our signals are already out there, so any ET within 100ly potentially already knows how tasty we are.
Only for extremely, utterly low values of potential.
To put things in perspective, think of how difficult it is to detect extrasolar planets. The planet's reflected light is nearly completely swamped by the star's light. Now think of this: the reflected light is as if all the surface of the earth were covered with sun panels converting light into electricity very efficiently and all the power generated in this way were used to transmit a signal.
If some alien civilization is capable of receiving our radio and TV signals at their planet, they certainly have means to know we are here even if we didn't send out any signal.
I'm much more modest than that. I just wish they would bring the kde-classic icons back. It's so frustrating trying to distinguish among equally "slick" "modern" icons.
Also, bring back konqueror. A browser that works equally well on the net as on the local file system is awesome, if only it would work well with javascript. instead of fixing Konqueror javascript they came with that POS dolphin and tried to fix the javascript issue with rekonq.
Sorry, folks, although three lefts will make a right, two worngs don't.
WTF? Either there's very little downloading being done or those 100 people are very busy watching all those films and listening to all that music they download...
I half remember some proposal where a sail plane would spend decades in ever increasing elliptical orbits building up speed until it would change course and head off at some reasonable percentage of the speed of light.
That's not possible because escape velocity from the solar system is well below that. If you move at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light, your trajectory is straight, not elliptical. Or rather, it's an ellipse that's so elongated it goes beyond the heliopause.
Great quote. Let me rephrase that: "There are two kinds of Socialists: those who don't know Karl Marx was writing fiction, and those who don't know John Maynard Keynes was writing fiction."
I agree with everything you wrote, and I must add that Florida is absolutely not the best place for a commercial launch site.
The most interesting orbit for commercial launches is the geosynchronous orbit over the equator. The highest cost, by far, in a launch for GEO is inclination control. The added fuel a satellite needs to compensate for inclination in a launch from Florida costs about as much as a complete launch from an equatorial position. Launching from Florida doubles the cost, it's as simple as that.
Okay, this might be flamebait, but the most economic way for the US to get into the commercial space business would be to invade Somalia. That would mean great savings in insurance against piracy for shipping in the Indian Ocean and would allow for the construction of a nice space center right on the equator with thousands of miles of eastwards ocean range. Why not a combined NASA/Pentagon operation?
It is also located along Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion Equator", a great circle which passes over minimal land area, primarily North America and Africa. This means minimal land area over which an "oops" can fall onto inhabited areas when a launch fails to reach orbit.
Doesn't mean as much as it seems on first sight. If the flight fails badly, the equipment will fall within a few hundred miles of the launch site. Otherwise, it will reach orbit and then the earth is rotating away from the orbit plane. You don't need a full great circle to abort a mission.
The key point here is that orbital velocity is the main factor. In order to be reasonably efficient, a rocket must reach orbital velocity as soon as possible. If a rocket isn't in orbit within about 500~1000 miles from the launch site it will never reach orbit, so that's the most open space you will need for any launch site.
The good news is if you bind one or both ends of the tube to a substrate it tends the stay put rather well
As long as the tube doesn't break, in which case you have new, non-bound, ends. I suppose any event that liberates particles of nanotubes from a larger substrate involve breaking things, so one can still see some problems here.
Note that fullerenes form in natural soot. So its unlikely a typical fullerene is super dangerous.
The problem with this idea is that soot is a known carcinogen.
Many substances are known carcinogens, but how dangerous are they?
Asbestos is one substance that's a known carcinogen and is strictly controlled or outlawed in most countries, but it's not particularly dangerous unless one is constantly exposed to it in a workplace. Asbestos fibers occur naturally in the air and water, a normal adult has millions of asbestos fibers in the lungs.
Nanotubes resemble asbestos in some ways, so they probably have similar characteristics. They are probably mildly carcinogenic at continued exposures. However I don't think they will pose the same risk as asbestos did in the early 20th century because workplace conditions are much healthier these days. Besides, asbestos was mined, carbon nanotubes are fabricated. That makes a lot of difference in the relative air concentrations of each.
JP Morgan financed Tesla's experiments until his advisors told him about the true implications of Tesla's later work: no need for electric power companies, no need for massive investment in power infrastructure (financed with loans from Morgan's bank), no dividends paid to him by his utility companies. It was simpler to just "fix" Maxwell's Equations to eliminate the unknowns, and just train physicists with the simplified equations.
Yes, and the same advisors told him about the true implications of Ford's work: no need for horse feed comapnies, no need for horseshoe manufacturing, no need for buggy whip factories.
Free energy, if it existed, would be the biggest economic miracle in all the history of mankind, make no mistake about that. JP Morgan was certainly smart enough to realize that. He was also smart enough to realize that Tesla was a crackpot who had one good idea, three-phase alternate current.
The problem with most of Tesla's ideas is that they were just crazy speculations without any basis in reality, it's as simple as that. Otherwise any investor would be happy to finance him. George Westinghouse, for instance, bought Tesla's patents on AC motors, if electricity could be obtained at lower cost it would allow Westinghouse to sell more motors.
I wonder what would be the minimum legal height at which one can fly.
If a plane goes twenty thousand feet above your property, that seems to be perfectly legal. If one of those drones flies two feet above your property that seems like trespassing to me.
Is there some minimum height agt which an aircraft must fly over private property without authorization from the owner?
What's happening in Israel is the same thing that happened in America a hundred years ago: destruction of the aboriginal culture and denial that it ever existed.
You are aware that the "aboriginal culture" in Israel is the Jewish culture, right? When Moahmmed started his religion, Israel had already existed for about two thousand years.
You've been reading too much bad fiction and believing it. Your should be aware that you have been manipulated by multinational corporations brainwash.
So, essentially the bottom line of AOL is bolstered by "inertia"?
Works for the RIAA. Actually, truth be told, this is how a lot of out-dated behemoths stay in business.
Works for Microsoft. For me, the year of Linux on the desktop was 1999, I had been using Linux since 1995 but in 1999 I stopped using Microsoft for anything but a few games.
MacGyver was the epitome of how technology does not work
The message they tried to send wasn't that you can arc weld cast iron using a quarter for an electrode. The message was that it's cool to be a geek who can solve technical problems with improvised materials.
I think the many technical mistakes even made this message more effective. Who is the coolest kid, the one who tries to imitate MacGyver or the one who finds the mistakes in MacGyver?
We had an Astronaut/physics guy as the main character in I dream of Jeanie, A senior marketing executive as the husband of a witch in Bewitched, and many many others
Well, if someone thinks a "senior marketing executive" is a position that inspires technical innovation, I think I've found why the US is losing its edge.
In other TV shows of the time there was "Get Smart" with the most incompetent secret agent you can imagine and "Gilligan's Island" with the most incompetent sailor you can imagine. Of course, in the 1960s you also had "Hogan's Heroes" with a bunch of pretty competent fliers. Then in the 1980s there was "MacGyver" which is the epitome of technological ingenuity.
No, I don't think you can get much information on this trend from TV shows.
Slashdot Mirror
if it's prohibited then I'm sure /no one/ will lie about their call sign while trying to evade a gov't ban on communication.
What's the use of lying about their call sign when they are sending a signal that points straight at their transmitter antenna?
our signals are already out there, so any ET within 100ly potentially already knows how tasty we are.
Only for extremely, utterly low values of potential.
To put things in perspective, think of how difficult it is to detect extrasolar planets. The planet's reflected light is nearly completely swamped by the star's light. Now think of this: the reflected light is as if all the surface of the earth were covered with sun panels converting light into electricity very efficiently and all the power generated in this way were used to transmit a signal.
If some alien civilization is capable of receiving our radio and TV signals at their planet, they certainly have means to know we are here even if we didn't send out any signal.
Yesssss! Printing parity with KDE 3.5! Finally!
I'm much more modest than that. I just wish they would bring the kde-classic icons back. It's so frustrating trying to distinguish among equally "slick" "modern" icons.
Also, bring back konqueror. A browser that works equally well on the net as on the local file system is awesome, if only it would work well with javascript. instead of fixing Konqueror javascript they came with that POS dolphin and tried to fix the javascript issue with rekonq.
Sorry, folks, although three lefts will make a right, two worngs don't.
Awesome video...
Now let's see how fast that guy can change the spark plugs? (One of them I don't remember which, was a bitch to change)
WTF? Either there's very little downloading being done or those 100 people are very busy watching all those films and listening to all that music they download...
I half remember some proposal where a sail plane would spend decades in ever increasing elliptical orbits building up speed until it would change course and head off at some reasonable percentage of the speed of light.
That's not possible because escape velocity from the solar system is well below that. If you move at a reasonable percentage of the speed of light, your trajectory is straight, not elliptical. Or rather, it's an ellipse that's so elongated it goes beyond the heliopause.
Great quote. Let me rephrase that: "There are two kinds of Socialists: those who don't know Karl Marx was writing fiction, and those who don't know John Maynard Keynes was writing fiction."
I agree with everything you wrote, and I must add that Florida is absolutely not the best place for a commercial launch site.
The most interesting orbit for commercial launches is the geosynchronous orbit over the equator. The highest cost, by far, in a launch for GEO is inclination control. The added fuel a satellite needs to compensate for inclination in a launch from Florida costs about as much as a complete launch from an equatorial position. Launching from Florida doubles the cost, it's as simple as that.
Okay, this might be flamebait, but the most economic way for the US to get into the commercial space business would be to invade Somalia. That would mean great savings in insurance against piracy for shipping in the Indian Ocean and would allow for the construction of a nice space center right on the equator with thousands of miles of eastwards ocean range. Why not a combined NASA/Pentagon operation?
It is also located along Buckminster Fuller's "Dymaxion Equator", a great circle which passes over minimal land area, primarily North America and Africa. This means minimal land area over which an "oops" can fall onto inhabited areas when a launch fails to reach orbit.
Doesn't mean as much as it seems on first sight. If the flight fails badly, the equipment will fall within a few hundred miles of the launch site. Otherwise, it will reach orbit and then the earth is rotating away from the orbit plane. You don't need a full great circle to abort a mission.
The key point here is that orbital velocity is the main factor. In order to be reasonably efficient, a rocket must reach orbital velocity as soon as possible. If a rocket isn't in orbit within about 500~1000 miles from the launch site it will never reach orbit, so that's the most open space you will need for any launch site.
The good news is if you bind one or both ends of the tube to a substrate it tends the stay put rather well
As long as the tube doesn't break, in which case you have new, non-bound, ends. I suppose any event that liberates particles of nanotubes from a larger substrate involve breaking things, so one can still see some problems here.
Yes, all separatists use suicide bombers, regardless of their religion. Like in Quebec or Slovakia, for instance. Oh wait...
Note that fullerenes form in natural soot. So its unlikely a typical fullerene is super dangerous.
The problem with this idea is that soot is a known carcinogen.
Many substances are known carcinogens, but how dangerous are they?
Asbestos is one substance that's a known carcinogen and is strictly controlled or outlawed in most countries, but it's not particularly dangerous unless one is constantly exposed to it in a workplace. Asbestos fibers occur naturally in the air and water, a normal adult has millions of asbestos fibers in the lungs.
Nanotubes resemble asbestos in some ways, so they probably have similar characteristics. They are probably mildly carcinogenic at continued exposures. However I don't think they will pose the same risk as asbestos did in the early 20th century because workplace conditions are much healthier these days. Besides, asbestos was mined, carbon nanotubes are fabricated. That makes a lot of difference in the relative air concentrations of each.
JP Morgan financed Tesla's experiments until his advisors told him about the true implications of Tesla's later work: no need for electric power companies, no need for massive investment in power infrastructure (financed with loans from Morgan's bank), no dividends paid to him by his utility companies. It was simpler to just "fix" Maxwell's Equations to eliminate the unknowns, and just train physicists with the simplified equations.
Yes, and the same advisors told him about the true implications of Ford's work: no need for horse feed comapnies, no need for horseshoe manufacturing, no need for buggy whip factories.
Free energy, if it existed, would be the biggest economic miracle in all the history of mankind, make no mistake about that. JP Morgan was certainly smart enough to realize that. He was also smart enough to realize that Tesla was a crackpot who had one good idea, three-phase alternate current.
The problem with most of Tesla's ideas is that they were just crazy speculations without any basis in reality, it's as simple as that. Otherwise any investor would be happy to finance him. George Westinghouse, for instance, bought Tesla's patents on AC motors, if electricity could be obtained at lower cost it would allow Westinghouse to sell more motors.
I wonder what would be the minimum legal height at which one can fly.
If a plane goes twenty thousand feet above your property, that seems to be perfectly legal. If one of those drones flies two feet above your property that seems like trespassing to me.
Is there some minimum height agt which an aircraft must fly over private property without authorization from the owner?
What's happening in Israel is the same thing that happened in America a hundred years ago: destruction of the aboriginal culture and denial that it ever existed.
You are aware that the "aboriginal culture" in Israel is the Jewish culture, right? When Moahmmed started his religion, Israel had already existed for about two thousand years.
You've been reading too much bad fiction and believing it. Your should be aware that you have been manipulated by multinational corporations brainwash.
Governments have the power to deprive you of your life, liberty or property...literally.
So do corporations.
For a corporation to do that, two conditions must be met first:
1) there must exist a government
2) that government must be corrupt
Without a corrupt government, corporations do not have the powers you mention.
Without any government at all, let's say as happens in some parts of Africa, no corporations exist.
So, essentially the bottom line of AOL is bolstered by "inertia"?
Works for the RIAA. Actually, truth be told, this is how a lot of out-dated behemoths stay in business.
Works for Microsoft. For me, the year of Linux on the desktop was 1999, I had been using Linux since 1995 but in 1999 I stopped using Microsoft for anything but a few games.
just look how China's political system has benefited.
Just look at how China's economy has benefited.
MacGyver was the epitome of how technology does not work
The message they tried to send wasn't that you can arc weld cast iron using a quarter for an electrode. The message was that it's cool to be a geek who can solve technical problems with improvised materials.
I think the many technical mistakes even made this message more effective. Who is the coolest kid, the one who tries to imitate MacGyver or the one who finds the mistakes in MacGyver?
We had an Astronaut/physics guy as the main character in I dream of Jeanie, A senior marketing executive as the husband of a witch in Bewitched, and many many others
Well, if someone thinks a "senior marketing executive" is a position that inspires technical innovation, I think I've found why the US is losing its edge.
In other TV shows of the time there was "Get Smart" with the most incompetent secret agent you can imagine and "Gilligan's Island" with the most incompetent sailor you can imagine. Of course, in the 1960s you also had "Hogan's Heroes" with a bunch of pretty competent fliers. Then in the 1980s there was "MacGyver" which is the epitome of technological ingenuity.
No, I don't think you can get much information on this trend from TV shows.
This can also reduce your eventual social security benefits
Social security benefits are capped at relatively low levels, he wouldn't get but a small part of those $379k/year after he retired.
According to this link he would get about $11k if he paid taxes on $24k/year and about $26k if he paid taxes on $379k.
(made tougher by the one-shower-per-week Frenchman sitting next to you)
Why would a Frenchman be worse than any other person who bathes only once a week?
"...if your salary weren't way above what us cheapskates are willing to pay!"
Unfortunately, people who are skilled in IT are lacking in salary negotiating skills. The end result is that some of them go to the dark side.
This is only true if delta-sigma modulation is performed with infinite time-resolution
Only if you need infinite bandwidth. The magic of Delta-Sigma is that you can make the quantization noise as low as you like over a limited bandwidth.