Slashdot Mirror


User: Banquo

Banquo's activity in the archive.

Stories
0
Comments
21
First seen
Last seen
Profile
(view on slashdot.org)

Comments · 21

  1. Solar or bust. on US Offers $30M For High-Risk Biofuel Research · · Score: 1

    Every major idea for alternate fuels is practically impossible (and when you take the human condition/profit/tradeoffs/greed into it, completely impossible) and the tradeoffs are all horrible with anything other than solar.

    Biofuels cause food displacement, land clearing, and are a net "bad" for the environment. Plus they would force people living on subsadies to work for a living and they have lobbies to prevent such things from happening.

    Hydrogen is dangerous to store, and ALL US hydrogen regulation plans have language making it illegal to refill your car at home and the requirement for all hydrogen cars to have proprietary fittings that you can't "just tap into" (Ie you can't make and compress your own. ( that cuts into business profits and taxable income so it won't happen.) They'll set an arificially inflated (no pun intended) price on it and while it may potentially be better for the environment, unless you're using solar to create your hydrogen,..you're still burning power somewhere in the mix.

    Solar is free, safe, and easy. Efficiency on solar panels grows daily (and as mentioned in another article) the US has no shortage of space to put solar panels/farms/arrays

    The only way to change to ANY different fuel source though is to be able to fix the price of oil and obtain it from non-foreign sources.
    If oil was at a set price (even a high set price that could only go down) that would allow enough stability politically to be able to truly invest in infrastructure. (if you're paying $3.00/gal today and prices drop back down under a dollar US citizens aren't going to be falling over themselves to invest in alternate fuel.

    Go with something like changingworldtechnologies, (Someone explain to me the US government is roadblocking them at every turn again??) get our mass gas and oil from recycling (killing two birds with one stone) fix the prices and wean ourselves off slowly (domestic production would insure price and political stability and maybe get us out of the Middle East)
    After we've developled and implemented solar/nuclear infrastructure we then sell off our excess to the rest of the world at a profit as well as insure dirt cheap oil for the things that still need it. It would take about 15 years or so to get "in full gear" but it would be 100% beneficial. The only people who would lose out would be big oil and those who have their bread and butter based on ties with the middle east.

    Unfortuately they alone weild enough power to topple governments so.... cest la vie.

    That's the best plan I could come up with and while it's a LONG TERM solution, I think it's about the only one that could actually work in the real world.

  2. Re:I still think my idea is better on Small Fujitsu Device Harvests Both Solar and Thermal Energy · · Score: 2

    Actually if it were attached to a system that could determine which source was better at the time, then switch I think just putting a strip of this down the emergency lanes/inside lanes of all the major roadways in the US would probably provide some insane power. During the day gather sunlight and then in the hours and hours after that the roads maintain heat, gather ambient heat then.

    If you could actually "pave" the roads with a photovoltaic material THEN you're talking serious energy. Major Highways see sunlight through most of the day and have a combined 4,042,778 miles of interstate highways,...that's a really good place to start.

    Of course there are new and proven building materials for highways right now that won't get approved because their repair cycle is so long it puts people out of work on a massive scale, so whoever builds this new energy tapping roadway better plan some obsolescence into it or it will never fly. (Yay for government efficiency!)

  3. Burn em up, or use em up? on NASA Solar Sail Lost In Space · · Score: 1

    I've always thought that every satellite/ship/station should be deigned with some kind of slow drive system and/or quick "death release" system that would cause them to fire out and land on or near the same spot on the moon. Then when/if moon bases/operations were a go you would have a huge stockpile of recycle materials to get you going. I'm sure the logistics are insane, but it seems even some kind of "bag it and sling it" system to shift orbital debris into a usable stockpile of stuff would make sense.

    Of course I'm also for railgunning all our nuclear waste into the sun so,...practical isn't my middle name.

  4. Serious lack of forethought on Google Struggles To Give Away $10 Million · · Score: 5, Informative

    I looked at the contest and at the time I was considering entering there was just too much of a lack of information. I found it insane that a company that huge running a "contest" with large sums of money involved had a rules/regs sheet that looked like "Dave in shipping" had typed it up. I had several good ideas (vetted by industry professionals) that I finally didn't enter because the "For additional questions send mail here" people never responded to any of my mails asking basic rule/regulation questions (most of the information a serious "inventor" would need was lacking in the 1 page rules sheet they offered. They may have updated by now but I got a bad vibe from this at the start. If you can't even set up the contest right, the followthrough is suspect from the start.

    They had no information at all concerning simple questions such as:

    "Winnings":
    How are the prize winnings distributed (are they administered by google or payed out as services or cash or ? (it never said)

    Intellectual property:
    Is this (they typical)internet VC front where they dole out some prize and in exchange you get all rights to IP and any revenues/future development etc that come from it? The HP "Design our next computer" contest comes to mind. They outsourced years of R&D time to tens of thousands of people on the internet and gave away 1 laptop to 1 person for the privilege of working for them.

    I mean,..at least the Tribecca film "Pitch a movie" contest has the decency to tell you in the rules and regulations that by "winning" you're signing your life away to them.

  5. Re:Does anyone remember when... on Blizzard Confirms No LAN Support For Starcraft 2 · · Score: 1

    It's all about making sure they get you into the sales channel.

    Sure back in the day Blizzard's main goal was to make a great game, THAT was the top priority (the thought was great game = success = more gamers = gamer loyalty = better games etc..) but when WOW hit there was no way they could maintain that.
    There are way too many people in the mix who simply don't care about games, and the people that were there from the start are so far removed, and are too busy dealing with their wads of cash to care if this kind of thing happens.

    The teams of people making the great games report up through 300 layers of bureaucracy now, they have funding cutbacks, forced "programming to the LCD", and TPS reports to worry about.

    Now the goal is to make quarterly earnings go up as the first priority (and the thought is that eyeballs + adverts + upselling = $$) I'm sure delivering a great game gets mentioned in there somewhere but for now, it's no longer essential to the mix. It's like the owner of clearchannel "I don't care what we do as long as we make money" same ungrateful "No one got us here but us!" attitude.

    We all KNOW that at some point someone will either hack it, or Blizzard will be forced to make it available, Blizzard knows this too..the thing that gets me is why bother being a douche, getting customer ire and having to deal with the hassles of bnet not being able to manage the load for the first 3 months in the first place?

    Is it so they can swoop in later and say "Here we give you LAN support,..SEE we listen to the people, we take what they say to heart?" or ??

    Don't shit where you eat is a survival 101 tactic that even animals are born with, it doesn't matter if you're a mouse or a elephant, so when did Blizzard forget that?

    I love Starcraft, I liked Warcraft, and I enjoyed WOW, but I personally hope Stardock continues with their RTS trend of providing better and better games. THAT is an organization who actually cares about their customers (and oddly enough they manage to show it despite corporate growth.)

  6. Behind the box with the ark in it,.... on G.M. Opens Its Own Battery Research Laboratory · · Score: 1

    All they need to do is go to all the warehouses that have the battery/capacitor prototypes from the companies and individuals that they boughtout and shut down in an effort to keep all the $$'s rolling in from big oil. They can dust off all that research and already be ahead by 5 or 10 years.

    There are too many "companies" involved in the infrastructure associated with all the potential fuel issues.
    There won't be mass produced inexpensive fast/easy/cheap to charge cars for 20 years or more.

  7. Re:dilemma on Keeping in Contact With Family, From Afghanistan? · · Score: 1

    You idiot,...our GOAL in the US is to get the middle east involved in a war that will cause some sort of nuclear event in the area, this way we can thin the global population of it's overcrowding uncivilized poor and re-distribute the resources between the powerfull and civilized. *sheesh* Learn to read between the lines for crying out loud. That's why we spread AIDS in Africa,..(Granted it WAS supposed to mutate into a fast acting form, but hey the human immune system is a wacky thing.)

    Also in the US we developed ways to make oil out of just about anything at this point (see changingworldtechnologies) so really it's all about power, population and power now.

    Also the lizard people are behind it all. (just google them and you'll see!)

  8. I asked the same question about Broadband.. on Keeping in Contact With Family, From Afghanistan? · · Score: 1

    I asked the same question about Broadband in Iraq for a friend who is stationed there who is all but 100% cutoff from the world (you have to be at a NICE base to get decent acess) if your in the a lot of the support units you get next to nothing.

    You'd have thought I was asking who wanted free herpes.

    Maybe I should have said it was me who was going to get greenlit.

  9. At sea has to be cheaper than Iraq!? on Internet Communications While At Sea? · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Not to threadjack, but this is related...

    A friend of mine is stationed in Iraq with a similar problem. I went looking to see if there was something here I could buy and ship there so that he would have something more than just enough time and resources to send a couple of mails a day.

    The only thing I could find was a compay called TS2 Satellite, they want 4K for their equipment and then about $900/mo for service. I mean I love the guy but I can't shell out that kind of dough (especially as he's there till Dec)

    Anyone know of any other solutions?

  10. TR Communutiy now trying to obtain game rights on Tabula Rasa To Shut Down · · Score: 1

    I play Tabula Rasa and when this announcement came out many of us thought the same thing,..
    If they're ditching this project (and as it's the best game that no-one knows about) what would it take for the user community to take over the game?

    Obviously we *JUST* found out about this and are just brainstorming the concept, but there are some people on board with the idea that are 100% serious, and several have internal connetions to NCSoft.
    Last night we set up a discussion board (quick and dirty) to kick things off for brainstorming, updates etc...
    Yeah I know you can shoot a million bullets into this idea right now, but any "Constructive" help would be appreciated on the boards.

    http://www.changingwind.org/savetr/signup.php

    The concept is that it would be run by a group of gamers, so the things that were the ultimate failures of TR in the first place (user community tools, social aspects, gamer support, advertising) might see a vast improvement.

    If you have any ties to "gamer media" I ask that you take a chance to follow a story that could be a huge Cinderella story, or a possible nightmare, but should be interesing either way.

  11. Lets get down to Watts what! on Can Static Electricity Generate Votes? · · Score: 5, Funny

    As the third party candidate, I'd just like to say that I'm completely grounded and I won't charge you AT ALL. Those other candidates say that a vote for me is throwing your vote away, but I say they cause Washington to be so polarized that nothing will get done.

    Sure they talk about delivering a path of least resistance, but I think there is a path which will save us from charge and discharge alike.

    (Also those other two guys support Islamist free radicals, and decreasing the capacitance of the middle class)

    I'm the Thane of Lochaber and I support this message

  12. Thank goodness! on How Close Were US Presidential Elections? · · Score: 1

    "269 votes would have given us President Gore"

    Thank goodness it was so many,...
    I mean there's no way to insure that a 269 votes could get ignored/miscounted/changed. It's not like thousands of votes were unaccounted for, or that there was any suspicion that some votes weren't counted. That would be impossible and there's certainly no way that our current administration would ever be that corrupt.

    If they were proven to be though...wouldn't that be treason?

  13. Wow,..Clearchannel must be crying with joy... on Using Computers for Sophisticated Music Analysis · · Score: 1

    Now they can just Say..."Make all new songs sound like this one band." and they won't have to work nearly so hard to ruin radio.

  14. Re:That's pretty damning for the CIA and Bush admi on 10 Years of Translated Bin Laden Messages Leaked · · Score: 1

    Seriously though, how many "damning" items have already come out and been quashed by the Bush Government? I think they're sunk in enough that they're bulletproof.

    You may see some Jr. Lackeys get some slaps on the wrist, but for all the insanity that's happened in the last 8 years, no one of any real consequence will be held to account for their actions. Bush will rely on the 5 sec attention span of the masses to let him waltz out of the oval office spinning the "We brought democracy to the middle east" story all the while. And we'll be so caught up in "the new guy" we'll let it happen.

    In 10 years enough spin will have happened that Dubya will be remembered as "The guy who made tough decisions" instead of "The guy who waged a personal war, and killed over one million innocent people."
    While he may not have been working *with* the enemy, he certainly was working *against* the office of President and the Citizens of the USA. The fact that nothing was/has been done about any of that proves my point even further.

  15. Re:I use Paytrust on Pitfalls of Automated Bill Payment · · Score: 1

    If I'm not mistaken you can pay all your paytrust bills through the credit card of your choice. If you're using Amex, they have a pretty hard core "The customer is always right give them their money back and prosecute the hell out of anyone in their path" approach, so that would insure you against any of the issues that could theoretically arise.

    You could then pay your credit card bill from your bank, or manually once a month and you'd still be ahead of the game time/hassle wise.

    As I said in another post, I've used them for over 3 years with zero negative payment issues. A great rule of thumb is to have a seperate CC for internet only purchases, IMHO it's those "I bought this 1 gig video card from Bob's online discount warehouse" purchases that end up causing issues, not your auto payment service.

  16. Re:I use Paytrust on Pitfalls of Automated Bill Payment · · Score: 1

    I've used Paytrust for about 3 years, and have had no payment issues whatsoever..

    I login on the 10th of every month, (by then all my bills are in) look over all the bills, click process payment on all the ones I want to pay the default values on, and DONE. (I still like the control of "releasing" the bill as opposed to autopayment)

    Every bill I have is paid in about 2 mintues with no paper and no fuss.

    I WAS using myciti.com to aggregate all my accounts and pay them but myciti folded, then I moved to national city accounts, they folded, I moved to netbank they folded, and almost all the other account aggregation/payment systems have dissapeared (Liabilities possibly? I Dunno)

    The only negatives to paytrust are that some of the accounts that don't have automated bill payments already setup, can take up to a month to get set up, and I really wish they had that aggregation service... I enjoyed looking at all my bank/stock/CC/bills in one screen, but for all the time and trouble it saves,...it's sooooo worth it.

  17. Re:I'll believe it when I see it on Mimicking Photosynthesis To Split Water · · Score: 1

    Thermal Depolymerization...

    They said "See we did it here"
    (of course they did say) Now we can make it BETTER!
    but that's just any product/process lifecycle.

  18. Re:perhaps they realize.. on Have Modern Gamers Lost the Patience For Puzzles? · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Yep,..

    I think gamers have gotten tired of THE SAME puzzles served up with a thousand different faces on them. (I loved Weltris with a passion that still makes me giddy) Portal has proven that, and Bioshock to a lesser extent (sometimes old puzzles are fine if you're not spending hours on them) There's a huge following of puzzle games in the "in a window" gaming community. Games like Desktop Tower Defense, Spaced Penguin (one of my favs), and most of the games at Homokaasu are puzzle games that are different enough to get you hooked and hard.

  19. Re:Provigil. on Cognition Enhancer Research · · Score: 1

    Hmm,..

    For me it negates the physical and mental aspects of fatigue, but there's (for lack of a better phrase) the memory of fatigue. I'm just as alert and functional as I would be if I was "fully rested"
    (actually more so because I'm usually a scatterbrain and this seems to help with that.)
    As I said I haven't had the headaches but then again, I am taking less than most people (so I assume) and I don't have any medical conditions. Maybe something else I'm taking with it (possibly the b12?) is negating the headache issue.

  20. Re:Ever tried sleep? on Cognition Enhancer Research · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Most nights my job/life don't allow me the time to get extra sleep through the week. But even if it did,..I feel about the same with 5,8,10 or 15 hours of sleep. I'm trying to clean up my life, (eat better, work out more etc..) but feeling tired and unfocused through the day is just the norm for me.

    And yes I've had the full medical battery and exams, aside from needing to lose some weight and having some mild skin allergies I'm 100%

    Also I'm taking this mainly as a neuro enhancer than a "pep pill" and so far it's working great. It really does help out even if I'm fully rested.

  21. Re:Provigil. on Cognition Enhancer Research · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I just started on a "neurotropics regimen" and one of the things I'm taking is modalert (cheap provigil) I've been taking that and other standard stuff (ginko, B-complex, amino's, dhea, C, etc..) for about 5 days @100MG/day.

    It's pushed that "post lunch drowsy need a nap" feeling back to about 7pm, and by then I'm up and around (not behind the desk)so there's no worries. My focus is better during the day. Haven't gotten any headaches but most people use 200mg a day from what I read. I've also noticed that I'm in a better overall mood. (of course with me tired=grumpy so...)

    I get roughly 5-6 hours of sleep a night and have had no issues at all. I did notice the "You know you're tired, but you don't think/act like you're tired" thing and yeah it's really odd. But I found that if you add a Monster Coffee in the morning it REALLY boosts the whole effect and the "ghost tiredness" is lessened a lot.

    Wired had an Article on "smart drugs" and they did a reader survey.