"no way in hell that DRM alone is responsible for a factor of 10-50 change"
I would bet "Studios sell on-line for a fair price in a real format." is a pretty integral part of that option. Of course no one is going to pay $15 for a non-DRM digital copy, but drop the price to $3-5 to match the savings of the studios (manufacturing, distribution, DRM software costs) and a large number of people would likely pay instead of pirate. There are of course people who are going to pirate even if the studios put each movie online for a penny, but most people simply don't want to pay exorbitant costs for a product (DVD, Blu-Ray, Digital Download) that goes out of its way to treat them like criminals.
"After all, those cell towers that you don't own won't necessarily"
True, but most cell sites are rigged with backup power and have some pretty hardened network connections. Unless something pretty severe happens they'll probably remain functional, and portable cellsites are becoming commonplace for disaster response. While you of course cannot rely on them and you will of course have difficulties connecting they will probably be the only form of communications system available in a dense urban environment. Unfortunately our glorious FCC has not set aside any ad-hoc digital communications bandwidth for civilian use, or at least anything that is portable & not cost prohibitive. And CB, FRS or GMRS are going to be pretty useless if you have several million people all trying to use a few dozen frequencies. In any case communications should probably be pretty low on your needs list for a severe disaster, food, water, medical & defense should probably be the priority.
Insane amounts of money can move a bad product, but it does not ensure it will be a successful product. Just look at Zune, Microsoft threw money at that hand over fist but they still weren't able to gain a significant market share. The most they achieved with their marketing blitz was 10%, their market share plummeted after that, roughly halving every year until they gave up and mothballed the brand.
I think a lot of people have given up on the White House petitions site, the responses thus far on positions the administration does not approve of have been less than stellar. They are often a boilerplate response roughly approximating "we understand your concerns and will take them under advisement" which is bureaucrat for "get lost".
What are all of the three letter agencies so afraid of? I mean, If they aren't doing anything wrong they shouldn't be concerned with some reasonable transparency. As long as they don't have anything to hide, right?
Its always amazing how some federal agencies seem to think it is so important to have unfettered access to others information so they can "keep a vigilant eye out" yet they so detest anyone making sure that their own activities remain above board. Especially in light of the obvious revolving door between the private sector companies which stand to make billions, and the three letter agencies dolling out those fees. As noted in the Guardian article James Clapper the current director of National Intelligence, one of the loudest voices of "disapproval" against Snowden's actions, was Vice-President of Booz Allen Hamilton not too long ago. That coupled with his lies to congress in regards to these programs............ If we're looking for traitors I'm far more concerned with the ones who are fleecing the American taxpayers out of hundreds of billions of dollars and lying to government inquests than one individual who released classified documents in an attempt to inform the public about possibly illegal acts.
I like the Aerofex or Chris Malloy's Hoverbike designs a lot better, the "flying motorcycle" in this article seems a quite inefficient for the task of flying. While I can definitely see the advantages of a dual role vehicle (hover bike for long distance, motorcycle for in town). Something more aircraft with the motorcycle parts added on would seem preferable, not the other way around.
I thought the point of such extensive containment structures was that they would never be destroyed? Just remove the fuel and any equipment that isn't cemented into the structure and leave the rest. I imagine the general thought-lines behind a lot of nuclear plants was to simply to continue to build new reactors as the old ones had to be decommissioned and continue to use the same generators, transmission equipment & facilities with incremental upgrades over the years. But I think I see why they're going the decommissioning route with this one, even if it was economic to build some new reactors this plant is sandwiched between the Pacific and a major highway. The reactor structures themselves are not more than 400' from the ocean, at least on the face of it this place is another Fukushima under the wrong circumstances.
The modular construction technique is pretty impressive, and while it would be great for shorter buildings I'm having my doubts as to its effectiveness in a skyscraper. Also while the structure looks pretty robust the facade, walls and flooring look a little flimsy and may not stand the test of time/usage.
I thought the problem with submarines was making them heavy enough, not too heavy. Its disturbing the amount of buoyancy that is provided by simply keeping seawater out of a volume. In sea water if you displace a cubic meter of ocean with air you have roughly 2,255 lbs of force pulling you towards the surface.
What does any of that have to do with designating an "official" (see required) taxi cab vehicle? Regulation, where required, can definitely help to keep a profession reputable. But in this case it seems to be far more about either pointless control or kickbacks from a government enforced monopoly.
What I don't understand is why there appears to be some monolithic entity designating the specific model of taxi cab for the entire city. Shouldn't each taxi company/cab owner be able to choose what car(s)/van(s) they want to use? Besides designating a paint scheme and setting some requirements (display of medallion, cleanliness of cab, etc) the city should butt out. It sounds to me like there is a lot of shady dealings & backdoor hand shaking going on.
Barely a majority, 52%? Isn't there something in the founding fathers statements regarding "tyranny of the majority" and hence the reason for the Constitution/Bill of Rights? Any technology can be used for good or evil, people are often killed with wine bottles (a 200 year old technology) yet we don't see a mass effort to redesign/restrict them for "safety". As always the focus should be on the INDIVIDUAL committing the act of violence, not the piece of hardware they choose to commit it with.
That thing is hardly a "flying car". More like a cheap dune buggy with an ultralight strapped to it. Even some of those autogyro craft qualify more as a "flying car".
As with most government tools we will only hear about the good things until after they become common place. When tazers were originally deployed they were a "replacement only for lethal force", now they are used at the drop of the hat against loudmouthed teens, nonviolent protestors, and pregnant women with little to no repercussions. Right now it is all about saving people lost in the woods and catching murders, but 5 years after they are more ubiquitous you can be guaranteed that the stories will begin to flow of women catching one hovering outside their bathroom window, protestors finding unflattering images of themselves on police forums & former boyfriends/girlfriends of officers being stalked by drones (much like the cases of police misusing official databases to track/harass).
I can understand "selling" (Licensing in the current auctions, though I am unsure if there are any time limits on this "License") portions of a spectrum so that companies/organizations/agencies know they can rely on the spectrum being there for their exclusive use. But portions of various spectrum should also be devoted for unlicensed public use. Just look at how Wi-fi and various wireless devices exploded on the market after the FCC pulled their collective heads out of the sand and allowed low powered transmitters on select frequencies. I imagine if the same were done for even a tenth of the spectrum in higher power modes (from mobile phone level (0.5W) to CB Radio (4W)) the wireless market (both voice and data) would explode with products and services. The protocols would have to be compatible (or at least not interfere with each other) across the board but the various 802.11 flavors proved that is doable.
As others have mentioned there are other applications for this method, but sticking to the Coffee demonstration premixing foods for consumption in space is a bit tricky. Things don't taste quite the same in zero G as they do in a gravity environment for most astronauts. While the basic parameters are fairly well know (less sugar than normal, more spices than normal, etc) tweaking it for individual tastes could be difficult. I believe the aspects of this also change depending on how long the astronaut is in orbit, the longer they are in zero g the closer their tastes return to more of an earth normal.
So instead of a dozen or so search and rescue personnel combing through debris, or helping survivors, they'll have one or two people staring at this things camera feed as it ever so slowly makes its way through a damaged building. Make them much smaller, cheap and autonomous so you can litter them throughout a site to find survivors and you might have something really useful. Until then this thing seems like a really expensive and wasteful toy.
"the International Astronomical Union issued a press release stressing its authority as the sole arbiter of the exoplanet-naming process"
While this of course is at best a PR/Fundraising scheme, and at worst a scam, I don't particularly have much respect for the IAU either. Some of their past decisions are less about science, and more about politics. They CONSIDER themselves the "official" naming organization but in the annals of history I don't think their decisions are going to mean a hole lot.
There's no debating that the debris is going to get quite a shock, if it was a full satellite it could even fragment slightly. But if the mist imparts enough energy it shouldn't matter as it would impart that energy across the entire surface of the debris, de-orbiting even the fragments. The real questions are of course would it impart enough energy to deorbit the debris in a reasonable amount of time, and would the "mist" (liquid/gas) that didn't hit the debris deorbit on its own or hang in orbit medium/long term definitely creating more problems.
You do realize that the Chinese "contribution" to the space debris problem is relatively insignificant compared to the amount of debris placed in orbit by the US and Russia right? I'm not saying it shouldn't be condemned, but the fact that they created 2% of the problem in one idiotic act compared to decades of continual stupidity by the US & Russia space agencies shouldn't given undue weight.
I wonder if anyone has looked into placing a satellite into orbit that was able to fire extremely precise mist clouds of some liquid. It would be launched either in a polar orbit or an opposite orbital direction from most satellites. It would fire the mist clouds into the path of a piece of debris and the energy imparted (~17,000 to ~34,000 MPH relative speed) on it from the mist would eventually cause it to deorbit. The best liquid for this would probably be something that remains a liquid on the dark side of the orbit, but evaporate on the light side to presumably self deorbit if it did not hit the debris in question, and of course be cheap (maybe some kind of cooking oil?). The satellite would have to have a pretty sophisticated tracking and targeting system but its probably not out of reach. The hardest thing I imagine would be to target the clouds precisely enough and make them small enough at the required distances (several miles) and speeds so that they only effect the target debris. After the satellite ran out of liquid it could either be refilled, or self deorbit by changing orientation to fire shortly before it ran out of liquid into its orbit instead of perpendicular to it.
I was expecting a little more. It looks like its just a standard model airplane with a little reworking of its controls so it can operate without a rudder and a high resolution camera. I highly doubt it would look very convincing in a real world situation. Maybe flying off in the distance it might fool someone for a bit but once it was overhead it would become apparent pretty quickly that it wasn't using its wings naturally for control & propulsion.
Isn't there a simple answer to this, DON'T MAKE THE STUPID CHARGING STATIONS REMOTELY ACCESSIBLE. There has to be ways to make sure the stations aren't putting too much strain on the power grid without tying them into some massive (insecure) control structure. Maybe wire them all into a single meter, and have the meter act as a smaller network letting the group of stations use a certain amount of power depending on the time of day. For personal chargers utilities could give homeowners a bill credit if they only charge their cars between specified times. While creating a centralized control network is easier from an administrative point of view, it creates far too much risk of some miscreant or criminal/foreign element using it with malice.
The most humorous (or most dangerous depending how you look at it) aspect of that fiasco is that a majority of the signs had been up for several weeks. Not only did the Boston PD vastly overreact upon noticing them, but they failed to notice devices that they are quoted as saying shared "some characteristics with improvised explosive devices" for weeks that were purposely placed in high visibility areas.
Slashdot Mirror
"no way in hell that DRM alone is responsible for a factor of 10-50 change"
I would bet "Studios sell on-line for a fair price in a real format." is a pretty integral part of that option. Of course no one is going to pay $15 for a non-DRM digital copy, but drop the price to $3-5 to match the savings of the studios (manufacturing, distribution, DRM software costs) and a large number of people would likely pay instead of pirate. There are of course people who are going to pirate even if the studios put each movie online for a penny, but most people simply don't want to pay exorbitant costs for a product (DVD, Blu-Ray, Digital Download) that goes out of its way to treat them like criminals.
"After all, those cell towers that you don't own won't necessarily"
True, but most cell sites are rigged with backup power and have some pretty hardened network connections. Unless something pretty severe happens they'll probably remain functional, and portable cellsites are becoming commonplace for disaster response. While you of course cannot rely on them and you will of course have difficulties connecting they will probably be the only form of communications system available in a dense urban environment. Unfortunately our glorious FCC has not set aside any ad-hoc digital communications bandwidth for civilian use, or at least anything that is portable & not cost prohibitive. And CB, FRS or GMRS are going to be pretty useless if you have several million people all trying to use a few dozen frequencies. In any case communications should probably be pretty low on your needs list for a severe disaster, food, water, medical & defense should probably be the priority.
Insane amounts of money can move a bad product, but it does not ensure it will be a successful product. Just look at Zune, Microsoft threw money at that hand over fist but they still weren't able to gain a significant market share. The most they achieved with their marketing blitz was 10%, their market share plummeted after that, roughly halving every year until they gave up and mothballed the brand.
I think a lot of people have given up on the White House petitions site, the responses thus far on positions the administration does not approve of have been less than stellar. They are often a boilerplate response roughly approximating "we understand your concerns and will take them under advisement" which is bureaucrat for "get lost".
What are all of the three letter agencies so afraid of? I mean, If they aren't doing anything wrong they shouldn't be concerned with some reasonable transparency. As long as they don't have anything to hide, right?
Its always amazing how some federal agencies seem to think it is so important to have unfettered access to others information so they can "keep a vigilant eye out" yet they so detest anyone making sure that their own activities remain above board. Especially in light of the obvious revolving door between the private sector companies which stand to make billions, and the three letter agencies dolling out those fees. As noted in the Guardian article James Clapper the current director of National Intelligence, one of the loudest voices of "disapproval" against Snowden's actions, was Vice-President of Booz Allen Hamilton not too long ago. That coupled with his lies to congress in regards to these programs............ If we're looking for traitors I'm far more concerned with the ones who are fleecing the American taxpayers out of hundreds of billions of dollars and lying to government inquests than one individual who released classified documents in an attempt to inform the public about possibly illegal acts.
I like the Aerofex or Chris Malloy's Hoverbike designs a lot better, the "flying motorcycle" in this article seems a quite inefficient for the task of flying. While I can definitely see the advantages of a dual role vehicle (hover bike for long distance, motorcycle for in town). Something more aircraft with the motorcycle parts added on would seem preferable, not the other way around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akA-B64RACU
http://www.hover-bike.com/
I thought the point of such extensive containment structures was that they would never be destroyed? Just remove the fuel and any equipment that isn't cemented into the structure and leave the rest. I imagine the general thought-lines behind a lot of nuclear plants was to simply to continue to build new reactors as the old ones had to be decommissioned and continue to use the same generators, transmission equipment & facilities with incremental upgrades over the years. But I think I see why they're going the decommissioning route with this one, even if it was economic to build some new reactors this plant is sandwiched between the Pacific and a major highway. The reactor structures themselves are not more than 400' from the ocean, at least on the face of it this place is another Fukushima under the wrong circumstances.
The modular construction technique is pretty impressive, and while it would be great for shorter buildings I'm having my doubts as to its effectiveness in a skyscraper. Also while the structure looks pretty robust the facade, walls and flooring look a little flimsy and may not stand the test of time/usage.
I thought the problem with submarines was making them heavy enough, not too heavy. Its disturbing the amount of buoyancy that is provided by simply keeping seawater out of a volume. In sea water if you displace a cubic meter of ocean with air you have roughly 2,255 lbs of force pulling you towards the surface.
What does any of that have to do with designating an "official" (see required) taxi cab vehicle? Regulation, where required, can definitely help to keep a profession reputable. But in this case it seems to be far more about either pointless control or kickbacks from a government enforced monopoly.
What I don't understand is why there appears to be some monolithic entity designating the specific model of taxi cab for the entire city. Shouldn't each taxi company/cab owner be able to choose what car(s)/van(s) they want to use? Besides designating a paint scheme and setting some requirements (display of medallion, cleanliness of cab, etc) the city should butt out. It sounds to me like there is a lot of shady dealings & backdoor hand shaking going on.
Barely a majority, 52%? Isn't there something in the founding fathers statements regarding "tyranny of the majority" and hence the reason for the Constitution/Bill of Rights? Any technology can be used for good or evil, people are often killed with wine bottles (a 200 year old technology) yet we don't see a mass effort to redesign/restrict them for "safety". As always the focus should be on the INDIVIDUAL committing the act of violence, not the piece of hardware they choose to commit it with.
That thing is hardly a "flying car". More like a cheap dune buggy with an ultralight strapped to it. Even some of those autogyro craft qualify more as a "flying car".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SgHSaNtAMjs
As with most government tools we will only hear about the good things until after they become common place. When tazers were originally deployed they were a "replacement only for lethal force", now they are used at the drop of the hat against loudmouthed teens, nonviolent protestors, and pregnant women with little to no repercussions. Right now it is all about saving people lost in the woods and catching murders, but 5 years after they are more ubiquitous you can be guaranteed that the stories will begin to flow of women catching one hovering outside their bathroom window, protestors finding unflattering images of themselves on police forums & former boyfriends/girlfriends of officers being stalked by drones (much like the cases of police misusing official databases to track/harass).
I can understand "selling" (Licensing in the current auctions, though I am unsure if there are any time limits on this "License") portions of a spectrum so that companies/organizations/agencies know they can rely on the spectrum being there for their exclusive use. But portions of various spectrum should also be devoted for unlicensed public use. Just look at how Wi-fi and various wireless devices exploded on the market after the FCC pulled their collective heads out of the sand and allowed low powered transmitters on select frequencies. I imagine if the same were done for even a tenth of the spectrum in higher power modes (from mobile phone level (0.5W) to CB Radio (4W)) the wireless market (both voice and data) would explode with products and services. The protocols would have to be compatible (or at least not interfere with each other) across the board but the various 802.11 flavors proved that is doable.
As others have mentioned there are other applications for this method, but sticking to the Coffee demonstration premixing foods for consumption in space is a bit tricky. Things don't taste quite the same in zero G as they do in a gravity environment for most astronauts. While the basic parameters are fairly well know (less sugar than normal, more spices than normal, etc) tweaking it for individual tastes could be difficult. I believe the aspects of this also change depending on how long the astronaut is in orbit, the longer they are in zero g the closer their tastes return to more of an earth normal.
So instead of a dozen or so search and rescue personnel combing through debris, or helping survivors, they'll have one or two people staring at this things camera feed as it ever so slowly makes its way through a damaged building. Make them much smaller, cheap and autonomous so you can litter them throughout a site to find survivors and you might have something really useful. Until then this thing seems like a really expensive and wasteful toy.
"the International Astronomical Union issued a press release stressing its authority as the sole arbiter of the exoplanet-naming process"
While this of course is at best a PR/Fundraising scheme, and at worst a scam, I don't particularly have much respect for the IAU either. Some of their past decisions are less about science, and more about politics. They CONSIDER themselves the "official" naming organization but in the annals of history I don't think their decisions are going to mean a hole lot.
There's no debating that the debris is going to get quite a shock, if it was a full satellite it could even fragment slightly. But if the mist imparts enough energy it shouldn't matter as it would impart that energy across the entire surface of the debris, de-orbiting even the fragments. The real questions are of course would it impart enough energy to deorbit the debris in a reasonable amount of time, and would the "mist" (liquid/gas) that didn't hit the debris deorbit on its own or hang in orbit medium/long term definitely creating more problems.
You do realize that the Chinese "contribution" to the space debris problem is relatively insignificant compared to the amount of debris placed in orbit by the US and Russia right? I'm not saying it shouldn't be condemned, but the fact that they created 2% of the problem in one idiotic act compared to decades of continual stupidity by the US & Russia space agencies shouldn't given undue weight.
I wonder if anyone has looked into placing a satellite into orbit that was able to fire extremely precise mist clouds of some liquid. It would be launched either in a polar orbit or an opposite orbital direction from most satellites. It would fire the mist clouds into the path of a piece of debris and the energy imparted (~17,000 to ~34,000 MPH relative speed) on it from the mist would eventually cause it to deorbit. The best liquid for this would probably be something that remains a liquid on the dark side of the orbit, but evaporate on the light side to presumably self deorbit if it did not hit the debris in question, and of course be cheap (maybe some kind of cooking oil?). The satellite would have to have a pretty sophisticated tracking and targeting system but its probably not out of reach. The hardest thing I imagine would be to target the clouds precisely enough and make them small enough at the required distances (several miles) and speeds so that they only effect the target debris. After the satellite ran out of liquid it could either be refilled, or self deorbit by changing orientation to fire shortly before it ran out of liquid into its orbit instead of perpendicular to it.
If I'm remembering my history correctly Europe has created its own share of messes that effected the rest of the world, WWI and WWII anyone?
I was expecting a little more. It looks like its just a standard model airplane with a little reworking of its controls so it can operate without a rudder and a high resolution camera. I highly doubt it would look very convincing in a real world situation. Maybe flying off in the distance it might fool someone for a bit but once it was overhead it would become apparent pretty quickly that it wasn't using its wings naturally for control & propulsion.
Isn't there a simple answer to this, DON'T MAKE THE STUPID CHARGING STATIONS REMOTELY ACCESSIBLE. There has to be ways to make sure the stations aren't putting too much strain on the power grid without tying them into some massive (insecure) control structure. Maybe wire them all into a single meter, and have the meter act as a smaller network letting the group of stations use a certain amount of power depending on the time of day. For personal chargers utilities could give homeowners a bill credit if they only charge their cars between specified times. While creating a centralized control network is easier from an administrative point of view, it creates far too much risk of some miscreant or criminal/foreign element using it with malice.
The most humorous (or most dangerous depending how you look at it) aspect of that fiasco is that a majority of the signs had been up for several weeks. Not only did the Boston PD vastly overreact upon noticing them, but they failed to notice devices that they are quoted as saying shared "some characteristics with improvised explosive devices" for weeks that were purposely placed in high visibility areas.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Bomb_Scare