That assumes the wayward bugs can metabolise anything on an alien world. Things like basic sugars, which I would assume are simple enough to be common, probably. But infecting a totally alien organism? Probably not.
Take staph. aureus for example. It can survive on humans of course, and a few domestic animals (maybe due to their long association with people) but apart from those I understand that it isn't common in other species. A bacteria that can easily cross species lines is one thing, but making the jump to an alien biology is quite another. Then again the biology might not be so alien if they're looking for worlds where the native plant life just happened to evolve chlorophyll.
With Dew the problem is that there isn't any sugar in it any more. I've all but given up on obtaining any in the UK, as the imported stuff all seems to have that HFCS muck in it.
It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should become too fond of it. - General E. Lee.
I would be surprised if that was quoted in the episode in question, and even more surprised if someone else hadn't already expressed the same sentiment earlier.
I've thought for a while now that the method of execution should be decided by the convicted.
I choose old age.
In seriousness though, going back to what swb said up there ^^, as far as I'm concerned the judge should be the one to carry out the sentence and to hell with the logistical complications. If you're going to sentence a person to death you should at least have the moral fibre to off them yourself. At the very least the judge should be present and perhaps the jurors too; let them see firsthand what they have wrought. Perhaps then, "hangin' judges" might be a little less common.
Maybe you should look towards that party that is based on letting you decide for yourself what's best for you? You know, the one that actually has "liberty" in the name and all? Just a thought...
You mean like all those countries that have words like "democratic" in the name?
For high-traffic cases, perhaps we should look at resurrecting the paternoster. We must have the technology by now to allow the lifts to stop and start individually to avoid the shortcomings of the old design.
GPS doesn't enter into it for most phones, particularly those that don't have it. What you're talking about it looking at which towers the phone has contacted and making a best estimate of where the user is. If there's only one tower in range - I gather that they have a range on the order of four miles - it can be quite difficult to locate a phone.
In addition, the GSM standard requires phones to be able to make emergency calls without a SIM card, so the issue of identifying a registered owner is a non-starter for a phone purchased without one. They might be able to link the IMEI to a sales record, assuming the store records the date/time/location of each phone sale.
There's already a thin rubber buffer between the glass and the case. It was there in the original iPhone and as far as I can see it's still there in the 5.
...Otherwise it would be kinda useless, since to use it you would have to have contact with other users which is risky.
Which is also how one usually gets a hold of stuff in the real world. Depending on what is meant by "stuff", this might not be as risky as obtaining it online.
One of my college profs offered a plausible-sounding explanation for all the really old things still working (bridges, building, plumbing etc.): simply put, the designers didn't really understand what they were doing, so they just over specced up the wazoo. Of course, if they hadn't built stuff to last, it wouldn't still be around for us to wonder about how it does.
...that we are currently actively cooling parts and attaching heat sinks and radiators for merely decorative purposes?
No, we do it because the devices need to be cooled and it's not worth the expense of slapping a thermocouple on them for the pitiful return one would get.
and if waste heat is an actual phenomenon... why NOT harvest energy from it?
See point the first.
complexity is low with no moving parts.
We've been making ICEs for a long time; we know how to make them reliable. Just because an alternative is presented that's solid state doesn't mean we should automatically jump on it.
price is currently high but as with most things, that can come down with research.
Then report a story that says "powers car" instead of "could one day power cars"
so waste heat exists. power can be harvested.
Never in dispute, but that doesn't mean it's worth doing. Look at it this way, would you go to the trouble of putting a heat exchanger between your bathroom plughole and the inlet for your heating system? There's waste heat there too, but not enough to justify the expense you'd be in for. That's to say nothing of the fact that it would be immensely more efficient than a theromelectric doodad.
i don't see what the point of your tirade is.
I'm guessing here, but maybe it's because the parent is frustrated that you don't appear to see that there's a reason it's called waste heat. Seriously, a large sink sitting slighty above ambient temperature may hold quite a lot of energy, but it's not practical to try and extract any work from it. As an exercise, read up a little on two things: Carnot efficiency, which has been covered nicely by posts above, and low grade heat, which is only really useful for heating something colder, not anything that needs a temperature differential (i.e. any heat engine, solid state or otherwise.)
Anybody who actually has some grasp of the matter want to chime in on where and why you would use thermoelectrics (and how efficient they would have to be) rather than simple insulation or one of the various waste-heat-recovery systems that transfer some amount of the heat remaing in outgoing exhaust gases into incoming working fluids?
In IC engines you want the intake air to be cold so the density is higher (more oxygen); you may have noticed that cars with turbo charges often have something called an intercooler for this reason (compressing the intake air heats it). If you're going to scavenge anything from the exhaust gases it will be low-grade heat (delta-T is smaller, moreso with an efficient engine). Using heat from exhaust to pre-heat the intake is more commonly done with gas or steam turbines, where you want to reduce the amount of heat you need to put into the working fluid at the "cold" side.
I expect that the reason thermoelectrics haven't seen much use in cars is because the benefit you get from using a low efficiency method with a low delta-T just doesn't justify the expense of adding them. I wouldn't be at all surprised if one could gain more by attaching a generator to a turbocharger.
In fairness though, TEs are good if you want something low-powered and simple, but it's not that unusual for a diesel engine to last longer than the car it's put into, so the issue of reliability - one of solid state's big plus points - is rendered moot to an extent. For my own two penneth worth, if they're going to use TE devices to provide power for accessories (you'd never get enough to actually "power" a car without massive efficiency improvements - stupid title) you might as well use the very efficient alternator* you already have attached to the engine.
*Essentially an AC generator with some rectifiers attached. You can get upwards of 75 amps @ 12V if you really want to.
Probably not. Internal combustion only means that the combustion occurs inside the engine. Contrast this to a classic example of external combustion: a steam engine, where the fuel is burnt well away from where the work is produced. Jet engines are internal combustion; most stirlings are external.
One might have a good case for arguing that thermoelectric engines are neither IC nor EC, since it needn't be combustion that provides the heat.
Slashdot Mirror
So long as the inside isn't plastered with ads I really couldn't give a toss, but I think we both know that isn't going to be the case.
That assumes the wayward bugs can metabolise anything on an alien world. Things like basic sugars, which I would assume are simple enough to be common, probably. But infecting a totally alien organism? Probably not.
Take staph. aureus for example. It can survive on humans of course, and a few domestic animals (maybe due to their long association with people) but apart from those I understand that it isn't common in other species. A bacteria that can easily cross species lines is one thing, but making the jump to an alien biology is quite another. Then again the biology might not be so alien if they're looking for worlds where the native plant life just happened to evolve chlorophyll.
With Dew the problem is that there isn't any sugar in it any more. I've all but given up on obtaining any in the UK, as the imported stuff all seems to have that HFCS muck in it.
It's older than that:
It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should become too fond of it. - General E. Lee.
I would be surprised if that was quoted in the episode in question, and even more surprised if someone else hadn't already expressed the same sentiment earlier.
I've thought for a while now that the method of execution should be decided by the convicted.
I choose old age.
In seriousness though, going back to what swb said up there ^^, as far as I'm concerned the judge should be the one to carry out the sentence and to hell with the logistical complications. If you're going to sentence a person to death you should at least have the moral fibre to off them yourself. At the very least the judge should be present and perhaps the jurors too; let them see firsthand what they have wrought. Perhaps then, "hangin' judges" might be a little less common.
You're telling me. Some of us have to pay twice as much, you know.
A Comcast customer with a fat pipe?
Hmm. Something about that just doesn't quite ring true.
Why do I have this urge to put a leech on the cable coming into my house to improve performance?
Don't bother, there's already one at the other end.
The lawyers got a jury to agree.
In much the same way that someone who wins a debate isn't necessarily correct.
Wait, there are non-evil flowcharts? What an eye-opener.
bloviation
I like that. My new word for the day.
Maybe you should look towards that party that is based on letting you decide for yourself what's best for you? You know, the one that actually has "liberty" in the name and all? Just a thought...
You mean like all those countries that have words like "democratic" in the name?
For high-traffic cases, perhaps we should look at resurrecting the paternoster. We must have the technology by now to allow the lifts to stop and start individually to avoid the shortcomings of the old design.
GPS doesn't enter into it for most phones, particularly those that don't have it. What you're talking about it looking at which towers the phone has contacted and making a best estimate of where the user is. If there's only one tower in range - I gather that they have a range on the order of four miles - it can be quite difficult to locate a phone.
In addition, the GSM standard requires phones to be able to make emergency calls without a SIM card, so the issue of identifying a registered owner is a non-starter for a phone purchased without one. They might be able to link the IMEI to a sales record, assuming the store records the date/time/location of each phone sale.
There's already a thin rubber buffer between the glass and the case. It was there in the original iPhone and as far as I can see it's still there in the 5.
All I want is: (snip)
So... USB?
Forget smoking, I'm waiting for the first reports of someone ending up in hospital because they tried to snort the stuff.
...Otherwise it would be kinda useless, since to use it you would have to have contact with other users which is risky.
Which is also how one usually gets a hold of stuff in the real world. Depending on what is meant by "stuff", this might not be as risky as obtaining it online.
Besides, the two cardinal rules of would-be military invaders are: (1) Do not invade the Chinese mainland. (2) Do not invade Russia.
In other words, never get involved in a land war in Asia.
One of my college profs offered a plausible-sounding explanation for all the really old things still working (bridges, building, plumbing etc.): simply put, the designers didn't really understand what they were doing, so they just over specced up the wazoo. Of course, if they hadn't built stuff to last, it wouldn't still be around for us to wonder about how it does.
why is waste heat "garbage"?
Because it's low temperature and high entropy.
...that we are currently actively cooling parts and attaching heat sinks and radiators for merely decorative purposes?
No, we do it because the devices need to be cooled and it's not worth the expense of slapping a thermocouple on them for the pitiful return one would get.
and if waste heat is an actual phenomenon... why NOT harvest energy from it?
See point the first.
complexity is low with no moving parts.
We've been making ICEs for a long time; we know how to make them reliable. Just because an alternative is presented that's solid state doesn't mean we should automatically jump on it.
price is currently high but as with most things, that can come down with research.
Then report a story that says "powers car" instead of "could one day power cars"
so waste heat exists. power can be harvested.
Never in dispute, but that doesn't mean it's worth doing. Look at it this way, would you go to the trouble of putting a heat exchanger between your bathroom plughole and the inlet for your heating system? There's waste heat there too, but not enough to justify the expense you'd be in for. That's to say nothing of the fact that it would be immensely more efficient than a theromelectric doodad.
i don't see what the point of your tirade is.
I'm guessing here, but maybe it's because the parent is frustrated that you don't appear to see that there's a reason it's called waste heat. Seriously, a large sink sitting slighty above ambient temperature may hold quite a lot of energy, but it's not practical to try and extract any work from it. As an exercise, read up a little on two things: Carnot efficiency, which has been covered nicely by posts above, and low grade heat, which is only really useful for heating something colder, not anything that needs a temperature differential (i.e. any heat engine, solid state or otherwise.)
Anybody who actually has some grasp of the matter want to chime in on where and why you would use thermoelectrics (and how efficient they would have to be) rather than simple insulation or one of the various waste-heat-recovery systems that transfer some amount of the heat remaing in outgoing exhaust gases into incoming working fluids?
In IC engines you want the intake air to be cold so the density is higher (more oxygen); you may have noticed that cars with turbo charges often have something called an intercooler for this reason (compressing the intake air heats it). If you're going to scavenge anything from the exhaust gases it will be low-grade heat (delta-T is smaller, moreso with an efficient engine). Using heat from exhaust to pre-heat the intake is more commonly done with gas or steam turbines, where you want to reduce the amount of heat you need to put into the working fluid at the "cold" side.
I expect that the reason thermoelectrics haven't seen much use in cars is because the benefit you get from using a low efficiency method with a low delta-T just doesn't justify the expense of adding them. I wouldn't be at all surprised if one could gain more by attaching a generator to a turbocharger.
In fairness though, TEs are good if you want something low-powered and simple, but it's not that unusual for a diesel engine to last longer than the car it's put into, so the issue of reliability - one of solid state's big plus points - is rendered moot to an extent. For my own two penneth worth, if they're going to use TE devices to provide power for accessories (you'd never get enough to actually "power" a car without massive efficiency improvements - stupid title) you might as well use the very efficient alternator* you already have attached to the engine.
*Essentially an AC generator with some rectifiers attached. You can get upwards of 75 amps @ 12V if you really want to.
Probably not. Internal combustion only means that the combustion occurs inside the engine. Contrast this to a classic example of external combustion: a steam engine, where the fuel is burnt well away from where the work is produced. Jet engines are internal combustion; most stirlings are external.
One might have a good case for arguing that thermoelectric engines are neither IC nor EC, since it needn't be combustion that provides the heat.
Have you ever heard the expression "the pen is mightier than the sword"?
Yes, but there's one I think is better: "never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel."
...I can edit/delete/repost with ease, why should I think about what I'm saying?
You seem to have forgotten what site this is.