Wow, that's over 50% bigger! I'm just saying it's (obviously) not as technically interesting as employing an entirely new building material and process. And the 380's size is wonderful, until you are waiting for your bags or for customs with another 300 fellow passengers. Boeing decided that more efficient was better than bigger. And without governments to write-off the initial investment, a bigger plane would never pay off. It still might not be truly profitable, ever, anyway. Governments are also investing to re-build terminals to accommodate (Frankfurt, for one, should've focused on eliminating stairways to planes before spending huge amounts to handle the 380).
"I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post." Memorably delivered by Jack Nicholson as Col. Jessup in "A Few Good Men" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104257/quotes)
oh definitely, let's all boycott planes made by "corporate fucks" and commit to flying only on planes made by little, friendly, ma-and-pa type ventures.
The fire can be contained, but it's the lithium that's a problem because it accellerates oxidation of aluminum. It's why there are regulations in place on transport of lithium in aircraft because a tiny bit of lithium can easily eat through critical aircraft structure and cause them to fail..
There's a lot less aluminum in the largely carbon fiber 787. Doesn't this change the risk analysis?
I was more excited about the A380 myself, but I realize that there's a very small market for such large planes.
Excited? About something slightly bigger than the 4-decade-old 747? The most interesting thing about that plane is the prospects for sales to recoup even a significant fraction of the tens of billions the European companies, err, countries , paid to build it. Forget about bailing out Greece, Portugal, et al., some of those Euros are going straight into subsidies to the companies assembling it. Financially interesting, technically not so much.
The way this could work to increase general knowledge and understanding, as well as fun and potential profit, is that 1. I make a claim, 2. you refute it, 3. I provide an example, and 4. you provide a counter-example.
Still waiting on step 4. Note that I never claimed Yale was the "only university out there", though it does provide a decent standard.
e.g., "At the request of the Office of Cooperative Research, the Inventors shall execute assignments or other documents assigning to the University all their rights in the invention and any patent applications or resulting patents on the invention. " Quoted from this page.
Universities also have rights to anything invented by their faculty. This produces the bizarre result that your own ideas, often developed through your own grants (grants that also pay "overhead" averaging >50% to the university), belong to your employer, the university that (also) uses the grant to pay you. A few universities have made large amounts of money but most have been net losers from patent costs, etc. Fortunately, universities are slowly realizing that they have a poor record of converting ideas/patents into money, so they may relinquish so rights for a stake in a resulting company.
What if a community of citizens decides they want a new road? They might agree to build it and finance it by a community tax. This would be possible even in a libertarian Utopia, correct? Even if some in their community object (who might also object to a single citizen building the same road), so long as there is a majority in favor, it seems they should be able to proceed. Is that not, in aggregate, what a well-functioning government does? Maybe it is more palatable if "public corporation" is substituted for "government".
We can argue about whether governments function well, whether they provide goods and services that their citizens actually want or need.
I hereby retract my call to heap troll karma on alen's post. A moment's reflection led me to realize that I'm not even sure I know what troll karma is. I apologize and welcome alen's ideas. Carry on.
Can somebody spare some "troll" karma for this post?
Nobody proposes that high speed rail can replace the airplane for long distance travel (100-600 miles, approximately). That said, I would (rather) like to see cars develop networking capabilities that would allow them to travel safely and efficiently in tight, slipstream packs on highways, where about half a single car's energy is spent (wasted) overcoming air resistance.
To moderate the post as "Flamebait", which it is at the time I post this reply, is pitiful.
I am sympathetic to the idea (honestly) but the article you link to does not make a good argument: it is tendentious, rhetorically flat (IMHO), and ridiculously outdated (e.g., how many readers upon reading "Dr. Spock" would think of the pediatrician instead of the Star Trek character?). It's good for "preaching to the choir" but please find something more persuasive for new prospective converts.
"I'm also wondering how many days I'll need to stay away from the rifle range before I won't show any particulate explosives at one of these checkpoint."
Simple: just don't carry your BOARDING PASS to the RIFLE RANGE.
Impressively low numbers, fer sure! "Age" is relative. When I finally joined (after watching for a while), I thought "that's it, I'll be at the end of this line forever." Then within a few years 10x more people joined. This is a great site (though I sometimes do look for a "like" or thumbs-up option and wish I had karma points to give).
"I don't think many people realize just how many embedded devices run Linux or BSD."
True. I've seen a couple airplane entertainment systems booting recently (normal startups, not reboots) and was a little surprised to recognize many of the usual daemons waking up. In contrast, I've seen a number of information screens in lobbies of hotels or office buildings stuck on a crashed Windows error message. Once upon a time, such a contrast would have cheered slashdotters but now it's just the way it is. So long Windows, and thanks for all the BSODs (in keeping with the thread above).
the subject of this discussion is scientific papers, which are commonly already 'uploaded' and available for download (not true for manuscripts but that is where email or dropbox work great).
Good point darrylo, iAnnotate was much cheaper - like $1 - a year or so ago, and it's updated gratis so far. Though $10 is not so bad if you know an app will be just what you need. I would also hesitate to buy a more expensive app with so many alternatives unless I knew it was what I wanted. Too bad iTunes doesn't permit try/buy... I've bought a number of apps I never use after the first couple tries.
3. you can transfer to the iPad very easily either by mailing or dropbox or downloading directly (I think... haven't done that recently). No need to use iTunes. As several others have recommended, read and annotate easily with iAnnotate PDF.
iAnnotate PDF on the iPad is a great way to read, bookmark, and annotate pdfs. You can highlight, draw, add notes, etc. It is great for conferences and meetings with a lot of documentation; all fits easily on even the 16GB iPad (of course, and much more beside). For heavier duty note taking, I copy from iAnnotate and paste into Pages.
To help keep your mind, such as it is, focused on the key point, you may strike the sentence with the reverie-inducing phrase "potentially dire effect" and replace this simpler one: "Fish will die in a more acidic ocean."
For being so ostensibly open-minded, and skeptical about others ("willfully lying"), you sure are certain about *your* "facts". Atmospheric CO2 is on a continuously upward trend since the beginning of the industrial revolution, i.e., the large-scale burning of fossil fuels. This correlation seems extremely suggestive of causation. Proof in large scale, uncontrolled environments usually comes too late (extinction).
CO2 also drives the acidity of the oceans, which strongly influences the ability of fish to extract oxygen, so even in the unlikely event that the skeptics are right to doubt the link between atmospheric levels and warming, there remains the potentially dire effects on ocean life.
re-posting after logging in (whoops)... I'll take dis/credit for this opinion: Having been frequently disappointed - even distressed - by major errors in comprehension and comprehensibility when reading reports of news from my own field published in the regular press, even high quality media such as the NY Times, I must imagine that they also get it wrong when reporting other fields. So I would recommend reading the real thing - the journals Science and Nature are tops in general science - and trying hard to understand what they are communicating. These journals both have outstanding introductions to the top papers each issue. They also have first rate podcasts (free) that describe the findings and discuss them with the authors. For tracking my own field, I have standing searches on PubMed that deliver matches with links every week by email.
Slashdot Mirror
Absolutely, the correct metric is fuel per seat. And by that metric, the 787 is more efficient (IIRC 10-20% more efficient than comparable jets).
Wow, that's over 50% bigger! I'm just saying it's (obviously) not as technically interesting as employing an entirely new building material and process. And the 380's size is wonderful, until you are waiting for your bags or for customs with another 300 fellow passengers. Boeing decided that more efficient was better than bigger. And without governments to write-off the initial investment, a bigger plane would never pay off. It still might not be truly profitable, ever, anyway. Governments are also investing to re-build terminals to accommodate (Frankfurt, for one, should've focused on eliminating stairways to planes before spending huge amounts to handle the 380).
"I would rather you just said thank you, and went on your way, Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a weapon, and stand a post." Memorably delivered by Jack Nicholson as Col. Jessup in "A Few Good Men" (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0104257/quotes)
oh definitely, let's all boycott planes made by "corporate fucks" and commit to flying only on planes made by little, friendly, ma-and-pa type ventures.
There's a lot less aluminum in the largely carbon fiber 787. Doesn't this change the risk analysis?
I was more excited about the A380 myself, but I realize that there's a very small market for such large planes.
Excited? About something slightly bigger than the 4-decade-old 747? The most interesting thing about that plane is the prospects for sales to recoup even a significant fraction of the tens of billions the European companies, err, countries , paid to build it. Forget about bailing out Greece, Portugal, et al., some of those Euros are going straight into subsidies to the companies assembling it. Financially interesting, technically not so much.
The way this could work to increase general knowledge and understanding, as well as fun and potential profit, is that
1. I make a claim,
2. you refute it,
3. I provide an example, and
4. you provide a counter-example.
Still waiting on step 4. Note that I never claimed Yale was the "only university out there", though it does provide a decent standard.
e.g., "At the request of the Office of Cooperative Research, the Inventors shall execute assignments or other documents assigning to the University all their rights in the invention and any patent applications or resulting patents on the invention. " Quoted from this page.
Universities also have rights to anything invented by their faculty. This produces the bizarre result that your own ideas, often developed through your own grants (grants that also pay "overhead" averaging >50% to the university), belong to your employer, the university that (also) uses the grant to pay you. A few universities have made large amounts of money but most have been net losers from patent costs, etc. Fortunately, universities are slowly realizing that they have a poor record of converting ideas/patents into money, so they may relinquish so rights for a stake in a resulting company.
'withing a few months' speaking a Saxon dialect. Maybe they would discover the spellchecker 'withing' a few years.
What if a community of citizens decides they want a new road? They might agree to build it and finance it by a community tax. This would be possible even in a libertarian Utopia, correct? Even if some in their community object (who might also object to a single citizen building the same road), so long as there is a majority in favor, it seems they should be able to proceed. Is that not, in aggregate, what a well-functioning government does? Maybe it is more palatable if "public corporation" is substituted for "government".
We can argue about whether governments function well, whether they provide goods and services that their citizens actually want or need.
I hereby retract my call to heap troll karma on alen's post. A moment's reflection led me to realize that I'm not even sure I know what troll karma is. I apologize and welcome alen's ideas. Carry on.
Can somebody spare some "troll" karma for this post?
Nobody proposes that high speed rail can replace the airplane for long distance travel (100-600 miles, approximately). That said, I would (rather) like to see cars develop networking capabilities that would allow them to travel safely and efficiently in tight, slipstream packs on highways, where about half a single car's energy is spent (wasted) overcoming air resistance.
To moderate the post as "Flamebait", which it is at the time I post this reply, is pitiful.
I am sympathetic to the idea (honestly) but the article you link to does not make a good argument: it is tendentious, rhetorically flat (IMHO), and ridiculously outdated (e.g., how many readers upon reading "Dr. Spock" would think of the pediatrician instead of the Star Trek character?). It's good for "preaching to the choir" but please find something more persuasive for new prospective converts.
"I'm also wondering how many days I'll need to stay away from the rifle range before I won't show any particulate explosives at one of these checkpoint."
Simple: just don't carry your BOARDING PASS to the RIFLE RANGE.
Impressively low numbers, fer sure! "Age" is relative. When I finally joined (after watching for a while), I thought "that's it, I'll be at the end of this line forever." Then within a few years 10x more people joined. This is a great site (though I sometimes do look for a "like" or thumbs-up option and wish I had karma points to give).
"I don't think many people realize just how many embedded devices run Linux or BSD."
True. I've seen a couple airplane entertainment systems booting recently (normal startups, not reboots) and was a little surprised to recognize many of the usual daemons waking up. In contrast, I've seen a number of information screens in lobbies of hotels or office buildings stuck on a crashed Windows error message. Once upon a time, such a contrast would have cheered slashdotters but now it's just the way it is. So long Windows, and thanks for all the BSODs (in keeping with the thread above).
Maybe because I have credits at Audible but not even registered at S&S? Friction and inertia are sales concepts too.
the subject of this discussion is scientific papers, which are commonly already 'uploaded' and available for download (not true for manuscripts but that is where email or dropbox work great).
Good point darrylo, iAnnotate was much cheaper - like $1 - a year or so ago, and it's updated gratis so far. Though $10 is not so bad if you know an app will be just what you need. I would also hesitate to buy a more expensive app with so many alternatives unless I knew it was what I wanted. Too bad iTunes doesn't permit try/buy... I've bought a number of apps I never use after the first couple tries.
3. you can transfer to the iPad very easily either by mailing or dropbox or downloading directly (I think... haven't done that recently). No need to use iTunes. As several others have recommended, read and annotate easily with iAnnotate PDF.
iAnnotate PDF on the iPad is a great way to read, bookmark, and annotate pdfs. You can highlight, draw, add notes, etc. It is great for conferences and meetings with a lot of documentation; all fits easily on even the 16GB iPad (of course, and much more beside). For heavier duty note taking, I copy from iAnnotate and paste into Pages.
To help keep your mind, such as it is, focused on the key point, you may strike the sentence with the reverie-inducing phrase "potentially dire effect" and replace this simpler one: "Fish will die in a more acidic ocean."
Simple enough to grasp, now?
For being so ostensibly open-minded, and skeptical about others ("willfully lying"), you sure are certain about *your* "facts". Atmospheric CO2 is on a continuously upward trend since the beginning of the industrial revolution, i.e., the large-scale burning of fossil fuels. This correlation seems extremely suggestive of causation. Proof in large scale, uncontrolled environments usually comes too late (extinction).
CO2 also drives the acidity of the oceans, which strongly influences the ability of fish to extract oxygen, so even in the unlikely event that the skeptics are right to doubt the link between atmospheric levels and warming, there remains the potentially dire effects on ocean life.
re-posting after logging in (whoops)... I'll take dis/credit for this opinion:
Having been frequently disappointed - even distressed - by major errors in comprehension and comprehensibility when reading reports of news from my own field published in the regular press, even high quality media such as the NY Times, I must imagine that they also get it wrong when reporting other fields. So I would recommend reading the real thing - the journals Science and Nature are tops in general science - and trying hard to understand what they are communicating. These journals both have outstanding introductions to the top papers each issue. They also have first rate podcasts (free) that describe the findings and discuss them with the authors. For tracking my own field, I have standing searches on PubMed that deliver matches with links every week by email.