Just as a quick exercise without foreknowledge, one can imagine possible approaches
- mop up the debris - explode the debris - slow down the debris so it falls out of orbit - selective approaches, safe corridors.
The approach could depend on size and material.
You shouldn't explode big pieces, it just makes the problem worse. It's like exploding approaching asteroids with bombs, it creates more projectiles. It could only work if you can explode things far enough so they become extremely small. Maybe exploding pieces makes sense for pieces that are just above some danger threshold.
One could imagine a long term 'cloudlike' situation with a lot of dust and increased drag. The cloud would also help in getting the material out of orbit. There should be some nice models for that.
Mopping up is a challenge because it you have to avoid creating more debris while you're at it. You'll need spiderweb materials that can absorb a lot of energy.
The delicate approach would be to slow down the debris. If it slows down enough, it will fall to earth.How could you do that though, Lasers? Then the difficulty is to generate enough impulse without overheating the debris. Electromagnetically(eddy currents), with some dedicated satellites? The debris will contain a lot of metal.
It seems with each strategy you'll need to model the statistical evolution of the debris.
There, and now I can check the article to check my guesses...
That's the kind of opinion I'm talking about yes. This is not about the value of technology, but about a distorted sense of value where cutting edge technology becomes a value in itself, where hightech trumps other solutions while the other solutions are more sensible.
..that's a general tendency, it goes far beyond slashdot. There's more than one thing wrong with it. It reminds me of this -valuable- article claiming that our longterm energy needs will necessarily have to be met by relatively lowtech, non-exotic solutions: mirrors and heatengines:
Could you give an estimate of the resources needed to get a few billion people to another planet? Then compare with fixing up this planet. It just doesn't make any sense. You can start small colonies and let them grow, but the people who are here, are here to stay.
I can easily read a good thriller twice, my wife really considers it a spoiler if she knows how it ends. That's a sample of two and I took thrillers because they're clearcut cases. People read stories differently. Can a spoiler enhance the experience? Well, some stories, also of the suspense type, use it as a technique, starting with the final scene and then working their way up to it.
Take off your tinfoil hat. There is no ulterior motive. Trust us. Ok, let's settle on plain stupidity. A fuel tax is a good measure and it takes in account very well the difference between an SUV and a Prius. Setting up a huge infrastructure in an attempt to go from 'good' to perfectly fair is very misguided. Usually it's the old 'because it has flaws it can't be good and it should be removed.' Then all you need is an example, however rare, where the fuel tax can be considered unfair.
And of course once your every move is being tracked every possible use will be made of that data.
I envy people who can say or write these things with a straight face and be taken seriously.
"Because thorium is so dense, similar to uranium, it stores considerable potential energy."
"Stevens agrees, emphasizing his system is âoesubcritical.â This means no nuclear reaction occurs within the thorium. It remains in the same state and is not turned into uranium 233, which happens only if thorium is sufficiently super-heated to generate a fission reaction."
"Thorium has unique properties that make it useful as such a source, he says. For instance, it has the highest melting point of all oxides."
"when silvery metal thorium is heated by an external source, it becomes so dense its molecules give off considerable heat. "
Or it's the infrastructure for the mapping system, with satellites and all. Or it's the design of the mapping system. We move so easily between all these meanings that nobody notices it. Until that is, someone applies their faulty ideas about what words mean.
The thing that atrophies your sense of direction the most is the external navigator that does the thinking for you. This navigator can be a person next to you or can be a functionality of your GPS app. It's this external help that does the thinking for you that makes you lose every sense of where you are and where you are going.
But the fact that GPS shows you at all times where you are on a map, does that hurt? Maybe, but whatever effect that has might be very variable. In any case I'd separate it from the navigation part..
"On a message board, one fan likened the ASCII experience in Dwarf Fortress to the immersive pleasures of reading a book: 'You can let your imagination fill in the gaps.'"
In other words, what Marshall Mcluhan called a cool medium.
Compressors in the amplifier. We've got these oldfashioned equalizer controls or their predecessor, the treble knob. If we had a dramatic improvement in those, with a compressor technology becoming available in the form of a few presets for the listener, and maybe combined with an appropriate music format, then there would be no need to compress the music upfront.
We do want compression. It makes perfect sense when you're listening in the car or with your lofi portable, otherwise a lot of the music is unintelligible. But now you have the same compression in the car and with your highend set at home. And that sucks.
It proves nothing. It's a bad way to make a point. And because of that it gives you an excuse to completely ignore the point, which is that in a litigitative society, and the US is one, you only get to have 30ft rope jungles in places where you have to sign a paper first.
You can imagine a slide control for how much google shows from your pages. From the point of view of the publisher you want Google to show enough to draw people to your site, but not so much that they just read Google news and not bother going to the actual site. It's a legitimate concern. So Google now signals they like to decide themselves what they show.
No, in fact they found there was a systematic pattern in the deviation from a perfect sphere, and when they made a map of the surface pattern they found a Laura Ashley wallpaper flower pattern. This has lead to a lot of speculation on the intentions of the grand designer.
How do you know there was no rapture?Maybe there was. Slashdot has been down for hours. I think it's the kind of glitch that occurs when the universe is doing a hot reboot. Anyone had deja vu ?
I agree it does look like psyops. They'll milk it a lot more, psyops is a big operation and since the WAR ON TERROR(tm) was declared as a permanent war, it's a permanent operation.
Slashdot Mirror
Next: technology for hearing with your glove.
Just as a quick exercise without foreknowledge, one can imagine possible approaches
- mop up the debris
- explode the debris
- slow down the debris so it falls out of orbit
- selective approaches, safe corridors.
The approach could depend on size and material.
You shouldn't explode big pieces, it just makes the problem worse. It's like exploding approaching asteroids with bombs, it creates more projectiles. It could only work if you can explode things far enough so they become extremely small. Maybe exploding pieces makes sense for pieces that are just above some danger threshold.
One could imagine a long term 'cloudlike' situation with a lot of dust and increased drag. The cloud would also help in getting the material out of orbit.
There should be some nice models for that.
Mopping up is a challenge because it you have to avoid creating more debris while you're at it. You'll need spiderweb materials that can absorb a lot of energy.
The delicate approach would be to slow down the debris. If it slows down enough, it will fall to earth.How could you do that though, Lasers? Then the difficulty is to generate enough impulse without overheating the debris. Electromagnetically(eddy currents), with some dedicated satellites? The debris will contain a lot of metal.
It seems with each strategy you'll need to model the statistical evolution of the debris.
There, and now I can check the article to check my guesses...
That's the kind of opinion I'm talking about yes. This is not about the value of technology, but about a distorted sense of value where cutting edge technology becomes a value in itself, where hightech trumps other solutions while the other solutions are more sensible.
Damnit, a car metaphor. That's not playing fair.
You know, where I come from we grab a beer and a bag of chips and get comfortable. Buckling up isn't comfortable. Looks silly too.
..that's a general tendency, it goes far beyond slashdot. There's more than one thing wrong with it. It reminds me of this -valuable- article claiming that our longterm energy needs will necessarily have to be met by relatively lowtech, non-exotic solutions: mirrors and heatengines:
http://www.phoenixprojectfoundation.us/uploads/IEEE_Solar_Hydrogen_Paper.pdf
I was hoping for something stronger but it does convey the required sense of humiliation.
You know. you're a bit less than a real star. You may think you're a star but you're not.
Could you give an estimate of the resources needed to get a few billion people to another planet? Then compare with fixing up this planet. It just doesn't make any sense. You can start small colonies and let them grow, but the people who are here, are here to stay.
I can easily read a good thriller twice, my wife really considers it a spoiler if she knows how it ends. That's a sample of two and I took thrillers because they're clearcut cases. People read stories differently. Can a spoiler enhance the experience? Well, some stories, also of the suspense type, use it as a technique, starting with the final scene and then working their way up to it.
Take off your tinfoil hat. There is no ulterior motive. Trust us. Ok, let's settle on plain stupidity. A fuel tax is a good measure and it takes in account very well the difference between an SUV and a Prius. Setting up a huge infrastructure in an attempt to go from 'good' to perfectly fair is very misguided. Usually it's the old 'because it has flaws it can't be good and it should be removed.' Then all you need is an example, however rare, where the fuel tax can be considered unfair.
And of course once your every move is being tracked every possible use will be made of that data.
I envy people who can say or write these things with a straight face and be taken seriously.
"Because thorium is so dense, similar to uranium, it stores considerable potential energy."
"Stevens agrees, emphasizing his system is âoesubcritical.â This means no nuclear reaction occurs within the thorium. It remains in the same state and is not turned into uranium 233, which happens only if thorium is sufficiently super-heated to generate a fission reaction."
"Thorium has unique properties that make it useful as such a source, he says. For instance, it has the highest melting point of all oxides."
"when silvery metal thorium is heated by an external source, it becomes so dense its molecules give off considerable heat. "
Dense.
Or it's the infrastructure for the mapping system, with satellites and all. Or it's the design of the mapping system. We move so easily between all these meanings that nobody notices it. Until that is, someone applies their faulty ideas about what words mean.
Think of the odd new appliances if enough people end up convinced it's true!
The thing that atrophies your sense of direction the most is the external navigator that does the thinking for you. This navigator can be a person next to you or can be a functionality of your GPS app. It's this external help that does the thinking for you that makes you lose every sense of where you are and where you are going.
But the fact that GPS shows you at all times where you are on a map, does that hurt? Maybe, but whatever effect that has might be very variable. In any case I'd separate it from the navigation part..
but they don't know where it is.
"On a message board, one fan likened the ASCII experience in Dwarf Fortress to the immersive pleasures of reading a book: 'You can let your imagination fill in the gaps.'"
In other words, what Marshall Mcluhan called a cool medium.
Compressors in the amplifier. We've got these oldfashioned equalizer controls or their predecessor, the treble knob. If we had a dramatic improvement in those, with a compressor technology becoming available in the form of a few presets for the listener, and maybe combined with an appropriate music format, then there would be no need to compress the music upfront.
We do want compression. It makes perfect sense when you're listening in the car or with your lofi portable, otherwise a lot of the music is unintelligible. But now you have the same compression in the car and with your highend set at home. And that sucks.
It proves nothing. It's a bad way to make a point. And because of that it gives you an excuse to completely ignore the point, which is that in a litigitative society, and the US is one, you only get to have 30ft rope jungles in places where you have to sign a paper first.
You can imagine a slide control for how much google shows from your pages. From the point of view of the publisher you want Google to show enough to draw people to your site, but not so much that they just read Google news and not bother going to the actual site.
It's a legitimate concern.
So Google now signals they like to decide themselves what they show.
No, in fact they found there was a systematic pattern in the deviation from a perfect sphere, and when they made a map of the surface pattern they found a Laura Ashley wallpaper flower pattern. This has lead to a lot of speculation on the intentions of the grand designer.
How do you know there was no rapture?Maybe there was. Slashdot has been down for hours. I think it's the kind of glitch that occurs when the universe is doing a hot reboot.
Anyone had deja vu ?
I agree it does look like psyops. They'll milk it a lot more, psyops is a big operation and since the WAR ON TERROR(tm) was declared as a permanent war, it's a permanent operation.
The fact sheet says the rotor diameter is 42 feet or almost 13m. So it appears the design aims for sufficient ground effect at 3m height.
GPS as far as I know works in one direction. How does TomTom collect data? They upload it if you log in on the net for an update?