you're doing this at a very young age (less than 2, I think it was). At that age you're not going to be out playing in the dirt, so the best guess was either that it's some airborne stuff that gets into your system, or that it's something that adults bring in with them and pass onto their kids. I've not seen any more on this for a while though.
That would be hang-gliding, thank you. Very few humans have hands big enough to glide with...
Powered hang-gliders and paragliders (aka paramotors) are also gaining in popularity these days - they attach a small engine and propellor to the pilot's harness (usually either around the pilot's feet for a hang-glider or to the pilot's back for a paraglider). Note that these are different from microlights, which attach a wing to a trike-type fuselage/engine/seating arrangement - powered hang-gliders and paragliders are defined by the capability to be launched by foot (ie. the pilot must be able to take off and land on their feet whilst using it). There's also rules on fuel tank size too, but the major limitation is being able to foot-launch whatever contraption you're using.
Incidentally, the guys who made the "Doodlebug" hang-glider power unit also have a jet-powered version. It is *LOUD*!!!
Actually, Fleming *didn't* realise it. It was a couple of other people in the lab who had a closer look at it and had the idea. Fleming just took it on after they talked to him, and as the head of the lab took credit for the end result.
You can pass universal laws like that all you want. But good luck getting the universe to give a shit. Rocks know the laws of gravity and conservation-of-momentum, but aren't too hot on the Rights of Man...
If they have batteries, a short circuit will cause the battery to get warm for a while, or it will release some slightly caustic goo and you have to wash your hands.
Sorry, that's incorrect.
Try shorting a car battery with a screwdriver and tell me there isn't a violent electrical arc. Also, NiCads (and I believe NiMH) have very low internal resistance - if shorted, they can literally explode as they overheat dramatically. You're confusing this with non-rechargeable batteries, which behave as you describe.
Also, capacitors deliver charge at a rate dependent on the impedance of the load they're driving. It would be very straightforward to put a small resistor in the package containing the capacitor, so that the current out of it is limited.
Regarding the short-circuiting, capacitors require overlapping surfaces that are electrically insulated from each other. That means if you're using nanotubes, you'll want both sides covered in nanotube "fuzz" and the two sides then pushed together so that the two intertwine. This means that one (or preferably both) sides need their nanotubes coated with some kind of insulating material for it to work, otherwise the nanotubes will simply short out, and then you won't have a capacitor any more. And that means you won't get short circuits from random broken nanotubes in the structure.
Fragility I don't know about, but since carbon nanotubes are the strongest substance currently known, I suspect it's not going to be a huge problem. Also consider that the whole thing could easily be encapsulated in some solid insulating block so that it's a single physical chunk (remember that carbon isn't a metal so there are no significant expansion/contraction issues with heat). Batteries are only as solid as they are because they've got a solid metal case encapsulating well-packed electrodes and electrolyte - try dropping a plastic-case car battery from a height and tell us how solid it is.:-/
Given how desperate battery manufacturers are for any kind of edge, I imagine this will be rushed to market as fast as physically possible!
Heard about what happened when they put the batteries in the Energiser Bunny backwards? He died from extreme sexual exhaustion - just kept coming, and coming, and coming...
After early experiments, I never use anything other than the LCD (unless I'm *majorly* screwed battery-wise). Everyone I know with digi cameras uses the LCD too.
All viewfinders for non-SLR cameras (with no exceptions) show something other than what will actually appear in the image. Using the viewfinder is the #1 reason for feet and heads being chopped off in photos. OK, you can zoom further out and crop later, but it'd be a pain to have to do that for every damn photo. The LCD also gives you an indication of whether you're over/under-exposed, and the display showing settings for speed/exposure lets you know whether you're likely to get camera shake or whether you want to tweak the settings manually.
And the clincher for me is the swivel screen on mine - I can play endlessly with camera position and still see how the shot's going to turn out. Crowd shot with camera held overhead? No problem. Low-level shot of sand or water, 2" off the surface, to highlight the reflections? Easy. "Candid" shots looking sideways, backwards or just at someone in front of you who doesn't realise you're preparing to take a picture? Result, every time.
Resolution-wise, of course LCDs are lousy. But is the viewfinder really better? Every viewfinder I've seen on digi cameras has been some teensy little hole that you can hardly see, with horrible distorted optics, and your subject as some tiny ant 20 miles away. So the "resolution" of that is pretty crap too. More recent camera have bigger screens as well, and the resolution is getting better all the time. Personally I like having a viewfinder as an emergency backup (eg. when my batteries are almost dead and I forgot to bring spares), but I could definitely live without it. Having using an LCD, I couldn't imagine taking quality photos without it.
Even this is behind the times. NewScientist ran an article on this a few months back, including pictures of the "alien" cells. Several readers then wrote in identifying said cells - IIRC it was some variety of bacterium after all (sadly I don't keep my copies of NS so I couldn't tell you exactly what). Mystery over.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Rail_Bridge. Even in 1879, they couldn't build railway bridges. The Tay Rail Bridge disaster was the reason for compulsory registration of civil engineers, and brought on a large degree of over-engineering in all civil engineering projects. Over-engineering meant that it wouldn't fall down, but it also meant it'd be vastly more expensive to build.
Excuse me, did I miss something there? "I have a perfect example of why I'm right, but the details aren't relevant" - WTF?!
You haven't shown FA - all you've done is given us a bunch of assertions, any or all of which could be complete fiction. You could be telling god's honest truth, or you could be a lying unscrupulous piece of weasel shite, and there's no way for us to know. Personally I've found it's fairly safe to assume that "slippery-slope" advocates are in the weasel category until proven otherwise, but I'm willing to be proved wrong.
The State is also in the business of doing things in bulk for the entire population which don't make sense to run on an individual basis. Things like roads and armed forces. Welfare also fits in here.
Most countries in the West have some system of welfare that provides money for sufficient food, clothing and heating. Not *good* food, clothing and heating, but enough so you won't die. People figured out this century that workers dying (from cold/illness/starvation) as a result of losing their jobs wasn't a good thing. Most people agree with this. If you disagree, I can guess with close to 100% accuracy that you're from a well-endowed family, who has never been unable to find work for longer than a couple of months, and whose parents were never out of work for longer than a couple of months. There's pretty good odds that you're a white male too.
Ever heard of factory ships like the Atlantic Harvester? They're busy doing to the West African coast what the Canadians did to the Grand Banks. But they're handing out money to the relevant African countries, and the leaders of those countries don't care that a few fishermen are going to lose their livelihoods, never mind caring about the environment and what's down there.
In my own back yard, we've got another classic. For the last 10-15 years, scientists have been telling the EU that cod stocks in the North Sea are going the same way as the Grand Banks. Is anything happening? Is it fuck. There's some rules about maximum catches, but those maximum catches have always been orders of magnitude more than what the scientists say is the most optimistic replacement level, bcos the fishermen's lobby puts money the right way. And even then, the fishing bastards complain like they've got a right to strip-mine the place.
Slashdot Mirror
Concrete and steel can be recycled
Can they? Please give me an example.
As far as I'm aware, the only way of reusing a steel-reinforced concrete structure is as hardcore in the footings of another building. There's no reason why plastic wouldn't be just as good - if all you're after is a load of rubble to pack down hard, big chunks of plastic would be just as good. The steel is so tightly bound with the concrete that extracting it for reuse is significantly more expensive than mining and processing some more. Ditto with concrete - to reuse it, you'd basically need to grind the entire building into rubble. Digging some more sand and gravel is a damn sight cheaper.
Grab.
games do not suffer from planned obsolescence
But they *do* get new generations of customers. There's only a finite market if people stop having kids, or (more likely, sadly) those kids stop getting into roleplaying.
Grab.
I second the Samsung option. The cheapest Samsung over in the UK is £80 (so around $150) although it's often on offer - a friend got one for £40 last year.
For "networkable" though, just find an old 486 and hook it up as a print server. People are practically throwing them away, so check Ebay, MicroMart in the UK (I presume there's a US equivalent), or anywhere else likely to do them. If it costs more than £20 ($30) then you've been ripped off.
Graham.
Isn't that the logical successor to NintenDogs - NintenBitches...?
That's not original though - that's standard foley work and has been since Foley invented the concept. It was well-established before Lucas could read and write, never mind hold a camera. Check the LotR making-of stuff, and they're still doing the same today.
Grab.
As bad as the violence is in the Middle East, a surprisingly few percent of people have had a family member killed in conflict with the US or with Israel
If you take the Middle East as one whole entity, that's absolutely right. But if you narrow in, you'll find a few areas with high loss of family members and friends. Palestine and Lebanon, it's almost guaranteed. And also there's the perception of self-defence amongst people from other countries (eg. Syria and Iran) where the US and/or Israel have threatened invasion, so it's reasonable for them to go and prolong the fighting in Lebanon or Iraq when you know that your country won't be attacked before the existing wars have ended.
The oddballs are people from Saudi and similar places fighting the US. They've already *got* as much material wealth as they can take, and their country isn't under threat, so I can only assume they really do believe in their cause. Which makes them dangerous, because nothing you can do will change their minds.
You're right that economic factors can cause wars if they're serious enough. The French and Russian revolutions were driven by the grinding poverty of the average worker. And the German invasion of Europe was as much about revenge against the countries which subjugated Germany in the 1920s as anything else. But I think it needs to be *really* bad before this kind of thing would take hold. And there are very few places where things are this bad. Palestine is one; Lebanon was another until they rebuilt, and now it is again. Iran certainly isn't though, and nor is Iraq.
I guess there's another primary reason as well, which is loss of home or land, or loss of control over it. This isn't just an economic thing - for hereditary farmers it's a part of who they are. Again, this is another reason why the Palestinians are so pissed off with Israel. And it's also the main reason for the American War of Independence and Civil Wars - the upper classes may have been doing it for a cause, but the poor whites who were the cannon-fodder were mostly just doing it because they didn't want someone from outside telling them what to do.
Grab.
You're right that economics is *a* factor. It may even be the major factor for the people at the top of these organisations. But it's not a cause that they could ever get an army behind.
What inspires people to fight is a reason that's personal to them. The most common personal reason is revenge from a previous attack, and the next most common is the fear that someone's going to attack you first. The former is what GWB used as the justification for invading Afghanistan (even though I remember a news article fully two weeks before 9/11 talking about the US seriously considering sending troops into Afghanistan to protect US companies' investment in an oil pipeline), and the latter was used for Iraq. The former is what drives the Palestinians and Lebanese, and the latter is what causes Syrians, Iranians and other Muslims to head across the borders to join the fight. You can bet your life that most of them don't give a shit about 70-however-many virgins, but they *do* give a shit about their mother and kid sister who had a bomb dropped on them last month. The latter reason is also why the Israelis have been attacking in such strength, but this then leads to a self-fulfilling prophesy of violence, like the old quote about the lion: "This animal is dangerous; it defends itself when attacked".
Way back when, when weapons were relatively cheap to make and armies didn't take vast amounts of training, they could have taken on their opponents with swords, cannons and muskets. The American revolutionaries did it, and so did the French. Your average Palestinian kid can't afford a cruise missile or an F16 though, so they're in the position of a 140lb lightweight taking on a 300lb heavyweight. You can't even make a dent by standing toe-to-toe like that, so they don't - they try to stay out of range, draw them in, and hit them where they can when they get an opportunity. You're right that this kind of fighting is a permanent byproduct, but it's a permanent byproduct of a military system that's escalated beyond what a civilian can lay their hands on.
It's also not necessarily terrorism, and the actions of a formal army can just as easily be terrorism too. Blowing up a bus full of kids - yes. Demolishing civilian buildings and infrastructure - yes. Launching rockets at places housing troops - no. Taking enemy soldiers captive - no. Taking anyone captive and torturing them - yes.
Grab.
Excuse me, but the real reason we don't have another Hunter S Thompson is because the first one was a self-centred dipshit with a pathological need for fame. "Wow dude, I go out and take tons of drugs and make up stories about it, PH34R M3!!!" Yeah right, you sad loser.
All HST was was a freak show. We've got Jerry Springer and Big Brother already, why would we need another one?
Grab.
There are, unfortunately, far more Muslims who are at least sympathetic to terrorism than there are religionists of any other persuasion.
You mean, "religionists" like, say Christians? I give you Rwanda, Northern Ireland, the USA (anti-abortion campaigners) and Serbia. All lovely folks who I'm sure you want inside your borders... Or Israel, which at the last count has managed to kill 600 "non-believers" in 2 weeks? Please get the reality, that religion really doesn't matter a damn.
The simple fact is that "the only way to fight Islamic terrorism" is to stop doing things that piss off the citizens of those countries, such as bombing civilians. Currently the US and the UK have royally fucked up Iraq to the extent of allowing a civil war to take place, Afghanistan is still in the shitter, and they're providing military and financial support for Israel while it bombs civilians and other non-military targets in Lebanon and Palestine. Meantime, George Bush is busy pointing the finger at Syria and Iran as the next targets, because they sponsor terrorism.
Hmm, a state which sponsors terrorism? How's about the USA? For US-supported countries whose governments actively terrorised their citizens, or where the US supported terrorist activities against the government, or where the US actively attacked/invaded to try and establish a government favourable to them, I give you: Cuba, Grenada, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Haiti, Congo, Vietnam, Cambodia, Argentina, Guatemala, Panama, Chile, Guyana, Angola... And that's just the ones I can remember easily.
Given how successful all this intervention has been (every single one of the examples above has been an unmitigated failure), an awful lot of people wish that the US would keep well out of international affairs, because the US government and the CIA clearly couldn't find their ass with both hands. And if they stopped fucking up other people's countries, maybe the citizens of those countries (and others) would feel more kindly towards the US.
I'm almost amused when I hear Americans saying how big a deal 9/11 was. In Iraq alone, that's about 2 weeks worth of civilian casualties (according to the most *optimistic* casualty figures). If you can imagine 9/11 happening every fortnight, maybe you will then understand why the US is not exactly appreciated abroad.
Grab.
Nope, you're confusing the phenomena with the method.
Suppose you're watching a cardsharp. He has you extract all the queens, put them back in the deck, then he shuffles it and the queens appear on the top. How did he do that?! Buggered if I know. This doesn't mean that it's "unproved" that a cardsharp can do that, bcos we've seen it happen. All it means is that we don't know the method yet.
Now telepathy. Can someone read someone else's mind? It's really a very simple test - do they continuously get it right more often than random chance would allow? If they do, then telepathy is happening, and it's been proven. What the method is, well that's up for grabs, but the fact that it happened would be indisputable.
Sadly that's not the case, and all those people who spent years of their lives investigating this have come back with nothing more than a big fat zero. At some point, a smart person has to realise that there's a reason they're not finding things...
Grab.
Too true. From about 1988 to 1991/2, the Amiga pwned everyone. The only reason it died was the internal politicking which killed the parent company (Commodore), and it took a good 3-4 years for PCs to catch up to where the Amiga had been, graphics- and sound-wise. The Amiga could have run a Quake-like game easily; it wasn't until 1996/7 that the PC had similar capabilities, and in fact Quake was the reason it *got* those capabilities.
The Amiga is one of the rare examples of a platform which died through outside causes, rather than through obsolescence or insufficient features to compete effectively. Sad really.
Grab.
I was the same, but I get *bad* hayfever. It didn't come on until age 4, during a camping holiday, when I'd been playing in a field and the other kids brought me back to the tent screaming because I literally couldn't see, my eyes were so swollen.
Interestingly though, there was some study that says living on a farm with animals (especially cows) reduces allergies - but only if you're doing this at a very young age (less than 2, I think it was). At that age you're not going to be out playing in the dirt, so the best guess was either that it's some airborne stuff that gets into your system, or that it's something that adults bring in with them and pass onto their kids. I've not seen any more on this for a while though.
Grab.
That would be hang-gliding, thank you. Very few humans have hands big enough to glide with...
Powered hang-gliders and paragliders (aka paramotors) are also gaining in popularity these days - they attach a small engine and propellor to the pilot's harness (usually either around the pilot's feet for a hang-glider or to the pilot's back for a paraglider). Note that these are different from microlights, which attach a wing to a trike-type fuselage/engine/seating arrangement - powered hang-gliders and paragliders are defined by the capability to be launched by foot (ie. the pilot must be able to take off and land on their feet whilst using it). There's also rules on fuel tank size too, but the major limitation is being able to foot-launch whatever contraption you're using.
Incidentally, the guys who made the "Doodlebug" hang-glider power unit also have a jet-powered version. It is *LOUD*!!!
Grab.
Actually, Fleming *didn't* realise it. It was a couple of other people in the lab who had a closer look at it and had the idea. Fleming just took it on after they talked to him, and as the head of the lab took credit for the end result.
Grab.
You can pass universal laws like that all you want. But good luck getting the universe to give a shit. Rocks know the laws of gravity and conservation-of-momentum, but aren't too hot on the Rights of Man...
Grab.
If they have batteries, a short circuit will cause the battery to get warm for a while, or it will release some slightly caustic goo and you have to wash your hands.
:-/
Sorry, that's incorrect.
Try shorting a car battery with a screwdriver and tell me there isn't a violent electrical arc. Also, NiCads (and I believe NiMH) have very low internal resistance - if shorted, they can literally explode as they overheat dramatically. You're confusing this with non-rechargeable batteries, which behave as you describe.
Also, capacitors deliver charge at a rate dependent on the impedance of the load they're driving. It would be very straightforward to put a small resistor in the package containing the capacitor, so that the current out of it is limited.
Regarding the short-circuiting, capacitors require overlapping surfaces that are electrically insulated from each other. That means if you're using nanotubes, you'll want both sides covered in nanotube "fuzz" and the two sides then pushed together so that the two intertwine. This means that one (or preferably both) sides need their nanotubes coated with some kind of insulating material for it to work, otherwise the nanotubes will simply short out, and then you won't have a capacitor any more. And that means you won't get short circuits from random broken nanotubes in the structure.
Fragility I don't know about, but since carbon nanotubes are the strongest substance currently known, I suspect it's not going to be a huge problem. Also consider that the whole thing could easily be encapsulated in some solid insulating block so that it's a single physical chunk (remember that carbon isn't a metal so there are no significant expansion/contraction issues with heat). Batteries are only as solid as they are because they've got a solid metal case encapsulating well-packed electrodes and electrolyte - try dropping a plastic-case car battery from a height and tell us how solid it is.
Given how desperate battery manufacturers are for any kind of edge, I imagine this will be rushed to market as fast as physically possible!
Grab.
Heard about what happened when they put the batteries in the Energiser Bunny backwards? He died from extreme sexual exhaustion - just kept coming, and coming, and coming...
After early experiments, I never use anything other than the LCD (unless I'm *majorly* screwed battery-wise). Everyone I know with digi cameras uses the LCD too.
All viewfinders for non-SLR cameras (with no exceptions) show something other than what will actually appear in the image. Using the viewfinder is the #1 reason for feet and heads being chopped off in photos. OK, you can zoom further out and crop later, but it'd be a pain to have to do that for every damn photo. The LCD also gives you an indication of whether you're over/under-exposed, and the display showing settings for speed/exposure lets you know whether you're likely to get camera shake or whether you want to tweak the settings manually.
And the clincher for me is the swivel screen on mine - I can play endlessly with camera position and still see how the shot's going to turn out. Crowd shot with camera held overhead? No problem. Low-level shot of sand or water, 2" off the surface, to highlight the reflections? Easy. "Candid" shots looking sideways, backwards or just at someone in front of you who doesn't realise you're preparing to take a picture? Result, every time.
Resolution-wise, of course LCDs are lousy. But is the viewfinder really better? Every viewfinder I've seen on digi cameras has been some teensy little hole that you can hardly see, with horrible distorted optics, and your subject as some tiny ant 20 miles away. So the "resolution" of that is pretty crap too. More recent camera have bigger screens as well, and the resolution is getting better all the time. Personally I like having a viewfinder as an emergency backup (eg. when my batteries are almost dead and I forgot to bring spares), but I could definitely live without it. Having using an LCD, I couldn't imagine taking quality photos without it.
Grab.
Even this is behind the times. NewScientist ran an article on this a few months back, including pictures of the "alien" cells. Several readers then wrote in identifying said cells - IIRC it was some variety of bacterium after all (sadly I don't keep my copies of NS so I couldn't tell you exactly what). Mystery over.
Grab.
Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tay_Rail_Bridge. Even in 1879, they couldn't build railway bridges. The Tay Rail Bridge disaster was the reason for compulsory registration of civil engineers, and brought on a large degree of over-engineering in all civil engineering projects. Over-engineering meant that it wouldn't fall down, but it also meant it'd be vastly more expensive to build.
Grab.
Excuse me, did I miss something there? "I have a perfect example of why I'm right, but the details aren't relevant" - WTF?!
You haven't shown FA - all you've done is given us a bunch of assertions, any or all of which could be complete fiction. You could be telling god's honest truth, or you could be a lying unscrupulous piece of weasel shite, and there's no way for us to know. Personally I've found it's fairly safe to assume that "slippery-slope" advocates are in the weasel category until proven otherwise, but I'm willing to be proved wrong.
Grab.
The State is also in the business of doing things in bulk for the entire population which don't make sense to run on an individual basis. Things like roads and armed forces. Welfare also fits in here.
Most countries in the West have some system of welfare that provides money for sufficient food, clothing and heating. Not *good* food, clothing and heating, but enough so you won't die. People figured out this century that workers dying (from cold/illness/starvation) as a result of losing their jobs wasn't a good thing. Most people agree with this. If you disagree, I can guess with close to 100% accuracy that you're from a well-endowed family, who has never been unable to find work for longer than a couple of months, and whose parents were never out of work for longer than a couple of months. There's pretty good odds that you're a white male too.
Grab.
And as spelling mistakes go, that was *odd*... (Not least the fact that he did it twice.)
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We didn't start the fire...
Ever heard of factory ships like the Atlantic Harvester? They're busy doing to the West African coast what the Canadians did to the Grand Banks. But they're handing out money to the relevant African countries, and the leaders of those countries don't care that a few fishermen are going to lose their livelihoods, never mind caring about the environment and what's down there.
In my own back yard, we've got another classic. For the last 10-15 years, scientists have been telling the EU that cod stocks in the North Sea are going the same way as the Grand Banks. Is anything happening? Is it fuck. There's some rules about maximum catches, but those maximum catches have always been orders of magnitude more than what the scientists say is the most optimistic replacement level, bcos the fishermen's lobby puts money the right way. And even then, the fishing bastards complain like they've got a right to strip-mine the place.
Grab.