So, apparently we need a complicated system of grid feeding substations (electric cars, in this article) to help keep the grid working. Here's another idea - the utilities could do THEIR job a little better, and this vast infrastructure change will be irrelevant. How do they handle solar, wind and similar at the moment? Another issue is that overall power quality will degrade with too many cheap substations feeding energy with uncontrollable amounts of reactive power into the grid. Sure this can be handled, but only at considerable cost to the installation you need in your home. That is one the reasons utilities would rather keep your excess wind, solar, hydro or other such energy sources off their precious grid, and will settle for your consumption to be really low. Handling that situation would require substantial investments on the side of the utilities - not exactly what they are known to love.
This is *exactly* what I think is best. Let the experienced hands create the design and let them solve the difficult stuff. Then have the juniors "fill in the blank" and help them along the way. Occasionally have them participate in design tasks to give them some experience and a little more of the "why" part about the design - this will reduce the number of annoying questions tremendously afterwards.
As you can probably tell, this is what I do - design and difficult stuff. I really enjoy that. Others do GUI, build process, configuration, and what-have-you. Some of them like their work because they get to go home and not think about their work until next morning. They will stay "junior" forever, but are perfectly happy with that. They don't have a passion for their work, so they should never ever be allowed to do the design or solve the difficult problems, and most of the time they don't even want to.
Now management, that's another issue. They simply fail to understand that there can easily be a factor of 5 or 10 difference in the total time it takes for any two of us to complete a certain task with any reasonable measure of quality. This works both ways - I end up spending more time doing GUI work than those who like that work, simply because it is a kind of work that does not motivate me. Likewise, solving that OS and transport-independent highspeed failover service protocol was my work, because that is what I do 10 times faster and better.
What is your role as tech advisor? I'm curious about the system you describe, because we don't really have that here in my little part of the world. It sounds like the Tech committee could be a great place to work.
I could see myself giving advise on the matter to anyone interested, but NYC is at least an 11 hour flight away in either direction. Not really a problem, it's just so that you know. Also, be aware that my formal education is not directly in this field. I'm originally a computer scientist, who just happened to have worked on these system for years now, and have managed to accumulate knowledge in the field we talk about here. This may serve to discredit my statements, should anyone decide to disagree aggressively. But that would be your decision - if you want to contact me, you can do so at allan[dot]bo[dot]jorgensen[at]gmail[dot]com.
Cutting out the middleman makes a lot of sense, and my guess is that a variant of the scenario you mention will become true. At some point, a genius somewhere in the world will engineer (or simply discover) an algae or bacteria that will produce standard car petrol (or at least one or two of the major components hexane, heptane and octane if memory serves correctly) when exposed to sunlight, water (salt water is preferable, because it's so abundant) and CO2. If you think about it, the benefits of this will be enormous - no need to set up a new infrastructure or replace the entire pool of automobiles, or any of those other gigantic investments that makes a hydrogen economy nothing but a wet dream. At least until some major breakthrough has occurred, and I am betting my money on the bugs-to-petrol variant because its barrier to market entry is so much lower. It would even be CO2 neutral, since the OC2 emitted by the car using the petrol would be equal to the amount used to produce it.
Power sure is cheap where you live - I pay about $.30 per kWh. But about a quarter of that power comes from wind turbines, waste management gas facilities, hydro power and other such green sources already. I live in Denmark, home of the wind turbine industry:-)
I think you underestimate the cost to set up the plant, get it approved for production and keep it running. The maintenance cost is the real problem here, because tidal power is so new. There are no long-term experiences with this type of equipment in a production environment - it's been mostly research so far. Another way to put it is that the low-maintenance setups are low yield and high-yield is mostly brand new. Some combine the worst of the two:-)
Many places in the US, grid codes are rather lax. This is both good and bad. It contributes to your apparently chronically unstable power grid, but it also makes it fairly easy to connect less-than-optimum power sources to the grid, and "roll the meter backwards". Essentially, strict gridcodes forces utilities to behave and to a limited extent cooperate, but realistically that requires federal action and regulation. As seen from over here, you guys seem to not be very fond of that type of action.
I think a feasible direction may be to get in contact with some well-reputed university and talk about an agreement of some sort. It's a good bet that they would be interested, once you find the right people. Then set up a small-scale facility to make power for your own home, and see if it scales. If that seems too slow to you (frankly, it would to me:-), try contacting some of the manufacturers about a small-scale facility - they might be willing to offer a really good deal if you agree that they can 'tinker' with it for a period to gather experience. When you (and they) have gathered some experience with the equipment, try doing a more informed cost/benefit analysis in terms of yield and investment risk assessment. You might just be better off buying stocks in some company and just pay for power. If you're doing this to be "green", that just shifts the breakpoint for the yield and investment risk assessment, but I'd do it anyway - it's good to know, in advance, what you're getting in to. After all, it's still a lot of money...
The connection-less design you mention does indeed allow for a sealed structure. It does not, however, solve all your problems in terms of a completely sealed electrical system, which is the more difficult problem to solve. You still need cabling, connectors, service access while submerged etc. An additional problem in an estuary would be silt deposits and increased mechanical wear, but I have no idea of how bad that problem would be - that would depend heavily on local factors. With the water being brackish, salt is indeed less of a problem, but you don't need much salt to short a 500kW powerline.
Storage with fuel cells is very much in its infancy right now, and the fuel cells do not last very long. This will certainly change, but for now it's considered an impractical and costly solution for wind turbines, and these benefit even more from any form of energy storage. Batteries are cheap (relatively) and a proven technology in terms of medium-term energy storage. They also support round-robin replacements as they age if you get modular ones (easy/cheap with batteries, difficult/expensive with fuel cells), which is a big reliability boost. For now, fuel cells look promising, but are not ready for production requiring much in the way of stability.
I would not recommend anyone to buy any of the available 500kW systems that I know of - they are still not ready for operation. Besides, the ones I know of are European, and as such made for European grid codes - I am from Europe myself. But look at Marine Current Turbines or see a few of their demonstration and test installations at this site. And yes, these are the guys we worked with briefly:-)
I guess a river would be fine, but that would be more like traditional hydropower. The fjord, however, is a bit more of a challenge. Although the power output is very predictable, it is also very variable. Every time the low or high tide peaks, you get little or no power. In between the two you get maximum power. So to power a home, you need energy storage. Realistically, this means batteries. Big ones, and throw in a big inverter to make AC power. This is similar to the energy storage from a small wind turbine, so getting the parts is not really a problem. Maybe a refurbished 200 or so kW wind turbine would be just as good? It's a lot easier to install and maintain. The biggest challenge is not getting the tidal generator to work properly (even though it can be tricky to handle that the rotor alternates direction as the tide changes), but getting it to reliably work completely submerged in salt water. To get it out of reach of storms, and you will really want to, you need to put it below at least 10 or so metres of water. To make a system that generates tens of kW of power below 10 metres of water, is quite an engineering challenge in terms of avoiding salt water in the electric system. That will short it very easily, and corrosion is a big issue too. You should be able to get far more power than that from a system like that. The prototype we worked on briefly was 500 kW, and that was a severely scaled down version. Installations of about 5 MW are being planned, but this is on-the-edge technology so far - not ready for production. There are small outfits making more reliable systems, but these tend to be local and best suited for local grid codes (the rules that, in short, say how well regulated the power should be before it is fed to the grid). If you wish to go off-grid completely the inverter will be more expensive, as it will need to maintain the AC frequency entirely on its own. Grid codes can be very strict in some countries - most of Great Britain, for instance. Other places have much laxer rules - YMMV.
These are being developed as we speak, but not in deep sea applications - inlets to certain fjords are way better suited and utilizes strong tidal currents. My company narrowly missed a contract for supplying the control system for one such system, which was basically an upside-down wind turbine. You can read about it in general at Wikipedia. The real catch is that it is, in contrast to wind power, utterly predictable.
Any wealthy group can escape overpopulation much more easily than you describe. Buy an island, perhaps. Buy a large tract of land wherever you want and hire enough guards, perhaps. Both of these allows escape from overpopulation, without permanently removing the wealthy people from the source or their wealth. If they blast off into the great unknown, how can things get better for them? Government restraints have always been easily avoidable if you have enough wealth.
My money would be on POOR people, for whom a multi-generational odyssey, wrought with dangers and/or incredible boredom, still represented a chance to improve their lives - and more importantly, the lives of their descendants. The MacroLife scenario you described is actually very compatible with this idea, but starting the whole thing is where things get shaky. How would we be able to gradually evolve this scenario? The key issues - space production capacity (to make the damn colonies in the first place - launching them is not an option) and the launch COST MUST COME DOWN. Dramatically. No amount of political or religious fervor to colonize (or escape from persecution) can successfully overcome the non-existence of space production facilities, IMHO.
That will happen once there's an incentive to go into space to build the factories you mention on a very small scale. Then slightly larger, and then larger again. What could we mass-produce in space, that could not as easily be produced on earth? I don't know, but something based on crystals could be a good starting point. Maybe Intel's fabs will be in LEO in thirty years?
It is my experience with C/C++ code, that much of the ugliness comes from optimization. When code was written 20+ years ago, processors were not the powerhouses they are now. Lots of effort went into making sure that the system not only worked, but worked fast enough for people to care about the result by the time it arrived. To some extent, making code really fast tends to make it ugly.
Now, we've got multi-core multi-GHz processors with multi-Gb of insanely fast memory. 95% of the time, we don't need to tweak the code for performance any longer. We may bemoan the dearth of fast optimized code (and sometimes I do just that), but in the vast majority of applications, it doesn't matter if we optimize more than a single or a few dozen function. Besides, compilers are getting so good at local optimizations for a single function that we get some of that for free - without the ugliness.
Make it silent. Given that constraint max out the specs with regards to CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD etc. I'd love a 30" full-HD screen too. But remember to make it all SILENT. Any takes on what I'd end up with?
I agree with just about everything you wrote, but there *is* a generic ArrayList in.NET 2.0 - it's just called List, and sits in the System.Collections.Generic namespace. I use it all the time, along with the generic Dictionary class that replaces Hashtable from previous frameworks. Generics are truly great, but I'm an old C++ guy so I knew they would be:-)
Uhm, no. Mars' athmospheric pressure is 0.6-0.9 kPa as you wrote, but that of good ol' Earth is 101 kPa according to Wikipedia, not 1.01 kPa. That's about a factor of 100 instead, which roughly translates to "really friggin thin". IIRC, that's the main reason for the large temperature swings, BTW - the athmosphere is too thin to retain sufficient heat from the day and release it during night.
For growing plants an underground greenhouse with groundbased mirrors for sunlight (easy way to get rid of radiation in the greenhouse) would be a workable solution. If we can manufacture greenhouse "glass" (locally on Mars, that is) that blocks harmful radiation and lets through the wavelengths needed by the plants, that could be the ideal solution. I have no idea if this is possible - any takers?
If you can live with the high taxes and the (mostly) bad weather, there is negative unemployment here right now and a serious economic boom. If you're good at something (almost any profession, and certainly all aspects of engineering and medicine) you can have a job in no time. In fact, if you're into power engineering and/or advanced process regulation my company would consider hiring you for our R&D department (where I work, BTW).
Most danes are good english speakers and only a few radicals are seriously anti-american. If you avoid glorifying your home country too badly and can live with an almost entirely non-religious society, you could have a really good time here. Immigration laws are sort of tough these days, but it's not impossible at all.
If you're a gun nut, then forget about going - weapons permits are very hard to obtain and, for all practical purposes, limited to highly regulated hunting weapons that require a hunting license.
On the good side, we've got some of the best-looking women in the world, IMNSHO;-)
These are the only games I play over and over again. The first two reflect my preference for turn-based strategy and X-Wing is equal parts fun and nostalgia. Other games simply don't cut it in the long run...
Without emotion, I'd be hard pressed to find a really good reason to do anything at all.
And BTW, I have 3 kids. There's a BIG emotional ROI every day, if you care to open your eyes. To those who think that emotional ROI and monetary/professional ROI are not linked both ways - well, maybe you don't know everything yet.
You're right about the nature of the dog - I knew that. I've had one or more dogs almost constantly from the age of 10 to now 37. They're great companions, and I know about the pack leader system. I have one piece of advice for (future and current) dogowners. Whenever your dog threatens you or openly disobeys you (simple stuff it surely knows how to do), simply grab it by the throat and force it onto its back. By firm but not mean. Hold your hand firmly around its throat without choking it until it becomes passive - that's when it "yields". Then release it immediately. Apart from you using your hand and the real pack leader using his teeth, this is exactly how dominance is established among dogs themselves, and they instinctively know what it means. Start this when they're big puppies, and they start playing dominance games with you. If done in the right way, it usually takes very little effort before they understand that they're below you. When they turn two, you're right - males will start to fight for position and status. Don't allow your dog to go very far along that route, or you will find that the procedure I described can be quite frightening - a furious 2-year old 70+ pound dog can very easily damage people, even if it didn't really want to hurt you seriously. There is no harm (physical or otherwise) to the dog if this procedure is done right. On the contrary, most dogs will happily accept you as the leader, if you consistently show that you are stronger. Most dogs only start fighting to be the leader if no leader seems to be present, as the absence of leadership is a serious threat to a pack animal like the dog/wolf.
Another tougher issue is how to make sure they understand that they are ranked below little children. For instance, making them understand that a two-year old running around with a sandwich does not have to give the food to the dog (as should happen by dogpack rules given that the dog is ranked above the child). We have had to teach our children to be tough (but not mean) with the dogs, and have been very strict about verbal punishment of the dog whenever it happens. Also, keeping the dog at heel (don't know if this is the correct english term for this) helps avoid the situation from occuring. Haven't really found a good way though...
Re:38 million households own a cat??
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Hypoallergenic Cats
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· Score: 4, Funny
I've heard it like this:
The Dog sees the Man serving food and water and generally taking care of it and loving it. The Dog concludes: "Wow, he must be God".
The Cat sees the Man serving food and water and generally taking care of it and loving it. The Cat concludes: "Wow, I must be God".
Where I live (Denmark) it's quite common for 4th or 5th graders to have cell-phones (that would be around 10 years of age). They don't call one another that much (let alone their parents unless they need a ride or something) - they use their phones to send each other text messages. Piles of them. That has become such a part of their pattern of social interaction that kids without cell phones feel left out. And quite frankly, they often are.
Most cell phone plans nowadays feature an optional "all the SMS'es you can send for DKK99 (~$15) per month" that is VERY popular with the young crowd (and certainly their parents).
My oldest son is in 2nd grade now, and in a few years we'll buy him a cell phone. Not for GPS tracking, partly for minor emergencies (of the "missed the bus" kind), partly for "I'm at Johnny's house" messages but the primary reason is that a cell phone is often a required device for social interaction with friends at that age. I may not like that (in fact, I don't) but the social well-being of my son is more important than my personal taste. A group of parents (myself included) have been trying to make my son's school ban cell phones from the classrooms with some success, but after school there's not much we can do about it.
with 46 percent doing their own computer trouble-shooting In my book, this means that 46 percent of the women we'll never have a chance of doing a favorable impression on. Not much of a chance to begin with, but now - no chance!
If more parents let their kids go ahead and, for example, chew on the cat's tail, the kid's immune system would get exposed to a few new agents (and learn to deal with them), and the cat would swat the kid who would then learn "don't chew on kitty, it hurts". My youngest son did exactly this (biting the cat, carrying it by its ears or tail etc), and the cat reacted as expected, leaving him with many red stripes on his hands, arms, legs and head. As expected, of course. The unusual reaction came from my son - it didn't make him leave the cat alone, it make him squeeze it that much harder. In the end, the *CAT* surrendered - it becomes passive whenever my youngest son catches it.
Most kids today have been raised to expect most "things" to give them instant gratification. If something is perceived as too hard, most just can't be bothered to learn it. Math, physics, chemistry and most other natural sciences *ARE* perceived as "too hard" by most people, including kids. So most conclude - why bother?
Where did this come from? Too many channels on the TV to zap between, giving most people the attention span of a ferret? Too much dumbed down content that keep children passively entertained, so they don't bother their parents? Too much emphasis on shortsighted gains by their parents (kids imitate their parents, good and bad stuff)? Too little emphasis on MASTERING and too much emphasis on BROWSING (no, not necessarily the Internet kind)? Uninspired/insufficient teaching all the way through the education system? Basketball players make $3M/year, scientists at most $100K/year, making basketball players the natural role-models in a spending-crazy society/economy?
Perhaps France will soon see war as a way to divert attention from all the troubles at home. It's well known that France wants to be a real superpower (again), and if this means adopting the measures used by the only superpower left - so be it.
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So, apparently we need a complicated system of grid feeding substations (electric cars, in this article) to help keep the grid working. Here's another idea - the utilities could do THEIR job a little better, and this vast infrastructure change will be irrelevant. How do they handle solar, wind and similar at the moment? Another issue is that overall power quality will degrade with too many cheap substations feeding energy with uncontrollable amounts of reactive power into the grid. Sure this can be handled, but only at considerable cost to the installation you need in your home. That is one the reasons utilities would rather keep your excess wind, solar, hydro or other such energy sources off their precious grid, and will settle for your consumption to be really low. Handling that situation would require substantial investments on the side of the utilities - not exactly what they are known to love.
He would be Peregrin Took, perhaps? Only guy named 'Took' that I know of...
This is *exactly* what I think is best. Let the experienced hands create the design and let them solve the difficult stuff. Then have the juniors "fill in the blank" and help them along the way. Occasionally have them participate in design tasks to give them some experience and a little more of the "why" part about the design - this will reduce the number of annoying questions tremendously afterwards.
As you can probably tell, this is what I do - design and difficult stuff. I really enjoy that. Others do GUI, build process, configuration, and what-have-you. Some of them like their work because they get to go home and not think about their work until next morning. They will stay "junior" forever, but are perfectly happy with that. They don't have a passion for their work, so they should never ever be allowed to do the design or solve the difficult problems, and most of the time they don't even want to.
Now management, that's another issue. They simply fail to understand that there can easily be a factor of 5 or 10 difference in the total time it takes for any two of us to complete a certain task with any reasonable measure of quality. This works both ways - I end up spending more time doing GUI work than those who like that work, simply because it is a kind of work that does not motivate me. Likewise, solving that OS and transport-independent highspeed failover service protocol was my work, because that is what I do 10 times faster and better.
You're perfectly welcome :-)
What is your role as tech advisor? I'm curious about the system you describe, because we don't really have that here in my little part of the world. It sounds like the Tech committee could be a great place to work.
I could see myself giving advise on the matter to anyone interested, but NYC is at least an 11 hour flight away in either direction. Not really a problem, it's just so that you know. Also, be aware that my formal education is not directly in this field. I'm originally a computer scientist, who just happened to have worked on these system for years now, and have managed to accumulate knowledge in the field we talk about here. This may serve to discredit my statements, should anyone decide to disagree aggressively. But that would be your decision - if you want to contact me, you can do so at allan[dot]bo[dot]jorgensen[at]gmail[dot]com.
Cutting out the middleman makes a lot of sense, and my guess is that a variant of the scenario you mention will become true. At some point, a genius somewhere in the world will engineer (or simply discover) an algae or bacteria that will produce standard car petrol (or at least one or two of the major components hexane, heptane and octane if memory serves correctly) when exposed to sunlight, water (salt water is preferable, because it's so abundant) and CO2. If you think about it, the benefits of this will be enormous - no need to set up a new infrastructure or replace the entire pool of automobiles, or any of those other gigantic investments that makes a hydrogen economy nothing but a wet dream. At least until some major breakthrough has occurred, and I am betting my money on the bugs-to-petrol variant because its barrier to market entry is so much lower. It would even be CO2 neutral, since the OC2 emitted by the car using the petrol would be equal to the amount used to produce it.
:-)
:-)
:-), try contacting some of the manufacturers about a small-scale facility - they might be willing to offer a really good deal if you agree that they can 'tinker' with it for a period to gather experience. When you (and they) have gathered some experience with the equipment, try doing a more informed cost/benefit analysis in terms of yield and investment risk assessment. You might just be better off buying stocks in some company and just pay for power. If you're doing this to be "green", that just shifts the breakpoint for the yield and investment risk assessment, but I'd do it anyway - it's good to know, in advance, what you're getting in to. After all, it's still a lot of money...
Power sure is cheap where you live - I pay about $.30 per kWh. But about a quarter of that power comes from wind turbines, waste management gas facilities, hydro power and other such green sources already. I live in Denmark, home of the wind turbine industry
I think you underestimate the cost to set up the plant, get it approved for production and keep it running. The maintenance cost is the real problem here, because tidal power is so new. There are no long-term experiences with this type of equipment in a production environment - it's been mostly research so far. Another way to put it is that the low-maintenance setups are low yield and high-yield is mostly brand new. Some combine the worst of the two
Many places in the US, grid codes are rather lax. This is both good and bad. It contributes to your apparently chronically unstable power grid, but it also makes it fairly easy to connect less-than-optimum power sources to the grid, and "roll the meter backwards". Essentially, strict gridcodes forces utilities to behave and to a limited extent cooperate, but realistically that requires federal action and regulation. As seen from over here, you guys seem to not be very fond of that type of action.
I think a feasible direction may be to get in contact with some well-reputed university and talk about an agreement of some sort. It's a good bet that they would be interested, once you find the right people. Then set up a small-scale facility to make power for your own home, and see if it scales. If that seems too slow to you (frankly, it would to me
The connection-less design you mention does indeed allow for a sealed structure. It does not, however, solve all your problems in terms of a completely sealed electrical system, which is the more difficult problem to solve. You still need cabling, connectors, service access while submerged etc. An additional problem in an estuary would be silt deposits and increased mechanical wear, but I have no idea of how bad that problem would be - that would depend heavily on local factors. With the water being brackish, salt is indeed less of a problem, but you don't need much salt to short a 500kW powerline.
:-)
Storage with fuel cells is very much in its infancy right now, and the fuel cells do not last very long. This will certainly change, but for now it's considered an impractical and costly solution for wind turbines, and these benefit even more from any form of energy storage. Batteries are cheap (relatively) and a proven technology in terms of medium-term energy storage. They also support round-robin replacements as they age if you get modular ones (easy/cheap with batteries, difficult/expensive with fuel cells), which is a big reliability boost. For now, fuel cells look promising, but are not ready for production requiring much in the way of stability.
I would not recommend anyone to buy any of the available 500kW systems that I know of - they are still not ready for operation. Besides, the ones I know of are European, and as such made for European grid codes - I am from Europe myself. But look at Marine Current Turbines or see a few of their demonstration and test installations at this site. And yes, these are the guys we worked with briefly
I guess a river would be fine, but that would be more like traditional hydropower. The fjord, however, is a bit more of a challenge. Although the power output is very predictable, it is also very variable. Every time the low or high tide peaks, you get little or no power. In between the two you get maximum power. So to power a home, you need energy storage. Realistically, this means batteries. Big ones, and throw in a big inverter to make AC power. This is similar to the energy storage from a small wind turbine, so getting the parts is not really a problem. Maybe a refurbished 200 or so kW wind turbine would be just as good? It's a lot easier to install and maintain.
The biggest challenge is not getting the tidal generator to work properly (even though it can be tricky to handle that the rotor alternates direction as the tide changes), but getting it to reliably work completely submerged in salt water. To get it out of reach of storms, and you will really want to, you need to put it below at least 10 or so metres of water. To make a system that generates tens of kW of power below 10 metres of water, is quite an engineering challenge in terms of avoiding salt water in the electric system. That will short it very easily, and corrosion is a big issue too.
You should be able to get far more power than that from a system like that. The prototype we worked on briefly was 500 kW, and that was a severely scaled down version. Installations of about 5 MW are being planned, but this is on-the-edge technology so far - not ready for production. There are small outfits making more reliable systems, but these tend to be local and best suited for local grid codes (the rules that, in short, say how well regulated the power should be before it is fed to the grid). If you wish to go off-grid completely the inverter will be more expensive, as it will need to maintain the AC frequency entirely on its own. Grid codes can be very strict in some countries - most of Great Britain, for instance. Other places have much laxer rules - YMMV.
These are being developed as we speak, but not in deep sea applications - inlets to certain fjords are way better suited and utilizes strong tidal currents. My company narrowly missed a contract for supplying the control system for one such system, which was basically an upside-down wind turbine. You can read about it in general at Wikipedia. The real catch is that it is, in contrast to wind power, utterly predictable.
Any wealthy group can escape overpopulation much more easily than you describe. Buy an island, perhaps. Buy a large tract of land wherever you want and hire enough guards, perhaps. Both of these allows escape from overpopulation, without permanently removing the wealthy people from the source or their wealth. If they blast off into the great unknown, how can things get better for them? Government restraints have always been easily avoidable if you have enough wealth.
My money would be on POOR people, for whom a multi-generational odyssey, wrought with dangers and/or incredible boredom, still represented a chance to improve their lives - and more importantly, the lives of their descendants. The MacroLife scenario you described is actually very compatible with this idea, but starting the whole thing is where things get shaky. How would we be able to gradually evolve this scenario? The key issues - space production capacity (to make the damn colonies in the first place - launching them is not an option) and the launch COST MUST COME DOWN. Dramatically. No amount of political or religious fervor to colonize (or escape from persecution) can successfully overcome the non-existence of space production facilities, IMHO.
That will happen once there's an incentive to go into space to build the factories you mention on a very small scale. Then slightly larger, and then larger again. What could we mass-produce in space, that could not as easily be produced on earth? I don't know, but something based on crystals could be a good starting point. Maybe Intel's fabs will be in LEO in thirty years?
It is my experience with C/C++ code, that much of the ugliness comes from optimization. When code was written 20+ years ago, processors were not the powerhouses they are now. Lots of effort went into making sure that the system not only worked, but worked fast enough for people to care about the result by the time it arrived. To some extent, making code really fast tends to make it ugly.
Now, we've got multi-core multi-GHz processors with multi-Gb of insanely fast memory. 95% of the time, we don't need to tweak the code for performance any longer. We may bemoan the dearth of fast optimized code (and sometimes I do just that), but in the vast majority of applications, it doesn't matter if we optimize more than a single or a few dozen function. Besides, compilers are getting so good at local optimizations for a single function that we get some of that for free - without the ugliness.
Make it silent. Given that constraint max out the specs with regards to CPU, GPU, RAM, HDD etc. I'd love a 30" full-HD screen too. But remember to make it all SILENT. Any takes on what I'd end up with?
I know it's not in style to RTFA, but it clearly says 1024x600 resolution. Don't know about the price though...
I agree with just about everything you wrote, but there *is* a generic ArrayList in .NET 2.0 - it's just called List, and sits in the System.Collections.Generic namespace. I use it all the time, along with the generic Dictionary class that replaces Hashtable from previous frameworks. Generics are truly great, but I'm an old C++ guy so I knew they would be :-)
Uhm, no. Mars' athmospheric pressure is 0.6-0.9 kPa as you wrote, but that of good ol' Earth is 101 kPa according to Wikipedia, not 1.01 kPa. That's about a factor of 100 instead, which roughly translates to "really friggin thin". IIRC, that's the main reason for the large temperature swings, BTW - the athmosphere is too thin to retain sufficient heat from the day and release it during night.
For growing plants an underground greenhouse with groundbased mirrors for sunlight (easy way to get rid of radiation in the greenhouse) would be a workable solution. If we can manufacture greenhouse "glass" (locally on Mars, that is) that blocks harmful radiation and lets through the wavelengths needed by the plants, that could be the ideal solution. I have no idea if this is possible - any takers?
If you can live with the high taxes and the (mostly) bad weather, there is negative unemployment here right now and a serious economic boom. If you're good at something (almost any profession, and certainly all aspects of engineering and medicine) you can have a job in no time. In fact, if you're into power engineering and/or advanced process regulation my company would consider hiring you for our R&D department (where I work, BTW).
;-)
Most danes are good english speakers and only a few radicals are seriously anti-american. If you avoid glorifying your home country too badly and can live with an almost entirely non-religious society, you could have a really good time here. Immigration laws are sort of tough these days, but it's not impossible at all.
If you're a gun nut, then forget about going - weapons permits are very hard to obtain and, for all practical purposes, limited to highly regulated hunting weapons that require a hunting license.
On the good side, we've got some of the best-looking women in the world, IMNSHO
1. Civ3 Conquests
2. Alpha Centauri
3. X-Wing
4. Whatever
5. Whatever
These are the only games I play over and over again. The first two reflect my preference for turn-based strategy and X-Wing is equal parts fun and nostalgia. Other games simply don't cut it in the long run...
Without emotion, I'd be hard pressed to find a really good reason to do anything at all.
And BTW, I have 3 kids. There's a BIG emotional ROI every day, if you care to open your eyes. To those who think that emotional ROI and monetary/professional ROI are not linked both ways - well, maybe you don't know everything yet.
You're right about the nature of the dog - I knew that. I've had one or more dogs almost constantly from the age of 10 to now 37. They're great companions, and I know about the pack leader system.
I have one piece of advice for (future and current) dogowners. Whenever your dog threatens you or openly disobeys you (simple stuff it surely knows how to do), simply grab it by the throat and force it onto its back. By firm but not mean. Hold your hand firmly around its throat without choking it until it becomes passive - that's when it "yields". Then release it immediately.
Apart from you using your hand and the real pack leader using his teeth, this is exactly how dominance is established among dogs themselves, and they instinctively know what it means. Start this when they're big puppies, and they start playing dominance games with you. If done in the right way, it usually takes very little effort before they understand that they're below you. When they turn two, you're right - males will start to fight for position and status. Don't allow your dog to go very far along that route, or you will find that the procedure I described can be quite frightening - a furious 2-year old 70+ pound dog can very easily damage people, even if it didn't really want to hurt you seriously. There is no harm (physical or otherwise) to the dog if this procedure is done right. On the contrary, most dogs will happily accept you as the leader, if you consistently show that you are stronger. Most dogs only start fighting to be the leader if no leader seems to be present, as the absence of leadership is a serious threat to a pack animal like the dog/wolf.
Another tougher issue is how to make sure they understand that they are ranked below little children. For instance, making them understand that a two-year old running around with a sandwich does not have to give the food to the dog (as should happen by dogpack rules given that the dog is ranked above the child). We have had to teach our children to be tough (but not mean) with the dogs, and have been very strict about verbal punishment of the dog whenever it happens. Also, keeping the dog at heel (don't know if this is the correct english term for this) helps avoid the situation from occuring. Haven't really found a good way though...
I've heard it like this:
The Dog sees the Man serving food and water and generally taking care of it and loving it. The Dog concludes: "Wow, he must be God".
The Cat sees the Man serving food and water and generally taking care of it and loving it. The Cat concludes: "Wow, I must be God".
Where I live (Denmark) it's quite common for 4th or 5th graders to have cell-phones (that would be around 10 years of age). They don't call one another that much (let alone their parents unless they need a ride or something) - they use their phones to send each other text messages. Piles of them. That has become such a part of their pattern of social interaction that kids without cell phones feel left out. And quite frankly, they often are.
Most cell phone plans nowadays feature an optional "all the SMS'es you can send for DKK99 (~$15) per month" that is VERY popular with the young crowd (and certainly their parents).
My oldest son is in 2nd grade now, and in a few years we'll buy him a cell phone. Not for GPS tracking, partly for minor emergencies (of the "missed the bus" kind), partly for "I'm at Johnny's house" messages but the primary reason is that a cell phone is often a required device for social interaction with friends at that age. I may not like that (in fact, I don't) but the social well-being of my son is more important than my personal taste. A group of parents (myself included) have been trying to make my son's school ban cell phones from the classrooms with some success, but after school there's not much we can do about it.
with 46 percent doing their own computer trouble-shooting
In my book, this means that 46 percent of the women we'll never have a chance of doing a favorable impression on. Not much of a chance to begin with, but now - no chance!
If more parents let their kids go ahead and, for example, chew on the cat's tail, the kid's immune system would get exposed to a few new agents (and learn to deal with them), and the cat would swat the kid who would then learn "don't chew on kitty, it hurts".
My youngest son did exactly this (biting the cat, carrying it by its ears or tail etc), and the cat reacted as expected, leaving him with many red stripes on his hands, arms, legs and head. As expected, of course. The unusual reaction came from my son - it didn't make him leave the cat alone, it make him squeeze it that much harder. In the end, the *CAT* surrendered - it becomes passive whenever my youngest son catches it.
About the rest of the post - I agree completely.
Most kids today have been raised to expect most "things" to give them instant gratification. If something is perceived as too hard, most just can't be bothered to learn it. Math, physics, chemistry and most other natural sciences *ARE* perceived as "too hard" by most people, including kids. So most conclude - why bother?
Where did this come from? Too many channels on the TV to zap between, giving most people the attention span of a ferret? Too much dumbed down content that keep children passively entertained, so they don't bother their parents? Too much emphasis on shortsighted gains by their parents (kids imitate their parents, good and bad stuff)? Too little emphasis on MASTERING and too much emphasis on BROWSING (no, not necessarily the Internet kind)? Uninspired/insufficient teaching all the way through the education system? Basketball players make $3M/year, scientists at most $100K/year, making basketball players the natural role-models in a spending-crazy society/economy?
I wonder if the actual developers/coders see it that way themselves. Sadly, CxO's often have a warped view of how things work "on the floor".
Perhaps France will soon see war as a way to divert attention from all the troubles at home.
It's well known that France wants to be a real superpower (again), and if this means adopting the measures used by the only superpower left - so be it.
You were talking about the US, non?