I find this technology very intriguing. But it took me a long time to realise that they are serious. First time I heard about this I had to check if it was April first.
They're serious, and poised to succeed just as well as the dozens of people and companies who have been studying the problem for decades.
The space elevator won't happen in your lifetime. Just like the permanent moon base, the SDI and hundreds of such grandiose and vaporous projects. The only one I've seen completed that I didn't think would ever happen is the French-English channel tunnel, and even that was a pretty tame project compared to the space elevator.
According to the website, the elevator will move at 200 mph. Considering that our atmosphere is roughly 380 miles, I'm going to have to listen to Kenny G for almost 2 hours!
You're going to eat a lot more Kenny G. than that, since the endpoint would have to be in geosynchronous orbit, in order for the cable to stay taut and the station not to fall back on Earth.
We firmly believe that the set of technologies that underlie the infinite promise of the Space Elevator can be demonstrated, or proven infeasible, within a 5 year time-frame. And hence our name. Elevator:2010. we promise to get an answer for you by then.
Odd logic: you go dump your old stuff on roadside when you could, with approximately the same amount of effort, bring it to some collection point and have people, who are effectively paid by you with the $10 recycling fee you've already shelled out, take it away from you.
If you care about recycling, then you'd see your tax dollar at work and you'd feel good about doing your bit for the planet. If you don't, you can still watch people work for you instead of having to haul junk out of the trunk by yourself. Not to mention, not having to watch right and left to avoid getting caught littering...
charging a $6 to $10 disposal fee on every computer and television purchased. Maine puts the onus on manufacturers, demanding they pay the full cost of recycling
which they swiftly pass onto consumers. Net result: consumers always pay for recycling (which incidentally sounds rather normal).
Radioactive materials in smoke detectors aren't made to power things. They just ionize the air around them, therefore they are only very weakly radioactive. Pacemakers are quite a lot more dangerous, and they don't require that much power either.
And the (tiny) problem of smashing the battery open by mistake and releasing enough radio-elements in the environment to poison your entire neighborhood for decades doesn't bother you?
Did you know people with pacemakers who die are cut open to recover the darn thing before they're buried, to avoid exactly what I just described, on a much smaller scale? if they take that many precautions for a well-designed pacemaker embedded in a corpse, itself embedded in a coffin 6 feet under, I have a feeling they won't give you a consumer product with radioisotopes to play with at home...
You watch Fox and CNN too much. Believe it or not, most everything can be used to commit any number of terrorist acts, but a vast majority of people just use these things for what they're intended to be used for. "X can be used for terrorism and therefore should be banned/watched/curtailed" is a recent invention of the current administration to justify pushing their agenda.
If you ban Google Earth on the ground, then also ban Hotmail (those terrorist email communications!), keyboard (they type the emails with 'em!!), batteries (they power the bombs they describe in the emails with 'em!!!), and nail clippers (they won't be able to make the bombs if their nails are too long). etc.
I already wanted to buy hard-cover copies of I, Robot to throw at Will Smith when the movie went out, to avenge Azimov's memory, but really, that pink roomba thing is too much. Poor Isaac must be spinning in his grave...
For years I've been watching Honda pimp Asimo and you're telling me Toyota is the company to first bring us robots. Surprising. So where's Nissan in all this hubbub, or do they need not even apply.
I have a Ford robot here at home. It's crackling and leaking hydraulics all over the carpet...
Please don't be such a sheep and read the Nokia blurb:
With respect to new functionality introduced into future Linux Kernel releases, Nokia reserves the right to declare that the Patent Statement shall not apply.
In short, Nokia says "we give you a new toy today, but we can always take it away from you later". Which means neither Linus or anybody else should touch it...
With Tor, you can flood sites and services such as IRC, web boards, instant messaging, and so forth. You could possibly use it to spam as well. All of this would be done by seemingly random IP addresses. In essence, it is an inflated case of Open Proxy Syndrome.
I'm sure dissidents in the PRC or other dictatorships, who look forward to a way of publishing things that go against their governments without losing their heads, are happy to hear you're worried about IRC crapflooding...
That's the price of freedom: preserving it comes at a cost, something citizens in the America of the DHS should remember too one of these days, incidentally.
...that Microsoft is in cahoots with hardware manufacturers to maintain the "software update == hardware update" status quo and force people to constantly buy new hardware. Because evidently, with this announcement, they *can* create a "diet-Windows", it was just not in their best interest to do it before Linux started gnawing at their pant legs.
as I understand it, the Prius has an interesting transmission that doesn't really use gears. I'm not entirely clear on how it works, but I guess it's a smooth continuum rather than the distinct steps of gears.
The Prius and other hybrid vehicles work by having a small internal combustion engine power a big alternator that charges a big battery, and in turn, the battery powers electric motors in the wheels through an electronic power controller.
So in effect, there is no linkage between the engine and the wheels: the engine works at its best RPM all the time, and the battery "buffers" the stop-and-go, and can be recharged when the car slows down, which allows having a much smaller engine for the same apparent nippiness of the car.
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I find this technology very intriguing. But it took me a long time to realise that they are serious. First time I heard about this I had to check if it was April first.
They're serious, and poised to succeed just as well as the dozens of people and companies who have been studying the problem for decades.
The space elevator won't happen in your lifetime. Just like the permanent moon base, the SDI and hundreds of such grandiose and vaporous projects. The only one I've seen completed that I didn't think would ever happen is the French-English channel tunnel, and even that was a pretty tame project compared to the space elevator.
According to the website, the elevator will move at 200 mph. Considering that our atmosphere is roughly 380 miles, I'm going to have to listen to Kenny G for almost 2 hours!
You're going to eat a lot more Kenny G. than that, since the endpoint would have to be in geosynchronous orbit, in order for the cable to stay taut and the station not to fall back on Earth.
The longest song in my MP3 collection is 22:43 (Autobahn by Kraftwerk - even on topic, sort of...) Is that long enough for the ride up?
I think you're looking at something like Wagner's Ring Cycle instead. 18 hours sounds about right for a space elevator ride.
How many quarters do I need to put in the slot?
What the hell elevator do you ride that requires you to pay to get musak?? Personally, I'd pay to silence the damn thing...
Not to mention, even if they didn't know, the chance of a collision is fabulously small.
Unless the pilot is a crazed Saudi with a taste for Flight Simulator...
From TFA:
We firmly believe that the set of technologies that underlie the infinite promise of the Space Elevator can be demonstrated, or proven infeasible, within a 5 year time-frame. And hence our name. Elevator:2010. we promise to get an answer for you by then.
Message 5 years from now:
42
...$6 to $10 disposal fee... Ha! Joke's on them! Most of my computers were fished from dumpsters.
Erhm, joke's on you actually: you take care of the recycling for them and they cash the $10 recycling fee.
Odd logic: you go dump your old stuff on roadside when you could, with approximately the same amount of effort, bring it to some collection point and have people, who are effectively paid by you with the $10 recycling fee you've already shelled out, take it away from you.
If you care about recycling, then you'd see your tax dollar at work and you'd feel good about doing your bit for the planet. If you don't, you can still watch people work for you instead of having to haul junk out of the trunk by yourself. Not to mention, not having to watch right and left to avoid getting caught littering...
charging a $6 to $10 disposal fee on every computer and television purchased. Maine puts the onus on manufacturers, demanding they pay the full cost of recycling
which they swiftly pass onto consumers. Net result: consumers always pay for recycling (which incidentally sounds rather normal).
and is there anything in the news about mr partenan's technology? is there xxxx. ... why are people being so THICK!!!! maaaaagh!
Link please, before I classify your post as the troll it appears to be?
Radioactive materials in smoke detectors aren't made to power things. They just ionize the air around them, therefore they are only very weakly radioactive. Pacemakers are quite a lot more dangerous, and they don't require that much power either.
I love my tritium for illumination
Did you notice that third hand growing on your arm under your wristwatch?
And the (tiny) problem of smashing the battery open by mistake and releasing enough radio-elements in the environment to poison your entire neighborhood for decades doesn't bother you?
Did you know people with pacemakers who die are cut open to recover the darn thing before they're buried, to avoid exactly what I just described, on a much smaller scale? if they take that many precautions for a well-designed pacemaker embedded in a corpse, itself embedded in a coffin 6 feet under, I have a feeling they won't give you a consumer product with radioisotopes to play with at home...
You watch Fox and CNN too much. Believe it or not, most everything can be used to commit any number of terrorist acts, but a vast majority of people just use these things for what they're intended to be used for. "X can be used for terrorism and therefore should be banned/watched/curtailed" is a recent invention of the current administration to justify pushing their agenda.
If you ban Google Earth on the ground, then also ban Hotmail (those terrorist email communications!), keyboard (they type the emails with 'em!!), batteries (they power the bombs they describe in the emails with 'em!!!), and nail clippers (they won't be able to make the bombs if their nails are too long). etc.
Stop being paranoid...
I already wanted to buy hard-cover copies of I, Robot to throw at Will Smith when the movie went out, to avenge Azimov's memory, but really, that pink roomba thing is too much. Poor Isaac must be spinning in his grave...
For years I've been watching Honda pimp Asimo and you're telling me Toyota is the company to first bring us robots. Surprising. So where's Nissan in all this hubbub, or do they need not even apply.
I have a Ford robot here at home. It's crackling and leaking hydraulics all over the carpet...
$600 per car is not a lot to spend to ensure road safety.
Depends: on a $300 Yugo, it might not be such a good idea...
Then again, with a Yugo, you're very safe in the first place, since the bus driver is never drunk.
I'd say this one is fairly safe...
What if Linux were to fork?
The code concerned by Nokia patents will just have to use threads instead I guess...
Please don't be such a sheep and read the Nokia blurb:
With respect to new functionality introduced into future Linux Kernel releases, Nokia reserves the right to declare that the Patent Statement shall not apply.
In short, Nokia says "we give you a new toy today, but we can always take it away from you later". Which means neither Linus or anybody else should touch it...
News for you; long before america was born, there was some other civilizations, using other charsets, such as latin-1, iso9960-1.
Wow, you mean the iso9960-1 charset was invented before 1776?
With Tor, you can flood sites and services such as IRC, web boards, instant messaging, and so forth. You could possibly use it to spam as well. All of this would be done by seemingly random IP addresses. In essence, it is an inflated case of Open Proxy Syndrome.
I'm sure dissidents in the PRC or other dictatorships, who look forward to a way of publishing things that go against their governments without losing their heads, are happy to hear you're worried about IRC crapflooding...
That's the price of freedom: preserving it comes at a cost, something citizens in the America of the DHS should remember too one of these days, incidentally.
...that Microsoft is in cahoots with hardware manufacturers to maintain the "software update == hardware update" status quo and force people to constantly buy new hardware. Because evidently, with this announcement, they *can* create a "diet-Windows", it was just not in their best interest to do it before Linux started gnawing at their pant legs.
as I understand it, the Prius has an interesting transmission that doesn't really use gears. I'm not entirely clear on how it works, but I guess it's a smooth continuum rather than the distinct steps of gears.
What you describe is called a Continuously Variable Transmission, found on older light vehicles such as DAFs and on newer Audis.
The Prius and other hybrid vehicles work by having a small internal combustion engine power a big alternator that charges a big battery, and in turn, the battery powers electric motors in the wheels through an electronic power controller.
So in effect, there is no linkage between the engine and the wheels: the engine works at its best RPM all the time, and the battery "buffers" the stop-and-go, and can be recharged when the car slows down, which allows having a much smaller engine for the same apparent nippiness of the car.
There is no physical link between the pedal and the wheels.
Bleh... Ford invented that years ago: it's called a "brake fluid leak".
Minardi had a software glitch take out both their F1 cars at last weekend's grand prix, are they the next Microsoft?
Well no, Minardi cars can start without an activation key.