It's an interesting concept, but it has issues. Largely, aerogels are largely air and therefor very lightweight. You would need a truly huge chunk of aerogel with a lot of weight strapped to it if you wanted it to catch things without gaining a lot of velocity itself.
It'd work great for the little stuff though, you'd still need a lot of it as space rather large, even just in orbit.
Last time I checked water was a greenhouse gas, as such it seems awfully silly to talk constantly about global warming and then blast a bunch of water into the upper reaches of the atmosphere(all earth orbits are still in atmosphere, just really really thin atmosphere).
It may be that the amount of water they're talking about is entirely too small to change much, but if they actually want to clear all the debris up they're going to need a lot of water.
Of course, whether that's an issue or not really depends on whether you believe in global warming.
How is something with a GMA950 or nvidia 9400 high end?
The 950 is a joke, and the 9400 isn't exactly beefy either.
Go to newegg and price out a computer, you can build something that has a real mid range video card and a core2duo 2.5 (that loves OC to 3.0-3.5) with 4gb of ram and a half terrabyte hard drive for about $500 shipped with taxes.
What it lacks is the apple "style" and the tiny size, as well as OSX.
Apple puts a high pricetag on OSX and the apple logo.
Now if you absolutely must have OSX and you don't feel like mucking around with a hacked to bits version, you're stuck paying the premium for a snazzy looking package.
If what you want is a cool looking computer, then you're all set. Course a bunch of LED fans and some lexan is cheaper then a mac, but whatever.
During the Olympics NBC had a deal like this going on with many cable providers, if you lived in the proper area you could watch just about everything online, rather then the meager showing on TV.
My cable provider wasn't on the list, but the online section was quite willing to believe that i was 250 miles southeast in a different zip code and let me watch it anyway.
The difficulty with this whole idea is making sure that you can't just type in a different zip code, but at that point you run into issues. My DHCP assigned IP addresses for my cable internet are generally based in the nearby metropolis (30k people, largest in the county), but occasionally they show as being 300 miles south in a completely different cable companies turf.
Go a step above algae to crayfish and we've already created one that spells disaster for any body of fresh water it's introduced to, google Marbled Crayfish.
The fun parts:
Reproduces without needing a second crayfish. That's right, it quite literally clones itself, 10-40 times per monthly batch of eggs.
It is largely non-hostile to it's offspring.
It lives and reproduces in water from ~40*f to ~90*f.
It, like most crayfish, eats everything, especially plants.
The really interesting part is that nobody actually knows where it came from, it has literally no natural habitat, the first anyone saw of it was in the aquarium trade in germany. It's DNA suggests that it is a hybrid of two american crayfish species, but nobody knows for sure.
In any case, it's quite capable of wiping out all life above algae in any habitat it can survive in, and it can survive in most fresh water in the world.
Alienware with a P4 here, it weighs 14lbs and gets 54 minutes of battery life with a new fully charged battery.
I still like it as a primary computer, if i want to play (older) 3d intensive games i can pack it up and drag it on the road with me.
Nothing recent has used desktop chips because the modern core2duo mobile chips are quite powerful and very low consumption, very few people need a desktop chip these days.
Hell one of the plugins listed in my copy of firefox is Windows Genuine Advantage.
I see no reason for that to exist in firefox.
Also there are two Microsoft DRM things.
However, all can be disabled.
Running SP3 here as well as.NET 3.5, and i do not have the plugin/addon mentioned.
My power comes from methane. Only 54% or so of the us's power comes from coal.
If you're part of the 46% that isn't powered by coal, cfl lights mean more mercury.
Sure it's their right to do whatever they want to with posted videos, but it seems to me like they open the door to competition by doing this.
Some other site (why doesn't microsoft have a streaming video site, anyway?) that demands actual legal proof before taking down videos could make real inroads to youtube's current market share.
Especially if they started off by mining youtube for good videos.
Youtube must feel very secure in their domination of the market here, else they wouldn't risk pissing off that many people.
If you only have a few things you MUST run you can build your own for $100 or less, i did. Works great, not the best efficiency but it beats the hell out of no power.
Take one lawn mower engine, bolt it to a plywood stand. Go down to your local lawn&garden store and get a 3-4" pulley that fits the output shaft of the motor.
Take one cheap alternator from the wrecking yard, ideally an older honda flavor as they're set up to rotate in the correct direction and use V belts rather then multi-groove belts.
Get a belt that fits both pulleys.
Bolt alternator to stand in such a way that you can adjust the belt tension.
Get a car (or motorcycle) battery of the 12 volt type.
Get an ebay power inverter, i got a 500/1000 watt one for $30.
Wire the inverter to the battery with a switch, and then the battery to the alternator, with a switch on the field line to the alternator (otherwise you'll never get it started, and the alt will drain the battery in short order.
Presto, two outlets and 500w of power.
I notice the 60hz blink. I got a couple strings of those LED christmass lights last year (you know, the ones with the prop. 65 warning about the massive amounts of lead in the PVC insulation), i tried using 'em for a nightlight in my kid's room. Lousy, they gave me headaches if i stayed in the room more then a couple minutes, and gave everything the same jerky strobe light look as waving your hand in front of a CRT. Plus they kept my kid awake, which was another major issue.
I am admittedly far more sensitive to that then most people though, i've run into such issues before.
as well that leds don't generate white light by themselves (they use phosphor?) and all that reduces the light given off.
CFLs use a phosphor too, the mercury in the tube is made to fluoresce, it emits UV light that strikes the phosphor layer on the bulb which then fluoresces, releasing visible light.
White LEDs are a UV LED with a phosphor layer that the UV strikes, causing it to fluoresce, releasing visible light.
Only difference between the two is the method of generating the UV.
People will pirate when it's overpriced. When it's right-priced, most people will gladly pay for it.
That's my view.
The last entertaining game i found that was decently priced ($20, rather then $60) also happened to be free of copy protection/drm, so i bought it.
The fact that it was made by a couple of independents in various coffee shops on their laptops is a bonus, but the low price, addictive gameplay, and lack of DRM is what sold me on it.
(In case you can't guess, this'd be World of Goo)
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I'm surprised visa/MC actually shut them down. 3% of 100k/week is a decent chunk of change.
It's an interesting concept, but it has issues. Largely, aerogels are largely air and therefor very lightweight. You would need a truly huge chunk of aerogel with a lot of weight strapped to it if you wanted it to catch things without gaining a lot of velocity itself.
It'd work great for the little stuff though, you'd still need a lot of it as space rather large, even just in orbit.
That's a decent point. We need an orbiting recycling and manufacturing center.
Last time I checked water was a greenhouse gas, as such it seems awfully silly to talk constantly about global warming and then blast a bunch of water into the upper reaches of the atmosphere(all earth orbits are still in atmosphere, just really really thin atmosphere).
It may be that the amount of water they're talking about is entirely too small to change much, but if they actually want to clear all the debris up they're going to need a lot of water.
Of course, whether that's an issue or not really depends on whether you believe in global warming.
That's totally on topic. They're spending money on coupons to make money selling off the freed up frequencies.
Anybody that currently subscribes to extended cable already has a digital converter box, that takes care of a lot of 'em.
Spend more money to make more money, right?
How is something with a GMA950 or nvidia 9400 high end?
The 950 is a joke, and the 9400 isn't exactly beefy either.
Go to newegg and price out a computer, you can build something that has a real mid range video card and a core2duo 2.5 (that loves OC to 3.0-3.5) with 4gb of ram and a half terrabyte hard drive for about $500 shipped with taxes.
What it lacks is the apple "style" and the tiny size, as well as OSX.
Apple puts a high pricetag on OSX and the apple logo.
Now if you absolutely must have OSX and you don't feel like mucking around with a hacked to bits version, you're stuck paying the premium for a snazzy looking package.
If what you want is a cool looking computer, then you're all set. Course a bunch of LED fans and some lexan is cheaper then a mac, but whatever.
Yes because solar panels work especially well in the winter when the sun is lower in the sky and it tends to be cloudy/raining/snowing?
During the Olympics NBC had a deal like this going on with many cable providers, if you lived in the proper area you could watch just about everything online, rather then the meager showing on TV.
My cable provider wasn't on the list, but the online section was quite willing to believe that i was 250 miles southeast in a different zip code and let me watch it anyway.
The difficulty with this whole idea is making sure that you can't just type in a different zip code, but at that point you run into issues. My DHCP assigned IP addresses for my cable internet are generally based in the nearby metropolis (30k people, largest in the county), but occasionally they show as being 300 miles south in a completely different cable companies turf.
That's not the same at all. A much more accurate way to put it is that it's the same as someone calling an internal combustion engine a motor.
Despite the fact that most people have no clue there is a difference between motor and engine, they are different terms for different things.
Go a step above algae to crayfish and we've already created one that spells disaster for any body of fresh water it's introduced to, google Marbled Crayfish.
The fun parts:
Reproduces without needing a second crayfish. That's right, it quite literally clones itself, 10-40 times per monthly batch of eggs.
It is largely non-hostile to it's offspring.
It lives and reproduces in water from ~40*f to ~90*f.
It, like most crayfish, eats everything, especially plants.
The really interesting part is that nobody actually knows where it came from, it has literally no natural habitat, the first anyone saw of it was in the aquarium trade in germany. It's DNA suggests that it is a hybrid of two american crayfish species, but nobody knows for sure.
In any case, it's quite capable of wiping out all life above algae in any habitat it can survive in, and it can survive in most fresh water in the world.
Dell mini-12 is the closest you can get. 12" screen, better graphics chip, too.
Alienware with a P4 here, it weighs 14lbs and gets 54 minutes of battery life with a new fully charged battery. I still like it as a primary computer, if i want to play (older) 3d intensive games i can pack it up and drag it on the road with me. Nothing recent has used desktop chips because the modern core2duo mobile chips are quite powerful and very low consumption, very few people need a desktop chip these days.
Hell one of the plugins listed in my copy of firefox is Windows Genuine Advantage. I see no reason for that to exist in firefox. Also there are two Microsoft DRM things. However, all can be disabled. Running SP3 here as well as .NET 3.5, and i do not have the plugin/addon mentioned.
My power comes from methane. Only 54% or so of the us's power comes from coal. If you're part of the 46% that isn't powered by coal, cfl lights mean more mercury.
However, tell me how you can get a "functional" windows desktop, without violating any licenses, and have it work inside 90MB.
Install windows 3.1. Presto! It'll run happily on 32mb. Has all the usual suspects for browsing and word processing too, if you can find them.
Sure it's their right to do whatever they want to with posted videos, but it seems to me like they open the door to competition by doing this. Some other site (why doesn't microsoft have a streaming video site, anyway?) that demands actual legal proof before taking down videos could make real inroads to youtube's current market share. Especially if they started off by mining youtube for good videos. Youtube must feel very secure in their domination of the market here, else they wouldn't risk pissing off that many people.
If you only have a few things you MUST run you can build your own for $100 or less, i did. Works great, not the best efficiency but it beats the hell out of no power. Take one lawn mower engine, bolt it to a plywood stand. Go down to your local lawn&garden store and get a 3-4" pulley that fits the output shaft of the motor. Take one cheap alternator from the wrecking yard, ideally an older honda flavor as they're set up to rotate in the correct direction and use V belts rather then multi-groove belts. Get a belt that fits both pulleys. Bolt alternator to stand in such a way that you can adjust the belt tension. Get a car (or motorcycle) battery of the 12 volt type. Get an ebay power inverter, i got a 500/1000 watt one for $30. Wire the inverter to the battery with a switch, and then the battery to the alternator, with a switch on the field line to the alternator (otherwise you'll never get it started, and the alt will drain the battery in short order. Presto, two outlets and 500w of power.
schemes such as fertilising the oceans with iron to stimulate algal blooms
that doesn't sound like a real great idea. Bonus points to the article for misspelling "fertilizing".
I notice the 60hz blink. I got a couple strings of those LED christmass lights last year (you know, the ones with the prop. 65 warning about the massive amounts of lead in the PVC insulation), i tried using 'em for a nightlight in my kid's room. Lousy, they gave me headaches if i stayed in the room more then a couple minutes, and gave everything the same jerky strobe light look as waving your hand in front of a CRT. Plus they kept my kid awake, which was another major issue. I am admittedly far more sensitive to that then most people though, i've run into such issues before.
Inconceivable!
as well that leds don't generate white light by themselves (they use phosphor?) and all that reduces the light given off.
CFLs use a phosphor too, the mercury in the tube is made to fluoresce, it emits UV light that strikes the phosphor layer on the bulb which then fluoresces, releasing visible light. White LEDs are a UV LED with a phosphor layer that the UV strikes, causing it to fluoresce, releasing visible light. Only difference between the two is the method of generating the UV.
I'm already there, you ignorant clod!
People will pirate when it's overpriced. When it's right-priced, most people will gladly pay for it.
That's my view. The last entertaining game i found that was decently priced ($20, rather then $60) also happened to be free of copy protection/drm, so i bought it. The fact that it was made by a couple of independents in various coffee shops on their laptops is a bonus, but the low price, addictive gameplay, and lack of DRM is what sold me on it. (In case you can't guess, this'd be World of Goo)