This is the thing: why isn't he making this directly into a small generator system before making it portable? Scale it up to the point that the turbine problem is a non-issue, and sell THAT. That would prove that the energy source itself is viable (economically too) and not a pipe dream.
Basically, that he hasn't already done so makes me skeptical that there isn't "something else" wrong here. Doesn't pass the smell test IMO.
Now having said that, I hope I'm wrong. I love this idea. But still, I'd like to know why this part hasn't been done already. This smells like trying to get investor dollars on something that MIGHT work instead of selling something that DOES work.
slighly off-topic: two major cities - tel aviv and bangalore - cut down large numbers of trees in order to make room for more people. the immediate result was a rise of 10 Centigrade in bangalore (from 45C to 55C).
Speaking of 45C... you'll never EVER see a temperature in Egypt officially reported as 45.0 degrees C or higher. The reason is that there's a law on the books that says that if it's that high, it's "too hot to work" and thus people need to, by law, given the day off while it's that hot if working w/o A/C. So the "solution" for the government is to never report higher than 44.9C.
Really. My wife and I were in Egypt last year (an awesome tour), and a thermometer somebody had showed 58C (this was near Farafra in the western desert), but the digital road sign said the temperature was 44.9. We asked about it, and the locals told us what I just said above.
So up to 45 in Cairo? Sure, but probably even higher.
It depends on who's lying. Level 3 said they wanted the additional fee for video. Comcast says it's just an imbalance in the amount of data in their existing peering agreement, REGARDLESS of the type of traffic.
Personally, I'm more willing to believe Comcast here. Imbalances can happen for a huge number of different reasons. This one is obvious: they're going to be taking on a HUGE amount of extra data from Level 3 specifically because of Netflix.
Think of it this way, if roughly the same amount of data is going back and forth, they both can say "it's about even, so we're not going to charge each other." But if suddenly a LOT more is going one way than the other, then they can start charging more. It's no different than me going to my ISP and saying "I'm going to increase the amount I'm uploading by 10x, but you'll still charge the same right? You mean you want to charge me more now? But YOU are requesting a bit from me still! What do you mean no?" That's what Level 3 is doing by the sounds of it.
It could be worse, they could call it a "Human Rights Commission". Oh wait, they already did that in Canada to stomp on free speech rights (and lots of other insanity occurring too). Read Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy In The Name Of Human Rights to get a summary of how much things like this have screwed up anything resembling free speech in Canada. I've been following the insanity of HRCs in Canada and I was STILL surprised by the content of this book, and it's a STRONG forewarning to anybody in any other countries trying to stifle free speech in the name of preventing "hate crimes."
This will become a greater issue as unicode domain names come into prominence. I believe that right now while Firefox "decodes" any unicode so that the characters look like the underlying hex (or something) so that a non-english character can NOT be confused for a real one.
For instance in certain fonts lowercase "L" (l) looks EXACTLY like an uppercase "i" (I). In others it doesn't. Now in your example that can't happen, but what about www.travelocity.com or www.traveIocity.com? (I used a capital "i" in the second) You can see how this can be an issue. It gets worse with other character sets that ARE different characters, but again look identical, thus bypassing any automatic "lowercase" that a browser probably does.
If you see a mismatch, unless the banking needs to be done in less time than it takes you to get to an actual local branch, do NOT do it.
For quite some time now you've been able to bring up FireFox inside of Everquest 2 (they have the files inside a sub-dir of the EQ2 directory, so it's a "private" copy of it, not accessing what you already have installed). They mainly did it because they were overhauling their in-game support page (reporting bugs, etc) to a normal web page instead of a one-off interface window specific to the game, but I guess somebody finally had a brain and said "hey, let's just let the players use this as a regular browser too" and so it happened.
It's slightly limited, since you can't put your own extensions in (I'd kill for Adblock Plus), or access the options panels, etc, but generally it's fine, and I haven't noticed it killing performance, but I have a really good computer, so other experiences may vary.
True that it's small now, but it's not a reason to start dumping more either. And considering that (and I quote) "nearly all CFLs are produced in China" do you really want to rely on THEIR production standards, or mining standards? Which is why I'm enthusiastic about the original article, as it heralds an alternative, but I just hope it's better than what's already here.
I'm all for getting away from CFLs, as their production alone is NOT environmentally friendly (most of the mercury in the world is mined in China, where HALF of it is "lost" to the environment during production, which means "polluted"), not to mention the ratio thrown out.
But what about the LEDs? How toxic (or not) are the materials they're talking about? And what about the production of such? And heck, back on the pollution thing, WHERE they are produced makes a big difference, since if it's in China, forget any environmental disposal of chemicals used, whereas if it's in a developed country, it'll probably be OK.
Not insurmountable problems, but I do want to know how those things will work out.
Exactly. The true definition of eliminating racism is when we can't really tell that there are any races. Not through having everybody inter-racial in heritage (which will likely happen anyways), but through people not caring beyond how we see hair color today (blonde jokes aside).
Except of course for the Alberta Progressive Conservative party, which reduced taxes, eliminated the deficit AND the provincial debt (it is now completely gone).
What the USA calls "right-wing" may not act like it at all, but in Canada generally fiscal conservatism means such, because we have an actual example of such that happened, not just theory like down south.
You're mis-interpreting the article. This isn't sending viruses to introduce new DNA into species where it never was, this is getting cells to "switch on" dormant genes in that cell type, so that they act like another.
For example, in your body, different genes are active in nerve cells, than in cardiac cells. That's WHY they're "differentiated" into those cell types, even though the underlying genetic code is identical for every cell in your body. The technique being talked about in this article is to "switch on" the genes they want in a specific place, not introducing new DNA.
So while you may be right about your points on spreading new DNA, that is not what is occurring here.
It may be more worth it to compare the adoption of SSDs to how the adoption of LCDs occurred. For quite a long while LCDs were much more expensive than CRTs, with arguably worse performance in some significant areas (response time and color accuracy), but they were THIN, and they were absolutely flat, and they were (generally) lighter.
And now they've taken over, and dirt-cheap LCDs are easily available. So being a much more expensive technology initially is not necessarily a barrier to many consumers who want "the next big thing" because they want the specific advantages.
For myself however, I'm interested to know how they've addressed some of the traditional weaknesses of SSDs, such as number of times you can write to any specific memory element, write speed in general, and lifetime of the memory when no power is applied (this limitation exists for HDDs too in that over time the files will become corrupt (random bit flipping due to the magnetics), but I want to know the numbers for SSDs too).
I'm a serious user, and I didn't disabled UAC. Did you know that ANY application can disable UAC globally without you knowing that's what they're doing? Sure it'll pop up a dialog saying that it needs admin privileges, but that happens so often you'll just assume it's an incompatible app just like many other things.
People who give up a little bit of liberty for a little bit of security deserve neither, the saying goes.
Don't compare the opression Benjamin Franklin and our other founding fathers lived through with a few cameras in public areas. These monitor the same things that any police officer can without a warrant. Not to mention that the quote is wrong:
Those who would give up Essential Liberty to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
Those words "essential" and "temporary" are kinda key there, but of course they're always omitted by those who don't like ANY restrictions against being an ass, or believe "it's not wrong if you don't get caught." Quite different than "essential" liberties.
And from a business stand point, why would they. I mean if your willing to change $1 for something that is bringing 350% more, your already in some financial troubles. They would maximize profits by charging just under the current rates to attrach clients but still high enough that they can make the most money possible. That gets into supply and demand actually. If you can sell 100 units at $3.50 or 1000 units at $2.00, (let's say base costs are $1 on the product) you're going to price at $2 per unit, as your overall profits are much higher.
With this product specifically, they are CARVING OUT a piece of an existing market rather than trying to expand the market, which affects the number of potential customers. Because it's gasoline, you'll probably won't carve much of a market if you're very near the existing price, but can take a HUGE share if you price not that far below where it is now (kinda like how people will flock to the station priced only $0.10 cheaper).
Supply of this product also affects this, as what's the point of pricing lower than the amount you can supply? If you know you will ALWAYS be sold out with the prices you're giving, price so that you're exactly at that line. Pricing lower really only costs you, and pricing higher will mean you have excess supply which is essentially wasted.
So yes, it won't crash as far down as the price of production, but it will be priced to take over as much of the market as they can supply, which is probably still cheaper than current gas prices, though it will likely "follow them, but cheaper" to keep cutting into the market as they want to.
Customs clearance always happens in the US. That's why you have to pick up your bags and clear them at the first airport in the US you arrive at, even if you are in transit to another airport. I can state for a fact that this is NOT how it's happened for me. In 2006 on a flight to Atlanta I changed planes in Minneapolis (it didn't just stop there then keep going, I had to change to a different plane) and I never even looked at my luggage between Calgary and Atlanta. So I don't know where you were going, or in what circumstance, but it doesn't usually work that way.
Now coming to Canada it'd be the opposite, since if you fly into an international airport you'd need to go through Canadian customs, pick up your luggage, and THEN go into the domestic parts of the airport, giving up your luggage again. Similar to if you flew from somewhere small, through Toronto, THEN to the USA. You'd have to pick up your luggage before the transfer into the USA.
Well to my understanding, this basically just says that information on laptops is subject to the same search criteria as ANY OTHER type of information you're carrying on you. If you have a bunch of folders with printouts of incriminating photos, or they're on your laptop, this says that they're treated exactly the same.
Think about going through international customs at any major airport. You go through US customs after you've already landed. The point is to control smuggling of goods into the US, not to protect airplanes. Depends. If flying from Canada, in many airports (Calgary at the least) you can actually pre-clear customs in Canada itself, then all flights to the USA are out of a single wing of the airport so you're essentially "in the USA" at that point, and don't need to clear after you land. Works out for everybody really. If there's a problem you're not in ANOTHER city when it happens, and the airlines themselves don't need to fly somebody BACK if there's a problem either.
Not that it's ever happened for me. I swear when they scan my passport the screen comes up with a big message saying "BORING" and they just let me through. Which is fine with me!
Slashdot Mirror
This is the thing: why isn't he making this directly into a small generator system before making it portable? Scale it up to the point that the turbine problem is a non-issue, and sell THAT. That would prove that the energy source itself is viable (economically too) and not a pipe dream.
Basically, that he hasn't already done so makes me skeptical that there isn't "something else" wrong here. Doesn't pass the smell test IMO.
Now having said that, I hope I'm wrong. I love this idea. But still, I'd like to know why this part hasn't been done already. This smells like trying to get investor dollars on something that MIGHT work instead of selling something that DOES work.
slighly off-topic: two major cities - tel aviv and bangalore - cut down large numbers of trees in order to make room for more people. the immediate result was a rise of 10 Centigrade in bangalore (from 45C to 55C).
Speaking of 45C... you'll never EVER see a temperature in Egypt officially reported as 45.0 degrees C or higher. The reason is that there's a law on the books that says that if it's that high, it's "too hot to work" and thus people need to, by law, given the day off while it's that hot if working w/o A/C. So the "solution" for the government is to never report higher than 44.9C.
Really. My wife and I were in Egypt last year (an awesome tour), and a thermometer somebody had showed 58C (this was near Farafra in the western desert), but the digital road sign said the temperature was 44.9. We asked about it, and the locals told us what I just said above.
So up to 45 in Cairo? Sure, but probably even higher.
It depends on who's lying. Level 3 said they wanted the additional fee for video. Comcast says it's just an imbalance in the amount of data in their existing peering agreement, REGARDLESS of the type of traffic.
Personally, I'm more willing to believe Comcast here. Imbalances can happen for a huge number of different reasons. This one is obvious: they're going to be taking on a HUGE amount of extra data from Level 3 specifically because of Netflix.
Think of it this way, if roughly the same amount of data is going back and forth, they both can say "it's about even, so we're not going to charge each other." But if suddenly a LOT more is going one way than the other, then they can start charging more. It's no different than me going to my ISP and saying "I'm going to increase the amount I'm uploading by 10x, but you'll still charge the same right? You mean you want to charge me more now? But YOU are requesting a bit from me still! What do you mean no?" That's what Level 3 is doing by the sounds of it.
It could be worse, they could call it a "Human Rights Commission". Oh wait, they already did that in Canada to stomp on free speech rights (and lots of other insanity occurring too). Read Shakedown: How Our Government Is Undermining Democracy In The Name Of Human Rights to get a summary of how much things like this have screwed up anything resembling free speech in Canada. I've been following the insanity of HRCs in Canada and I was STILL surprised by the content of this book, and it's a STRONG forewarning to anybody in any other countries trying to stifle free speech in the name of preventing "hate crimes."
Henry Ford (modified) : Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is not black. (wiki)
This will become a greater issue as unicode domain names come into prominence. I believe that right now while Firefox "decodes" any unicode so that the characters look like the underlying hex (or something) so that a non-english character can NOT be confused for a real one.
For instance in certain fonts lowercase "L" (l) looks EXACTLY like an uppercase "i" (I). In others it doesn't. Now in your example that can't happen, but what about www.travelocity.com or www.traveIocity.com? (I used a capital "i" in the second) You can see how this can be an issue. It gets worse with other character sets that ARE different characters, but again look identical, thus bypassing any automatic "lowercase" that a browser probably does.
If you see a mismatch, unless the banking needs to be done in less time than it takes you to get to an actual local branch, do NOT do it.
For quite some time now you've been able to bring up FireFox inside of Everquest 2 (they have the files inside a sub-dir of the EQ2 directory, so it's a "private" copy of it, not accessing what you already have installed). They mainly did it because they were overhauling their in-game support page (reporting bugs, etc) to a normal web page instead of a one-off interface window specific to the game, but I guess somebody finally had a brain and said "hey, let's just let the players use this as a regular browser too" and so it happened.
It's slightly limited, since you can't put your own extensions in (I'd kill for Adblock Plus), or access the options panels, etc, but generally it's fine, and I haven't noticed it killing performance, but I have a really good computer, so other experiences may vary.
True that it's small now, but it's not a reason to start dumping more either. And considering that (and I quote) "nearly all CFLs are produced in China" do you really want to rely on THEIR production standards, or mining standards? Which is why I'm enthusiastic about the original article, as it heralds an alternative, but I just hope it's better than what's already here.
I'm all for getting away from CFLs, as their production alone is NOT environmentally friendly (most of the mercury in the world is mined in China, where HALF of it is "lost" to the environment during production, which means "polluted"), not to mention the ratio thrown out.
But what about the LEDs? How toxic (or not) are the materials they're talking about? And what about the production of such? And heck, back on the pollution thing, WHERE they are produced makes a big difference, since if it's in China, forget any environmental disposal of chemicals used, whereas if it's in a developed country, it'll probably be OK.
Not insurmountable problems, but I do want to know how those things will work out.
Explain please. Do you mean her statements about greatness?
Exactly. The true definition of eliminating racism is when we can't really tell that there are any races. Not through having everybody inter-racial in heritage (which will likely happen anyways), but through people not caring beyond how we see hair color today (blonde jokes aside).
Not to mention that if he's trying to SAVE energy, how much energy is the webcam + computer hooked up to watch this thing consuming?
Except of course for the Alberta Progressive Conservative party, which reduced taxes, eliminated the deficit AND the provincial debt (it is now completely gone).
What the USA calls "right-wing" may not act like it at all, but in Canada generally fiscal conservatism means such, because we have an actual example of such that happened, not just theory like down south.
Very true, but there are also a lot of places in the world (and even in the USA) where hail is virtually unknown, so for those markets it'd work.
But yes, that definitely wouldn't be where I live, as we get hail multiple times per year. Those things would get massacred up here.
You're mis-interpreting the article. This isn't sending viruses to introduce new DNA into species where it never was, this is getting cells to "switch on" dormant genes in that cell type, so that they act like another.
For example, in your body, different genes are active in nerve cells, than in cardiac cells. That's WHY they're "differentiated" into those cell types, even though the underlying genetic code is identical for every cell in your body. The technique being talked about in this article is to "switch on" the genes they want in a specific place, not introducing new DNA.
So while you may be right about your points on spreading new DNA, that is not what is occurring here.
It may be more worth it to compare the adoption of SSDs to how the adoption of LCDs occurred. For quite a long while LCDs were much more expensive than CRTs, with arguably worse performance in some significant areas (response time and color accuracy), but they were THIN, and they were absolutely flat, and they were (generally) lighter.
And now they've taken over, and dirt-cheap LCDs are easily available. So being a much more expensive technology initially is not necessarily a barrier to many consumers who want "the next big thing" because they want the specific advantages.
For myself however, I'm interested to know how they've addressed some of the traditional weaknesses of SSDs, such as number of times you can write to any specific memory element, write speed in general, and lifetime of the memory when no power is applied (this limitation exists for HDDs too in that over time the files will become corrupt (random bit flipping due to the magnetics), but I want to know the numbers for SSDs too).
UAC is useless.
It's apple people. What ELSE could it be but mass hysteria? ;)
I nominate Stephane Dion. Oh, wait, I WANT him to self-destruct the Liberal party even more than he already has. I don't want him to jump off (yet).
Layton would work though. His mutant moustache would be stopped from taking over the country then!
Don't compare the opression Benjamin Franklin and our other founding fathers lived through with a few cameras in public areas. These monitor the same things that any police officer can without a warrant. Not to mention that the quote is wrong:
Those words "essential" and "temporary" are kinda key there, but of course they're always omitted by those who don't like ANY restrictions against being an ass, or believe "it's not wrong if you don't get caught." Quite different than "essential" liberties.
With this product specifically, they are CARVING OUT a piece of an existing market rather than trying to expand the market, which affects the number of potential customers. Because it's gasoline, you'll probably won't carve much of a market if you're very near the existing price, but can take a HUGE share if you price not that far below where it is now (kinda like how people will flock to the station priced only $0.10 cheaper).
Supply of this product also affects this, as what's the point of pricing lower than the amount you can supply? If you know you will ALWAYS be sold out with the prices you're giving, price so that you're exactly at that line. Pricing lower really only costs you, and pricing higher will mean you have excess supply which is essentially wasted.
So yes, it won't crash as far down as the price of production, but it will be priced to take over as much of the market as they can supply, which is probably still cheaper than current gas prices, though it will likely "follow them, but cheaper" to keep cutting into the market as they want to.
So this technology is 5-10 years away? Kinda like how fusion is always 20 years away?
Basically, I'll believe it when I'm pumping it into my gas/ethanol tank.
Customs clearance always happens in the US. That's why you have to pick up your bags and clear them at the first airport in the US you arrive at, even if you are in transit to another airport. I can state for a fact that this is NOT how it's happened for me. In 2006 on a flight to Atlanta I changed planes in Minneapolis (it didn't just stop there then keep going, I had to change to a different plane) and I never even looked at my luggage between Calgary and Atlanta. So I don't know where you were going, or in what circumstance, but it doesn't usually work that way.
Now coming to Canada it'd be the opposite, since if you fly into an international airport you'd need to go through Canadian customs, pick up your luggage, and THEN go into the domestic parts of the airport, giving up your luggage again. Similar to if you flew from somewhere small, through Toronto, THEN to the USA. You'd have to pick up your luggage before the transfer into the USA.
Well to my understanding, this basically just says that information on laptops is subject to the same search criteria as ANY OTHER type of information you're carrying on you. If you have a bunch of folders with printouts of incriminating photos, or they're on your laptop, this says that they're treated exactly the same.
Not that it's ever happened for me. I swear when they scan my passport the screen comes up with a big message saying "BORING" and they just let me through. Which is fine with me!