What, why is this not ethical? Are you assuming he *lied* in the review to get people to buy the book?
It doesn't matter if he lied or not. One rule of journalism is full disclosure: if you have a personal or financial interest in what you are writing about, you are required to inform your audience about it. Otherwise the line between reporting and shilling becomes very thin.
If you had essentially unlimited O2, then you could stay deeper for longer, and do proper decompression on the way up.
Perhaps, but even with this device you would not have "essentially unlimited O2". The device requires a battery to operate, and when the battery runs out of juice, you stop getting air.
"Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far"
Really? Last I checked, AMD was running circles around Intel in the 64-bit arena. Does Steve know something I don't know, or is he blowing smoke?
There is no such thing as a place in the world that doesn't have lightning. That's just stupid
What's stupid is making a blind assertion like the above, without any facts or knowledge to back it up. Apparently there are places without lightning, and this is one of them. If you have some knowledge to the contrary, let's hear it.
You can generate electricity by moving a conductor through a magnetic field. I would think 62k miles of carbon nanotube ribbon running through the magnetic field of the earth would make a pretty good generator
... and you would be wrong, because the ribbon is not moving through the earth's magnetic field. It rotates with the earth, and so is stationary relative to the earth.
The space elevator won't happen in your lifetime. Just like the permanent moon base, the SDI and hundreds of such grandiose and vaporous projects.
The moon base, SDI, and all the other grandiose projects would all be made possible by the space elevator. The reason they haven't happened so far is because lifting large amounts of mass into orbit is just too expensive with rockets. Once you can lift entire buildings into orbit on a weekly basis, a moon base is almost trivial.
As for the space elevator not happening in our lifetime... you might be right, but you might also be quite wrong. Certainly if I had been born in 1900 I might have thought that PowerMacs would never happen in my life time, because in 2000 years automation had only advanced as far as the automatic loom. But progress isn't linear that way -- sometimes there is a (apologies for the term) sudden paradigm shift, after which things change very quickly.
What kind of damage can the ribbon sustain if a small meteorite or space junk impact it? No big deal or total failure?
It really depends on the size of the object hitting the ribbon. Whatever hits the ribbon will likely be going fast enough to drill right through it, leaving a hole where it hit in the shape of its cross-section (think Wile E. Coyote). That's one of the reasons why they propose to use a wide flat ribbon instead of a cable -- if a small object hits it, it might leave a hole and weaken the ribbon a bit, but hopefully the ribbon won't be cut in two. As long as the ribbon isn't cut, you can then send up a climber to repair the hole. Larger objects could still cut across the entire length, of course, but they hope to be able to track the orbits of larger objects and move the ribbon out of the way as necessary(!)
What's more disconcerting to me is that at any real distance, it will be essentially invisible
Of course, when it is in use, there will be several power stations transmitting laser beams to the photovoltaic cells on the bottom of the climber, in order to power it. I wonder if those will be more visible?
Unless the pilot is a crazed Saudi with a taste for Flight Simulator...
And what if he is? The elevator is in the middle of a frickin' 4000 square mile no-fly zone. They'd see him coming for several hours before he got there. There would be loads of time to, um, dissuade him from his course.
Not for you, no. But they aren't trying to sell it to you. They are trying to sell it to people who need to visualize proteins, brain tumours, oil wells, etc. The people who are doing those things will decide if it is worth $40,000 of their money or not.
Somehow, I doubt Hummer drivers do much carpooling. Carpooling involves co-operating with other people for the common good, which is not what a Hummer is about.
Right. A relatively small island nation is having troubles meeting it's commitments to Kyoto. Is it any wonder why the U.S. didn't sign on? The requirements are near impossible - especially for an energy PRODUCING nation
Fine... but what is the U.S.'s alternative plan to fight global warming? As far as I can tell, the current plan is to deny that the problem exists, and hope it will go away.
it's a common myth that the hybrid system is what gives it such good gas mileage. It isn't. It's narrow, hard tires and good aerodynamics.
Wow, that's quite a revelation! Call Toyota right away and let them know! They can save $17,000 per car and increase their efficiency even more, by just not including the hybrid drive train! I wonder why they never thought of that?
Oh, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to "drive them properly".
You think you have to be a rocket scientist to drive a hybrid car properly? Perhaps you should try driving one, then, instead of just ignorantly spouting off.
PS: on the actual subject of the article, the "initiative" isn't about saving energy. It's about pumping money into the economy from people buying the most expensive consumer goods- appliances and vehicles.
You know, it's possible to be so cynical and worldly-wise that you become stupid and paranoid. Consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, not everything you see and hear is a plot with ulterior motives.
There goes the hospital bills, straight through the roof!
Not necessarily -- if the use of this display prevents one $40,000 medical mistake, then it's already paid for itself. If it also prevents the $500,000 malpractice lawsuit that would have sprung from that mistake, then it's reduced your hospital bills dramatically.
On the minus side, with robots doing all the work, the humans can't get a job or earn any money -- the robots are always willing to work cheaper.
On the plus side, now that all the humans have their own self-replicated robots that produce the food, shelter, and energy they require, they don't really need to get a job or money.
So now the only real problem is keeping the human population down to a size the planet has enough raw meterials for.
Generation 33 = One for everybody on Earth, plus about 10% overage.
Generation 31 = robots use up the last of the available IPv4 addresses and turn on their masters, subjugating humanity and forcing it to adopt IPv6 at gunpoint.
Accidentally killing a small number of individuals of a species is not at all the same thing as intentionally destroying the entire species. Your analogy is false.
And lets not forget, those those ants are a LOT more complex and intelligent than microbes.
How do you know so much about Martian microbes that you feel qualified to make that judgement?
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It's not the first time England has tried this sort of thing. It never leads to any good...
It doesn't matter if he lied or not. One rule of journalism is full disclosure: if you have a personal or financial interest in what you are writing about, you are required to inform your audience about it. Otherwise the line between reporting and shilling becomes very thin.
Or to put it another way, Windows runs Linux poorly. The solution? Run Windows under Linux instead.
Perhaps, but even with this device you would not have "essentially unlimited O2". The device requires a battery to operate, and when the battery runs out of juice, you stop getting air.
"Our goal is to provide our customers with the best personal computers in the world, and looking ahead Intel has the strongest processor roadmap by far"
Really? Last I checked, AMD was running circles around Intel in the 64-bit arena. Does Steve know something I don't know, or is he blowing smoke?
Did you actually look at that map before your posted? Your map doesn't show any information about lightning frequency over the oceans.
This page contains the information you were looking for.
What's stupid is making a blind assertion like the above, without any facts or knowledge to back it up. Apparently there are places without lightning, and this is one of them. If you have some knowledge to the contrary, let's hear it.
You can generate electricity by moving a conductor through a magnetic field. I would think 62k miles of carbon nanotube ribbon running through the magnetic field of the earth would make a pretty good generator
To be clear -- it would be based in the Pacific ocean, not in any desert.
From a power generating facility. Nuclear, coal, oil, solar, wind, natural gas, whatever type you care to use.
The moon base, SDI, and all the other grandiose projects would all be made possible by the space elevator. The reason they haven't happened so far is because lifting large amounts of mass into orbit is just too expensive with rockets. Once you can lift entire buildings into orbit on a weekly basis, a moon base is almost trivial.
As for the space elevator not happening in our lifetime... you might be right, but you might also be quite wrong. Certainly if I had been born in 1900 I might have thought that PowerMacs would never happen in my life time, because in 2000 years automation had only advanced as far as the automatic loom. But progress isn't linear that way -- sometimes there is a (apologies for the term) sudden paradigm shift, after which things change very quickly.
It really depends on the size of the object hitting the ribbon. Whatever hits the ribbon will likely be going fast enough to drill right through it, leaving a hole where it hit in the shape of its cross-section (think Wile E. Coyote). That's one of the reasons why they propose to use a wide flat ribbon instead of a cable -- if a small object hits it, it might leave a hole and weaken the ribbon a bit, but hopefully the ribbon won't be cut in two. As long as the ribbon isn't cut, you can then send up a climber to repair the hole. Larger objects could still cut across the entire length, of course, but they hope to be able to track the orbits of larger objects and move the ribbon out of the way as necessary(!)
essentially invisible
Of course, when it is in use, there will be several power stations transmitting laser beams to the photovoltaic cells on the bottom of the climber, in order to power it. I wonder if those will be more visible?
And what if he is? The elevator is in the middle of a frickin' 4000 square mile no-fly zone. They'd see him coming for several hours before he got there. There would be loads of time to, um, dissuade him from his course.
Not for you, no. But they aren't trying to sell it to you. They are trying to sell it to people who need to visualize proteins, brain tumours, oil wells, etc. The people who are doing those things will decide if it is worth $40,000 of their money or not.
Somehow, I doubt Hummer drivers do much carpooling. Carpooling involves co-operating with other people for the common good, which is not what a Hummer is about.
Fine... but what is the U.S.'s alternative plan to fight global warming? As far as I can tell, the current plan is to deny that the problem exists, and hope it will go away.
Wow, that's quite a revelation! Call Toyota right away and let them know! They can save $17,000 per car and increase their efficiency even more, by just not including the hybrid drive train! I wonder why they never thought of that?
Oh, and you don't need to be a rocket scientist to "drive them properly".
You think you have to be a rocket scientist to drive a hybrid car properly? Perhaps you should try driving one, then, instead of just ignorantly spouting off.
PS: on the actual subject of the article, the "initiative" isn't about saving energy. It's about pumping money into the economy from people buying the most expensive consumer goods- appliances and vehicles.
You know, it's possible to be so cynical and worldly-wise that you become stupid and paranoid. Consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, not everything you see and hear is a plot with ulterior motives.
Not necessarily -- if the use of this display prevents one $40,000 medical mistake, then it's already paid for itself. If it also prevents the $500,000 malpractice lawsuit that would have sprung from that mistake, then it's reduced your hospital bills dramatically.
Hm, why is that? Will their system clock roll over?
I heard it for the first time today, but it was as part of a news story about it being ubiquitous in the UK. I haven't heard it anywhere else...
On the plus side, now that all the humans have their own self-replicated robots that produce the food, shelter, and energy they require, they don't really need to get a job or money.
So now the only real problem is keeping the human population down to a size the planet has enough raw meterials for.
Just tell your universal constructor to create a universal destructor that eats the waste and excretes raw materials. Problem solved!
(warning: keep hands and feet away from the destructor)
Generation 31 = robots use up the last of the available IPv4 addresses and turn on their masters, subjugating humanity and forcing it to adopt IPv6 at gunpoint.
The horror!
Man, I can't wait to download the latest PowerMac G7 from Kazaa, 2 days before Apple releases it...
Accidentally killing a small number of individuals of a species is not at all the same thing as intentionally destroying the entire species. Your analogy is false.
And lets not forget, those those ants are a LOT more complex and intelligent than microbes.
How do you know so much about Martian microbes that you feel qualified to make that judgement?