What are the prospects for a single orbiting planet (let's exclude other objects) orbiting both stars in a figure 8 configuration, crossing the barycenter of the star's combined rotations?
(Eg, both stars orbit clockwise as seen from plane of rotation north, and orbit each other in an elipse. A planet orbits first one star, then the other, crossing the barycenter at the period of maximal approach of the two stars, moving from one star to the other like a dance partner in a ballroom routine.)
Assuming that the objects are free from outside gravitational purturbations, are exactly the right distance apart, and that the periodicity of the planet's orbits between the stars is exactly synchronized, would such a system be stable?
I could provide a number of theories as to why this is.
For instance, people cede more power to those they feel will provide better for them. (Like it or not, this is exactly what voting is.)
A skilled confidence man (aka, a "con artist") can supply services, and silently obstruct competition so as to artificially inflate the apparent need for his services, while simultaneously degrading the quality of his service rendered.
He can do this, and people will adore him for it. (Just look at the fearless leadership of N. Korea.)
Flagrant liberalism is just a form of reverse lobbying. The government provides subsidized services and products to the public, who then becomes dependent upon them. The government does this through exclusivitiy deals with private enterprises and contractors, creating graft.
Ask yourself this: why is the stock exchange ONLY in new york? Given the global nature of stock trading, wouldn't a more decentralized ntwork, with trade centers clustered around other population centers make more logistical sense?
You know, like how Akamai manages to handle so much data, by having servers fucking everywhere.
It couldn't be because of exclusivity deals, and long lsting "partnerships" (graft) between wallstreet and NewYork, and the fed could it? No. Certainly not. The stock exchange people had absolutely no part in the rapid removal of Occupy. None whatsoever.
Here it is in a nut shell for you:
1) government wants people to stop detracting from their policies, and to blindly vote for them year after year. 2) they reverse-lobby through public programs, to offer vital services waaaaaaaay below market price. 3) they get industry on board, with twisted backroom deals that exclude the competition that would prevent the plan from working. 4) the government subsidizes their chosen partners, and legally bars competition from the market. They spend taxpayer money on maintaining this relationship, while their partners still charge for services. The suppliers still get paid as if they were charging fair market price, and often, way better through the other perks of the subsidy, like tax exemption. 5) people think they get a good deal, as since the government is supplying (financing) the services, they will surely be highly reliable. (Cough.) 6) in reality, removed from competative pressures, infrastructue deteriorates or languishes compared to real competition based systems. 7) big industries collect lots of money from these liberal spending policies in government, and aggregate there.
The NYC taxi system is a very clearcut example of graft in action, as is the subway system.
Want to see NYC shine again? Remove exclusivity from contracts. Watch unions shit gold bricks, and watch industries quake with fear as the gravy train derails for them, and they have to earn their money.
Even though the taxi contract is due for renewal/renegotiation, this guy's business plan goes against the symbiotic relationship between city and enterprise. It will *never* work.
Just imagine the 'lulz' that could be unleashed on the world, should the creators of malicious computer code, decide to dabble in wetware systems and genetic code.
We release the documentation publicly already you know. Incuding decompiled source, such as it is.
All that is needed, is that the technology becomes ubiquitous, and cheap.
Eventually, someone *will* make something like it. Someone with nothing to lose.
Sorry to be such a joykill, but I don't deny being a misanthropist. I am just not a cold blooded murderous misanthropist. I see the creation of such a horrible thing as being as inevitable as botnets and government malware were.
We use virus carriers to inject genetic payloads into plant and animal species as a routine practice. Monsanto especially is very well equipped to make such a...."product"...
The technology is sufficiently advanced and widely enough deployed that the proposal is quite doable.
The issue, is that it is inconsionably unethical. You would have to be freaking Trevor Goodchild to make and release something like this.
Take HIV. (Yes, that virus.) Attach to the rna strand an rna encoded copy of the gene for botuloid toxin, and a regulator gene to control expression. (Say, something that only permits activation during certain cyclical conditons, like say, menstration, or some other chemical trigger, so that it stays methylated and inactive in the host until that time.) Use the kind that is immune to the delta-CCR32 mutation, for maximum carnage.
Release into the wild.
Enjoy lots of dead people, as their own bodies begin cranking out the toxins that kill them. Quickly. Horribly.
Want to not catch it? Stay away from blood, needles, and sexual contact with anyone.
Tada. Doesn't effect a wide range of species, is fairly human specific, has a set interval of activation enabling incubation in the host to promote spread...
Its the population control that keeps on working.
(Note. I do not actually advocate this position. I am merely pointing out that it would be fairly easy to do, and that the reslts would be profound and would target rich and poor alike. Humans would have to adapt to not having unprotected sex, should it reach true pandemic proportions. Being politically, racially, and demographically agnostic, it is the perfect vehicle.)
I was more aiming for the 'la la la, wow, this internet thing in the future is fantastic, I can get any..... omg, is that mdoing what I think he's doing!? What is wrong with these people!? "Trol-lol-lol"?'
Eg, wells sits down at the free computer kiosk at the familiar setting of the library, starts researching things to see how culture has changed, and gets sub jected to the very worst the internet has to offer. Walked in expecting enlightenment. Gets a stark lesson in the futility that is man.
Even better, reads online that 4chan is a bastion of uncensored speech. Decides to look for himself (expecting more of a french salon). Gets told "tits or GTFO", called a "newfag", etc. Quickly realizes that no speech of any real importance goes on there. Leaves disappointed after having been pelted with internet memes.
The issue is not the lack of logic, or having weaker minds. (The exact counter argument could be made, in fact. The greeks had an entire profession built around training people to remember huge volumes of information, for instance.)
The issue is the distance on cultural norms, and radical changes that disruptive technologies produce. (Compare the culture of the 80s, with that of 2012. What changed? What stayed the same? Why?)
As for the 1880s mathematitian being daunted by factoring a 4096 bit integer, on paper... approach this rationally.
A 4096 bit integer has more possible factors in an exhaustive search than there were human beings on the planet at the time. Assuming 100% utilization of 100% of the world population, factoring a single crypto block would take more time than the human race had previously existed up until that point. Even with technological devices of the time, running at a few hundred operations per second (per babbage), the absurdity of doing this so uncle sam wouldn't spy on your private correspondence would be dumbfounding.
(People used cryptograms back then, sure. But nothing approaching the "overkill" of modern cryptography. When we measure "time to factor complete space" in terms of "time before universe dies of heat death", using modern, multi-gigahertz machines with billions of FLOPS each, *and* ubiquity of such horsepower, doing it on PAPER would be laughable, and a good mathematician would point out how impractical that is. Its like inventing superliminal processing, only to get porno from the future.)
As for victorian era porno.. with exception to houses of ill repute, and dog and pony shows, the "pornography" of the era is easily trumped with a victoria's secret catalog. Goatse, tubgirl, and "2 girls, one cup" and their ilk would send victorians rushing for the door. Remember, "dog and pony" were the "extreme" of that era. The shit on the internet, both real and fake alike-- puts even the raciest stuff from that era to shame in terms of being scandalous.
While wells might be willing to have an open mind about the future, I think he would draw the line at child porn snuff films, and people using the greatest accomplishment since the library of alexandria to wipe their asses with. (Intellectually speaking.)
I agree. Explaining the extreme difficulty involved with machines even approaching that level of autonomous function would be hard to do indeed.
Even today, few people realize how excrutiatingly difficult AI really is. Something as intelligent as a mouse would be a radical accomplishment. (And we routinely make science fiction where AIs with superhuman intellect are commonplace...)
Like everything, the devil's in the details. Sadly, this is something that routinely goes unnoticed or unappreciated, even today, where the reality stares us brazenly in the face and mocks us openly. (How many times have you had to deal with the starry-eyed executive, who has "a great idea"?)
Many of the things we have today came from trying to solve the frustratingly difficult, but seemingly simple things people have imagined for ages. Like going to the moon. I would be hard pressed to make an all-inclusive list of things around me at this very moment that exist exclusively because we dared to tackle that seemingly simple problem, [which it turns out wasn't so simple.]
I just think it prudent for people daydreaming about the future to rationalize that the future world where your romantic idea becomes real, is one that you simply cannot understand, because of all the knowledge and social changes it brought in the intervening time.
When I think about a future with strong ai in it, I imagine a future where goatse-esque things are commonplace, and even appearing on things like gameshows. Essentially phillip k dick on an ecstacy and crack smoothie. (With barbituates and chocolate chips blended in.)
The 1880s were still deely gripped by puritanism, social stratification as being a good thing, institutionalized racism, and a very narrow and rigid view of what was considered "acceptable", and "proper".
We aren't talking a comical spin on modern problems with aliens and silly technologies.
Think about what *we* consider unspeakable. THAT, times 9000.
I doubt that a 19th century time traveler would have a sufficiently powerful adjective to describe what he would see, and how he would percieve it.
Many of the things we know today, and even take for granted, would be seen as pure magic to a person from the 19th century.
Take for instance something we are all on (precariously) friendly terms with, like the integrated circuit.
The finer points of how an IC work (such as the quantum nature of the bandgap, especially at nanoscopic scales) would be nearly incomprehensible to such a person.
Fiberoptic communication, with such strange things as helical polarization would bake their noodles, not to mention such curious things as the GPS network. (Einstein didn't come along until much later. GPS wouldn't work without SR, due to earth's frame dragging.)
Or even just the workings inside a cellphone, or just a microwave oven.
They might have been able to imagin the basic concept of the device, (eg, "portable wireless telephone"), but the signal encoding stratagems used to get the most from limited commodities of wireless band? In an age without computers, the math involved would be frightening! Something like 4096bit RSA ecryption would induce nightmares. (Just the mere notion that somebody might be willing to *try* factoring a number like that would cause dumbstruck expressions of incredulity. Let alone people routinely attempting to attack the problem from a myriad of different theoretical angles, and the impetus to do so.)
Others that would floor people from the 19th century, would be ENGINEERING microbes. They often felt that complete eradication of germs was desirable. (Just read the last part of "the time machine") As such, the very idea of creating new ones would be cognitatively jarring. Using engineered viruses for gene therapy and the like would seem backward and regressive to their views.
Wells' time traveler would be astounded, and confounded simultaneously by our modern world.
Here's a clever thought experiment for you: imagine H.G. Wells dropping in for a sunset view from his time machine at a nude beach, asking politely for a newspaper and being laughed at, going to a delapidated paper book library, and told by a 10 year old that he could have all the books in the entire world litterally in the palm of his hand. Expose him to the radical idea of the internet, then expose him to 4chan (or worse, a site dedicated to 'rule 34'), and reveal the shocking truth that most people use the internet for pornographic entertainment instead of personal improvement. (Remember, 19th century sexual repressedness)
My money would be on the time traveler being convinced we are all incurably insane, rushing back to his time machine, and wondering how it all went so terribly wrong.
It almost makes you wish that betavoltaics were a valid option.you make up for the abysmal internal efficiency with the absurd service life, and lack the need to recharge it.
I almost wonder if a viable one could be made with tritium gas, a frequency specific phosphor layer, and a high efficiency single freq photovoltaic composite. (Tritium releases beta particles, excites the phosphor, which releases light at the fixed freq that the photocell is designed for. This protects the cell from the deleterious effects of direct beta exposure, at a hit on efficiency.)
Then again, people would piss and moan about "nuclear".
If you remove the Tata's gas-tank first, (why keep it?) You can rid at least 20 to 50lbs right there.
How much does an aftermarket prius battery weigh?
(I am suggesting a prius battery, because it comes with all the whizbang charge leveling and cell safety hardware already inside it. Rolling your own is more fun, but also much more work. Also, buying LiON or LiPO batteries in bulk may prove a daunting obstacle.)
With a 37hp engine, it is theoretically drop-in replacable with an agricultural grade consumer electric motor. (I can get them that strong at at least 4 places in my city alone.)
Dropping a battery array, and turning it into a plugin electric conversion should be fairly painless, especially without all the energy hungry appliances.
This is a hardware hack's dream just waiting to happen.
It should be drivable on just a few kilowatts' worth of current flow, meaning you don't have to be crazy on the battery. If you have the cash in pocket, you could put a prius battery in the trunk (such as it is... probably the best use for it, given the tiny size), and get a pretty decent town car.
Won't get any dates driving it, but this is slashdot.
I KNEW those amiga fanbois were up to something! All this time their precious UAE was silently gathering damning personal biometric information on their users, hoping to shame them away from PCs running windows, MacOS and Linux!
Wait.. what? United Arab Emerates? Not Ubiqutious Amiga Emulator?
Wait, what? Nothing to do with amiga users at all? Sir, do you know what site this is!? Honestly, what is this world coming to!
[Note for the humor deprived: there has been so much bullshit pertaining to the middle east lately that I felt some humor was warranted. Deal with it.]
Also, in addition to the actual advert itself, if we also factored in all the inter-server communication between advertising companies as well, (eg, slashdot sends a request to the advert company server [via the user], telling the advert where the advert was displayed for payment processing, which then sends a random advert, as well as the cross-hosted script requests, and added http get requests for said files that would not have been generated without the need to serve the advert.), all those nickles and dimes surely add up?
I realize network neutrality is the defacro norm (at least for the time being), but let's say backbone provider A has a peering agreement with downstream provider B, and advertising company C.
Downstream B gets lots of traffic through their pipe from advert company B, pumped into the through backbone connction A.
The adverts have to traverse intermediate networks to reach the "recipient".
That same 900kb of data takes bandwidth on many networks, and is not exactly free to transmit.
What I was asking, is if the amount of traffic sent by advertisers through downstream networks could be considered abusive. (Eg, what percentage of traffic is unsolicited advertisements lobbed at users, just for trying to use a web service, especially compared to the amount of data that web service would consume all by itself.)
I would be interested in seeing actual transfer amount statistics, breaking down the traffic through a major backbone provider.
Exactly what percentage of internet traffic is "service", and what percentage is "advertisment related"?
(EG, what prcentage of the data transfered in a 24 hour polling period is explicitly advertisement related, vs all other uses.)
I have see some very data hungry adverts. Flash based ads especially. (Blizzard, I am looking at you. Movie studios, you too!) Give that those can easily be 900kb+ each, just how much of their hosting bill is actually being levied for serving the adverts they claim they need to serve, to pay for their hosting bill?
Would an ad-starved internet actually have cleaner pipes?
Or just flash the firmware of the printer, inject a new key, and point at said empty database.
Or, just monitor the network traffic and attach some logic probes to the printer's processing unit, validate a valid object, invalidate an invalid object, then build a modchip that automagically injects the the "Approved!" result from the DRM system using a homebrew microcontroller.
Or, just build your own NC interface, and gut the existing printer, and roll your own from the actuators, heaters, nozzels and table.
Sadly, there seems to be this irrational need by many people to ascribe greatness to a group by vicariously claiming a portion of the grandeur by association.
Eg, because they were American scientists, this makes America greater, and by association, americans greater.
Nevermind that this innately divisive, unnecessary, unwarranted, stupid, and wasteful. It makes people completely unrelated to the subject matter, ans who do not comprehend the implication of the awarded science behind the award, to feel good about themselves, by excluding others.
The reality is that it should not and does not matter which country the scientists who undertook this work were from. The work benefits all of mankind as a whole, which is exactly why a nobel prize could be awarded.
Needless to say, I find the rationale behind the sensationalism concerning nationality in the announcement to be offensive, and I happen to be an american.
Pinkie Pie simply makes use of exploit code to circumvent google's "real name" requiremets for google services. It was, in fact, by getting good at retaining his pseudonym that he became skilled enough to enter these competitions.;D
(And I totally pulled that out of my ass. For my next trick..)
More than just that, the mechanisms implicated in intercellular communication are involved in a great many areas, including new and novel approaches to regenerative medicine such as stem cell treatments, and in emerging fields like biotechnology.
So essentially, they have openly stated that because the practice is useful to the government ut should not be subjected to judiciary review, despite clear concerns from privacy advocates, and seemingly legitimate legal challenges to the validity of the practice?
Since when did the judiciary stop doing its job and become rubber stampers?
If the red giant star is spewing that much matter, and has a companion star that for all practical purposes will greatly outlive its partner, what are the prospects for novel planetary formation from this structure over cosmological time?
Slashdot Mirror
What are the prospects for a single orbiting planet (let's exclude other objects) orbiting both stars in a figure 8 configuration, crossing the barycenter of the star's combined rotations?
(Eg, both stars orbit clockwise as seen from plane of rotation north, and orbit each other in an elipse. A planet orbits first one star, then the other, crossing the barycenter at the period of maximal approach of the two stars, moving from one star to the other like a dance partner in a ballroom routine.)
Assuming that the objects are free from outside gravitational purturbations, are exactly the right distance apart, and that the periodicity of the planet's orbits between the stars is exactly synchronized, would such a system be stable?
I could provide a number of theories as to why this is.
For instance, people cede more power to those they feel will provide better for them. (Like it or not, this is exactly what voting is.)
A skilled confidence man (aka, a "con artist") can supply services, and silently obstruct competition so as to artificially inflate the apparent need for his services, while simultaneously degrading the quality of his service rendered.
He can do this, and people will adore him for it. (Just look at the fearless leadership of N. Korea.)
Flagrant liberalism is just a form of reverse lobbying. The government provides subsidized services and products to the public, who then becomes dependent upon them. The government does this through exclusivitiy deals with private enterprises and contractors, creating graft.
Ask yourself this: why is the stock exchange ONLY in new york? Given the global nature of stock trading, wouldn't a more decentralized ntwork, with trade centers clustered around other population centers make more logistical sense?
You know, like how Akamai manages to handle so much data, by having servers fucking everywhere.
It couldn't be because of exclusivity deals, and long lsting "partnerships" (graft) between wallstreet and NewYork, and the fed could it? No. Certainly not. The stock exchange people had absolutely no part in the rapid removal of Occupy. None whatsoever.
Here it is in a nut shell for you:
1) government wants people to stop detracting from their policies, and to blindly vote for them year after year.
2) they reverse-lobby through public programs, to offer vital services waaaaaaaay below market price.
3) they get industry on board, with twisted backroom deals that exclude the competition that would prevent the plan from working.
4) the government subsidizes their chosen partners, and legally bars competition from the market. They spend taxpayer money on maintaining this relationship, while their partners still charge for services. The suppliers still get paid as if they were charging fair market price, and often, way better through the other perks of the subsidy, like tax exemption.
5) people think they get a good deal, as since the government is supplying (financing) the services, they will surely be highly reliable. (Cough.)
6) in reality, removed from competative pressures, infrastructue deteriorates or languishes compared to real competition based systems.
7) big industries collect lots of money from these liberal spending policies in government, and aggregate there.
The NYC taxi system is a very clearcut example of graft in action, as is the subway system.
Want to see NYC shine again? Remove exclusivity from contracts. Watch unions shit gold bricks, and watch industries quake with fear as the gravy train derails for them, and they have to earn their money.
Even though the taxi contract is due for renewal/renegotiation, this guy's business plan goes against the symbiotic relationship between city and enterprise. It will *never* work.
Just imagine the 'lulz' that could be unleashed on the world, should the creators of malicious computer code, decide to dabble in wetware systems and genetic code.
We release the documentation publicly already you know. Incuding decompiled source, such as it is.
All that is needed, is that the technology becomes ubiquitous, and cheap.
Eventually, someone *will* make something like it. Someone with nothing to lose.
Sorry to be such a joykill, but I don't deny being a misanthropist. I am just not a cold blooded murderous misanthropist. I see the creation of such a horrible thing as being as inevitable as botnets and government malware were.
We use virus carriers to inject genetic payloads into plant and animal species as a routine practice. Monsanto especially is very well equipped to make such a ...."product"...
The technology is sufficiently advanced and widely enough deployed that the proposal is quite doable.
The issue, is that it is inconsionably unethical. You would have to be freaking Trevor Goodchild to make and release something like this.
No. Nukes cause too much collateral damage.
Here's a much better idea.
Take HIV. (Yes, that virus.) Attach to the rna strand an rna encoded copy of the gene for botuloid toxin, and a regulator gene to control expression. (Say, something that only permits activation during certain cyclical conditons, like say, menstration, or some other chemical trigger, so that it stays methylated and inactive in the host until that time.) Use the kind that is immune to the delta-CCR32 mutation, for maximum carnage.
Release into the wild.
Enjoy lots of dead people, as their own bodies begin cranking out the toxins that kill them. Quickly. Horribly.
Want to not catch it? Stay away from blood, needles, and sexual contact with anyone.
Tada. Doesn't effect a wide range of species, is fairly human specific, has a set interval of activation enabling incubation in the host to promote spread...
Its the population control that keeps on working.
(Note. I do not actually advocate this position. I am merely pointing out that it would be fairly easy to do, and that the reslts would be profound and would target rich and poor alike. Humans would have to adapt to not having unprotected sex, should it reach true pandemic proportions. Being politically, racially, and demographically agnostic, it is the perfect vehicle.)
I was more aiming for the 'la la la, wow, this internet thing in the future is fantastic, I can get any..... omg, is that mdoing what I think he's doing!? What is wrong with these people!? "Trol-lol-lol"?'
Eg, wells sits down at the free computer kiosk at the familiar setting of the library, starts researching things to see how culture has changed, and gets sub jected to the very worst the internet has to offer. Walked in expecting enlightenment. Gets a stark lesson in the futility that is man.
Even better, reads online that 4chan is a bastion of uncensored speech. Decides to look for himself (expecting more of a french salon). Gets told "tits or GTFO", called a "newfag", etc. Quickly realizes that no speech of any real importance goes on there. Leaves disappointed after having been pelted with internet memes.
The issue is not the lack of logic, or having weaker minds. (The exact counter argument could be made, in fact. The greeks had an entire profession built around training people to remember huge volumes of information, for instance.)
The issue is the distance on cultural norms, and radical changes that disruptive technologies produce. (Compare the culture of the 80s, with that of 2012. What changed? What stayed the same? Why?)
As for the 1880s mathematitian being daunted by factoring a 4096 bit integer, on paper... approach this rationally.
A 4096 bit integer has more possible factors in an exhaustive search than there were human beings on the planet at the time. Assuming 100% utilization of 100% of the world population, factoring a single crypto block would take more time than the human race had previously existed up until that point. Even with technological devices of the time, running at a few hundred operations per second (per babbage), the absurdity of doing this so uncle sam wouldn't spy on your private correspondence would be dumbfounding.
(People used cryptograms back then, sure. But nothing approaching the "overkill" of modern cryptography. When we measure "time to factor complete space" in terms of "time before universe dies of heat death", using modern, multi-gigahertz machines with billions of FLOPS each, *and* ubiquity of such horsepower, doing it on PAPER would be laughable, and a good mathematician would point out how impractical that is. Its like inventing superliminal processing, only to get porno from the future.)
As for victorian era porno.. with exception to houses of ill repute, and dog and pony shows, the "pornography" of the era is easily trumped with a victoria's secret catalog. Goatse, tubgirl, and "2 girls, one cup" and their ilk would send victorians rushing for the door. Remember, "dog and pony" were the "extreme" of that era. The shit on the internet, both real and fake alike-- puts even the raciest stuff from that era to shame in terms of being scandalous.
While wells might be willing to have an open mind about the future, I think he would draw the line at child porn snuff films, and people using the greatest accomplishment since the library of alexandria to wipe their asses with. (Intellectually speaking.)
I agree. Explaining the extreme difficulty involved with machines even approaching that level of autonomous function would be hard to do indeed.
Even today, few people realize how excrutiatingly difficult AI really is. Something as intelligent as a mouse would be a radical accomplishment. (And we routinely make science fiction where AIs with superhuman intellect are commonplace...)
Like everything, the devil's in the details. Sadly, this is something that routinely goes unnoticed or unappreciated, even today, where the reality stares us brazenly in the face and mocks us openly. (How many times have you had to deal with the starry-eyed executive, who has "a great idea"?)
Many of the things we have today came from trying to solve the frustratingly difficult, but seemingly simple things people have imagined for ages. Like going to the moon. I would be hard pressed to make an all-inclusive list of things around me at this very moment that exist exclusively because we dared to tackle that seemingly simple problem, [which it turns out wasn't so simple.]
I just think it prudent for people daydreaming about the future to rationalize that the future world where your romantic idea becomes real, is one that you simply cannot understand, because of all the knowledge and social changes it brought in the intervening time.
When I think about a future with strong ai in it, I imagine a future where goatse-esque things are commonplace, and even appearing on things like gameshows. Essentially phillip k dick on an ecstacy and crack smoothie. (With barbituates and chocolate chips blended in.)
Worse.
The 1880s were still deely gripped by puritanism, social stratification as being a good thing, institutionalized racism, and a very narrow and rigid view of what was considered "acceptable", and "proper".
We aren't talking a comical spin on modern problems with aliens and silly technologies.
Think about what *we* consider unspeakable. THAT, times 9000.
I doubt that a 19th century time traveler would have a sufficiently powerful adjective to describe what he would see, and how he would percieve it.
Many of the things we know today, and even take for granted, would be seen as pure magic to a person from the 19th century.
Take for instance something we are all on (precariously) friendly terms with, like the integrated circuit.
The finer points of how an IC work (such as the quantum nature of the bandgap, especially at nanoscopic scales) would be nearly incomprehensible to such a person.
Fiberoptic communication, with such strange things as helical polarization would bake their noodles, not to mention such curious things as the GPS network. (Einstein didn't come along until much later. GPS wouldn't work without SR, due to earth's frame dragging.)
Or even just the workings inside a cellphone, or just a microwave oven.
They might have been able to imagin the basic concept of the device, (eg, "portable wireless telephone"), but the signal encoding stratagems used to get the most from limited commodities of wireless band? In an age without computers, the math involved would be frightening! Something like 4096bit RSA ecryption would induce nightmares. (Just the mere notion that somebody might be willing to *try* factoring a number like that would cause dumbstruck expressions of incredulity. Let alone people routinely attempting to attack the problem from a myriad of different theoretical angles, and the impetus to do so.)
Others that would floor people from the 19th century, would be ENGINEERING microbes. They often felt that complete eradication of germs was desirable. (Just read the last part of "the time machine") As such, the very idea of creating new ones would be cognitatively jarring. Using engineered viruses for gene therapy and the like would seem backward and regressive to their views.
Wells' time traveler would be astounded, and confounded simultaneously by our modern world.
Here's a clever thought experiment for you: imagine H.G. Wells dropping in for a sunset view from his time machine at a nude beach, asking politely for a newspaper and being laughed at, going to a delapidated paper book library, and told by a 10 year old that he could have all the books in the entire world litterally in the palm of his hand. Expose him to the radical idea of the internet, then expose him to 4chan (or worse, a site dedicated to 'rule 34'), and reveal the shocking truth that most people use the internet for pornographic entertainment instead of personal improvement. (Remember, 19th century sexual repressedness)
My money would be on the time traveler being convinced we are all incurably insane, rushing back to his time machine, and wondering how it all went so terribly wrong.
Really, our world more strongly resembles the various "decadent decline" models of the fiction of their time, where people are depicted as being unacceptably vulgar, evil, and jaded. (Take for instance, the descriptions of the decadent residents of k'n-yan, from lovecraft's novels) A short, 10 minute exposure to witnessing an online FPS shooter, with 8 year olds "teabagging" people, with the conception that "this routinely happens" would surely sinch it.
Our world would traumatize people from the 19th century.
I agree.
It almost makes you wish that betavoltaics were a valid option.you make up for the abysmal internal efficiency with the absurd service life, and lack the need to recharge it.
I almost wonder if a viable one could be made with tritium gas, a frequency specific phosphor layer, and a high efficiency single freq photovoltaic composite. (Tritium releases beta particles, excites the phosphor, which releases light at the fixed freq that the photocell is designed for. This protects the cell from the deleterious effects of direct beta exposure, at a hit on efficiency.)
Then again, people would piss and moan about "nuclear".
If you remove the Tata's gas-tank first, (why keep it?) You can rid at least 20 to 50lbs right there.
How much does an aftermarket prius battery weigh?
(I am suggesting a prius battery, because it comes with all the whizbang charge leveling and cell safety hardware already inside it. Rolling your own is more fun, but also much more work. Also, buying LiON or LiPO batteries in bulk may prove a daunting obstacle.)
With a 37hp engine, it is theoretically drop-in replacable with an agricultural grade consumer electric motor. (I can get them that strong at at least 4 places in my city alone.)
Dropping a battery array, and turning it into a plugin electric conversion should be fairly painless, especially without all the energy hungry appliances.
This is a hardware hack's dream just waiting to happen.
It should be drivable on just a few kilowatts' worth of current flow, meaning you don't have to be crazy on the battery. If you have the cash in pocket, you could put a prius battery in the trunk (such as it is... probably the best use for it, given the tiny size), and get a pretty decent town car.
Won't get any dates driving it, but this is slashdot.
I KNEW those amiga fanbois were up to something! All this time their precious UAE was silently gathering damning personal biometric information on their users, hoping to shame them away from PCs running windows, MacOS and Linux!
Wait.. what? United Arab Emerates? Not Ubiqutious Amiga Emulator?
Wait, what? Nothing to do with amiga users at all? Sir, do you know what site this is!? Honestly, what is this world coming to!
[Note for the humor deprived: there has been so much bullshit pertaining to the middle east lately that I felt some humor was warranted. Deal with it.]
Also, in addition to the actual advert itself, if we also factored in all the inter-server communication between advertising companies as well, (eg, slashdot sends a request to the advert company server [via the user], telling the advert where the advert was displayed for payment processing, which then sends a random advert, as well as the cross-hosted script requests, and added http get requests for said files that would not have been generated without the need to serve the advert.), all those nickles and dimes surely add up?
I mean..
I realize network neutrality is the defacro norm (at least for the time being), but let's say backbone provider A has a peering agreement with downstream provider B, and advertising company C.
Downstream B gets lots of traffic through their pipe from advert company B, pumped into the through backbone connction A.
The adverts have to traverse intermediate networks to reach the "recipient".
That same 900kb of data takes bandwidth on many networks, and is not exactly free to transmit.
What I was asking, is if the amount of traffic sent by advertisers through downstream networks could be considered abusive. (Eg, what percentage of traffic is unsolicited advertisements lobbed at users, just for trying to use a web service, especially compared to the amount of data that web service would consume all by itself.)
I would be interested in seeing actual transfer amount statistics, breaking down the traffic through a major backbone provider.
Exactly what percentage of internet traffic is "service", and what percentage is "advertisment related"?
(EG, what prcentage of the data transfered in a 24 hour polling period is explicitly advertisement related, vs all other uses.)
I have see some very data hungry adverts. Flash based ads especially. (Blizzard, I am looking at you. Movie studios, you too!) Give that those can easily be 900kb+ each, just how much of their hosting bill is actually being levied for serving the adverts they claim they need to serve, to pay for their hosting bill?
Would an ad-starved internet actually have cleaner pipes?
Or just flash the firmware of the printer, inject a new key, and point at said empty database.
Or, just monitor the network traffic and attach some logic probes to the printer's processing unit, validate a valid object, invalidate an invalid object, then build a modchip that automagically injects the the "Approved!" result from the DRM system using a homebrew microcontroller.
Or, just build your own NC interface, and gut the existing printer, and roll your own from the actuators, heaters, nozzels and table.
"This is a cordless electric rotary tool. It can be used to dismantle annoying robots."
Sadly, there seems to be this irrational need by many people to ascribe greatness to a group by vicariously claiming a portion of the grandeur by association.
Eg, because they were American scientists, this makes America greater, and by association, americans greater.
Nevermind that this innately divisive, unnecessary, unwarranted, stupid, and wasteful. It makes people completely unrelated to the subject matter, ans who do not comprehend the implication of the awarded science behind the award, to feel good about themselves, by excluding others.
The reality is that it should not and does not matter which country the scientists who undertook this work were from. The work benefits all of mankind as a whole, which is exactly why a nobel prize could be awarded.
Needless to say, I find the rationale behind the sensationalism concerning nationality in the announcement to be offensive, and I happen to be an american.
The answer is simple.
Pinkie Pie simply makes use of exploit code to circumvent google's "real name" requiremets for google services. It was, in fact, by getting good at retaining his pseudonym that he became skilled enough to enter these competitions. ;D
(And I totally pulled that out of my ass. For my next trick..)
More than just that, the mechanisms implicated in intercellular communication are involved in a great many areas, including new and novel approaches to regenerative medicine such as stem cell treatments, and in emerging fields like biotechnology.
This is fundemental science.
It deserves recognition.
You are an idiot.
Please die in a fire.
So essentially, they have openly stated that because the practice is useful to the government ut should not be subjected to judiciary review, despite clear concerns from privacy advocates, and seemingly legitimate legal challenges to the validity of the practice?
Since when did the judiciary stop doing its job and become rubber stampers?
If the red giant star is spewing that much matter, and has a companion star that for all practical purposes will greatly outlive its partner, what are the prospects for novel planetary formation from this structure over cosmological time?