I think everyone is overlooking the important parts of this...
Assuming it works as advertised:
If it isn't trivially cheap to produce in large quantities, it's worthless... It might find a niche similar to the one photovoltaics have carved out, but like those solar panels, you won't find these built into your notebook computer anytime soon, no matter how effecient.
And even if they are dirt cheap, they're of limited usefulness if they need a high tempurature difference. Sure, your CPU might get up to 90C degrees, but you don't want it covered by something that is going to hold (much of) that heat in, and melt your core. So the only possible location is perhaps a small area parallel to the airflow, where it won't impeed cooling, and therefore will only potentially be able to exploit a small fraction of the escaping heat to begin with.
Water is pushed through them backwards to clean them out, but this ruins the column's careful stacking as the large particles naturally settle to the bottom.
Now, maybe this is just a gross oversimplification of the problem... but I came up with two solutions to this "problem" a second after I read it...
1) Multiple seperate filters, each only containing a single size of sand particle.
2) Use the natural process (gravity and water) to your advantage... If backflushing perfectly inverts the particles, turn the whole filter over...
Of course, this is the first time I've heard anything negative about sand filtration systems, so I suspect this problem is largely invented for marketing purposes...
I think a lot of the reasons things "get better after high school" is because of the age you are when in high school. I didn't know who I was, took people's opinions of me too seriously, and couldn't get the girl I liked to notice me.
I expect a lot of that was actually to do with your being herded around in large groups of your peers, under a prison schedule, with absolutely no opportunity for individual identity at all until AFTER you were able to successfully escape... Your age was probably only a minor contributing factor.
Out here in the real world most employers require their employees to show up at a prescribed time every day. It's called working for a living.
And if your employer gave you 8 hours of only utterly mindless tasks (on top of similar work you're expected to do at home), in an extremely restrictive (in every sense) environment, did not allow you a lunch break, etc., would you continue to work there for 13 years straight or would you be extremely disgruntled, as public school students are?
Along the way Bilbo becomes an expert at fighting with light staffs. Gollum is going to become very ashmatic and have a penchant for black outfits with funny helmets.
The energy from the sun gets transfers into the H2O of the clouds. With respect to global warming, this is no different then the energy transferring into the ground.
Clouds are white, and reflect much of the sunlight, unlike the ground...
Even if that wasn't so, having the heat disperse higher up in the atmosphere would be a slight improvement, as more of it would then escape into space.
but isn't the reason that Venus's surface is so hot because of the excessive cloud layer?
It's the dense atmosphere of Venus (which incidentally also happens to make the formation of clouds possible) holding heat it, but not the clouds themselves.
Once everyone gets used to no roadsigns as the standard, things will be no safer than before.
There was no speed-limit in Montana for many years (safe to say everyone was familiar with it). Yet, the fatality rate stayed very low, until they introduced a 75MPH speed limit...
(1) traffic entering the roundabout gives way to all traffic on the roundabout, and (2) on a multi-lane roundabout, only exit from the first left if you entered in the left hand lane. Keep those 2 rules straight and it's near impossible for it to stuff up.
Gee, that's only 100Xs more complex than the rules at stop signs (first to stop, first to go), which you are complaining so loudly about...
A few weeks ago (here, on slashdot) they wanted to pour sulphur or something into the atmosphere, now smog?
If you RTFA you'd see they are talking about sulphur here, NOT SMOG.
What part of "the earth is 2/3rds water, which evaporates, naturally, the warmer the planet gets, covering the planet in CLEAN, NATURAL, REFLECTIVE, WHITE, FLUFFY, clouds of water vapour" do these brainiacs not get?
Oh, maybe they don't get the fact that (transparent) moisture in the air will naturally latch on to tiny particulates (like sulphur) to form opaque "REFLECTIVE, WHITE, FLUFFY, clouds of water vapour" when the humidity is lower than would otherwise be required.
Oh wait, maybe they do! And maybe it's only you (and the idiot mods) criticizing the experts that don't really understand what you're talking about.
Skype.. the propritary, we don't speak any accepted standard VoIP provider.
SIP sucks. That's all there is to it. Ridiculous overhead, and its preferred method of handling dropped or delayed packets is to storm the network with MORE of them...
Although I would much prefer they were open, Skype is still a big step in the right direction. If not for Skype, you probably wouldn't see Google making its own (more open) VoIP offering.
8-Track has a small cult following that's endeared to it because of it's impractical quirkiness.
It was quirky, no doubt. However, the impractical features are offset by some highly practical ones... For example, even today, a cousin of the 8-track (Fidelipac) is used for samples in recording studios... There really isn't any other way (outside digital) to do endless looping playback.
If they had reduced the physical size, and done a MUCH better job keeping the ends of the tape held together, 8-track might have kept going on strong for years, rather than becomming the butt of so many jokes.
No fast forward, no rewind. You wanna hear your favorite song again? Wait for it to work its way around.
Fast Forward wasn't common at first, but it appeared after a while. I can't imagine how a Rewind button could possibly work.... It's not easy to push the tape back into the CENTER of the spool from whence it came.
And the 8-track nature made rewind superfluous. Your 40-minute album was divided into quarters you could select from, so any song was generally no more than approx. 6 minutes away.
And you should see the box of 4-track tapes I recently discovered...
...is that I NEVER had a bad rental tape. More than half the DVDs I've rented have had problems of varying impact.
Whaaa??? Either you live in some magical fairy land that doesn't resemble our planet at all, or you've got some serious rose-colored glasses...
VHS tapes are ALWAYS damaged. A few times through various VCRs and you've got stretched tape which has tracking issues, desaturated colors, blurry or damaged picture, stretched or otherwise distored audio, etc.
With VHS tapes, you were happy if you were lucky enough to select a tape that was only seriously damaged at the beginning and end, and ignored the distortion and other issues throughout the video.
With DVDs, people aren't happy unless they're absolutely bit-perfect and 100% glitch-free. You occasionally have to wash dust and greasy fingerprints off slightly older discs (which is unlike VHS) but that trade-off is well worth it....but what do I know, I only rent 100 DVDs a year...
But here, you KNOW exactly where it came from, without even trying... Not so on TV, where they don't bother to mention those little details, and present it as THEIR OWN unbiased story.
Those points of view that do not have the resources to outshout other points of view do not get represented.
Unless you have a cute little puppy, or sad little kids, or a woman who cries on cue... Any one of the above will get you ridiculous ammounts of TV time, to expouse whatever view you want.
There's a carefully crafted and delicate balance of power (and money) between government, corporations and media (corporations). You, the voter, don't matter anymore.
Right. The voters don't matter anymore, as they proved in the mid-term elections a week ago...
Unless you want me to believe the corporations for some reason I can't imagine, WANTED democrats to come into power.
Only the state can realistically challenge their authority, and even then only with considerable effort and expense.
That effort and expense need not be necessary. The Republican party has been putting a LOT of effort into "Tort Reform", a code-word for removing the right of individuals from using corporations. If they put a FRACTION as much effort into limiting the legal remedies of corporations against the government, they could eliminate the vast majority of expenses associated with reforming corporations.
So now my cookie accept/block list is the size of New York's phone book. Heaven forbid in that barrage of cookies there was actually an important one. With all the obscure names they're given it's impossible to tell until you can't maintain your login.
Set cookies to be per-session, block banner ads, and then only white-list cookies from a few sites.
Hell, I can handle logging-in to most sites when I need them, so I only have 3 on my exceptions list.
I sometimes wonder why there isn't a little more effort put into doing terraforming experiments where land and resources are a little more accessible: earth.
The earth is already terraformed... Nothing you do can possibly make the earth any more "earth-like" than it already is.
There's plenty of pretty hostile environments here we could start to practice on,
HOSTILE TO WHOM?
There is no area on Earth, AFAIK, that doesn't support living organisms. As cold as the tundra is, and as hot as the deserts are, they all support large quantities of diverse life-forms.
Indeed, even humans can survive in the hottest places on earth without any air conditioning, and with absolutely minimal shelter. I know, because I'm one of them.
Slashdot Mirror
I think everyone is overlooking the important parts of this...
Assuming it works as advertised:
If it isn't trivially cheap to produce in large quantities, it's worthless... It might find a niche similar to the one photovoltaics have carved out, but like those solar panels, you won't find these built into your notebook computer anytime soon, no matter how effecient.
And even if they are dirt cheap, they're of limited usefulness if they need a high tempurature difference. Sure, your CPU might get up to 90C degrees, but you don't want it covered by something that is going to hold (much of) that heat in, and melt your core. So the only possible location is perhaps a small area parallel to the airflow, where it won't impeed cooling, and therefore will only potentially be able to exploit a small fraction of the escaping heat to begin with.
Now, maybe this is just a gross oversimplification of the problem... but I came up with two solutions to this "problem" a second after I read it...
1) Multiple seperate filters, each only containing a single size of sand particle.
2) Use the natural process (gravity and water) to your advantage... If backflushing perfectly inverts the particles, turn the whole filter over...
Of course, this is the first time I've heard anything negative about sand filtration systems, so I suspect this problem is largely invented for marketing purposes...
Those little differences are why I (and numerous others) call them American units, instead of imperial
Outdated? Because metric is more accurate than American units?
Just because it's somewhat newer, doesn't make it better.
I expect a lot of that was actually to do with your being herded around in large groups of your peers, under a prison schedule, with absolutely no opportunity for individual identity at all until AFTER you were able to successfully escape... Your age was probably only a minor contributing factor.
And if your employer gave you 8 hours of only utterly mindless tasks (on top of similar work you're expected to do at home), in an extremely restrictive (in every sense) environment, did not allow you a lunch break, etc., would you continue to work there for 13 years straight or would you be extremely disgruntled, as public school students are?
Legolas shot first!
Clouds are white, and reflect much of the sunlight, unlike the ground...
Even if that wasn't so, having the heat disperse higher up in the atmosphere would be a slight improvement, as more of it would then escape into space.
Ever see clouds when it's 120 above?
It's the dense atmosphere of Venus (which incidentally also happens to make the formation of clouds possible) holding heat it, but not the clouds themselves.
There was no speed-limit in Montana for many years (safe to say everyone was familiar with it). Yet, the fatality rate stayed very low, until they introduced a 75MPH speed limit...
Gee, that's only 100Xs more complex than the rules at stop signs (first to stop, first to go), which you are complaining so loudly about...
Because YOU haven't invented (inexpensive) (cold?) fusion yet...
If you RTFA you'd see they are talking about sulphur here, NOT SMOG.
Oh, maybe they don't get the fact that (transparent) moisture in the air will naturally latch on to tiny particulates (like sulphur) to form opaque "REFLECTIVE, WHITE, FLUFFY, clouds of water vapour" when the humidity is lower than would otherwise be required.
Oh wait, maybe they do! And maybe it's only you (and the idiot mods) criticizing the experts that don't really understand what you're talking about.
Hmm... Funny, I don't remember everyone in the world dying after the 1991 Pinatubo eruption, which this plan is modeled after.
Yup, lots of people dying from contrails every year...
And people think it's only the skeptics of global warming that are the mindless, anti-scientific nutjobs?
SIP sucks. That's all there is to it. Ridiculous overhead, and its preferred method of handling dropped or delayed packets is to storm the network with MORE of them...
Although I would much prefer they were open, Skype is still a big step in the right direction. If not for Skype, you probably wouldn't see Google making its own (more open) VoIP offering.
It was quirky, no doubt. However, the impractical features are offset by some highly practical ones... For example, even today, a cousin of the 8-track (Fidelipac) is used for samples in recording studios... There really isn't any other way (outside digital) to do endless looping playback.
If they had reduced the physical size, and done a MUCH better job keeping the ends of the tape held together, 8-track might have kept going on strong for years, rather than becomming the butt of so many jokes.
Fast Forward wasn't common at first, but it appeared after a while. I can't imagine how a Rewind button could possibly work.... It's not easy to push the tape back into the CENTER of the spool from whence it came.
And the 8-track nature made rewind superfluous. Your 40-minute album was divided into quarters you could select from, so any song was generally no more than approx. 6 minutes away.
And you should see the box of 4-track tapes I recently discovered...
Right, because 8-tracks were going strong until cassettes were cheaper 100% of the time...
Besides, they'll all probably get down very close to $50 in about a month, when the Christmas sales hit hard... (Last year I got a $10 digital camera)
I think you're answering a question that is very different from the one that was asked.
Whaaa??? Either you live in some magical fairy land that doesn't resemble our planet at all, or you've got some serious rose-colored glasses...
VHS tapes are ALWAYS damaged. A few times through various VCRs and you've got stretched tape which has tracking issues, desaturated colors, blurry or damaged picture, stretched or otherwise distored audio, etc.
With VHS tapes, you were happy if you were lucky enough to select a tape that was only seriously damaged at the beginning and end, and ignored the distortion and other issues throughout the video.
With DVDs, people aren't happy unless they're absolutely bit-perfect and 100% glitch-free. You occasionally have to wash dust and greasy fingerprints off slightly older discs (which is unlike VHS) but that trade-off is well worth it.
But here, you KNOW exactly where it came from, without even trying... Not so on TV, where they don't bother to mention those little details, and present it as THEIR OWN unbiased story.
Unless you have a cute little puppy, or sad little kids, or a woman who cries on cue... Any one of the above will get you ridiculous ammounts of TV time, to expouse whatever view you want.
Right. The voters don't matter anymore, as they proved in the mid-term elections a week ago...
Unless you want me to believe the corporations for some reason I can't imagine, WANTED democrats to come into power.
That effort and expense need not be necessary. The Republican party has been putting a LOT of effort into "Tort Reform", a code-word for removing the right of individuals from using corporations. If they put a FRACTION as much effort into limiting the legal remedies of corporations against the government, they could eliminate the vast majority of expenses associated with reforming corporations.
This is the second time, in as many days, that a link in the story has gone to some random nonsense at the bottom of the page.
It isn't all that hard to strip off, is it editors? Editors...
Set cookies to be per-session, block banner ads, and then only white-list cookies from a few sites.
Hell, I can handle logging-in to most sites when I need them, so I only have 3 on my exceptions list.
The earth is already terraformed... Nothing you do can possibly make the earth any more "earth-like" than it already is.
HOSTILE TO WHOM?
There is no area on Earth, AFAIK, that doesn't support living organisms. As cold as the tundra is, and as hot as the deserts are, they all support large quantities of diverse life-forms.
Indeed, even humans can survive in the hottest places on earth without any air conditioning, and with absolutely minimal shelter. I know, because I'm one of them.