Many crimes can be stopped in the conspiracy phase rather than the "real world". Would you rather have bombers or armed robbers stopped before or after they commit the crime?
Some books are designed so that text refers to an illustration that is on the other page in the 2 page spread. Continually having to flip pages is annoying.
Sorry, still not "interesting". I bet if any noise was played at the same volume as the "alarm", different frequencies but same volume, that the birds would flee just as well. Birds fly from loud noises; any loud noises.
Attributing something special to a bird's natural reaction to flee noise in suspect at best.
So a bird who's wings create a whistling sound in flight creates a different sound when it flees from a predator and that is interpreted as an alarm by other birds.
It seems to me that the "alarm" is a side effect of "getting out of Dodge" and nothing more. The bird did not do anything different than any other fleeing bird when it created the noise. I did not do something special with its wings other than beat them harder and faster to get away faster
The fact that other birds also react is a no brainer; "Gee, someone is fleeing from something, I better go too".
It is very easy to make unsupported grandiose accusations against big corporations. "All the important work is publicly funded"? Completely false. Just look at the list of new drugs coming out from Big Pharm, http://www.drugs.com/newdrugs.html. Some of these are quite significant and not publicly funded.
Could they be spending more on R&D and less on marketing? Probably. Are they spending large amounts of money on new research? definitely
The logic behind only researching improvements is flawed for a couple of reasons:
1. Viagra had to be invented somehow. There had to be R&D money spent to create it in the first place.
2. Diminishing returns; There is only so far one can push a drug. Eventually they will be unable to sustain growth. By creating new drugs they open new markets and therefore ensure the life of the company.
They have actually done something similar to what you are suggesting.
One of the issues with the "all fire is bad" theory is that quite a bit of dead plant material builds up (read fuel) so when a fire does occur it gets very hot very fast and spreads very rapidly. Many trees survive ground fires quite well. In fact, the Pondarosa pine requires fire to open its cones and release seeds. To counteract this a program of brush removal must be done to decrease the fuel buildup near critical areas. They have been doing this for some time now.
The firefighters are also creating backfires that burn slowly and in a controlled manner down the slopes and using the fuel lying on the ground. These flames are not allowed to get big enough to burn the trees.
According to the article power would be beamed down at 23mW/cm2. Todays peak usage in California was 42942MW. That would require 1867 sq KM of receiver to collect all that power. That sure is a lot of area.
Using these figures, the receiver for the 1GW Japanese station would have to be almost 36Km across.
What is the upper bound on the size of a receiver?
What happens if it snows more than 4 inches over night? Wouldn't there be e buildup that requires plowing. It is not uncommon for a foot of snow to fall in a 24 hour period.
These calculations also do not take into account heat sinks such as the glass, the concrete, etc. What about heat dissipation to the environment?
Falling snow is not the only issue. What about blowing snow? In windy conditions snow blows around and is deposited on the road and would have to be melted
What happens to snow when it melts? It turn into water which may or may not run off. If that water is not continually heated it will form ice. Great thing for a road.
If the road is using it's power to melt snow and ice it is not contributing that power to the grid. So during the winter months a large portion of the power grid would be off-line.
They miss the very real issue of voltage conversion.
Since solar panels produce DC where is it converted to AC and to what voltage? Many of the roads are in open country where the power would have to be transmitted hundreds of miles before it is used. Low voltages are not good for that. What about large power users like aluminum plants?
Self cleaning glass
Self Cleaning glass works due to a titanium oxide layer. It requires UV radiation for it to work and the flushing action of water to remove the particle. It also only works on organics. Works great for vertical surfaces; not so well for horizontal. water has a tendancy to pool on roads. The process is relatively slow; a road would be completely covered before the action happened. This would block the UV from getting to the coating. Sand is not organic and would not be effected by this process. Since the glass would have a textured surface for traction it would have a tendency to hold dirt and not let water wash it away. Looks like we are back to street sweepers.
And who has these "high-altitude high-speed stealth anti-spy missile[s]"? No one. So for now this is a moot point. Who has cruise missiles? Just about everyone.
Even though hydrogen did not take down the Hindenburg it is still highly explosive particularly in compressed form. What would you prefer to transport to and through a war zone; inert helium or volatile hydrogen?
The price is not each but as the report says; "Long term acquisition requirements call for 12 complete systems at an estimated value of $1.6 billion. ". Which is actually 24 blimps and related mobile ground equipment"
As it states in the article; "Long term acquisition requirements call for 12 complete systems at an estimated value of $1.6 billion. " Each system consists of 2 blimps and mobile ground facilities.
Maybe your local pub does not have an issue (and therefore does not need to identify troublemakers) but many nightclubs do. That is the whole reason for needing a way to identify banned people.
BTW, how big is your "local"? Does it have 500+people in it at any one time?
"Violence is clearly a problem" in every bar that does not have a way of banning idiots who cause problems.
Are you really advocating tying up police resources and clogging the court system with assault complaints every time someone starts a fight in a bar? And how would one enforce government banning of offenders from bars? A policeman at every bar?
Do you really not understand the reason for recording the information the DLs; to be able to ban the idiots who start fights. I am safer by not being punched in the head by some idiot who has done it before in another bar.
True, one can not wreck both vehicles at the same time but they both can be stolen, vandalizes, etc. Insurance covers the vehicle even when it is not moving.
1. Club cards do not deal with tourists and costs quite a bit to implement. Do you really want highet covers and drink prices?
2. When banning someone the bouncer will not use the DL# to find them. They will use the other identifiers; height, hair colour, etc; to narrow down the database and then use the picture on the ID to identify the person. That record will contain the DL# which will be sent to the central database along with the reason for banning.
Slashdot Mirror
Are you kidding?
Many crimes can be stopped in the conspiracy phase rather than the "real world". Would you rather have bombers or armed robbers stopped before or after they commit the crime?
Some books are designed so that text refers to an illustration that is on the other page in the 2 page spread. Continually having to flip pages is annoying.
Sorry, still not "interesting". I bet if any noise was played at the same volume as the "alarm", different frequencies but same volume, that the birds would flee just as well. Birds fly from loud noises; any loud noises.
Attributing something special to a bird's natural reaction to flee noise in suspect at best.
So a bird who's wings create a whistling sound in flight creates a different sound when it flees from a predator and that is interpreted as an alarm by other birds.
It seems to me that the "alarm" is a side effect of "getting out of Dodge" and nothing more. The bird did not do anything different than any other fleeing bird when it created the noise. I did not do something special with its wings other than beat them harder and faster to get away faster
The fact that other birds also react is a no brainer; "Gee, someone is fleeing from something, I better go too".
It is very easy to make unsupported grandiose accusations against big corporations. "All the important work is publicly funded"? Completely false. Just look at the list of new drugs coming out from Big Pharm, http://www.drugs.com/newdrugs.html. Some of these are quite significant and not publicly funded.
Take a look at http://media.pfizer.com/files/research/pipeline/2009_0331/pipeline_2009_0331.pdf. Out of 100 clinical trials underway at Pfizer only 22 are "new indications or enhancements"
Could they be spending more on R&D and less on marketing? Probably. Are they spending large amounts of money on new research? definitely
The logic behind only researching improvements is flawed for a couple of reasons:
1. Viagra had to be invented somehow. There had to be R&D money spent to create it in the first place.
2. Diminishing returns; There is only so far one can push a drug. Eventually they will be unable to sustain growth. By creating new drugs they open new markets and therefore ensure the life of the company.
According to Phizer's quarterly report, http://ccbn.tenkwizard.com/xml/download.php?format=PDF&ipage=6453879, they spent 17% of their revenue or $1.7 Billion in 3 months. That's a lot of R&D. I doubt that NIH is giving them $6.8Billion/yr for research.
They have actually done something similar to what you are suggesting.
One of the issues with the "all fire is bad" theory is that quite a bit of dead plant material builds up (read fuel) so when a fire does occur it gets very hot very fast and spreads very rapidly. Many trees survive ground fires quite well. In fact, the Pondarosa pine requires fire to open its cones and release seeds. To counteract this a program of brush removal must be done to decrease the fuel buildup near critical areas. They have been doing this for some time now.
The firefighters are also creating backfires that burn slowly and in a controlled manner down the slopes and using the fuel lying on the ground. These flames are not allowed to get big enough to burn the trees.
Something has to hold that wire mesh up; poles in the ground. This makes farming more difficult.
According to the article power would be beamed down at 23mW/cm2. Todays peak usage in California was 42942MW. That would require 1867 sq KM of receiver to collect all that power. That sure is a lot of area.
Using these figures, the receiver for the 1GW Japanese station would have to be almost 36Km across.
What is the upper bound on the size of a receiver?
Shock wave out, bullets in; works for me. /sarcasm
What happens if it snows more than 4 inches over night? Wouldn't there be e buildup that requires plowing. It is not uncommon for a foot of snow to fall in a 24 hour period.
These calculations also do not take into account heat sinks such as the glass, the concrete, etc. What about heat dissipation to the environment?
Falling snow is not the only issue. What about blowing snow? In windy conditions snow blows around and is deposited on the road and would have to be melted
What happens to snow when it melts? It turn into water which may or may not run off. If that water is not continually heated it will form ice. Great thing for a road.
If the road is using it's power to melt snow and ice it is not contributing that power to the grid. So during the winter months a large portion of the power grid would be off-line.
The outcome is correct but the formula written is incorrect. The correct number is 9.19 Trillion Watts or 9.19 Billion Kilowatts
They miss the very real issue of voltage conversion.
Since solar panels produce DC where is it converted to AC and to what voltage? Many of the roads are in open country where the power would have to be transmitted hundreds of miles before it is used. Low voltages are not good for that. What about large power users like aluminum plants?
Self cleaning glass
Self Cleaning glass works due to a titanium oxide layer. It requires UV radiation for it to work and the flushing action of water to remove the particle. It also only works on organics. Works great for vertical surfaces; not so well for horizontal. water has a tendancy to pool on roads. The process is relatively slow; a road would be completely covered before the action happened. This would block the UV from getting to the coating. Sand is not organic and would not be effected by this process. Since the glass would have a textured surface for traction it would have a tendency to hold dirt and not let water wash it away. Looks like we are back to street sweepers.
25,000 sq/Mi * (5280 ft/mi)^2 * $48/sq ft = $33.454 Trillion dollars. If there is enough manufacturing capacity to create that much solar panel.
And who has these "high-altitude high-speed stealth anti-spy missile[s]"? No one. So for now this is a moot point. Who has cruise missiles? Just about everyone.
Even though hydrogen did not take down the Hindenburg it is still highly explosive particularly in compressed form. What would you prefer to transport to and through a war zone; inert helium or volatile hydrogen?
There are no satellites in orbit that can do this job right now. To put new one up would cost quite a bit more.
A drone with enough radar power to do the job would be called an E-3. This requires huge airports and infrastructure to support.
The price is not each but as the report says; "Long term acquisition requirements call for 12 complete systems at an estimated value of $1.6 billion. ". Which is actually 24 blimps and related mobile ground equipment"
As it states in the article; "Long term acquisition requirements call for 12 complete systems at an estimated value of $1.6 billion. " Each system consists of 2 blimps and mobile ground facilities.
Maybe your local pub does not have an issue (and therefore does not need to identify troublemakers) but many nightclubs do. That is the whole reason for needing a way to identify banned people.
BTW, how big is your "local"? Does it have 500+people in it at any one time?
"Violence is clearly a problem" in every bar that does not have a way of banning idiots who cause problems.
Are you really advocating tying up police resources and clogging the court system with assault complaints every time someone starts a fight in a bar? And how would one enforce government banning of offenders from bars? A policeman at every bar?
Do you really not understand the reason for recording the information the DLs; to be able to ban the idiots who start fights. I am safer by not being punched in the head by some idiot who has done it before in another bar.
Why don't you just not go to the bars that swipe your DL in the first place and let those of us who do not mind have a safer place to drink?
True, one can not wreck both vehicles at the same time but they both can be stolen, vandalizes, etc. Insurance covers the vehicle even when it is not moving.
1. Club cards do not deal with tourists and costs quite a bit to implement. Do you really want highet covers and drink prices?
2. When banning someone the bouncer will not use the DL# to find them. They will use the other identifiers; height, hair colour, etc; to narrow down the database and then use the picture on the ID to identify the person. That record will contain the DL# which will be sent to the central database along with the reason for banning.