They are losing the battle, but we're doing just fine, thanks. Their definition of the battle is that they effortlessly control everything and have "Total Information Awareness" which, of course, is not the battle we are in ourselves at all.
I mean, they're nice and if you can get them, do it. But! I went off-grid in '80 or so, when subsidies were hard to find, solar was $7/watt for panels or more, and it still paid off. I just doubled what I have here so as to have enough extra to charge my new Volt too - and it's a pretty big deal to just tell the gasoline man to get lost entirely - more panels is also more times the house system needs no backup. Finally there. !00% NOT Chinese stuff, though I have no axe to grind with them as a people. I just prefer poly xtal big, thick, reliable, conservative cells, that's all - I've got them 30 years old at still 80% of original spec. Even those are down to 3.50/watt or so now, made in USA if you care (I don't much, I'm just trying to get the most kWh/buck). It was hard at first, but built good habits of no waste, and now its fantastic - and no monthly bills...just internet.
I got a much better subsidy thusly - I bought raw land and homesteaded on it. Power companies are in a lot of places, in charge of enforcing the building permit and inspections regimes. So, if you're not and never become a customer - well, my buildings are taxed as barns and sheds even though I obviously live here.
In today's tax environment - lookee, no property taxes to speak of.
The reaction cross section for DT is only ~100 times higher at its resonance than for DD it its own resonance. Some of the DD reaction products include Helium-3 and Tritium FWIW - I've detected T in the output from my Farnsworth fusor, not a lot, but some is there.
Not much online there yet. Looks like we might get a review by *real* scientists for a change, but from the presentation and slides I could get, it's more or less a compendia of what's been done so far. As usual, no one but Rossi et all claim any real output power - and only they won't let the world see their stuff, nor will they explain how it works even in theory, much less practice. High hopes have I, but really, if we have much clue how the universe works - this LENR stuff is a pretty long shot. No one seems to be able to say how you overcome a MeV worth of Coulomb repulsion with room temperature (less than an eV) energies to allow tunnelling into fusion to happen - or some new way to get to fusion that doesn't involve the known processes.
Dpf has some good properties for a lab source of neutrons or fusion. It won't be practical for real use, even if it gets high Q someday, until someone finds a material with about 100-1000 times better properties than for example, tungsten. At the power densities required to run the "plasma rail gun" the electrodes won't live long at all - a few hundred shots tops before they are gone, and all the required insulators are coated with evaporated metal. It's not a matter of just cooling them better. The heat happens too fast for any conduction to carry it away, and simply vaporises a layer of the electrode on each shot.
And again, this isn't a 2x kind of problem where some new material or alloy or nanotech metamaterial is going to come along and solve it - it's a several orders of magnitude class problem, with absolutely no clue how it could ever be solved.
Don't worry about mostly a-neutronic reactions with tiny cross sections and resonances that aren't hit till high energies yet. They can't get DD to work at gain now, and this one's hundreds of times harder to make "go". DT is 100 times easier than DD but makes much higher energy neutrons that take your reactor materials apart via lattice displacement...
It's just a hard problem, one I spend all my free hack time on - see my site.
Agree - have been running the unity releases in virtual box under 10.04 - but very little. They suck and so do all the alternatives I've seen so far. Sticking with 10.04 for as long as possible - when new versions of things I need won't run on the old one, not sure what I'll do.
Please, please, app guys - don't break things for the old desktop! It's not broken, please don't fix it.
I understand what unity is for - dumb people who need to "explore where I want to go today" when they walk up to their computer. I already know. I run applications, trade stocks, and I want every friggin pixel and other resource I paid for to do it. I already *know* what my computer can do, and what I want it to do now. I'm not stupid, and unity thinks I'm stupid enough to need handholding to use a desktop for a fondleslab. None of this is true, and it's damn insulting.
Or, someone thought they could get away with COTS stuff that requires air to carry away its own heat. NASA's even forgotten that one. Even a relatively low power chip in a vacuum will burn itself out from its own heat, no radiation required. Could just be a gap in the heatsink mate up...that's all it takes.
Love of money fixed anonymity pretty quick. Can't monetise the Internet if the parties don't know who each other are with reasonable certainty. Then, spam tracking required more info - it's all about money, so nothing new.
Did anyone notice more than usual? Wow. Maybe I should have tried for the more expensive Tesla instead of my more versatile Volt. Chevy makes great cars, but ain't doing much for my "want space" jones.
Here's the problem - They have "the goods" on your congress critter, and nothing you can do will make them not vote for laws like this - blackmail, you bet.
And every crappy law, if allowed to sit on the books, gets misused - I am unaware of any exception. Gheesh, what country do you live in? Even rubber-stamp FISA warrants have been abused, and that's not that easy to find out - but it got out. Warrantless wiretapping? Phone companies indemnified for collaborating in illegal acts, government says "you can't try us, we'd have to reveal national security secrets, so no case". Just because they aren't abusing the NDAA now, that we kow of - why did they insist on getting it if they didn't plan to use it - and with a law like that - any use is abuse.
How is a lobbyist writing our legislation? You'd be very hard pressed to find ANY that wasn't lobbyist-written. Congress critters don't have time for reading and writing.
A worse threat than money - Hollywood could just start telling the truth about the pols through mainstream media. The stick to go with the carrot....and before you can bust a blackmailer you have to come clean...not a politician thing to do.
Mod parent up. I farm, I also trade commodities. I'm outdoors a lot and have been monitoring all this since '80 or so. It's getting warmer for certain. I like it warm, but some of the things I grow don't. And pests that used to stay south of here have moved north to here and we are getting new problems from that. They can migrate quick, but trees cannot...I'm not going to die from the change we have, but another 30 years on this same track - what was productive farmland will be a desert. So, someone will have to tear down that city you live in to grow crops in, because some of the best land on the planet - right here, won't be anymore, and that food's gotta come from somewhere. At our human density, everything that isn't city is farm...more or less. It's not going to be pretty. Gonna vote NIMBY against tearing your city down while you starve? GoodLuckWithThat. Who cares what caused it - we better look into how to change it back!
I'm glad you taxpayers helped develop the car I drive - the Volt, which was shepherded through by Bob Lutz, the original "car guy" - read his book or drive any of the other cars he made great (stupid things like Vettes and such). Saw a great Charile Rose interview with him and Elon Musk - and I admire them both.
But don't count out the Volt as not fun to drive without driving one. I also have a 2010 Camaro SS - and on the twisty roads around here - the Volt is more agile and more fun if not as quick. The Camaro shines on straights and sweepers where it pretty much eats any other car around (all of them so far) - but you have to drive as though you were strapped into a fighter plane because that is what it is. The Volt is more like a euro sporty car, much more comfortable with quick switchbacks, it's just more agile and plenty fast when its the curves that limit your speeds anyway.
The Camaro would beat it - but at the end of the road the Camaro driver is going to be really tired, and the Volt driver is going to have a mile wide grin - and not be very far behind anyway.
Picked up my new Volt in Oct. Loving it. If I had to charge it off power company power, it would cost me about $1/40 miles. But I have plenty of solar panels. And yes, it has a nice engine too. Having a sense of humor, I just bought some nice flame decal stickons for it. It's actually a right sporty car, particularly off the line in traffic, and an utter blast to drive on the twisty mountain roads where I live.
You can hate on "government motors" all ya want - They did a great job on this one, and unlike the haters, I'm getting that bailout money back in the form of something pretty darn cool. Could it just be sour grapes? Or is it all astroturfing by people with errrm, illiquid investments in the oil patch who are desperate?
Don't get me wrong - I admire Elon and his projects quite a bit. They're just behind. A big company might take longer to get the word, but once they get in motion, look out - I couldn't get a Tesla, or afford one, but this is in my driveway now. And I promise to exit the car within the three weeks it takes to catch on fire after being total lossed sideways into a pole. I'd rather not starve to death before burning.
What's funny is that at that age, when it was far more rare (and there wasn't even a microsoft, gasp) I was programming a PDP-8 and designing and building my own peripherals for it. Truth. Yeah, I did ok in life, even had something to do with VoIP later on - you're probably using my code. But you don't even know my name.
Why is it death makes you famous when it can't matter to you anymore. All that skill made me moderately well off (no debt) but... nothing like this, and yes, I'm really that good and have been since the '60s or so.
I've certainly seen plenty with one of these certs who I'd prefer the *average* 9 year old to. That's not that special people. Oh, bring on the flames. Some of you who think you're hot shit probably only have that to their names, and no, I'm not gonna hire you unless you can actually do good things. Screw the paper.
And get off my lawn.
Well, I belong to, and help promote a large crowd of amateurs who actually produce very measurable fusion in their home labs (see the forums at my sig, and elsewhere, fusor.net). Some of them are polywell believers. There's just one problem - NO ONE has demonstrated convincingly any real fusion out of a polywell, ever. We build some pretty doggone fancy stuff, and we even get things like 3He neutron detectors, serious instrumentation to prove it - my fusor even activates elements to see the radioactive results from all the neutrons it makes.
Bussard, on the other hand, only tried one dirt cheap (particularly in the context of the money he spent compared to us) plastic neutron detector, and didn't even get conclusive results - with thousands of times the money and time we've all spent at this.
I won't say polywell is wrong (but I easily could - they are trying to make a magnetic monopole -GoodLuckWithThat), or that fusors are the way (they probably aren't). but the real data says that....well, go look for yourself but ask real people really doing one or the other - some are easy to find, some aren't (because there aren't any?).
I just wasted a couple hours looking at this crap. Anyone who can't instantly pick out a large number of VERY obvious flaws in this guy's talk is NOT invited to my forums.
http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=544
The operating costs are of course, the cost of the hydrogen you burn to get that power - with oxygen and a nickel catalyst. No fusion to see here, move along.
I do this for a living, and that's my take. No need for a patent, you'd just lose it to the bigger lawyer anyway. All you'd need is credit - and what outfit wouldn't want the "parent of fusion" on their staff at any money and perks they wanted. Buddy, this is trillions of bucks - there will be some crumbs falling off the table no matter what. Trying to hold out for "real money" (billions) just paints a target on your back. Stupid. Solve the doggone problem, then sweat that stuff.
Agree. No. Go see the slides. In any big org like NASA, there's a fair amount of latitude for speculation and blue sky. Those slides don't say *anything* works, just crap they've tried.
Slashdot Mirror
They are losing the battle, but we're doing just fine, thanks. Their definition of the battle is that they effortlessly control everything and have "Total Information Awareness" which, of course, is not the battle we are in ourselves at all.
I mean, they're nice and if you can get them, do it. But! I went off-grid in '80 or so, when subsidies were hard to find, solar was $7/watt for panels or more, and it still paid off. I just doubled what I have here so as to have enough extra to charge my new Volt too - and it's a pretty big deal to just tell the gasoline man to get lost entirely - more panels is also more times the house system needs no backup. Finally there. !00% NOT Chinese stuff, though I have no axe to grind with them as a people. I just prefer poly xtal big, thick, reliable, conservative cells, that's all - I've got them 30 years old at still 80% of original spec. Even those are down to 3.50/watt or so now, made in USA if you care (I don't much, I'm just trying to get the most kWh/buck). It was hard at first, but built good habits of no waste, and now its fantastic - and no monthly bills...just internet. I got a much better subsidy thusly - I bought raw land and homesteaded on it. Power companies are in a lot of places, in charge of enforcing the building permit and inspections regimes. So, if you're not and never become a customer - well, my buildings are taxed as barns and sheds even though I obviously live here. In today's tax environment - lookee, no property taxes to speak of.
You're correct, you can do all those things to get your measurements (see my username) but...did they?
Intel's and microsoft's compilers only handle x86, though. GCC can compile for a rather larger variety of targets...
The reaction cross section for DT is only ~100 times higher at its resonance than for DD it its own resonance. Some of the DD reaction products include Helium-3 and Tritium FWIW - I've detected T in the output from my Farnsworth fusor, not a lot, but some is there.
Not much online there yet. Looks like we might get a review by *real* scientists for a change, but from the presentation and slides I could get, it's more or less a compendia of what's been done so far. As usual, no one but Rossi et all claim any real output power - and only they won't let the world see their stuff, nor will they explain how it works even in theory, much less practice. High hopes have I, but really, if we have much clue how the universe works - this LENR stuff is a pretty long shot. No one seems to be able to say how you overcome a MeV worth of Coulomb repulsion with room temperature (less than an eV) energies to allow tunnelling into fusion to happen - or some new way to get to fusion that doesn't involve the known processes.
Dpf has some good properties for a lab source of neutrons or fusion. It won't be practical for real use, even if it gets high Q someday, until someone finds a material with about 100-1000 times better properties than for example, tungsten. At the power densities required to run the "plasma rail gun" the electrodes won't live long at all - a few hundred shots tops before they are gone, and all the required insulators are coated with evaporated metal. It's not a matter of just cooling them better. The heat happens too fast for any conduction to carry it away, and simply vaporises a layer of the electrode on each shot. And again, this isn't a 2x kind of problem where some new material or alloy or nanotech metamaterial is going to come along and solve it - it's a several orders of magnitude class problem, with absolutely no clue how it could ever be solved. Don't worry about mostly a-neutronic reactions with tiny cross sections and resonances that aren't hit till high energies yet. They can't get DD to work at gain now, and this one's hundreds of times harder to make "go". DT is 100 times easier than DD but makes much higher energy neutrons that take your reactor materials apart via lattice displacement... It's just a hard problem, one I spend all my free hack time on - see my site.
Please, please, app guys - don't break things for the old desktop! It's not broken, please don't fix it.
I understand what unity is for - dumb people who need to "explore where I want to go today" when they walk up to their computer. I already know. I run applications, trade stocks, and I want every friggin pixel and other resource I paid for to do it. I already *know* what my computer can do, and what I want it to do now. I'm not stupid, and unity thinks I'm stupid enough to need handholding to use a desktop for a fondleslab. None of this is true, and it's damn insulting.
Or, someone thought they could get away with COTS stuff that requires air to carry away its own heat. NASA's even forgotten that one. Even a relatively low power chip in a vacuum will burn itself out from its own heat, no radiation required. Could just be a gap in the heatsink mate up...that's all it takes.
Love of money fixed anonymity pretty quick. Can't monetise the Internet if the parties don't know who each other are with reasonable certainty. Then, spam tracking required more info - it's all about money, so nothing new.
Did anyone notice more than usual? Wow. Maybe I should have tried for the more expensive Tesla instead of my more versatile Volt. Chevy makes great cars, but ain't doing much for my "want space" jones.
Here's the problem - They have "the goods" on your congress critter, and nothing you can do will make them not vote for laws like this - blackmail, you bet. And every crappy law, if allowed to sit on the books, gets misused - I am unaware of any exception. Gheesh, what country do you live in? Even rubber-stamp FISA warrants have been abused, and that's not that easy to find out - but it got out. Warrantless wiretapping? Phone companies indemnified for collaborating in illegal acts, government says "you can't try us, we'd have to reveal national security secrets, so no case". Just because they aren't abusing the NDAA now, that we kow of - why did they insist on getting it if they didn't plan to use it - and with a law like that - any use is abuse.
How is a lobbyist writing our legislation? You'd be very hard pressed to find ANY that wasn't lobbyist-written. Congress critters don't have time for reading and writing.
A worse threat than money - Hollywood could just start telling the truth about the pols through mainstream media. The stick to go with the carrot....and before you can bust a blackmailer you have to come clean...not a politician thing to do.
Mod parent up. I farm, I also trade commodities. I'm outdoors a lot and have been monitoring all this since '80 or so. It's getting warmer for certain. I like it warm, but some of the things I grow don't. And pests that used to stay south of here have moved north to here and we are getting new problems from that. They can migrate quick, but trees cannot...I'm not going to die from the change we have, but another 30 years on this same track - what was productive farmland will be a desert. So, someone will have to tear down that city you live in to grow crops in, because some of the best land on the planet - right here, won't be anymore, and that food's gotta come from somewhere. At our human density, everything that isn't city is farm...more or less. It's not going to be pretty. Gonna vote NIMBY against tearing your city down while you starve? GoodLuckWithThat. Who cares what caused it - we better look into how to change it back!
I'm glad you taxpayers helped develop the car I drive - the Volt, which was shepherded through by Bob Lutz, the original "car guy" - read his book or drive any of the other cars he made great (stupid things like Vettes and such). Saw a great Charile Rose interview with him and Elon Musk - and I admire them both. But don't count out the Volt as not fun to drive without driving one. I also have a 2010 Camaro SS - and on the twisty roads around here - the Volt is more agile and more fun if not as quick. The Camaro shines on straights and sweepers where it pretty much eats any other car around (all of them so far) - but you have to drive as though you were strapped into a fighter plane because that is what it is. The Volt is more like a euro sporty car, much more comfortable with quick switchbacks, it's just more agile and plenty fast when its the curves that limit your speeds anyway. The Camaro would beat it - but at the end of the road the Camaro driver is going to be really tired, and the Volt driver is going to have a mile wide grin - and not be very far behind anyway.
You can hate on "government motors" all ya want - They did a great job on this one, and unlike the haters, I'm getting that bailout money back in the form of something pretty darn cool. Could it just be sour grapes? Or is it all astroturfing by people with errrm, illiquid investments in the oil patch who are desperate?
More here: http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewforum.php?f=48
Don't get me wrong - I admire Elon and his projects quite a bit. They're just behind. A big company might take longer to get the word, but once they get in motion, look out - I couldn't get a Tesla, or afford one, but this is in my driveway now. And I promise to exit the car within the three weeks it takes to catch on fire after being total lossed sideways into a pole. I'd rather not starve to death before burning.
What's funny is that at that age, when it was far more rare (and there wasn't even a microsoft, gasp) I was programming a PDP-8 and designing and building my own peripherals for it. Truth. Yeah, I did ok in life, even had something to do with VoIP later on - you're probably using my code. But you don't even know my name. Why is it death makes you famous when it can't matter to you anymore. All that skill made me moderately well off (no debt) but... nothing like this, and yes, I'm really that good and have been since the '60s or so. I've certainly seen plenty with one of these certs who I'd prefer the *average* 9 year old to. That's not that special people. Oh, bring on the flames. Some of you who think you're hot shit probably only have that to their names, and no, I'm not gonna hire you unless you can actually do good things. Screw the paper. And get off my lawn.
So could simply burning the hydrogen.
Well, I belong to, and help promote a large crowd of amateurs who actually produce very measurable fusion in their home labs (see the forums at my sig, and elsewhere, fusor.net). Some of them are polywell believers. There's just one problem - NO ONE has demonstrated convincingly any real fusion out of a polywell, ever. We build some pretty doggone fancy stuff, and we even get things like 3He neutron detectors, serious instrumentation to prove it - my fusor even activates elements to see the radioactive results from all the neutrons it makes. Bussard, on the other hand, only tried one dirt cheap (particularly in the context of the money he spent compared to us) plastic neutron detector, and didn't even get conclusive results - with thousands of times the money and time we've all spent at this. I won't say polywell is wrong (but I easily could - they are trying to make a magnetic monopole -GoodLuckWithThat), or that fusors are the way (they probably aren't). but the real data says that....well, go look for yourself but ask real people really doing one or the other - some are easy to find, some aren't (because there aren't any?). I just wasted a couple hours looking at this crap. Anyone who can't instantly pick out a large number of VERY obvious flaws in this guy's talk is NOT invited to my forums. http://www.coultersmithing.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=544
How could I realize something that never happened? You are misinformed.
I'm an experimentalist IN THIS FIELD. Mod parent up. This is almost surely fake.
The operating costs are of course, the cost of the hydrogen you burn to get that power - with oxygen and a nickel catalyst. No fusion to see here, move along.
I do this for a living, and that's my take. No need for a patent, you'd just lose it to the bigger lawyer anyway. All you'd need is credit - and what outfit wouldn't want the "parent of fusion" on their staff at any money and perks they wanted. Buddy, this is trillions of bucks - there will be some crumbs falling off the table no matter what. Trying to hold out for "real money" (billions) just paints a target on your back. Stupid. Solve the doggone problem, then sweat that stuff.
Agree. No. Go see the slides. In any big org like NASA, there's a fair amount of latitude for speculation and blue sky. Those slides don't say *anything* works, just crap they've tried.