Its nothing new to most people that a catastrophic impact is just a
matter of time. Tomorrow, next year, whatever. And if its not a
meteor or asteroid, it could very well be a large volcano, etc.
Regardless, the survival of our species will be threatened.
I highly recommend Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace". In this book Kaku
describes a very real and valid method by which we can classify a
civilization based on its understanding of physics, even though we
have no data points besides our own. This understanding of physics
will have a direct result on how any civilization utilizes energy in
surviving a variety of inevitable crisis.
This is from memory, so it could be totally wrong. But, you'll get the idea:
0. Level Zero. This civilization depends on natural energy deposits in
its environment. It is unable to survive a large scale disaster, despite
any technical or artistic accomplishments it has achieved.
1. Level One. This civilization is able to harness true sources of energy
production on a large scale, as opposed to only harnessing local energy
reserves. The only true source of energy in the universe is fusion. This
could be in reactors, or in some clever harnessing of a star. A level
one civilization will be able to utilize and direct enough energy to
survive a planetary disaster. This could be by diverting the disaster, or
by relocating enough resources to a safe area of a solar system and
rebuilding.
2. Level Two. This civilization can utilize and produce enough
energy to survive a solar system disaster. This could be a massive
solar flare, death of a star, or destruction of the solar system by
interstellar collision between neighboring stars, supernova, etc.
Survival of such a disaster would imply the ability to manipulate a
planet or star, or the ability to move about a group of solar systems
with relative ease. Planetary engineering and terraforming would be
taught in the freshman physics lab class.
3. Level Three. A black hole is sucking up half the galaxy? No problem,
these guys will move to the other side of the galaxy, or, maybe they would
move the black hole to a safer place.
4. Level Four. All the resources used up in the galaxy? No problem, we'll
go find more useful galaxies to plunder. Traveling about the universe would
be no problem.
5. Level Five. The universe has existed for so long that protons are
starting to decay. The universe is coming to an end - either in the
big crunch - a repeat of the big bang, or the big chill - matter in
the universe expands to the point of oblivion, kinda like a fart in a
wind tunnel. A level 5 civilization would step into a different universe,
or would engineer their own.
From our perspective, a level 5 or 4 civilization would look like the
Kingdom of God. We probably wouldn't comprehend it.
A level 3 civilization would be something like Isaac Asimov described in
his Foundation Trilogy.
A level 2 civilization would be like Star Trek or Star Wars.
A level 1 civilization would be like the early episodes of Star Trek.
A level 0 civilization would be like the dinosaurs that
used to roam the earth, and its current inhabitants of strangely naked
apes, otherwise known as humans. We're not even close to being level 1.
Our economies are so dependent upon oil that its sad, and we have no idea
whats going on in our own solar neighborhood. We're trying though. With
any luck we'll get to level one before mother nature or our own stupidity
does us in.
Your story evoked very little sympathy from me. I'm sure VA would have installed a nice distro for you that would have worked fine. Instead, you opted for a machine with no os and cried when you couldn't get your disto to install. From your story I couldn't tell if the computer was ever really broken, or if you just couldn't get it to work.
If you want customer support from someone you need to take their whole package, not pick and choose. Frankly, what disturbs me is that VA shipped you a computer with no OS. They should have sold you a standard product and made you erase whatever it was they _did_ support. The fact they sold it with no OS hints at a lax or non-existent testing/burn-in program.
You can buy off the shelf adapters to put a Chevy engine in many Ford vehicles. Does that mean a dealer should be expected to sell Ford cars with Chevy engines, or, like your request, no engine, so that you can do the conversion yourself, only to have the car returned when you can't get it to work?
I work for a large company that provides world class unix solutions, and its not Sun. Alot of our management can't seem to figure out what Unix is, much less Linux. Go figure. Anyway, they send email attachments for word, excel, powerpoint, etc. Star Office has been invaluable to me in maintaining a unix only environment that is both productive and cheap and easy to maintain. Now, if they GPL it, I'll also be completely legal.
Thats it! Turn all the crazy people into Soylent Green!! We'd save massive amounts of money that would otherwise be wasted on defective people, and we'd feed thte starving at the same time!
Let me guess - you co-authored Mein Kompf?? You consider yourself to be a member of the Aryan Race? Regardless - despite all the problems that the insanity brings, it makes our entire society all the more HUMAN to deal with it, humanely, with love, tenderness, patience and science. Engineer it out of yourself if you choose, all the more power to you. But if you choose to engineer it out of me or the ones I love I'll drop you where you stand. You have no right to dictate how or who someone is or may become, by sterilization, genetic manipulation, etc. Not only am I not with you, I am against your suggestion so strongly that I'd stop at nothing to stop you or anyone else who tried to carry out such a horrific plan. Absolutely nothing.
However, its a little hard to carry around a bucket of electricity. This is why fuel cells are so nice - direct energy conversion of fuel and oxidizer into electricity with no moving parts, much less pollution, outstanding efficiency (no Carnot limitations).
If you want to carry electricity around directly the most promising technology might be a torroidal superconducting coil. The only high temperature superconductors so far discovered have a rather low critical field and current though, which makes them not very good energy carriers. Maybe someday, but for now fuel cell technology is coming along nicely.
Yeah, NOx are truly evil. Crack the NH3 into N & H and 'burn' the H in a fuel cell and problem mostly solved. Scrubbing remaining NOx from exhaust is very doable.
The problem with N and C is really agrivated by high temperature combustion. Fuel cells really help reduce this, but it will never really go away since we seem to have a mostly N atmosphere anyway.
The Hindenburg would have exploded even if it was filled with air.
The crazy Germans used iron oxide and aluminum in the doping process to seal the fabric. This makes thermite. Thermite burns rather quickly, very hot, and ignites very easily all on its own.
Add a static discharge, and POOF.
Had the Hindenburge actually developed a puncture the size of a house, then caught fire at that puncture (without the skin burning), it would have LANDED and everyone would have more than likely walked away.
Hydrogen has been thoroughly investigated as a fuel for all kinds of uses (automotive, home heating, etc) in the 70's and 80's. The DOE even had a hydrogen powered Buick that was powered by liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen embrittlement caused turbo-charger failure, but that was solved by a bit of metalurgy. The car ran great, the hydrogen fueling station was managable, and the car had great performance and safety. They even crashed the thing once on accident, no Hindenburg. Hydrogen is probably an overall safer energy carrier than gasoline.
However, what became clear in all my hydrogen readings and research a few years ago is that hydrogen as an energy carrier for any mobile application just plains sucks - its density is too low. Even for liquid hydrogen the tank volume is so great your vehicle looks like a mini space shuttle - small cargo space, huge tank. As far as compressed hydrogen, don't even go there. Tanks of 4,000 PSI hydrogen stuffed all over, in, and under a vehicle will get you back and forth accross town a few times. Maybe practicle for a bus. Barely. Also, there is enough energy just from the compression of the hydrogen to launch an average vehicle vertically up a few thousand feet. No thank you. (this is a risk introduced by the compression, the fact that it is hydrogen is irrelevant to this particular risk, mostly. Hydrogen does throttle hot). Compressed natural gas is even more stupid - all the drawbacks of compressed hydrogen, plus you'd still be burning a hydrocarbon. Cleaner than gasoline or diesel, yes, but still nasty. For functionality, safety and cleanliness (overall) liquid propane is still way nicer than compressed natural gas. Its liquid, very easy to fill a tank, great energy density per tank volume. Its almost as convenient as gasoline or diesel, actually, more so in some ways.
Some people think metal hydrides will make nice hydrogen storage systems. Yeah, right. Trade massive volume for massive mass. Or, go the carbon composite adsorption route - a nice mix of volume and mass, but it still sucks. How many people want to wait tens of minutes if not hours to fill their tank? Some have proposed tank swapping: drop off an empty, pick up a full tank. So, now fueling stations become warehouses. Nice. "Sorry, we're out of full tanks right now, you'll have to wait an hour". Again, no thank you.
Hopefully this makes it clear that the fuel (or energy carrier, as it actually is) is not the real issue, distribution and fueling stations are the issue. Hydrogen is nice cuz it doesn't have any carbon to mess up our air, but its such a pain to transfer around for any kind of mobile application. Maybe the gas companies can pipe it to your house - this would be nice, you could 'burn' it in a fuel cell, produce electricity and heat your house all at the same time. Molten carbonate fuel cells and/or solid oxide fuel cells could do this now with natural gas, hydrogen would just make it a little easier to keep the membranes from being loaded up with sulfur and other nasty crap from natural gas.
For a mobile application we really need a hydrogen based energy carrier thats more like liquid propane. And we have one, a rather nice one. Ammonia.
Sure, its stinky, but its relatively safe. Dumb-ass Kansas/Colorado/Nebraska farm kids (me) have been dragging HUGE tanks of ammonia around the countryside and spraying it into the ground as fertilizer for generations. It has great energy density per tank volume, and its not a hydrocarbon. The X-15 space plane flew into space on two relatively small tanks, one was ammonia, the other LOX. Remember, if you are flying in and out of the atmosphere alot (as the X-15 was designed to do) huge tanks won't cut it - too much drag.
So, in short, making hydrogen is one small step towards a clean and sustainable energy economy that we as a race MUST move towards, that is if we want to keep breathing. NH3 is a much nicer way to move hydrogen around. Making hydrogen with the sun is cute. Maybe it will amount to something someday. I doubt it though. I honestly think Henk Monkhorst and clan are onto a much nicer path with their Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor.
How many people would buy a car with the hood welded shut?
Not only would the manufacturer have you rely soley on them for maintenance, but you would also be prevented from learning how the thing works and making your own improvements, etc.
Anything that prevents the free exchange of information is just a hop, skip and a jump away from slavery.
You want to protect your investment? Fine. Do it without taking away personal liberties such as curiousity an innovation.
... or are you not happy with anything that conforms to your world view? Geez, get a grip.
GNU/Linux is about changing society, not about innovating with clever arrangements of bits. This guy is challenging society to look at extreme body art as, well, art. I think its cool. If you don't like it, don't read it!
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe I'll try this at work, I've got over 300 megs there.
Too bad RAM prices aren't dropping like disk storage prices...
Its nothing new to most people that a catastrophic impact is just a matter of time. Tomorrow, next year, whatever. And if its not a meteor or asteroid, it could very well be a large volcano, etc. Regardless, the survival of our species will be threatened.
I highly recommend Michio Kaku's "Hyperspace". In this book Kaku describes a very real and valid method by which we can classify a civilization based on its understanding of physics, even though we have no data points besides our own. This understanding of physics will have a direct result on how any civilization utilizes energy in surviving a variety of inevitable crisis.
This is from memory, so it could be totally wrong. But, you'll get the idea:
0. Level Zero. This civilization depends on natural energy deposits in its environment. It is unable to survive a large scale disaster, despite any technical or artistic accomplishments it has achieved.
1. Level One. This civilization is able to harness true sources of energy production on a large scale, as opposed to only harnessing local energy reserves. The only true source of energy in the universe is fusion. This could be in reactors, or in some clever harnessing of a star. A level one civilization will be able to utilize and direct enough energy to survive a planetary disaster. This could be by diverting the disaster, or by relocating enough resources to a safe area of a solar system and rebuilding.
2. Level Two. This civilization can utilize and produce enough energy to survive a solar system disaster. This could be a massive solar flare, death of a star, or destruction of the solar system by interstellar collision between neighboring stars, supernova, etc. Survival of such a disaster would imply the ability to manipulate a planet or star, or the ability to move about a group of solar systems with relative ease. Planetary engineering and terraforming would be taught in the freshman physics lab class.
3. Level Three. A black hole is sucking up half the galaxy? No problem, these guys will move to the other side of the galaxy, or, maybe they would move the black hole to a safer place.
4. Level Four. All the resources used up in the galaxy? No problem, we'll go find more useful galaxies to plunder. Traveling about the universe would be no problem.
5. Level Five. The universe has existed for so long that protons are starting to decay. The universe is coming to an end - either in the big crunch - a repeat of the big bang, or the big chill - matter in the universe expands to the point of oblivion, kinda like a fart in a wind tunnel. A level 5 civilization would step into a different universe, or would engineer their own.
From our perspective, a level 5 or 4 civilization would look like the Kingdom of God. We probably wouldn't comprehend it.
A level 3 civilization would be something like Isaac Asimov described in his Foundation Trilogy.
A level 2 civilization would be like Star Trek or Star Wars.
A level 1 civilization would be like the early episodes of Star Trek.
A level 0 civilization would be like the dinosaurs that used to roam the earth, and its current inhabitants of strangely naked apes, otherwise known as humans. We're not even close to being level 1. Our economies are so dependent upon oil that its sad, and we have no idea whats going on in our own solar neighborhood. We're trying though. With any luck we'll get to level one before mother nature or our own stupidity does us in.
-Neandertal
Your story evoked very little sympathy from me. I'm sure VA would have installed a nice distro for you that would have worked fine. Instead, you opted for a machine with no os and cried when you couldn't get your disto to install. From your story I couldn't tell if the computer was ever really broken, or if you just couldn't get it to work. If you want customer support from someone you need to take their whole package, not pick and choose. Frankly, what disturbs me is that VA shipped you a computer with no OS. They should have sold you a standard product and made you erase whatever it was they _did_ support. The fact they sold it with no OS hints at a lax or non-existent testing/burn-in program. You can buy off the shelf adapters to put a Chevy engine in many Ford vehicles. Does that mean a dealer should be expected to sell Ford cars with Chevy engines, or, like your request, no engine, so that you can do the conversion yourself, only to have the car returned when you can't get it to work?
I work for a large company that provides world class unix solutions, and its not Sun. Alot of our management can't seem to figure out what Unix is, much less Linux. Go figure. Anyway, they send email attachments for word, excel, powerpoint, etc. Star Office has been invaluable to me in maintaining a unix only environment that is both productive and cheap and easy to maintain. Now, if they GPL it, I'll also be completely legal.
They are going for the most negative publicity and are pursuing an anti-business marketing campaign?
Some companies/people are soooo stupid.
Thats it! Turn all the crazy people into Soylent Green!! We'd save massive amounts of money that would otherwise be wasted on defective people, and we'd feed thte starving at the same time!
Let me guess - you co-authored Mein Kompf?? You consider yourself to be a member of the Aryan Race? Regardless - despite all the problems that the insanity brings, it makes our entire society all the more HUMAN to deal with it, humanely, with love, tenderness, patience and science. Engineer it out of yourself if you choose, all the more power to you. But if you choose to engineer it out of me or the ones I love I'll drop you where you stand. You have no right to dictate how or who someone is or may become, by sterilization, genetic manipulation, etc. Not only am I not with you, I am against your suggestion so strongly that I'd stop at nothing to stop you or anyone else who tried to carry out such a horrific plan. Absolutely nothing.
However, its a little hard to carry around a bucket of electricity. This is why fuel cells are so nice - direct energy conversion of fuel and oxidizer into electricity with no moving parts, much less pollution, outstanding efficiency (no Carnot limitations).
If you want to carry electricity around directly the most promising technology might be a torroidal superconducting coil. The only high temperature superconductors so far discovered have a rather low critical field and current though, which makes them not very good energy carriers. Maybe someday, but for now fuel cell technology is coming along nicely.
Yeah, NOx are truly evil. Crack the NH3 into N & H and 'burn' the H in a fuel cell and problem mostly solved. Scrubbing remaining NOx from exhaust is very doable.
The problem with N and C is really agrivated by high temperature combustion. Fuel cells really help reduce this, but it will never really go away since we seem to have a mostly N atmosphere anyway.
The Hindenburg would have exploded even if it was filled with air.
The crazy Germans used iron oxide and aluminum in the doping process to seal the fabric. This makes thermite. Thermite burns rather quickly, very hot, and ignites very easily all on its own.
Add a static discharge, and POOF.
Had the Hindenburge actually developed a puncture the size of a house, then caught fire at that puncture (without the skin burning), it would have LANDED and everyone would have more than likely walked away.
Some rambling comments about hydrogen:
Hydrogen has been thoroughly investigated as a fuel for all kinds of uses (automotive, home heating, etc) in the 70's and 80's. The DOE even had a hydrogen powered Buick that was powered by liquid hydrogen. Hydrogen embrittlement caused turbo-charger failure, but that was solved by a bit of metalurgy. The car ran great, the hydrogen fueling station was managable, and the car had great performance and safety. They even crashed the thing once on accident, no Hindenburg. Hydrogen is probably an overall safer energy carrier than gasoline.
However, what became clear in all my hydrogen readings and research a few years ago is that hydrogen as an energy carrier for any mobile application just plains sucks - its density is too low. Even for liquid hydrogen the tank volume is so great your vehicle looks like a mini space shuttle - small cargo space, huge tank. As far as compressed hydrogen, don't even go there. Tanks of 4,000 PSI hydrogen stuffed all over, in, and under a vehicle will get you back and forth accross town a few times. Maybe practicle for a bus. Barely. Also, there is enough energy just from the compression of the hydrogen to launch an average vehicle vertically up a few thousand feet. No thank you. (this is a risk introduced by the compression, the fact that it is hydrogen is irrelevant to this particular risk, mostly. Hydrogen does throttle hot). Compressed natural gas is even more stupid - all the drawbacks of compressed hydrogen, plus you'd still be burning a hydrocarbon. Cleaner than gasoline or diesel, yes, but still nasty. For functionality, safety and cleanliness (overall) liquid propane is still way nicer than compressed natural gas. Its liquid, very easy to fill a tank, great energy density per tank volume. Its almost as convenient as gasoline or diesel, actually, more so in some ways.
Some people think metal hydrides will make nice hydrogen storage systems. Yeah, right. Trade massive volume for massive mass. Or, go the carbon composite adsorption route - a nice mix of volume and mass, but it still sucks. How many people want to wait tens of minutes if not hours to fill their tank? Some have proposed tank swapping: drop off an empty, pick up a full tank. So, now fueling stations become warehouses. Nice. "Sorry, we're out of full tanks right now, you'll have to wait an hour". Again, no thank you.
Hopefully this makes it clear that the fuel (or energy carrier, as it actually is) is not the real issue, distribution and fueling stations are the issue. Hydrogen is nice cuz it doesn't have any carbon to mess up our air, but its such a pain to transfer around for any kind of mobile application. Maybe the gas companies can pipe it to your house - this would be nice, you could 'burn' it in a fuel cell, produce electricity and heat your house all at the same time. Molten carbonate fuel cells and/or solid oxide fuel cells could do this now with natural gas, hydrogen would just make it a little easier to keep the membranes from being loaded up with sulfur and other nasty crap from natural gas.
For a mobile application we really need a hydrogen based energy carrier thats more like liquid propane. And we have one, a rather nice one. Ammonia.
Sure, its stinky, but its relatively safe. Dumb-ass Kansas/Colorado/Nebraska farm kids (me) have been dragging HUGE tanks of ammonia around the countryside and spraying it into the ground as fertilizer for generations. It has great energy density per tank volume, and its not a hydrocarbon. The X-15 space plane flew into space on two relatively small tanks, one was ammonia, the other LOX. Remember, if you are flying in and out of the atmosphere alot (as the X-15 was designed to do) huge tanks won't cut it - too much drag.
So, in short, making hydrogen is one small step towards a clean and sustainable energy economy that we as a race MUST move towards, that is if we want to keep breathing. NH3 is a much nicer way to move hydrogen around. Making hydrogen with the sun is cute. Maybe it will amount to something someday. I doubt it though. I honestly think Henk Monkhorst and clan are onto a much nicer path with their Colliding Beam Fusion Reactor.
Henk is the man, fusion rocks.
How many people would buy a car with the hood welded shut?
Not only would the manufacturer have you rely soley on them for maintenance, but you would also be prevented from learning how the thing works and making your own improvements, etc.
Anything that prevents the free exchange of information is just a hop, skip and a jump away from slavery.
You want to protect your investment? Fine. Do it without taking away personal liberties such as curiousity an innovation.
GNU/Linux is about changing society, not about innovating with clever arrangements of bits. This guy is challenging society to look at extreme body art as, well, art. I think its cool. If you don't like it, don't read it!
Ugh.