I want a pda that can survive for more than a few weeks! Palm OS has everything I need (except maybe sensory stuff), but the damn things are built like tissue boxes. I want a small, useful pda that's at least a little waterproof (for when I get soaked on the moto), that can handle dropping it occasionally, and that has a good battery life. What's the point of having all those gee-whiz features if you have to plug it in every 4 or 8 hours to recharge the batteries? I'd also like to see Palm get more into stand-alone software - it'd be nice to use a palm and a cell phone to do email, read news, etc, without having to log into a PC (which crashes) all the time. I want something that will survive extended moto trips, the odd paragliding wipeout, and even a kayaking trip. Then it'd be worth spending some money on, unlike the disposeable crap they're building these days.
Nope, in terms of energy used per kilogram per kilometer, a human on a well oiled (not high performance, just well oiled) bicycle is by far the most efficient mode of transportation. Joe MTB on his bike is even more efficient, in terms of energy per kg per km, than a soaring albatross or hawk. Internal combustion engines are a really crappy, high entropy way of producing mechanical work.
Hey, Olympic caliber athletes can put out about.5 hp, or 370 W. For a couple of minutes, then they throw up. Most fit people are closer to about 70 watts for short periods of time. So, assuming you have awesome power conversion system and are getting close to 100% efficiency, you could power a rather dim lightbulb, for a short period of time. Cool, eh? But not so useful - save your breath, and bike to work. Your car is less than 100% efficient, and extremely heavy, so you're saving ~20,000 W by riding your bike, versus generating 70 W riding a bike connected to a generator.
The real problem is not politics, it's energy density, and the fact that H2 is a pain to store. If I want to drive 500 km in my H2 powered fuel cell car, I need either A:huge H2 tanks taking up half the car, specialized H2 detection systems (the H2 will slowly leak right through steel tanks), and I have to use 10% of the energy in the fuel compressing it just so I can carry enough H2 to get around, or B: a small gas tank full of methanol and a cracking device. I'll choose B anyday. Energy density is one of the biggest problems with alternative drive systems - it's really, really hard to get more bang per kilo than gasoline.
Um, fuel cell vehicles ARE electric vehicles - a fuel cell is just a battery that you can change the electrolyte. Current fuel cells use hydrogen and oxygen, and produce electricity and water. A lot of them run on methanol or other dead dinosaur fuels, and crack it into H2 and CO2 just before it is used in the fuel cell. So, how is a fixed electrolyte lead acid or NiMh battery better than a fuel cell? Fuel cells are also many times more efficient than the gas turbines used to generate electricity, which is then used to charge you battery powered car.
Um, that's just not true. Solar cells still suck. Even though the energy you get from them is "free", the initial investment is so high that they just aren't economical. I ran the numbers, and I figured at current electricity prices and with Kyocera's latest and greatest PV cells, I could convert my house entirely to solar power. However, it would take about 20 years of solar power to save the money I invested in the cells in the first place. And I ignored the time value of money, as well as the fact that the average lifetime of the cells was only 17 years. So, no big corporate conspiracy needed here - solar cells are only usefull when no other power source is available.
The frame of reference is whatever the display is mounted to. If it's mounted to your head, the display does not track your eyeball. So yup, 800x600 would suck for reading and such, but it would be fine for full motion video.
This is cool! My dad, an engineer and spelunker, used to explore mines (note, do not try this at home!), and told me abut how he'd often find chambers full of huge gypsum crystals. Apparently the mining companies normally just mine the xtals for the minerals they contain - it's cool that there's a better way to make money from them!
Actually, they didn't say anything at all about Eros hitting Earth, they just mentioned that it was one of a group of large asteriods in near Earth orbits, and that one of them might hit us someday. A very real possibility, take a peek at these photos of previous terrestrial impacts:
http://www.pibburns.com/catastro/impactim.htm
Hey, just wanted to point out that I learned how to make my first homebrew firecracker from a library book. It wasn't until years later that I found out how dangerous that particular recipe was - from rec.pyrotechnics.
Hey, I like Napster. It works. I tried Gnutella, and it sorta worked, but without a central database it sucked - searches took forever, and rarely came up with what I was looking for.
I'll pay Napster good money to keep a good, quality index of songs (P2P or whatever), and to distribute some (hopefully most) of that cash to the artists. Especially if they pay the popular artists, and find some way to minimize the record companies percentage. Like that'll happen.
Yeah, go for it! Ever since I found Comet Cursor running on my system without my permission, I've been noticing more and more privacy violations, all so someone can make a buck. If they gave me a free PC, with the understanding they were going to track my use of it, fine. If they install tracking software surreptitiously on my pc to gather data (and thus money) without my permission, blast them to hell! Or Phobos!
The aerobot might be nice, but like the aerocar, it's not in production yet and is hideously expensive right now. The UAV guys that win usually use modified rc helicopters - no point in reinventing the wheel, especially since there's a perfectly good wheel right there that only costs $1k and has been around for a while. The real competition is in developing the smarts and sensors to make the flying platform perform something useful. Those hazards are impressive too - jets of water and flame, oh boy!
Actually, I have to agree with Anne Marie on this one. I'm an engineer, and after meeting some Kyocera reps in Japan and finding out about their latest and greatest solar cells designed for rooftops, I decided to do a quick design study.
Here in Canada, using natural gas for heating, using the grid for nighttime power and selling excess power back to the grid during the day (at current prices), I calculated that the Kyocera cells (the roofing tiles ones) would pay themselves off in 15 years. Their usefull lifetime is quoted at 17 years.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for renewable, clean economies, but the solar cells just don't cut it yet. Putting down an extra $35,000 for a system that "might" be able to pay for itself before it fails is not a sound decision. Besides, the high manufacturing cost indicates a lot of resources (and pollution) went into producing the cells in the first place.
Solar cells make perfect sense in an envirionment where other energy sources are not available - like a ski hut on top of a mountain, a high altitude blimp, or a satellite. However, if you've got far cheaper resources available right next door, why would you swith? We need to start integrating the environmental cost of fossil fuels into the price - then clean sources of energy might be economical, and therefore usefull.
Axtually, the fan exhausts are to either side of the person, not directly on to him. I imagine the wind force would be pretty similar to the wind forces I experience riding my motorcycle on the highway. You should try it sometime - wind in your hair and all that. OK, wind in the helmet, but same idea!
Yup, it fits in a backpack, weighs about 20 kilos. Carries me and a few powerbars. I don't need a license to fly it, but I've got a lot of training hours anyway. Its solar powered, but there are gas powered versions available. I've taken it up to 10,000 ft msl. It's fun as hell!
It's a paraglider. On a good day with the sun heating up the ground nicely, you can ride thermal currents and cover hundreds of kilometers (if you're real good!). Or some guys strap an engine and a propellor to their back - paramotor!
If the solotrek device works out, I'll probably buy one for fun flying. With a set of ballistic parachutes for engine failures, it should have a reasonable safety margin. The routine maintenance will probably be killer though - a lot like a helicopter.
Hey, I see a lot of posts about how genetic selection is a bad thing. Any of you guys believe in natural selection? Well, we've gotten so good at the medical sciences in the last few centuries that natural selection doesn't really apply to us anymore.
For example, say I have such bad eyesight that I can't see anything without my glasses. A few milennia ago, I'd probably have died of starvation before I was able to reproduce. Now I'm free to wear glasses, contacts, or get laser surgery, lead a productive life, and pass on poor vision to my offspring.
We've figured out how to fix a lot of medical problems, (ie, glasses), but now we're just figuring out how to prevent them. If I had the option of ensuring my offspring had good vision, should I take it?
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Just one point, for most of the world, God!=honest!=truth.
I want a pda that can survive for more than a few weeks! Palm OS has everything I need (except maybe sensory stuff), but the damn things are built like tissue boxes. I want a small, useful pda that's at least a little waterproof (for when I get soaked on the moto), that can handle dropping it occasionally, and that has a good battery life. What's the point of having all those gee-whiz features if you have to plug it in every 4 or 8 hours to recharge the batteries? I'd also like to see Palm get more into stand-alone software - it'd be nice to use a palm and a cell phone to do email, read news, etc, without having to log into a PC (which crashes) all the time. I want something that will survive extended moto trips, the odd paragliding wipeout, and even a kayaking trip. Then it'd be worth spending some money on, unlike the disposeable crap they're building these days.
Nope, in terms of energy used per kilogram per kilometer, a human on a well oiled (not high performance, just well oiled) bicycle is by far the most efficient mode of transportation. Joe MTB on his bike is even more efficient, in terms of energy per kg per km, than a soaring albatross or hawk. Internal combustion engines are a really crappy, high entropy way of producing mechanical work.
Hey, Olympic caliber athletes can put out about .5 hp, or 370 W. For a couple of minutes, then they throw up. Most fit people are closer to about 70 watts for short periods of time. So, assuming you have awesome power conversion system and are getting close to 100% efficiency, you could power a rather dim lightbulb, for a short period of time. Cool, eh? But not so useful - save your breath, and bike to work. Your car is less than 100% efficient, and extremely heavy, so you're saving ~20,000 W by riding your bike, versus generating 70 W riding a bike connected to a generator.
The real problem is not politics, it's energy density, and the fact that H2 is a pain to store. If I want to drive 500 km in my H2 powered fuel cell car, I need either A:huge H2 tanks taking up half the car, specialized H2 detection systems (the H2 will slowly leak right through steel tanks), and I have to use 10% of the energy in the fuel compressing it just so I can carry enough H2 to get around, or B: a small gas tank full of methanol and a cracking device. I'll choose B anyday. Energy density is one of the biggest problems with alternative drive systems - it's really, really hard to get more bang per kilo than gasoline.
Um, fuel cell vehicles ARE electric vehicles - a fuel cell is just a battery that you can change the electrolyte. Current fuel cells use hydrogen and oxygen, and produce electricity and water. A lot of them run on methanol or other dead dinosaur fuels, and crack it into H2 and CO2 just before it is used in the fuel cell. So, how is a fixed electrolyte lead acid or NiMh battery better than a fuel cell? Fuel cells are also many times more efficient than the gas turbines used to generate electricity, which is then used to charge you battery powered car.
Um, that's just not true. Solar cells still suck. Even though the energy you get from them is "free", the initial investment is so high that they just aren't economical. I ran the numbers, and I figured at current electricity prices and with Kyocera's latest and greatest PV cells, I could convert my house entirely to solar power. However, it would take about 20 years of solar power to save the money I invested in the cells in the first place. And I ignored the time value of money, as well as the fact that the average lifetime of the cells was only 17 years. So, no big corporate conspiracy needed here - solar cells are only usefull when no other power source is available.
The frame of reference is whatever the display is mounted to. If it's mounted to your head, the display does not track your eyeball. So yup, 800x600 would suck for reading and such, but it would be fine for full motion video.
heh, who says they'll be T shirts? Maybe they'll be W hirts or something by then - the dominant species might not have two arms and a head!
This is cool! My dad, an engineer and spelunker, used to explore mines (note, do not try this at home!), and told me abut how he'd often find chambers full of huge gypsum crystals. Apparently the mining companies normally just mine the xtals for the minerals they contain - it's cool that there's a better way to make money from them!
Actually, they didn't say anything at all about Eros hitting Earth, they just mentioned that it was one of a group of large asteriods in near Earth orbits, and that one of them might hit us someday. A very real possibility, take a peek at these photos of previous terrestrial impacts: http://www.pibburns.com/catastro/impactim.htm
Hey, just wanted to point out that I learned how to make my first homebrew firecracker from a library book. It wasn't until years later that I found out how dangerous that particular recipe was - from rec.pyrotechnics.
Hey, I like Napster. It works. I tried Gnutella, and it sorta worked, but without a central database it sucked - searches took forever, and rarely came up with what I was looking for. I'll pay Napster good money to keep a good, quality index of songs (P2P or whatever), and to distribute some (hopefully most) of that cash to the artists. Especially if they pay the popular artists, and find some way to minimize the record companies percentage. Like that'll happen.
Yeah, go for it! Ever since I found Comet Cursor running on my system without my permission, I've been noticing more and more privacy violations, all so someone can make a buck. If they gave me a free PC, with the understanding they were going to track my use of it, fine. If they install tracking software surreptitiously on my pc to gather data (and thus money) without my permission, blast them to hell! Or Phobos!
The aerobot might be nice, but like the aerocar, it's not in production yet and is hideously expensive right now. The UAV guys that win usually use modified rc helicopters - no point in reinventing the wheel, especially since there's a perfectly good wheel right there that only costs $1k and has been around for a while. The real competition is in developing the smarts and sensors to make the flying platform perform something useful. Those hazards are impressive too - jets of water and flame, oh boy!
Here in Canada, using natural gas for heating, using the grid for nighttime power and selling excess power back to the grid during the day (at current prices), I calculated that the Kyocera cells (the roofing tiles ones) would pay themselves off in 15 years. Their usefull lifetime is quoted at 17 years.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for renewable, clean economies, but the solar cells just don't cut it yet. Putting down an extra $35,000 for a system that "might" be able to pay for itself before it fails is not a sound decision. Besides, the high manufacturing cost indicates a lot of resources (and pollution) went into producing the cells in the first place.
Solar cells make perfect sense in an envirionment where other energy sources are not available - like a ski hut on top of a mountain, a high altitude blimp, or a satellite. However, if you've got far cheaper resources available right next door, why would you swith? We need to start integrating the environmental cost of fossil fuels into the price - then clean sources of energy might be economical, and therefore usefull.
Axtually, the fan exhausts are to either side of the person, not directly on to him. I imagine the wind force would be pretty similar to the wind forces I experience riding my motorcycle on the highway. You should try it sometime - wind in your hair and all that. OK, wind in the helmet, but same idea!
It's a paraglider. On a good day with the sun heating up the ground nicely, you can ride thermal currents and cover hundreds of kilometers (if you're real good!). Or some guys strap an engine and a propellor to their back - paramotor!
If the solotrek device works out, I'll probably buy one for fun flying. With a set of ballistic parachutes for engine failures, it should have a reasonable safety margin. The routine maintenance will probably be killer though - a lot like a helicopter.
For example, say I have such bad eyesight that I can't see anything without my glasses. A few milennia ago, I'd probably have died of starvation before I was able to reproduce. Now I'm free to wear glasses, contacts, or get laser surgery, lead a productive life, and pass on poor vision to my offspring.
We've figured out how to fix a lot of medical problems, (ie, glasses), but now we're just figuring out how to prevent them. If I had the option of ensuring my offspring had good vision, should I take it?