And why would you want to go all the way to GEO anyway?
To go to work at centerpoint station? The station that builds/deploys the ribbon/s? Anyways, the problem with releasing early to get into LEO is that your orbital period attached to the cable isn't fast enough for LEO, thus you're going to end up in a rather elliptical orbit. Not insurmountable, but a pain.
If we actually get this built, I see the ISS being relegated to the same status as Mir.
If they're trying to travel to the Moon, I imagine they'd want to stop off at some space station first (which again, might not be in GEO)
Actually, it might be even further along. You're probably going to want a ribbon going out the other way to make the center of mass the GEO. You can use the other length to set up a slingshot.
First I didn't quite understand the wording of your post, it almost made it seem that Raygun was talking TODAY
First, He's a former US president. A deceased former US president. Show some respect please. Second, I was refering to a speech he made while president, when he first proposed the SDI program.
A complete SDI system is what Reagan wanted; a comprehensive STRATEGIC (not tactical) defense system that could rid the world (actually just us) of nuclear terror.
Yes, the mission statement has changed a bit.
BRUTE FORCE OVERWHELMING the system with THOUSANDS OF WARHEADS
Oh, I agree. For that matter even before Reagan proposed SDI the USSR had enough nukes to overwhelm us. The idea was to make it more expensive to do so. In the course of time, though, Russia has ceased to be the primary threat; now we're worrying about 'rougue nations' with less than a dozen missiles. So we can save a lot of money by not trying to protect against the thousands of nukes Russia can still launch.
Well, while I know carbon nanotubes are conductive, I'm not sure how conductive they really are, especially our theoretical 4X as strong as best lab results one.
At best, I figure it'll be around copper's conductivity. So we'll lose a lot of power to resistance, but we can handle that by putting a nuke plant next to the facility and lots of solar panels on the orbital receiving platform.
Definitely want to go high voltage - good seperation and vacuum resists arcing very well. 10KV@1A = 10KW, which is about 1/4 of a modern home's maximum draw with a 200 amp service.
An EV@60mph needs ~22kw to maintain speed. I figure our elevator is going to be heavier, and going straight up, increasing the need for power, but we can accept a much lower speed, decreasing power demands. So call the 10KW 'within a order of magnitude'. A big, heavy, fast elevator would require more power than a small slow one.
You can't really compare the energy demands to a conventional elevator, as those are counterweighted, this one wouldn't be. Plus, the whole goal is to get stuff into space.
Anyways, if we assume 22kw of power over the course of 220 hours, perhaps at 100kva to reduce the effects of long 'wires' of relatively high resistance, that'd be 4840kwh of power to get the pod to the orbital station. Or $484 of electricity in my local area.
Not only is that not 'park a nuclear plant next to the station', that's 'inconsequential' to space agencies.
We have these already in all major cities. They are called buses and taxicabs.
However, if you add 'convienence' and 'speed' in there bus systems start losing. Add in 'Capacity' to serve the entire population and cabs lose out - there's no sense in 30-40% of a city being taxi drivers.
In my mind, it needs to be automated - thus I think PRT is a good solution. Built right it can be faster than a personal car due to the non-stop nature, on demand service is convientent, and given that a single rail has more capacity than a three lane highway*, you'd be able to move everybody, even during rush periods as long as you have an extensive enough grid system and a suitable number of pods.
I mentioned an 'average' 100 mph speed, with a note on speeding up once outside the atmosphere. I figure you'll be slow at first and speed up over time. The problem with 1k km/h is friction with the ribbon, plus you're probably limited on the amount of power you can put towards acceleration. Though it would get easier during the latter part of the journey as the effects of gravity and atmosphere lessen.
I don't thing 10km/h, straight up, while in the atmosphere is out of line. You'd still be out of most of the atmosphere within a day, and at those speeds wind resistance isn't a big deal.
So maybe aerodynamics won't matter that much.
At least we haven't gotten any people complaining about the devistation a ribbon cut might cause yet.
The commentator stated that Reagan didn't understand the difficulties involved; when the very speech tidbit that they played had Reagan mentioning that it might take into the next century to get it done. That, to me, indicates that Reagan DID understand it was a difficult goal to meet and could take quite some time.
In other words, their "space elevator" will probably more closely resember a sleeker rocket/airplane design, and less like an actual elevator...
Given the speed you'll want to haul cargos up to have them there in a reasonable time you'll want some areodynamics.
Even assuming you speed up once you reach upper atmosphere/vacuum, a 22k mile journey at an average speed of 100mph will take 220 hours, or just over 9 days.
I'd see a fuel cell system for in atmosphere lifting, shifting to battery/solar once you're over the atmosphere. Maybe even jettison the fuel cell to be recovered and reused.
Though there is a chance you could use the cable - electrical potential is generated if you string a conductive line through a chunk of the atmosphere, and CF is conductive. You still have the problem of how to utilize that differential at any given point of the cable though. You might end up using a double ribbon system and shipping electricity that way to the cars.
Being groped by space-whores could potentially be worth the wait anyway.
But remember, this is JAPAN we're talking about. They have tentacles.
Still, that amounts to $9.5 Billion USD at the moment. To put it in perspective, we're looking at spending $700B to bail out the banks this week. Over the course of the life of the shuttle, each launch as ended up costing $1.3B. So, for a little over a tenth of the bank buyout, or less than 10 shuttle launches*. Or, if you want to go with incremental costs ($60M), it'd be 158 launches - compared to the 115 launches as of Aug 2006. Still, I hardly think that it'd be fair to compare incremental costs of a dangerous platform with creating a new one with substantially lower incremental costs and hopefully greater safety.
Of course, the article does at least mention a number of issues - we need to industrialize a carbon nanotube production process that makes a cable that'd 4 times as strong as the best lab result to date. There's all sorts of issues with a pod that has to go 22k miles, straight up.
I heard a snippet of a speech by Reagan today about SDI and how we now finally have the missile defense stuff he proposed. They talked about him not realizing the difficulties and state of the art, at which I laughed a bit when, in the speech, he talked about it possibly taking 'into the next century'. Anyways - this topic reminded me of the SDI program - nice goal, but might end up being slightly out of our reach at the moment. Especially for a 'mere' 9.5B. Probably end up being 100B*, and an additional 40 years.
It's also happened before; it's often called a 'poison pill'. There's been bills that even the original sponsor has turned against it due to an amendment that was attached.
Still, while this was a rather obvious version of it, how about something like option 3 is a renewal of the AWB? Some congresscritters will like it, some will be against it, and the NRA/libertarians like me will be screaming, even though before that we were meh of the bill beforehand.
Well, actually, the 2nd part would have had me reversing position - I'm all for legalizing drugs, but I DO believe drug patents are an important part of new development of drugs. It's essentially government confiscation of the company's assets. Now, adjusting patent rules, or restructuring the FDA/drug approval process, then we can talk. At least patents are extremely limited compared to copyrights today.
I say please, keep the seniors off the roads for everyone's safety. Besides, we seriously need to reduce the number of drivers on the road, not find new ways to let everyone drive!
Statistically the seniors are better than young teenage drivers, so should we extend the driving deals to kids?
Honestly enough, my dream would be for an automated travel system that addresses 90-99% of everybody's needs. If they have special handicaps or limited mobility, live in a condo with a station in the condo.
Get away from the car as being a necessary option.
Second - while your mom, living in Atlantic City, has all sort of options, my grandparents, living in Sebring, FL, don't have as many, and I'd have even less where I live. So there is some call for this sort of stuff.
Third - we need better options going into the future. People are living longer, we're having fewer children, so in the coming years we're going to have a far higher proportion of older people - will we be able to keep the older, relatively manpower wasteful assistance services going under such demand at a still reasonable cost?
Diesel is diesel, heating oil is heating oil and everyone's production economics is pretty much the same.
Actually, most 'heating oil' can be used as diesel as well. To the point they have to put a dye in it.
I'd love to have a 65mpg commuter, even if it's diesel. A hybrid isn't my best choice - I have a relatively long commute, but it's all highway. Highway miles are a hybrid's weak point for efficiency gains over a more traditional vehicle.
Rather than (or perhaps in addition to) taking this passive-aggressive route, why not contact EA directly and say "Hey, I bought this game, I like it, but I can't deal with these bullshit restrictions." That way you make your opinion known unambiguously without having to rely on their interpretation of pirating information.
How about a massive shrinkwrap refund protest? Buy the game, pay attention to the shrinkwrap EULA, find out that the store won't take returns on opened software, demand a refund from EA. Sue in small claims court if necessary. 'Sir, EA placed excessive restrictions on my game that was only revealed once I opened the package; making it not worth the $50 I paid for it and at which point the store won't take returns. I want my $50 back from EA, because they're the ones that caused the problem.'
What this fixes: Doesn't cost the store money, costs EA money because of their EULA and restrictions, much more than what their profit would have been(they're effectively paying the store's costs and profit as well).
NOTE: I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if this will work. A lot of it depends on the court. NOTE2: Most EULAs specify any court claims go through either moderation or their home turf. The point here is that you REJECT the EULA and want your money back, so you haven't agreed to use their court.
Well, with bacteria you also have to worry about spore forms, which, while inactive, are also far tougher while it awaits favorable circumstances to hatch.
One thing to realize is that while you can indeed get bacteria that 'love' excessively high or low PHs, temperatures, etc... These optimizations also tend to make the human body less than ideal for it, limiting infections.
On the other hand, has hard surface sanitization ever really been a problem? Though this looks like it's supposed to be a continuing process, yet at 80% concentration needed, I'd point out that germs tend not to last on metal surfaces anyways - no food.
Windows XP should have been poorly received as everyone who tried it said it was terrible too.
As I remember it, XP offered quite a few benefits over 2k/ME*, and I found it often easier to install. Of course, the difference was smaller than NT to 2k, because NT was really long in the tooth at that point, with systems exceeding the limits of a non service-packed NT. 2k also offered much more in the way of multimedia/game options.
Vista, just doesn't offer anything motivating enough for the performance hit. I've likened it to chopping 200 mhz and a gig of RAM.
I think it's not much different than the current pizza hut/hardies ads where they pretend to be much more upscale than they really are - like serving their burger in an actual(or fake) upscale restaurant.
Then again, the fact that they need to do this indicates the same thing - people think their product is inferior.
Can you imagine what Honda would be doing if a significant portion of people became convinced that a 02 civic was superior than a 08? Or a Ford F-150? Any car company's line? There'd be heads rolling!
I don't think so. It isn't a difficult operation. 20 seconds. I don't think there'd be much of a queue. Design the station correctly, with multiple waiting railcars, and you should be able to have a high thruput.
The problem is that a car can only go forwards and back with a limited turn radius. Neither can standard trains go sideways. You can't run with the vehicle sideways, using a very wide car - it's too wide for tracks.
So you're going to have to have a very wide station that ends up being very long to collect a large number of loading rails to the main line. Not to mention some complicated loading platforms if you expect the car to drive up rather than being loaded by crane.
Flexibility. I can put together a trip that stops at the movie, the hardware store, the bookstore, the electronics store. I can go to a restaurant, start and stop where I please. I can drop by the gym and have my exercise clothes in the trunk, and put them back there when I'm done.
Fine and dandy. For those that addicted to their vehicle, we'll still have roads, preferably roads that are now a lot less congested because those that just toss their briefcase and laptop on the passanger seat for the ride home are now taking a pod. Roads are also good for custom large loads, emergency equipment, etc. So we'll still have them. We just won't need nearly as many six lane highways and such, and you won't have seas of cars and roads so congested that fluid dynamics is a good explanation for their movement.
On the replacement end: How about a backpack and/or cargo services by pod? A locker at the gym? Yes, it's a lifestyle change, but I do believe that americans will change if they can see some true cost savings by changing. Heck, I've always envisioned easy vehicle rental being part of the station - normally golf cart type vehicles, for the efficiency. It'd be easy enough to make them electric, fully enclosable, with a higher security locking area. Sure would reduce pollution in a lot of cities.
Cargo. I like to have stuff along. For work, I want my briefcase and my laptop. Do I want to have to lug them around everywhere I go? No. If I decide to stop at the hardware/book/electronics stores, I don't have to luge them all over the store.
Leave the briefcase/laptop at work. Or, alternatively, use a locker at the pod station. I've always imagined them being fairly full service - restroom, lockers, a spot to load/unload a cargo pod, golf cart/gator rental down on the first floor*.
And, this system is not _just_ a commuter system. It is suburbs to town, or town to town, even NYC to LA. The latter railcar might even have a kitchenette, living room, and large screen HDTV positioned in front of the car. Get out of the car, start the coffee and microwave, settle into the easy chair and tune HBO or slip in a Blue-Ray.
And it'd be cheaper and easier to provide this stuff if the car isn't sitting there. It'd be called a private cabin, and you could have a path to a dining car for your eating pleasure. Have the cars in the back of the train, or the front, whichever works better.
Pods - for those traveling light and small cargo services(USPS/Fedex/UPS types stuff), trains for heavy cargo and people who want to travel in luxury. Heck, you could have somebody toss their luggage that they won't need until their destination into a cargo pod, tell it the city/address to go to, then take a personal pod to their destination.
With airlines charging even for the first two bags today, I figure it's now frequently cheaper to simply ship your gear to your next location. Then you don't have to worry about airport screening or hauling it to/from your airport. The shipping services will mostly happily pick your stuff up from your door, and deliver it to the door of your destination. Takes a bit more planning, but if enough people start doing it, I imagine that they'll come up with even
If it's anything like these systems, they still use spinning platter disk drives.
I'm talking about when you start seeing a significant percentage of datacenters choosing to go with flash storage for at least some of their systems.
Signficant percentage would be 5-10%, with more extensive installs giving more weight to 'significant'. Only OSes and programs would count less than terabytes of database, for example.
Right now I'm looking at 50% annual increase for HD's, and 100% increase for SSD.
SSDs are a bit odd in that they should be nearly infinitly chainable in a device, while a hard drive is a much more discrete unit. So I'm looking more at 'What's the total capacity based on the size and number of chips manufacturers are willing to put in a SSD for the best $ per GB?'. Going by pure $ per GB, SSDs are doing better than 100% improvement a year.
Going by that, it'll be around 9 years. I figure HD development will stall before that, as SSDs take over the laptop and high speed database server market much sooner, 3-5 years.
I figure about 4 years until we start looking at putting ~80GB SSDs in baseline computers for under $40, still plenty for a windows/office install*, your favorite linux distro, or whatever. Occasional use programs and AV media will be stored on terabyte sized spinning platter hard drives.
*Yes, as long as they keep the bloat halfway under control.
It's not so much that we've been lagging at the terabyte, it's that the increments are getting bigger. Platter differences aside, the increment is usually 33% or more.
It's also taking longer. The 1 - 1.5 increment has taken longer than the 1GB - 2GB - 4 GB flash drive jumps took.
Yes, it's going to take a while for flash to catch up. On the other hand, especially if Microsoft can actually contain it's bloat, in about 5 years flash based laptops will dominate platter versions.
If flash doubles every year and HD's gain 50%, It'll be ~9 years before 'state of the art' has SSDs pass HD's. Especially since HD price for 'state of the art' seems to stay pretty steady, while SSD prices are decreasing about 10% for the 'sweet spot' capacity each year.
I also figure that SSD density increases will accelerate when it takes over for laptop hard drives, then again when it starts taking over the server market. Meanwhile HD development will slow as markets for the SSDs increase.
Once you can get a 200GB SSD for ~$100, I figure it'll see a big growth - at that point it'll serve the non-videophile non-techie market quite well. $40 for the OEM market, I'd say 80GB today, but let's call it 160 GB at that future point of time. I'd say 4-5 years.
Strapping down the wheels would probably take 2 guys 20 seconds or so to throw a nylon net over the tires and fasten it with a cargo fastener.
A bit longer, I think. The problem, as I see it, is also one of getting the vehicle to the depot(extra driving for many), getting into queue at rush hour, getting started, then at the leaving depot, getting unhooked and all that.
but the history of transportation in the USA shows that people absolutely do not want to do that. They want their cars with them.
The trick is to ask WHY they want their cars with thim. In my case I figure it's a 'last mile' problem for most mass transit solutions. They want to get to their destination, or at least within a certain distance of it, within a reasonable period of time. Studies have also shown that people tend to assign more expense with 'stalled' time - They'll value a trip at 50mph with a 10 minute wait in the middle less than a 20mph trip with no wait, even if they ultimately take the same amount of time to make a journey of the same distance.
I figure that if you offer people a comfortable, clean, individual car or pod that's faster and cheaper than the alternatives, they'll take it, even if it means leaving their car at home. As long as they can get to where they're going, preferably as close to their destination as they can get with said car. In cases of things like airports and busy malls, easy to do. You can end up quite far away in the parking lot.
And, this system is not _just_ a commuter system. It is suburbs to town, or town to town, even NYC to LA. The latter railcar might even have a kitchenette, living room, and large screen HDTV positioned in front of the car. Get out of the car, start the coffee and microwave, settle into the easy chair and tune HBO or slip in a Blue-Ray.
How about we get rid of the car and give them a couch? Or at least have the car be somewhere else on the train? A car gets stifling if you'd otherwise have the option to get up and stretch out.
With your car carrying system, you just don't have the room to run stations into malls and businesses. Think about a condo dweller in a building with a station in the building and lines that run out to the grocery store, mall, walmart, movie theater, etc... They wouldn't NEED a car, the insurance costs for said car alone would pay for the occasional cab trip.
At current improvement rates, I think that you're looking at 7-10 years before SSD becomes cheaper than 3.5" form factor drives for sheer storage. We seem to have been lagging at around a terabyte for a while. Meanwhile it seems that SSD is doubling in capacity per $ at it's 'sweet spot' each year at the moment.
Going by performance improvements, it'll only be a 2-4 years before companies start replacing their platters with solid state for intensive database operations, especially those biased towards reads. Those 10k-15k RPM drives are significantly more expensive and store less than 7200/5400 RPM drives.
The article mentions $595. Looking up, a 300GB 15k HD is $400 for an OEM. That's 5 times the size of the 80GB SSD mentioned in the article. Figure on a doubling each year, that'd be 3 years before the SSD exceeds current models. Figure in the lower power requirements and such, and I can see SSDs selling well before reaching parity based purely on size - their improved seek time, lower power demands, etc...
Well, it certainly started before then, but I was refering to the period where we had nukes and still had the occasional KKK lynching. It's been a while since the KKK last showed it's face in a way that showed up on the news. Last time they got pelted with batteries. (Now there's Assault and BATTERY for you!;) )
You'd probably have to add a step in there to secure the wheels to the floor of the railcar to insure that it doesn't roll around.
More than this, you'd have to strap it down for a 100mph train. To put this another way, most people don't have enough of a commute that this would work if it adds even 10 minutes to their commute.
I'd rather get them out of their cars completely, they have a short walk to the nearest station, then get dropped off within a block of their destination. Downtown, likely into the very building they work in. They can take a golf cart type vehicle if they can't walk that far due to amount of cargo or handicap.
An order of magnitude cheaper than your system, and actually aliviates traffic downtown. As a bonus, you gain back parking capacity, enabling even denser buildings.
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And why would you want to go all the way to GEO anyway?
To go to work at centerpoint station? The station that builds/deploys the ribbon/s? Anyways, the problem with releasing early to get into LEO is that your orbital period attached to the cable isn't fast enough for LEO, thus you're going to end up in a rather elliptical orbit. Not insurmountable, but a pain.
If we actually get this built, I see the ISS being relegated to the same status as Mir.
If they're trying to travel to the Moon, I imagine they'd want to stop off at some space station first (which again, might not be in GEO)
Actually, it might be even further along. You're probably going to want a ribbon going out the other way to make the center of mass the GEO. You can use the other length to set up a slingshot.
First I didn't quite understand the wording of your post, it almost made it seem that Raygun was talking TODAY
First, He's a former US president. A deceased former US president. Show some respect please. Second, I was refering to a speech he made while president, when he first proposed the SDI program.
A complete SDI system is what Reagan wanted; a comprehensive STRATEGIC (not tactical) defense system that could rid the world (actually just us) of nuclear terror.
Yes, the mission statement has changed a bit.
BRUTE FORCE OVERWHELMING the system with THOUSANDS OF WARHEADS
Oh, I agree. For that matter even before Reagan proposed SDI the USSR had enough nukes to overwhelm us. The idea was to make it more expensive to do so. In the course of time, though, Russia has ceased to be the primary threat; now we're worrying about 'rougue nations' with less than a dozen missiles. So we can save a lot of money by not trying to protect against the thousands of nukes Russia can still launch.
Well, while I know carbon nanotubes are conductive, I'm not sure how conductive they really are, especially our theoretical 4X as strong as best lab results one.
At best, I figure it'll be around copper's conductivity. So we'll lose a lot of power to resistance, but we can handle that by putting a nuke plant next to the facility and lots of solar panels on the orbital receiving platform.
Definitely want to go high voltage - good seperation and vacuum resists arcing very well. 10KV@1A = 10KW, which is about 1/4 of a modern home's maximum draw with a 200 amp service.
An EV@60mph needs ~22kw to maintain speed. I figure our elevator is going to be heavier, and going straight up, increasing the need for power, but we can accept a much lower speed, decreasing power demands. So call the 10KW 'within a order of magnitude'. A big, heavy, fast elevator would require more power than a small slow one.
You can't really compare the energy demands to a conventional elevator, as those are counterweighted, this one wouldn't be. Plus, the whole goal is to get stuff into space.
Anyways, if we assume 22kw of power over the course of 220 hours, perhaps at 100kva to reduce the effects of long 'wires' of relatively high resistance, that'd be 4840kwh of power to get the pod to the orbital station. Or $484 of electricity in my local area.
Not only is that not 'park a nuclear plant next to the station', that's 'inconsequential' to space agencies.
We have these already in all major cities. They are called buses and taxicabs.
However, if you add 'convienence' and 'speed' in there bus systems start losing. Add in 'Capacity' to serve the entire population and cabs lose out - there's no sense in 30-40% of a city being taxi drivers.
In my mind, it needs to be automated - thus I think PRT is a good solution. Built right it can be faster than a personal car due to the non-stop nature, on demand service is convientent, and given that a single rail has more capacity than a three lane highway*, you'd be able to move everybody, even during rush periods as long as you have an extensive enough grid system and a suitable number of pods.
*depends on the system
I mentioned an 'average' 100 mph speed, with a note on speeding up once outside the atmosphere. I figure you'll be slow at first and speed up over time. The problem with 1k km/h is friction with the ribbon, plus you're probably limited on the amount of power you can put towards acceleration. Though it would get easier during the latter part of the journey as the effects of gravity and atmosphere lessen.
I don't thing 10km/h, straight up, while in the atmosphere is out of line. You'd still be out of most of the atmosphere within a day, and at those speeds wind resistance isn't a big deal.
So maybe aerodynamics won't matter that much.
At least we haven't gotten any people complaining about the devistation a ribbon cut might cause yet.
So, he was right? What's your point?
The commentator stated that Reagan didn't understand the difficulties involved; when the very speech tidbit that they played had Reagan mentioning that it might take into the next century to get it done. That, to me, indicates that Reagan DID understand it was a difficult goal to meet and could take quite some time.
So I laughed a bit at the commentator.
In other words, their "space elevator" will probably more closely resember a sleeker rocket/airplane design, and less like an actual elevator...
Given the speed you'll want to haul cargos up to have them there in a reasonable time you'll want some areodynamics.
Even assuming you speed up once you reach upper atmosphere/vacuum, a 22k mile journey at an average speed of 100mph will take 220 hours, or just over 9 days.
I'd see a fuel cell system for in atmosphere lifting, shifting to battery/solar once you're over the atmosphere. Maybe even jettison the fuel cell to be recovered and reused.
Though there is a chance you could use the cable - electrical potential is generated if you string a conductive line through a chunk of the atmosphere, and CF is conductive. You still have the problem of how to utilize that differential at any given point of the cable though. You might end up using a double ribbon system and shipping electricity that way to the cars.
Being groped by space-whores could potentially be worth the wait anyway.
But remember, this is JAPAN we're talking about. They have tentacles.
Still, that amounts to $9.5 Billion USD at the moment. To put it in perspective, we're looking at spending $700B to bail out the banks this week. Over the course of the life of the shuttle, each launch as ended up costing $1.3B. So, for a little over a tenth of the bank buyout, or less than 10 shuttle launches*. Or, if you want to go with incremental costs ($60M), it'd be 158 launches - compared to the 115 launches as of Aug 2006. Still, I hardly think that it'd be fair to compare incremental costs of a dangerous platform with creating a new one with substantially lower incremental costs and hopefully greater safety.
Of course, the article does at least mention a number of issues - we need to industrialize a carbon nanotube production process that makes a cable that'd 4 times as strong as the best lab result to date. There's all sorts of issues with a pod that has to go 22k miles, straight up.
I heard a snippet of a speech by Reagan today about SDI and how we now finally have the missile defense stuff he proposed. They talked about him not realizing the difficulties and state of the art, at which I laughed a bit when, in the speech, he talked about it possibly taking 'into the next century'. Anyways - this topic reminded me of the SDI program - nice goal, but might end up being slightly out of our reach at the moment. Especially for a 'mere' 9.5B. Probably end up being 100B*, and an additional 40 years.
*Still cheap at the price.
It's also happened before; it's often called a 'poison pill'. There's been bills that even the original sponsor has turned against it due to an amendment that was attached.
Still, while this was a rather obvious version of it, how about something like option 3 is a renewal of the AWB? Some congresscritters will like it, some will be against it, and the NRA/libertarians like me will be screaming, even though before that we were meh of the bill beforehand.
Well, actually, the 2nd part would have had me reversing position - I'm all for legalizing drugs, but I DO believe drug patents are an important part of new development of drugs. It's essentially government confiscation of the company's assets. Now, adjusting patent rules, or restructuring the FDA/drug approval process, then we can talk. At least patents are extremely limited compared to copyrights today.
I say please, keep the seniors off the roads for everyone's safety. Besides, we seriously need to reduce the number of drivers on the road, not find new ways to let everyone drive!
Statistically the seniors are better than young teenage drivers, so should we extend the driving deals to kids?
Honestly enough, my dream would be for an automated travel system that addresses 90-99% of everybody's needs. If they have special handicaps or limited mobility, live in a condo with a station in the condo.
Get away from the car as being a necessary option.
Second - while your mom, living in Atlantic City, has all sort of options, my grandparents, living in Sebring, FL, don't have as many, and I'd have even less where I live. So there is some call for this sort of stuff.
Third - we need better options going into the future. People are living longer, we're having fewer children, so in the coming years we're going to have a far higher proportion of older people - will we be able to keep the older, relatively manpower wasteful assistance services going under such demand at a still reasonable cost?
Diesel is diesel, heating oil is heating oil and everyone's production economics is pretty much the same.
Actually, most 'heating oil' can be used as diesel as well. To the point they have to put a dye in it.
I'd love to have a 65mpg commuter, even if it's diesel. A hybrid isn't my best choice - I have a relatively long commute, but it's all highway. Highway miles are a hybrid's weak point for efficiency gains over a more traditional vehicle.
Rather than (or perhaps in addition to) taking this passive-aggressive route, why not contact EA directly and say "Hey, I bought this game, I like it, but I can't deal with these bullshit restrictions." That way you make your opinion known unambiguously without having to rely on their interpretation of pirating information.
How about a massive shrinkwrap refund protest? Buy the game, pay attention to the shrinkwrap EULA, find out that the store won't take returns on opened software, demand a refund from EA. Sue in small claims court if necessary. 'Sir, EA placed excessive restrictions on my game that was only revealed once I opened the package; making it not worth the $50 I paid for it and at which point the store won't take returns. I want my $50 back from EA, because they're the ones that caused the problem.'
What this fixes: Doesn't cost the store money, costs EA money because of their EULA and restrictions, much more than what their profit would have been(they're effectively paying the store's costs and profit as well).
NOTE: I'm not a lawyer and I don't know if this will work. A lot of it depends on the court.
NOTE2: Most EULAs specify any court claims go through either moderation or their home turf. The point here is that you REJECT the EULA and want your money back, so you haven't agreed to use their court.
Would this work?
Well, with bacteria you also have to worry about spore forms, which, while inactive, are also far tougher while it awaits favorable circumstances to hatch.
One thing to realize is that while you can indeed get bacteria that 'love' excessively high or low PHs, temperatures, etc... These optimizations also tend to make the human body less than ideal for it, limiting infections.
On the other hand, has hard surface sanitization ever really been a problem? Though this looks like it's supposed to be a continuing process, yet at 80% concentration needed, I'd point out that germs tend not to last on metal surfaces anyways - no food.
Windows XP should have been poorly received as everyone who tried it said it was terrible too.
As I remember it, XP offered quite a few benefits over 2k/ME*, and I found it often easier to install. Of course, the difference was smaller than NT to 2k, because NT was really long in the tooth at that point, with systems exceeding the limits of a non service-packed NT. 2k also offered much more in the way of multimedia/game options.
Vista, just doesn't offer anything motivating enough for the performance hit. I've likened it to chopping 200 mhz and a gig of RAM.
*May ME die the ignoble death it deserves
It's been noted that most mass shootings happen in 'gun free zones' where people aren't allowed to carry guns for self defense.
When shooters have tried to hit non gun free zones, generally they're shot before they get far.
I think it's not much different than the current pizza hut/hardies ads where they pretend to be much more upscale than they really are - like serving their burger in an actual(or fake) upscale restaurant.
Then again, the fact that they need to do this indicates the same thing - people think their product is inferior.
Can you imagine what Honda would be doing if a significant portion of people became convinced that a 02 civic was superior than a 08? Or a Ford F-150? Any car company's line? There'd be heads rolling!
Where they invite users to 'try' the newest Microsoft OS, before revealing it's Vista.
Sure, have users play around a bit with a top of the line machine with a Slim Vista install, it's great.
Go to try to configure stuff, install 3rd party programs, run actual benchmarks, it's not so nice.
I don't think so. It isn't a difficult operation. 20 seconds. I don't think there'd be much of a queue. Design the station correctly, with multiple waiting railcars, and you should be able to have a high thruput.
The problem is that a car can only go forwards and back with a limited turn radius. Neither can standard trains go sideways. You can't run with the vehicle sideways, using a very wide car - it's too wide for tracks.
So you're going to have to have a very wide station that ends up being very long to collect a large number of loading rails to the main line. Not to mention some complicated loading platforms if you expect the car to drive up rather than being loaded by crane.
Flexibility. I can put together a trip that stops at the movie, the hardware store, the bookstore, the electronics store. I can go to a restaurant, start and stop where I please. I can drop by the gym and have my exercise clothes in the trunk, and put them back there when I'm done.
Fine and dandy. For those that addicted to their vehicle, we'll still have roads, preferably roads that are now a lot less congested because those that just toss their briefcase and laptop on the passanger seat for the ride home are now taking a pod. Roads are also good for custom large loads, emergency equipment, etc. So we'll still have them. We just won't need nearly as many six lane highways and such, and you won't have seas of cars and roads so congested that fluid dynamics is a good explanation for their movement.
On the replacement end: How about a backpack and/or cargo services by pod? A locker at the gym? Yes, it's a lifestyle change, but I do believe that americans will change if they can see some true cost savings by changing. Heck, I've always envisioned easy vehicle rental being part of the station - normally golf cart type vehicles, for the efficiency. It'd be easy enough to make them electric, fully enclosable, with a higher security locking area. Sure would reduce pollution in a lot of cities.
Cargo. I like to have stuff along. For work, I want my briefcase and my laptop. Do I want to have to lug them around everywhere I go? No. If I decide to stop at the hardware/book/electronics stores, I don't have to luge them all over the store.
Leave the briefcase/laptop at work. Or, alternatively, use a locker at the pod station. I've always imagined them being fairly full service - restroom, lockers, a spot to load/unload a cargo pod, golf cart/gator rental down on the first floor*.
And, this system is not _just_ a commuter system. It is suburbs to town, or town to town, even NYC to LA. The latter railcar might even have a kitchenette, living room, and large screen HDTV positioned in front of the car. Get out of the car, start the coffee and microwave, settle into the easy chair and tune HBO or slip in a Blue-Ray.
And it'd be cheaper and easier to provide this stuff if the car isn't sitting there. It'd be called a private cabin, and you could have a path to a dining car for your eating pleasure. Have the cars in the back of the train, or the front, whichever works better.
Pods - for those traveling light and small cargo services(USPS/Fedex/UPS types stuff), trains for heavy cargo and people who want to travel in luxury. Heck, you could have somebody toss their luggage that they won't need until their destination into a cargo pod, tell it the city/address to go to, then take a personal pod to their destination.
With airlines charging even for the first two bags today, I figure it's now frequently cheaper to simply ship your gear to your next location. Then you don't have to worry about airport screening or hauling it to/from your airport. The shipping services will mostly happily pick your stuff up from your door, and deliver it to the door of your destination. Takes a bit more planning, but if enough people start doing it, I imagine that they'll come up with even
If it's anything like these systems, they still use spinning platter disk drives.
I'm talking about when you start seeing a significant percentage of datacenters choosing to go with flash storage for at least some of their systems.
Signficant percentage would be 5-10%, with more extensive installs giving more weight to 'significant'. Only OSes and programs would count less than terabytes of database, for example.
Right now I'm looking at 50% annual increase for HD's, and 100% increase for SSD.
SSDs are a bit odd in that they should be nearly infinitly chainable in a device, while a hard drive is a much more discrete unit. So I'm looking more at 'What's the total capacity based on the size and number of chips manufacturers are willing to put in a SSD for the best $ per GB?'. Going by pure $ per GB, SSDs are doing better than 100% improvement a year.
Going by that, it'll be around 9 years. I figure HD development will stall before that, as SSDs take over the laptop and high speed database server market much sooner, 3-5 years.
I figure about 4 years until we start looking at putting ~80GB SSDs in baseline computers for under $40, still plenty for a windows/office install*, your favorite linux distro, or whatever. Occasional use programs and AV media will be stored on terabyte sized spinning platter hard drives.
*Yes, as long as they keep the bloat halfway under control.
It's not so much that we've been lagging at the terabyte, it's that the increments are getting bigger. Platter differences aside, the increment is usually 33% or more.
It's also taking longer. The 1 - 1.5 increment has taken longer than the 1GB - 2GB - 4 GB flash drive jumps took.
Yes, it's going to take a while for flash to catch up. On the other hand, especially if Microsoft can actually contain it's bloat, in about 5 years flash based laptops will dominate platter versions.
If flash doubles every year and HD's gain 50%, It'll be ~9 years before 'state of the art' has SSDs pass HD's. Especially since HD price for 'state of the art' seems to stay pretty steady, while SSD prices are decreasing about 10% for the 'sweet spot' capacity each year.
I also figure that SSD density increases will accelerate when it takes over for laptop hard drives, then again when it starts taking over the server market. Meanwhile HD development will slow as markets for the SSDs increase.
Once you can get a 200GB SSD for ~$100, I figure it'll see a big growth - at that point it'll serve the non-videophile non-techie market quite well. $40 for the OEM market, I'd say 80GB today, but let's call it 160 GB at that future point of time. I'd say 4-5 years.
Strapping down the wheels would probably take 2 guys 20 seconds or so to throw a nylon net over the tires and fasten it with a cargo fastener.
A bit longer, I think. The problem, as I see it, is also one of getting the vehicle to the depot(extra driving for many), getting into queue at rush hour, getting started, then at the leaving depot, getting unhooked and all that.
but the history of transportation in the USA shows that people absolutely do not want to do that. They want their cars with them.
The trick is to ask WHY they want their cars with thim. In my case I figure it's a 'last mile' problem for most mass transit solutions. They want to get to their destination, or at least within a certain distance of it, within a reasonable period of time. Studies have also shown that people tend to assign more expense with 'stalled' time - They'll value a trip at 50mph with a 10 minute wait in the middle less than a 20mph trip with no wait, even if they ultimately take the same amount of time to make a journey of the same distance.
I figure that if you offer people a comfortable, clean, individual car or pod that's faster and cheaper than the alternatives, they'll take it, even if it means leaving their car at home. As long as they can get to where they're going, preferably as close to their destination as they can get with said car. In cases of things like airports and busy malls, easy to do. You can end up quite far away in the parking lot.
And, this system is not _just_ a commuter system. It is suburbs to town, or town to town, even NYC to LA. The latter railcar might even have a kitchenette, living room, and large screen HDTV positioned in front of the car. Get out of the car, start the coffee and microwave, settle into the easy chair and tune HBO or slip in a Blue-Ray.
How about we get rid of the car and give them a couch? Or at least have the car be somewhere else on the train? A car gets stifling if you'd otherwise have the option to get up and stretch out.
With your car carrying system, you just don't have the room to run stations into malls and businesses. Think about a condo dweller in a building with a station in the building and lines that run out to the grocery store, mall, walmart, movie theater, etc... They wouldn't NEED a car, the insurance costs for said car alone would pay for the occasional cab trip.
At current improvement rates, I think that you're looking at 7-10 years before SSD becomes cheaper than 3.5" form factor drives for sheer storage. We seem to have been lagging at around a terabyte for a while. Meanwhile it seems that SSD is doubling in capacity per $ at it's 'sweet spot' each year at the moment.
Going by performance improvements, it'll only be a 2-4 years before companies start replacing their platters with solid state for intensive database operations, especially those biased towards reads. Those 10k-15k RPM drives are significantly more expensive and store less than 7200/5400 RPM drives.
The article mentions $595. Looking up, a 300GB 15k HD is $400 for an OEM. That's 5 times the size of the 80GB SSD mentioned in the article. Figure on a doubling each year, that'd be 3 years before the SSD exceeds current models. Figure in the lower power requirements and such, and I can see SSDs selling well before reaching parity based purely on size - their improved seek time, lower power demands, etc...
What do you mean, "back during the cold war"?
Well, it certainly started before then, but I was refering to the period where we had nukes and still had the occasional KKK lynching. It's been a while since the KKK last showed it's face in a way that showed up on the news. Last time they got pelted with batteries. (Now there's Assault and BATTERY for you! ;) )
We've made a lot of progress.
You'd probably have to add a step in there to secure the wheels to the floor of the railcar to insure that it doesn't roll around.
More than this, you'd have to strap it down for a 100mph train. To put this another way, most people don't have enough of a commute that this would work if it adds even 10 minutes to their commute.
I'd rather get them out of their cars completely, they have a short walk to the nearest station, then get dropped off within a block of their destination. Downtown, likely into the very building they work in. They can take a golf cart type vehicle if they can't walk that far due to amount of cargo or handicap.
An order of magnitude cheaper than your system, and actually aliviates traffic downtown. As a bonus, you gain back parking capacity, enabling even denser buildings.