There are ways around our current vision, however. For instance, you could use a parallel universe as a giant heat tank, effectively nullifying the need to radiate it away.
I know it sounds far-fetched, and that's because it is, but bear in mind quantum mechanics sounded positively insane when first introduced. Einstein worked for decades to show it was wrong (despite actually helping lay down its foundations), and he's one of the most brilliant scientists the world has ever known.
Please do correct me if I am wrong, but this reads like a patent application that contains a novel, concrete implementation of an idea that isn't necessarily obvious to one skilled in the art. That is what patents are supposed to protect, and I have to say I have no problem with that.
It's perhaps the first/. post in a long time that contains a patent that respects both the spirit and the letter of what a patent is supposed to be. It also sounds fairly ingenious and very interesting considering the possibilities, so props to Boeing.
A star is a fusion reactor. In fact, if you need the kind of power that's given out by a Dyson sphere, then a Dyson sphere is by and large the most efficient method for generating it, especially for long periods of time.
The question should be whether any civilization would require so much power in such a static and concentrated way (as opposed to dispersed across hundreds of planets across thousands of lightyears), and where they'd find the materials required to build it (we're speaking about transforming entire planets from crust to core, or harvesting dozens more in a less destructive fashion).
Farmville actually qualifies you to be a lobbyist. You get to learn how to nag people until they give up and comply or bribe the system if you don't get what you want fast enough, all while doing absolutely nothing good for society.
It all depends on where you look, but generally the same thing holds: cheap, good, fast, pick two.
I mean, Asus' line of Zenbooks is downright sexy and works very well, but they're among the pricier ultrabooks or sometimes entirely leave the denotation because it's more convenient in terms of cost versus performance. Sony's Vaio Z is insane, but it's even more expensive than Macs. HP's Envy line (I own a first-gen 14") is more and more of a Macbook clone, with the latest versions being basically far more blatant than anything Samsung's ever produced, but this does mean they're generally well made with good components and a metal body.
The same thing can be said about tablets, too. Some manufacturers like Asus ans Samsung are doing their best to offer competitive products, and that usually translates into a lot of sales and good publicity. Meanwhile, the more... half-hearted manufacturers like LG, Toshiba, Motorola, etc. seem to put as little work into their products as possible and they end up with something between mediocre and shitty.
Just please don't put them all in the same basket, as some are genuinely good.
You do realize the Surface and Surface Pro are rather similar from the outside? Plus, I have to say the name doesn't make me think "those are two entirely different products running on two entirely different platforms" like, say, iPad and MacBook do.
Re:While we're talking about sexism in Science
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Sexism In Science
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Yes, so while the women (who are still a very small percentage of many STEM programs, such as physics) are almost guaranteed to get a ton of money from women-only grants, even if their grades aren't anything special, the (rapidly diminishing number of) men who do make it to hard programs and who actually work hard to get good grades need to fight tooth and nail for meagre pay.
Speaking from personal experience, an important part of my female friends got grants just by submitting, whereas only the most insanely brilliant guys (think people who could've done all the exams without following the courses) would get something of a similar importance. It doesn't really get more women into the disciplines, because money is far from the most important criterion in their choice of majors, all the while demotivating men from performing due to utter lack of recognition. And then people complain that boys are dropping out more than ever and not reaching university.
So hold on, super-high resolution displays should only be used so that the rounded corners are more rounded?
Thanks, but no thanks. The entire point of higher resolution displays is displaying more information on the same space. Apple's way of just doubling the resolution for each length is good for backwards compatibility, but it shouldn't be the standard for new applications: they should be designed to take advantage of the high resolution displays, and I don't just mean better text rendering.
1) So because the USA doesn't want to use them (and let's be honest a significant portion of the US could use them with no downside), the rest of the world should just forget them? 2) Charging stations will be constructed if there is demand for it. That's only a problem for so long as we say electric cars don't work. 3) Goes back to 1: unless you're doing ridiculously large round-trips, 200-300mi range (which is entirely achievable using current technology) is more than enough for the average commute and a run or two to the shops. 4) Even the worst powerplant is vastly more efficient than the internal combustion engine, just by way of scale. Furthermore, not every country is running on dirty plants, and thus moving to electric cars would be a first step in the good direction. Over 90% of the electricity here comes from hydroelectric dams. France mostly runs on nuclear power. Germany wants to have a significant proportion of its electricity to come from green sources. Should we ignore this just because the US loves its coal plants? 5) The Volt is misdirected. I think Tesla has it right: make an expensive car targeted at the luxury market. You can make a car that is in many ways similar to the BMWs and Mercedes of the world while not feeling overpriced for what it offers. Making the car pretty helps too, unlike the Volt, Prius and Leaf. Bear in mind that the cars are expensive right now because economies of scale have not yet kicked in. It should be possible to bring down costs a lot if the market can actually grow to a certain point.
The conclusion is that the US is mostly going to stick with gas guzzlers while complaining about rising fuel prices (even though they have one of the cheapest on the planet), and the rest of the world will try to move towards more efficient and clean vehicles. When the US will wake up and do something about it is unclear, even though, ironically, some of the innovation is coming from the US.
Doubtful. The advantages of control (because let's be honest, religion is just an excuse for control in those instances) are much less important than the disadvantages for a post-industrial country like the US. The entire economy of the US revolves around the services sector, and destroying the Internet would have profound impacts on that.
You can say what you will about the FBI, the MAFIAA, the DoD, etc. wanting more control, but there's a point where the encroachment would be too great to be financially beneficial, and making an intranet would be much past that point. Just think about the effect on stock markets.
Comfort breeds a lot of things, namely political apathy and corruption, but it doesn't bring the kind of social unrest necessary to create a new Hitler. You need an unstable area combined with an extremely charismatic leader to succeed there.
A politician in the US or in Europe who wanted to go power-crazy would be stopped by inertia: the population doesn't give a flying shit about what he wants to do, since they're still comfortable as they are and see no reason to change that.
Now, if the US or EU collapse for whatever reason, this may change quickly, but for the time being the chances are slim, whereas the Middle East already is extremely unstable, and many societal elements are already present for there to be a new Hilter-level individual, namely political unrest and the rise to power of religious extremists.
Not to imply that all Iranians are stupid, extremist or terrible, but please keep in mind you're having an extreme sampling bias. Unless you say you went there and spoke with the local population, the Iranians you will have met have managed to leave the country, and that usually requires money or a heap of effort, both of which are heavy factors into whether the person is going to be erudite and intelligent. Moderation then comes from being exposed to many different ideas and perspectives, which is a lot more likely when you are affluent.
Again, the problem isn't with Android itself. The problem is drivers. Apple controls the hardware, therefore they also have direct and unfettered access to the drivers for all the hardware they have ever made. They can design iOS specifically around the hardware they have made, they can plan out compatibility ahead of time with future hardware revisions.
Google's mostly working by itself, releasing device-agnostic Android builds and then working with a manufacturer to provide reference device implementations (the Nexus series). Google doesn't make the phones, so there's still a level of disconnect, whereby they don't necessarily know ahead of time what kind of hardware they will put in, and they may not have access to the drivers as early as Apple does.
I'll also point out that I wasn't making excuses, I was stating the reason. Telcos have been a plague for every single phone released since the dawn of time with the conspicuous exception of Apple's iPhones. They have had some form of perfect storm that has let them forego the usual carrier-manufacturer relationship which shafts customers. The only other manufacturer I know of which used to do this was Nokia, and that caused them to be mostly absent from the US market for the longest time. I can't tell you why Apple specifically has had this kind of ability. I sure wish Google would work towards gaining it, too, so that telcos could go back to being carriers instead of also meddling in software and hardware, but I don't know whether Google is interested or even can do it at this point in time.
Which goes back to my original point: yes, Apple's software updates, heck most of Apple's environment, is very sleek and easy to use. To many, that's all that counts, and I say good for you. Me, I'm ready to cope with rougher edges if it means I get a more open ecosystem. It's personal choice, and overall you'll have a hard time finding that one is objectively better than the other: they both have strengths and weaknesses. My post wasn't trying to provide excuses for Google, I was attempting to explain the reason we are in the situation we see.
You should've put this in the question. That's quite an important element to the whole thing, as it goes from what could be identified as "petty" by some to what is clearly just wrong and should be rectified.
The best plan I could get is 200/30 for 200$/month, and that's when combined with another service from the ISP like TV or mobile.
The kicker though is that it also has a 200gb down/50gb up monthly cap. Yes, you read that right: you can bust your cap by saturating your connection for less than 3 hours. You can then buy up to three packages of 60gb per month for 12.50$ each.
Yes, and I'm seriously hoping that now that Motorola is officially part of Google, their support will improve, if not for current phones, then at least for the next models. It's entirely unacceptable that so many phones are left with ancient versions of the OS. Google should put it in the licensing agreement for getting access to the Market and Google apps that they need to support their phones for a certain period of time.
I'd be agreeing with you if you hadn't put that last paragraph. Saying that Android won't gain much market share is not only foolish, it's entirely false. By now Android's taken a significant share of the market and I don't see that shrinking anytime soon. If Google can step their game up and fix some the glaring issues such as inconsistent updates from manufacturers, they'll be well on their way to take the dominant position.
Apple controls the hardware and software. You're singling out a specific version of the Galaxy Nexus which is renown for having compatibility issues (different antenna if I'm not mistaken) and for being bogged down by Verizon's stupid involvement.
My Nexus S has had Jelly Bean since roughly two weeks after it was announced. OTA updates were available worldwide within the same timeframe. My Transformer received it a month or so later, and that's to account for the docking station support, specific drivers, etc.
You just can't compare the two platforms. If what you want is a closed, smooth environment, go for Apple. If you want an open environment, with both the good and bad that that implies, go Android. It's simple really.
It should be noted that students have access to the full Visual Studio suite, alongside the Expression suite and Windows Server (I think it goes back to 2003 up to 2012) through DreamSpark. I've used it in the past and I have to say this is one of the nice things Microsoft does in comparison to, say, Adobe. Autodesk also provides free educational software, but theirs is branded as such whereas Microsoft's stuff seems like the full Professional versions with no strings attached.
Right, so the logical answer to an unknown which could potentially destroy us as a civilization is to sit back and watch until we know for certain?
It's not like the actions we can undertake to reduce the danger are going to sabotage the worldwide economy or anything. In fact, it'd probably help with a heap of other issues like general pollution, acid rains, deforestation, dependency on a rapidly diminishing non-renewable resource, etc.
But yeah, let's just wait another century, shovel the problems to our children and die happy that we didn't have to throw away our second Hummer we're only using to go to the mall.
I didn't know man used to have cars, coal plants and all that alongside a population in the billions during the last ice age. It's almost like you can't say "because it happened before and we're still around collectively, it's all going to be fine now!"
Just to clear things up, I think we should definitely invest more into nuclear power, not less. The current trend to move away from it is dumb and may very well cause more issues in the future.
However, I do not believe that nuclear fission is the universal panacea. Use the energy that is available to you. Got a desert? Some efficient solar power plants could help. Got lots of running water? Get a dam up there. Near the sea? Use tidal effects to your advantage. Lots of buildings with flat roofs in a urban area? Put solar panels on every roof (or alternatively green roofs, which help cool down the building and thus reduce air conditioning costs) and on all the windows.
Then in the long run I'd hope to see a shift towards nuclear fusion, as eventually we'll find a way to harness that.
I think it's important to diversify energy sources. No one source is perfect, but many are much better than coal, oil and gas, and nuclear is definitely one of them (modern nuclear incredibly more so). We should take advantage of them fast.
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There are ways around our current vision, however. For instance, you could use a parallel universe as a giant heat tank, effectively nullifying the need to radiate it away.
I know it sounds far-fetched, and that's because it is, but bear in mind quantum mechanics sounded positively insane when first introduced. Einstein worked for decades to show it was wrong (despite actually helping lay down its foundations), and he's one of the most brilliant scientists the world has ever known.
Please do correct me if I am wrong, but this reads like a patent application that contains a novel, concrete implementation of an idea that isn't necessarily obvious to one skilled in the art. That is what patents are supposed to protect, and I have to say I have no problem with that.
It's perhaps the first /. post in a long time that contains a patent that respects both the spirit and the letter of what a patent is supposed to be. It also sounds fairly ingenious and very interesting considering the possibilities, so props to Boeing.
A star is a fusion reactor. In fact, if you need the kind of power that's given out by a Dyson sphere, then a Dyson sphere is by and large the most efficient method for generating it, especially for long periods of time.
The question should be whether any civilization would require so much power in such a static and concentrated way (as opposed to dispersed across hundreds of planets across thousands of lightyears), and where they'd find the materials required to build it (we're speaking about transforming entire planets from crust to core, or harvesting dozens more in a less destructive fashion).
Farmville actually qualifies you to be a lobbyist. You get to learn how to nag people until they give up and comply or bribe the system if you don't get what you want fast enough, all while doing absolutely nothing good for society.
It all depends on where you look, but generally the same thing holds: cheap, good, fast, pick two.
I mean, Asus' line of Zenbooks is downright sexy and works very well, but they're among the pricier ultrabooks or sometimes entirely leave the denotation because it's more convenient in terms of cost versus performance. Sony's Vaio Z is insane, but it's even more expensive than Macs. HP's Envy line (I own a first-gen 14") is more and more of a Macbook clone, with the latest versions being basically far more blatant than anything Samsung's ever produced, but this does mean they're generally well made with good components and a metal body.
The same thing can be said about tablets, too. Some manufacturers like Asus ans Samsung are doing their best to offer competitive products, and that usually translates into a lot of sales and good publicity. Meanwhile, the more... half-hearted manufacturers like LG, Toshiba, Motorola, etc. seem to put as little work into their products as possible and they end up with something between mediocre and shitty.
Just please don't put them all in the same basket, as some are genuinely good.
You do realize the Surface and Surface Pro are rather similar from the outside? Plus, I have to say the name doesn't make me think "those are two entirely different products running on two entirely different platforms" like, say, iPad and MacBook do.
Yes, so while the women (who are still a very small percentage of many STEM programs, such as physics) are almost guaranteed to get a ton of money from women-only grants, even if their grades aren't anything special, the (rapidly diminishing number of) men who do make it to hard programs and who actually work hard to get good grades need to fight tooth and nail for meagre pay.
Speaking from personal experience, an important part of my female friends got grants just by submitting, whereas only the most insanely brilliant guys (think people who could've done all the exams without following the courses) would get something of a similar importance. It doesn't really get more women into the disciplines, because money is far from the most important criterion in their choice of majors, all the while demotivating men from performing due to utter lack of recognition. And then people complain that boys are dropping out more than ever and not reaching university.
So hold on, super-high resolution displays should only be used so that the rounded corners are more rounded?
Thanks, but no thanks. The entire point of higher resolution displays is displaying more information on the same space. Apple's way of just doubling the resolution for each length is good for backwards compatibility, but it shouldn't be the standard for new applications: they should be designed to take advantage of the high resolution displays, and I don't just mean better text rendering.
What are you doing!? Get away from the monitor! All those nasty radiations might give you skin cancer!
1) So because the USA doesn't want to use them (and let's be honest a significant portion of the US could use them with no downside), the rest of the world should just forget them?
2) Charging stations will be constructed if there is demand for it. That's only a problem for so long as we say electric cars don't work.
3) Goes back to 1: unless you're doing ridiculously large round-trips, 200-300mi range (which is entirely achievable using current technology) is more than enough for the average commute and a run or two to the shops.
4) Even the worst powerplant is vastly more efficient than the internal combustion engine, just by way of scale. Furthermore, not every country is running on dirty plants, and thus moving to electric cars would be a first step in the good direction. Over 90% of the electricity here comes from hydroelectric dams. France mostly runs on nuclear power. Germany wants to have a significant proportion of its electricity to come from green sources. Should we ignore this just because the US loves its coal plants?
5) The Volt is misdirected. I think Tesla has it right: make an expensive car targeted at the luxury market. You can make a car that is in many ways similar to the BMWs and Mercedes of the world while not feeling overpriced for what it offers. Making the car pretty helps too, unlike the Volt, Prius and Leaf. Bear in mind that the cars are expensive right now because economies of scale have not yet kicked in. It should be possible to bring down costs a lot if the market can actually grow to a certain point.
The conclusion is that the US is mostly going to stick with gas guzzlers while complaining about rising fuel prices (even though they have one of the cheapest on the planet), and the rest of the world will try to move towards more efficient and clean vehicles. When the US will wake up and do something about it is unclear, even though, ironically, some of the innovation is coming from the US.
Don't panic. You got your towel right?
Doubtful. The advantages of control (because let's be honest, religion is just an excuse for control in those instances) are much less important than the disadvantages for a post-industrial country like the US. The entire economy of the US revolves around the services sector, and destroying the Internet would have profound impacts on that.
You can say what you will about the FBI, the MAFIAA, the DoD, etc. wanting more control, but there's a point where the encroachment would be too great to be financially beneficial, and making an intranet would be much past that point. Just think about the effect on stock markets.
Comfort breeds a lot of things, namely political apathy and corruption, but it doesn't bring the kind of social unrest necessary to create a new Hitler. You need an unstable area combined with an extremely charismatic leader to succeed there.
A politician in the US or in Europe who wanted to go power-crazy would be stopped by inertia: the population doesn't give a flying shit about what he wants to do, since they're still comfortable as they are and see no reason to change that.
Now, if the US or EU collapse for whatever reason, this may change quickly, but for the time being the chances are slim, whereas the Middle East already is extremely unstable, and many societal elements are already present for there to be a new Hilter-level individual, namely political unrest and the rise to power of religious extremists.
Not to imply that all Iranians are stupid, extremist or terrible, but please keep in mind you're having an extreme sampling bias. Unless you say you went there and spoke with the local population, the Iranians you will have met have managed to leave the country, and that usually requires money or a heap of effort, both of which are heavy factors into whether the person is going to be erudite and intelligent. Moderation then comes from being exposed to many different ideas and perspectives, which is a lot more likely when you are affluent.
Again, the problem isn't with Android itself. The problem is drivers. Apple controls the hardware, therefore they also have direct and unfettered access to the drivers for all the hardware they have ever made. They can design iOS specifically around the hardware they have made, they can plan out compatibility ahead of time with future hardware revisions.
Google's mostly working by itself, releasing device-agnostic Android builds and then working with a manufacturer to provide reference device implementations (the Nexus series). Google doesn't make the phones, so there's still a level of disconnect, whereby they don't necessarily know ahead of time what kind of hardware they will put in, and they may not have access to the drivers as early as Apple does.
I'll also point out that I wasn't making excuses, I was stating the reason. Telcos have been a plague for every single phone released since the dawn of time with the conspicuous exception of Apple's iPhones. They have had some form of perfect storm that has let them forego the usual carrier-manufacturer relationship which shafts customers. The only other manufacturer I know of which used to do this was Nokia, and that caused them to be mostly absent from the US market for the longest time. I can't tell you why Apple specifically has had this kind of ability. I sure wish Google would work towards gaining it, too, so that telcos could go back to being carriers instead of also meddling in software and hardware, but I don't know whether Google is interested or even can do it at this point in time.
Which goes back to my original point: yes, Apple's software updates, heck most of Apple's environment, is very sleek and easy to use. To many, that's all that counts, and I say good for you. Me, I'm ready to cope with rougher edges if it means I get a more open ecosystem. It's personal choice, and overall you'll have a hard time finding that one is objectively better than the other: they both have strengths and weaknesses. My post wasn't trying to provide excuses for Google, I was attempting to explain the reason we are in the situation we see.
You should've put this in the question. That's quite an important element to the whole thing, as it goes from what could be identified as "petty" by some to what is clearly just wrong and should be rectified.
The best plan I could get is 200/30 for 200$/month, and that's when combined with another service from the ISP like TV or mobile.
The kicker though is that it also has a 200gb down/50gb up monthly cap. Yes, you read that right: you can bust your cap by saturating your connection for less than 3 hours. You can then buy up to three packages of 60gb per month for 12.50$ each.
It's absurd.
Yes, and I'm seriously hoping that now that Motorola is officially part of Google, their support will improve, if not for current phones, then at least for the next models. It's entirely unacceptable that so many phones are left with ancient versions of the OS. Google should put it in the licensing agreement for getting access to the Market and Google apps that they need to support their phones for a certain period of time.
Fewer, better phones, I say.
I'd be agreeing with you if you hadn't put that last paragraph. Saying that Android won't gain much market share is not only foolish, it's entirely false. By now Android's taken a significant share of the market and I don't see that shrinking anytime soon. If Google can step their game up and fix some the glaring issues such as inconsistent updates from manufacturers, they'll be well on their way to take the dominant position.
Apple controls the hardware and software. You're singling out a specific version of the Galaxy Nexus which is renown for having compatibility issues (different antenna if I'm not mistaken) and for being bogged down by Verizon's stupid involvement.
My Nexus S has had Jelly Bean since roughly two weeks after it was announced. OTA updates were available worldwide within the same timeframe. My Transformer received it a month or so later, and that's to account for the docking station support, specific drivers, etc.
You just can't compare the two platforms. If what you want is a closed, smooth environment, go for Apple. If you want an open environment, with both the good and bad that that implies, go Android. It's simple really.
The petition itself won't stop them (though who knows, it got Dark Souls on PC after all...), but it's symptomatic of something much bigger.
If Twitter doesn't want to become the next Digg, they should listen to their audience more.
It should be noted that students have access to the full Visual Studio suite, alongside the Expression suite and Windows Server (I think it goes back to 2003 up to 2012) through DreamSpark. I've used it in the past and I have to say this is one of the nice things Microsoft does in comparison to, say, Adobe. Autodesk also provides free educational software, but theirs is branded as such whereas Microsoft's stuff seems like the full Professional versions with no strings attached.
Right, so the logical answer to an unknown which could potentially destroy us as a civilization is to sit back and watch until we know for certain?
It's not like the actions we can undertake to reduce the danger are going to sabotage the worldwide economy or anything. In fact, it'd probably help with a heap of other issues like general pollution, acid rains, deforestation, dependency on a rapidly diminishing non-renewable resource, etc.
But yeah, let's just wait another century, shovel the problems to our children and die happy that we didn't have to throw away our second Hummer we're only using to go to the mall.
I didn't know man used to have cars, coal plants and all that alongside a population in the billions during the last ice age. It's almost like you can't say "because it happened before and we're still around collectively, it's all going to be fine now!"
Just to clear things up, I think we should definitely invest more into nuclear power, not less. The current trend to move away from it is dumb and may very well cause more issues in the future.
However, I do not believe that nuclear fission is the universal panacea. Use the energy that is available to you. Got a desert? Some efficient solar power plants could help. Got lots of running water? Get a dam up there. Near the sea? Use tidal effects to your advantage. Lots of buildings with flat roofs in a urban area? Put solar panels on every roof (or alternatively green roofs, which help cool down the building and thus reduce air conditioning costs) and on all the windows.
Then in the long run I'd hope to see a shift towards nuclear fusion, as eventually we'll find a way to harness that.
I think it's important to diversify energy sources. No one source is perfect, but many are much better than coal, oil and gas, and nuclear is definitely one of them (modern nuclear incredibly more so). We should take advantage of them fast.