Star Wars is not science fiction. It is a space opera. Anybody with any understanding of the genre knows that.
So how exactly did Star Wars steal the lunch money of all the "good" sci fi? Remembering, of course, all the BAD sci fi that was also coming out in the 70's.
Remember Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is crap.
Yeah, you come live here. We'll see how long you last with the thermostat set at 102.
Fuck the heat. That's why I have opposable thumbs: So I can obtain tools that make my environment suit me.
I will happily sleep in a room that's about 40 degrees, though.
Re:Here's some solutions to help lower the bill:
on
DIY HVAC
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· Score: 0, Flamebait
...solutions that you can't bother to link to? Somebody had a problem, they solved the problem, they posted the solution, and you think they shouldn't have bothered because you don't like the solution?
Boy, I sure do love useless backbiting. It makes me so much more eager to share the fruits of MY labor with the world.
Re:Here's some solutions to help lower the bill:
on
DIY HVAC
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Learn to live a bit warmer?
Please. Do you live in Texas? I don't want to hear about doing without air conditioning. I had no AC in my car, and I had to drive a lot. Spending eight hours sweating in 80 consecutive days of over-100 degree heat is not fun.
I'm sorry, but air conditioning in this state is not a luxury one can "do without".
Most of the math I've seen shows them paying for themselves in about 15-20 years. However, that cost does not account for the amazingly environmentally nasty production method. The pollutants that are a by-product of PV cell creation are similar to those from printed circuit board construction, but you don't have to cover your roof in printed circuit boards.
My safety is not worth my liberty. I'll take my chances with the terrorists. They're not going to hijack any plane I'm on until I'm good and dead anyway.
Yes. Or, so you don't have to schlep all your carbon up from Earth (which would cost ludicrous bucks) you go catch a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid, bring it to Earth (and start building your tether on the trip from the asteroid belt) and use the mined-out asteroid as a counterweight, halving the length of your elevator.
Crazy, yes, but I think that's actually more practical than carrying thousands and thousands of tons of carbon up from Earth.
A free market would include minimal protections on intellectual property (like document formats, say) and no pro-business legislation (DMCA et al). This is a topic that could easily consume a book, but let's start with good old fashioned libertarianism and add really solid consumer protection laws, and we're on the right track.
You're telling me that something with the tensile strength to anchor a space elevator is going to be the consistency of tissue paper.
I'll believe it when I see it. 100GPa is only about ten times as strong as good steel. This thing is going to be under rather enormous tensile load (even if your center of mass were.01% away from geostationary, we're talking LOTS of stress). The "cable" is going to have to be pretty substantial.
It would be interesting to look at models of the aerodynamic behavior of a falling space elevator. I think it would hit the ground, relatively intact, at supersonic (but nowhere near asteroid) speeds. Note that the thing starts out stationary with respect to the surface, so it doesn't have a Mach 25 reentry to deal with. Just a long, long, long way to fall.
Geosync is approximately 22,241 miles away. Earth's circumference is about 24,000 miles. So, assuming you have a big counterweight asteroid, and not a double-length space elevator, a little less than once. Depending, of course, on where the break occurs.
The carnage that such an event would wreak absolutely beggars the imagination. Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. Skip to the last few chapters if you just want the space elevator stuff.
Building a space elevator from the bottom up would be, IMO, utter madness. Top down is the way to go.
Think about it: How wide would the base of a tower 30,000 miles tall have to be? Hint: REALLY WIDE. I'd want somebody REALLY smart to tell me that when I got this huge, VERY RIGID, thing all set up, that the tidal forces from the other planets and the sun weren't going to move my counterweight asteroid around very much.
Woohoo! We can make this super-strong stuff in our lab! Now, all we have to do is, uh, figure out to make, well, how far is it to geostationary? 22,000 miles or so?
And it took us how long to grow this two foot test article? And we have to figure out how to get 22,000 miles of this stuff into orbit, so we can build our space elevator?
"But that doesn't mean we should abandon all technological advances and hide in a 10x10 shack in the woods.."
No, but we should have iron-clad privacy legislation, that expressly forbids anybody from eavesdropping on us or accumulating data on us unless there is a clear case to be made for obtaining a warrant.
But we'll never get that, because, uh, there's terrorists or something.
Capitalism is about making money IN A FREE MARKET.
Your evolution algorithm is totally broken. There are DOZENS of species of high-order predators on Earth. None of them monopolizes the food sources (with the arguable exception of humans, which are THE alpha predator of this rock)
Evolution has checks and balances built in. Too many wolves==not enough deer==fewer wolves==more deer==more wolves. Circle of life.
I'm a big fan of laissez-faire capitalism. However, no corporation in the history of the planet has ever liked the notion. When they talk about "laissez-faire", that means that they want the government to protect THEIR interests and let them rape MY interests.
That was totally clear. I am smart. Thank you. I was using parallel structure to mock the poster who was calling me a fuckwit (which, you might note, is a far more derogatory attack than I employed on Mr. Moore, who has the power to bind and to loose and should obviously be worshiped for his majesty by all bipeds).
Inherently superior? Surely not. Has a lot of advantages, that make people who spent the money feel like it was worthwhile? Arguably, yes.
The iPod isn't competing against your $20 CD player. They are after different segments of the market. To pretend otherwise is just silly.
I guaran-damn-tee you that fewer people lust over an Audiophase CD player than an iPod.
Steve Jobs might irritate you, because you don't think his stuff is of sufficient value to pay for it. That's cool. But, for those of us who ARE willing to spend money on good design and engineering, we say "Go Steve go!"
If he hurts people's feelings, that's great. It's when he distorts the truth and misrepresents peoples' positions and frames the discussion in a way where you have to agree with him or be The Epitome of Evil, I think he lacks integrity and insight.
Factual errors? He didn't present any facts. He presented the notion that since we in America often lock our front doors (completely ignoring the fact that there are LOTS of communities in America where people DON'T lock their front doors), Canada is somehow the epitome of sweetness and light and brotherly love. He presented his opinion that there's something wrong with giving away guns at a bank (What, you think these people are going to hold up a bank with a bolt action rifle? That's stupid). He presented his opinion that the press works on fear, yet he then exploits that fear to get Wal Mart to do what he wants them to do (by taking bullets off the shelves). He presented his opinion that Charleton Heston likes to eat babies, and then managed to make it seem like he was saying something insightful as Mr. Heston opted not to allow this rude person to enjoy his hospitality.
You're absolutely right. I challenged the established orthodoxy that Michael Moore has a big brain, and I got called a fuckwit. You're on to a serious theorem of social interaction, my friend. Go get yourself a movie camera and start breaking into houses in Canada. You'll be a star.
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Star Wars is not science fiction. It is a space opera. Anybody with any understanding of the genre knows that.
So how exactly did Star Wars steal the lunch money of all the "good" sci fi? Remembering, of course, all the BAD sci fi that was also coming out in the 70's.
Remember Sturgeon's Law. 90% of everything is crap.
Yeah, you come live here. We'll see how long you last with the thermostat set at 102.
Fuck the heat. That's why I have opposable thumbs: So I can obtain tools that make my environment suit me.
I will happily sleep in a room that's about 40 degrees, though.
...solutions that you can't bother to link to? Somebody had a problem, they solved the problem, they posted the solution, and you think they shouldn't have bothered because you don't like the solution?
Boy, I sure do love useless backbiting. It makes me so much more eager to share the fruits of MY labor with the world.
Learn to live a bit warmer?
Please. Do you live in Texas? I don't want to hear about doing without air conditioning. I had no AC in my car, and I had to drive a lot. Spending eight hours sweating in 80 consecutive days of over-100 degree heat is not fun.
I'm sorry, but air conditioning in this state is not a luxury one can "do without".
Most of the math I've seen shows them paying for themselves in about 15-20 years. However, that cost does not account for the amazingly environmentally nasty production method. The pollutants that are a by-product of PV cell creation are similar to those from printed circuit board construction, but you don't have to cover your roof in printed circuit boards.
No sir.
My safety is not worth my liberty. I'll take my chances with the terrorists. They're not going to hijack any plane I'm on until I'm good and dead anyway.
Yes. Or, so you don't have to schlep all your carbon up from Earth (which would cost ludicrous bucks) you go catch a carbonaceous chondrite asteroid, bring it to Earth (and start building your tether on the trip from the asteroid belt) and use the mined-out asteroid as a counterweight, halving the length of your elevator.
Crazy, yes, but I think that's actually more practical than carrying thousands and thousands of tons of carbon up from Earth.
If you wanted Google's definition of a free market, ask Google. But you asked me, so I gave you mine.
A free market would include minimal protections on intellectual property (like document formats, say) and no pro-business legislation (DMCA et al). This is a topic that could easily consume a book, but let's start with good old fashioned libertarianism and add really solid consumer protection laws, and we're on the right track.
You're telling me that something with the tensile strength to anchor a space elevator is going to be the consistency of tissue paper.
.01% away from geostationary, we're talking LOTS of stress). The "cable" is going to have to be pretty substantial.
I'll believe it when I see it. 100GPa is only about ten times as strong as good steel. This thing is going to be under rather enormous tensile load (even if your center of mass were
It would be interesting to look at models of the aerodynamic behavior of a falling space elevator. I think it would hit the ground, relatively intact, at supersonic (but nowhere near asteroid) speeds. Note that the thing starts out stationary with respect to the surface, so it doesn't have a Mach 25 reentry to deal with. Just a long, long, long way to fall.
Geosync is approximately 22,241 miles away. Earth's circumference is about 24,000 miles. So, assuming you have a big counterweight asteroid, and not a double-length space elevator, a little less than once. Depending, of course, on where the break occurs.
The carnage that such an event would wreak absolutely beggars the imagination. Read Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars. Skip to the last few chapters if you just want the space elevator stuff.
Building a space elevator from the bottom up would be, IMO, utter madness. Top down is the way to go.
Think about it: How wide would the base of a tower 30,000 miles tall have to be? Hint: REALLY WIDE. I'd want somebody REALLY smart to tell me that when I got this huge, VERY RIGID, thing all set up, that the tidal forces from the other planets and the sun weren't going to move my counterweight asteroid around very much.
Tensile load is your friend.
Woohoo! We can make this super-strong stuff in our lab! Now, all we have to do is, uh, figure out to make, well, how far is it to geostationary? 22,000 miles or so?
And it took us how long to grow this two foot test article? And we have to figure out how to get 22,000 miles of this stuff into orbit, so we can build our space elevator?
oh. this is going to be harder than we thought.
I thought they said "illegal aliens", and signed up.
Damn, I love that freakin' movie.
"and abuse of this ability is hardly rampant"
Echelon. 'Nuff said.
"But that doesn't mean we should abandon all technological advances and hide in a 10x10 shack in the woods.."
No, but we should have iron-clad privacy legislation, that expressly forbids anybody from eavesdropping on us or accumulating data on us unless there is a clear case to be made for obtaining a warrant.
But we'll never get that, because, uh, there's terrorists or something.
Capitalism is about making money IN A FREE MARKET.
Your evolution algorithm is totally broken. There are DOZENS of species of high-order predators on Earth. None of them monopolizes the food sources (with the arguable exception of humans, which are THE alpha predator of this rock)
Evolution has checks and balances built in. Too many wolves==not enough deer==fewer wolves==more deer==more wolves. Circle of life.
I'm a big fan of laissez-faire capitalism. However, no corporation in the history of the planet has ever liked the notion. When they talk about "laissez-faire", that means that they want the government to protect THEIR interests and let them rape MY interests.
...except for the fact that a lot of CDs now are broken so that they can't be ripped. What do you do then?
Thank you for using "loose" correctly. Gold star, buddy. : )
Yup. Only thing cooler than a new Appleseed trailer (I'm a sucker for big robots) is a new Appleseed trailer with a Basement Jaxx song.
Damn, that's a cool band.
That was totally clear. I am smart. Thank you. I was using parallel structure to mock the poster who was calling me a fuckwit (which, you might note, is a far more derogatory attack than I employed on Mr. Moore, who has the power to bind and to loose and should obviously be worshiped for his majesty by all bipeds).
Thank you for your redundant elucidation.
Inherently superior? Surely not. Has a lot of advantages, that make people who spent the money feel like it was worthwhile? Arguably, yes.
The iPod isn't competing against your $20 CD player. They are after different segments of the market. To pretend otherwise is just silly.
I guaran-damn-tee you that fewer people lust over an Audiophase CD player than an iPod.
Steve Jobs might irritate you, because you don't think his stuff is of sufficient value to pay for it. That's cool. But, for those of us who ARE willing to spend money on good design and engineering, we say "Go Steve go!"
If he hurts people's feelings, that's great. It's when he distorts the truth and misrepresents peoples' positions and frames the discussion in a way where you have to agree with him or be The Epitome of Evil, I think he lacks integrity and insight.
Factual errors? He didn't present any facts. He presented the notion that since we in America often lock our front doors (completely ignoring the fact that there are LOTS of communities in America where people DON'T lock their front doors), Canada is somehow the epitome of sweetness and light and brotherly love. He presented his opinion that there's something wrong with giving away guns at a bank (What, you think these people are going to hold up a bank with a bolt action rifle? That's stupid). He presented his opinion that the press works on fear, yet he then exploits that fear to get Wal Mart to do what he wants them to do (by taking bullets off the shelves). He presented his opinion that Charleton Heston likes to eat babies, and then managed to make it seem like he was saying something insightful as Mr. Heston opted not to allow this rude person to enjoy his hospitality.
"fuckwit...ad hominem attacks...established orthodoxy".
You're absolutely right. I challenged the established orthodoxy that Michael Moore has a big brain, and I got called a fuckwit. You're on to a serious theorem of social interaction, my friend. Go get yourself a movie camera and start breaking into houses in Canada. You'll be a star.
Since airplanes have a gazillion controls, you can't simulate flight without a gazillion controls.
Afterburner was not, repeat not, a flight simulator.
They don't. Hence the problem.