Your idea passes the first hurdle of the genius test, in that it seems laugably idiotic at first glance.
As I ponder it, salt isn't the only thing dissolved in seawater. There are plants around, mostly near high saline lakes, which use electrolysis to remove valuable elements. The outflow from whatever you have in mind would probably be an excellent "ore" to mine. Even better, being right at an ocean drop off, getting rid of the used ore wouldn't be a problem at all.
In fact, if the lower water is more nutrient rich, it's probably more mineral rich as well.
By the way, don't get too excited over old analyses of seawater concentrations of minerals. Many of them were so trace that they were measuring contaminates in their beakers and extrapolating them to outrageous wealth.
Back on the desalination thing: if it's generating electricity, you might just be able to design up a self contained and powered automatic plant that has only a mineral rich slurry coming out of a pipe leading to a refinery. Who knows? Mabye salt can be used somehow to make refrectory bricks.
That's just one idea. Good luck.
Re:Here's a fun little Google trick...
on
Google Hacks
·
· Score: 0, Redundant
Actually, California has large access to water in the Pacific.
Salt water will electrolize. As the H2 combines with the O in a (fuel cell / jet engine / IC engine / Gas Furnace / whatever) and makes fresh water, it will help California, because it will add moisture to the air that was in the ocean before.
If you want to capture the water escaping the fuel cell, you could drink it. It would be distilled.
So a hydrogen economy would help California's water troubles.
Depends on the copyright of the songs. If they were all public domain, no.
Now, all the driver would have to do is prove it. Annually. With expensive lawyers.
Yes, he would have to go to court to prove it, because the local RIAA clone would want to make it expensive to buck their system. To that end, they would benefit from spending several thousand to bring doubt into the mind of a jury that he really didn't stick to public domain music only.
Then, after 'proving' him a liar, they'd hit him with punitive damages as hard as possible to keep all the other sheep in line.
Things are getting bad, and they're only going to get worse. This crap will continue.
If you use copyrighted materials for public performance for benefit of the business, you have to pay extra.
It's the same thing as running a TV or radio in the waiting room of a business. The business is getting a benefit from the music, so they have to pay a cut.
There's also a group of old ladies who go to restraunts and pretend that one of them is having a birthday. If one of the employees sings "Happy Birthday" a copywrited song, they sue. This apparently keeps them in bingo money.
I hate it too, but that's the law. If you don't like it, get filthy stinking rich, and buy new ones.
If you're going to go the rich dad - poor dad route of accounting, you'll probably have to go single-entry cash basis accounting.
On the bright side, get an accounting package worked up that will handle stuff the same way, and Kiosaki would probably be willing to cross license their name and marketing power with your program.
Matter of fact, shouldn't be too hard to tweak double entry book keeping to do the same. Have to think about it some more.
I disagree with you on the arguments being ridiculous, they do have merit. I don't agree with them, but they still have merit. The tactic MS used in killing off browsers reinforces the point of the grandparent post.
IE was essentially free software, and killed netscape. RMS's 'Free Software' (quotes and names used for clarity) will kill off mass marketed commercial alternatives. ESR makes the point that most programmers, however, do custom work not for resale.
The logical extension is that the generic software is all going to end up free, and the programmers money will have to come in from custom work. This is already the case in the PRC, where copyright enforcement is antiethical to the ideals of the communist government.
Stallman, on the other hand, is more of a capitalist, who wants ownership of all the software in the universe. Since it's free, everyone else can own it all too, and we all benefit. Stallman is using copyright in his own way to bring this about.
I think that free software is going to kill off the commercial, mass market software, like office. MS Office will eventually become free as in beer. At that time, it will become open source, because people will only use it if they can customize it. MS will only make money on office from packaging, and value add. The lock-in days are coming to a close.
Remember, MS Office is running out of steam as a cash cow, because 97 was good enough. 2000 proved that 97 was good enough. XP is only purchased because 2000 licenses aren't generally available. Star office actually is beginning to compete. The US market for new versions of office is drying up, and overseas, people don't want to pay. MS can influence high government officials to make office mandatory, (see Mexico), but the inevitable scandals always cause people to wonder 'Why are strongarm tactics necessary, unless better alternatives exist?"
Will this end MS? Hell no. MS high command has already won the PC battlefield, and have moved on. There are VP's tasked with milking all the money out that is left, but MS Embedded in cell phones is the next exciting war. They'll probably win that too.
MS will keep alive as long as there is new technology to embrace and extend.
The United States Federal Government couldn't win against MS in it's own country! Here is a real reading of your scenario:
Your lawyer: You have an airtight legal case, lets go win!
MS legal: hmmmm. Their case is airtight, lets go to plan B. Depose them to death.
Your lawyer: bad news, they're deposing everybody in the university. We have to have a lawyer present. Let's see... three hours per student, twenty thousand students, $200/hr legal counsel. It's gonna cost 800 mill, because you have to have a lawyer present at the depositions too.
MS can afford it for one high profile case, can you?
Let's say you bought the proper legal insurance (you didn't, but let's just pretend you did buy one with an $800,000,000 dollar cap). That's still only round one.
Let's say that you didn't have to spend any more than that. Let's also say that you didn't have anything at all. They'd just hire a student, or plant one. Then they don't have to pay your legal bills, because you have to pay theirs -- because they found their own planted illegal software.
Remember, this hasn't even gone to trial, and you're out nearly one billion. Actually, you are out a billion, because you cover more than legal fees.
So you go to court, and the judge says, "No fine, just buy that one software license. Case closed."
That's the very best you can hope for, and you're bankrupt. This is the big stick that they're wielding. I've seen it used before, and it'll be used again.
You simply cannon win in civil court against someone with unlimited funds. Period. Remember, MS FALSIFIED EVIDENCE IN FEDERAL COURT AND PERJURED THEMSELVES and got away with it.
I don't agree with Lar's marketing decisions, but I read Lars' rant, and he makes some very good points. He owns rights to his stuff, and if he wants to control distribution, it's most certainly his right.
How much do we complain when our stuff is used in ways we don't like - like GPL'd code. We all own it, because we're in a social contract with it.
Lars complaining about free sharing of his stuff is equivelant to us complaining about GPL'd code being taken into closed software.
#1. Flint is a published author making a very good living selling SF books. His books are probably in your local bookstore.
I'd say he has a pot to piss in. He's also been helped financially by 'losing control of his work.' He has cold hard numbers about how he has made MORE money by his work getting out where all of us 'thieves' can read it free of charge.
Flint says first and formost that Ellison is within his rights, but as laws change, it is hurting the publishing industry, and authors. That is most assuredly his business.
The too-restrictive laws are also hurting our culture. This is also his business. Mine too. Mabye even yours. Flint makes the point that Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to legally make the works he did, had our copyrights been in place. Surely you can see the implications of that.
Your post is intelligent, and the subject line is dead on. Even Flint agrees with it.
However, if you're a published writer, I'd strongly recommend you read all of his letters over at the Baen Free Library. You're dead wrong on the "he hasn't been able to prove it, just offer ancedotal evidence" line.
He has hard cold figures about money in his pocket that contradicts you. You are the one with only anecdotal evidence. Flint goes out of his way to say that the author is entitled to use his stuff any way he wants, even if it is financially stupid. He just argues about what constitutes financial stupidity.
In your particular case, if you had GOOD stuff in the Baen free library, and I were to read it, I'd go buy the books. Why? I hate reading off monitors. I also love curling up with a good book.
I hate wasting time buying a book that turns out to be unreadable crap, so I spend my limited time and money reading authors I know.
How does it affect you financially? If I were introduced at no cost to myself to your work, and I liked it, I'd buy a book. If I really liked the book, I'd buy everything else you've ever written that I could get my hands on.
I read Flint's work on the free library and have since bought everything I've seen with his name on the cover, because I know it'll be good. I regularly cruise Barnes and Noble, and Media Play. I check the racks for known and loved authors and BUY.
I would never have picked up a Flint book, were it not for the post on/.
Libraries are for the unlucky who have to give their books back. Used books? God only knows what those hands were touching while the pages were turning. I know I read on the john.
the DMCA does not impose even an arguable limitation on the opportunity to make a variety of traditional fair uses of DVD movies, such as commenting on their content, quoting excerpts from their screenplays, and even recording portions of the video images and sounds on film or tape by pointing a camera, a camcorder, or a microphone at a monitor as it displays the DVD movie
Apparently there are some legally acceptible forms to make at least limited copies, though I don't see how pointing a camera at a movie screen doesn't qualify as circumvention.
Of course, you could design a server to withstand a pound of C4, just like you could design a skyscraper to withstand a 757 fully loaded with fuel.
It's just terribly expensive.
And next time it will be a lawfully purchased surplus 747 on an approved flight path that crashes into a nuclear power plant somewhere.
Come to think of it, with a large cargo plane, it would be easy to make it into a shaped charge (think RPG-7 warhead). It would be more expensive to buy the plane, but the proof of concept necessary for the investors has now been done.
Slashdot Mirror
Your idea passes the first hurdle of the genius test, in that it seems laugably idiotic at first glance.
As I ponder it, salt isn't the only thing dissolved in seawater. There are plants around, mostly near high saline lakes, which use electrolysis to remove valuable elements. The outflow from whatever you have in mind would probably be an excellent "ore" to mine. Even better, being right at an ocean drop off, getting rid of the used ore wouldn't be a problem at all.
In fact, if the lower water is more nutrient rich, it's probably more mineral rich as well.
By the way, don't get too excited over old analyses of seawater concentrations of minerals. Many of them were so trace that they were measuring contaminates in their beakers and extrapolating them to outrageous wealth.
Back on the desalination thing: if it's generating electricity, you might just be able to design up a self contained and powered automatic plant that has only a mineral rich slurry coming out of a pipe leading to a refinery. Who knows? Mabye salt can be used somehow to make refrectory bricks.
That's just one idea. Good luck.
Laughing my butt off.
Actually, California has large access to water in the Pacific.
Salt water will electrolize. As the H2 combines with the O in a (fuel cell / jet engine / IC engine / Gas Furnace / whatever) and makes fresh water, it will help California, because it will add moisture to the air that was in the ocean before.
If you want to capture the water escaping the fuel cell, you could drink it. It would be distilled.
So a hydrogen economy would help California's water troubles.
What exactly did dave do? I'm in nearly the same boat.
Thanks.
Here's to the couple!
CHEERS!
Depends on the copyright of the songs. If they were all public domain, no.
Now, all the driver would have to do is prove it. Annually. With expensive lawyers.
Yes, he would have to go to court to prove it, because the local RIAA clone would want to make it expensive to buck their system. To that end, they would benefit from spending several thousand to bring doubt into the mind of a jury that he really didn't stick to public domain music only.
Then, after 'proving' him a liar, they'd hit him with punitive damages as hard as possible to keep all the other sheep in line.
Things are getting bad, and they're only going to get worse. This crap will continue.
If you use copyrighted materials for public performance for benefit of the business, you have to pay extra.
It's the same thing as running a TV or radio in the waiting room of a business. The business is getting a benefit from the music, so they have to pay a cut.
There's also a group of old ladies who go to restraunts and pretend that one of them is having a birthday. If one of the employees sings "Happy Birthday" a copywrited song, they sue. This apparently keeps them in bingo money.
I hate it too, but that's the law. If you don't like it, get filthy stinking rich, and buy new ones.
Chris,
I don't agree with you, but so far, you have the most interesting post of day.
It's not common that I can get a glimpse into the mind of someone who's thought patterns are so alien to me.
Thank you for your candor,
hanzie
They're using it in skis, too.
I would like to see if it is usable in automobile suspensions. Active electronic dampening should out perform any hydraulics.
Come to think of it, this technology could be used to make an active muffler for auto exhaust systems. It could also absorb driveline vibrations.
Wonder if it could do anything for crankshaft vibration?
hanzie
What about unmanned robot blimps? They are much easier, because they're slower. Robot planes require fuel to stay up. Blimps don't.
If you're going to go the rich dad - poor dad route of accounting, you'll probably have to go single-entry cash basis accounting.
On the bright side, get an accounting package worked up that will handle stuff the same way, and Kiosaki would probably be willing to cross license their name and marketing power with your program.
Matter of fact, shouldn't be too hard to tweak double entry book keeping to do the same. Have to think about it some more.
hanzie
I wonder if the article was taken down in anticipation of their server getting smashed flat by /.
I disagree with you on the arguments being ridiculous, they do have merit. I don't agree with them, but they still have merit. The tactic MS used in killing off browsers reinforces the point of the grandparent post.
IE was essentially free software, and killed netscape. RMS's 'Free Software' (quotes and names used for clarity) will kill off mass marketed commercial alternatives. ESR makes the point that most programmers, however, do custom work not for resale.
The logical extension is that the generic software is all going to end up free, and the programmers money will have to come in from custom work. This is already the case in the PRC, where copyright enforcement is antiethical to the ideals of the communist government.
Stallman, on the other hand, is more of a capitalist, who wants ownership of all the software in the universe. Since it's free, everyone else can own it all too, and we all benefit. Stallman is using copyright in his own way to bring this about.
I think that free software is going to kill off the commercial, mass market software, like office. MS Office will eventually become free as in beer. At that time, it will become open source, because people will only use it if they can customize it. MS will only make money on office from packaging, and value add. The lock-in days are coming to a close.
Remember, MS Office is running out of steam as a cash cow, because 97 was good enough. 2000 proved that 97 was good enough. XP is only purchased because 2000 licenses aren't generally available. Star office actually is beginning to compete. The US market for new versions of office is drying up, and overseas, people don't want to pay. MS can influence high government officials to make office mandatory, (see Mexico), but the inevitable scandals always cause people to wonder 'Why are strongarm tactics necessary, unless better alternatives exist?"
Will this end MS? Hell no. MS high command has already won the PC battlefield, and have moved on. There are VP's tasked with milking all the money out that is left, but MS Embedded in cell phones is the next exciting war. They'll probably win that too.
MS will keep alive as long as there is new technology to embrace and extend.
hanzie
You'll probably win against MS funded BSA?
The United States Federal Government couldn't win against MS in it's own country! Here is a real reading of your scenario:
Your lawyer: You have an airtight legal case, lets go win!
MS legal: hmmmm. Their case is airtight, lets go to plan B. Depose them to death.
Your lawyer: bad news, they're deposing everybody in the university. We have to have a lawyer present. Let's see... three hours per student, twenty thousand students, $200/hr legal counsel. It's gonna cost 800 mill, because you have to have a lawyer present at the depositions too.
MS can afford it for one high profile case, can you?
Let's say you bought the proper legal insurance (you didn't, but let's just pretend you did buy one with an $800,000,000 dollar cap). That's still only round one.
Let's say that you didn't have to spend any more than that. Let's also say that you didn't have anything at all. They'd just hire a student, or plant one. Then they don't have to pay your legal bills, because you have to pay theirs -- because they found their own planted illegal software.
Remember, this hasn't even gone to trial, and you're out nearly one billion. Actually, you are out a billion, because you cover more than legal fees.
So you go to court, and the judge says, "No fine, just buy that one software license. Case closed."
That's the very best you can hope for, and you're bankrupt. This is the big stick that they're wielding. I've seen it used before, and it'll be used again.
You simply cannon win in civil court against someone with unlimited funds. Period. Remember, MS FALSIFIED EVIDENCE IN FEDERAL COURT AND PERJURED THEMSELVES and got away with it.
What kind of chance do you have?
Laughing my ass off...
I don't agree with Lar's marketing decisions, but I read Lars' rant, and he makes some very good points. He owns rights to his stuff, and if he wants to control distribution, it's most certainly his right.
How much do we complain when our stuff is used in ways we don't like - like GPL'd code. We all own it, because we're in a social contract with it.
Lars complaining about free sharing of his stuff is equivelant to us complaining about GPL'd code being taken into closed software.
hanzie
#1. Flint is a published author making a very good living selling SF books. His books are probably in your local bookstore.
I'd say he has a pot to piss in. He's also been helped financially by 'losing control of his work.' He has cold hard numbers about how he has made MORE money by his work getting out where all of us 'thieves' can read it free of charge.
Flint says first and formost that Ellison is within his rights, but as laws change, it is hurting the publishing industry, and authors. That is most assuredly his business.
The too-restrictive laws are also hurting our culture. This is also his business. Mine too. Mabye even yours. Flint makes the point that Shakespeare wouldn't have been able to legally make the works he did, had our copyrights been in place. Surely you can see the implications of that.
hanzie,
bibliophile and car nut.
Your post is intelligent, and the subject line is dead on. Even Flint agrees with it.
/.
However, if you're a published writer, I'd strongly recommend you read all of his letters over at the Baen Free Library. You're dead wrong on the "he hasn't been able to prove it, just offer ancedotal evidence" line.
He has hard cold figures about money in his pocket that contradicts you. You are the one with only anecdotal evidence. Flint goes out of his way to say that the author is entitled to use his stuff any way he wants, even if it is financially stupid. He just argues about what constitutes financial stupidity.
In your particular case, if you had GOOD stuff in the Baen free library, and I were to read it, I'd go buy the books. Why? I hate reading off monitors. I also love curling up with a good book.
I hate wasting time buying a book that turns out to be unreadable crap, so I spend my limited time and money reading authors I know.
How does it affect you financially? If I were introduced at no cost to myself to your work, and I liked it, I'd buy a book. If I really liked the book, I'd buy everything else you've ever written that I could get my hands on.
I read Flint's work on the free library and have since bought everything I've seen with his name on the cover, because I know it'll be good. I regularly cruise Barnes and Noble, and Media Play. I check the racks for known and loved authors and BUY.
I would never have picked up a Flint book, were it not for the post on
Libraries are for the unlucky who have to give their books back. Used books? God only knows what those hands were touching while the pages were turning. I know I read on the john.
Hanzie,
incurable bibliophile and car nut.
The abscence of EVIDENCE of a security breach is not an indication of security.
hanzie
I'd recommend going to a theatre and seeing it. It really was a good movie.
hanzie
So that's who they are! Now I know where to forward e-mail.
I own Asguard.com
Thanks.
Of course, you could design a server to withstand a pound of C4, just like you could design a skyscraper to withstand a 757 fully loaded with fuel.
It's just terribly expensive.
And next time it will be a lawfully purchased surplus 747 on an approved flight path that crashes into a nuclear power plant somewhere.
Come to think of it, with a large cargo plane, it would be easy to make it into a shaped charge (think RPG-7 warhead). It would be more expensive to buy the plane, but the proof of concept necessary for the investors has now been done.
Higher temps means more energy is available to make interesting weather.
Ice storms seem to be caused by fronts shifting quickly (warm enough for rain, then cold front moves in quickly)
http://www.costco.com/frameset.asp?trg=product%2Ea sp&catid=354&subid=627&hierid=629&prdid=10017886&l og=
hanzie