I agree with you and I don't. I agree that laws like the DMCA are bad. In fact, the more you can get these big companies to hang by a tiny thread of protection, the better.
But what would be the effect of abolishing the copyright system? What would be the incentive to produce good music and literature? We could continue fueling the economy for a short while from the media that's already produced. (The music industry is already doing this. Blech.) In the long run, however, promising artists and writers will be forced to take jobs to support themselves rather than continue to produce media. Some media will be used as a loss leader (as already exists in some areas), but content costs money to produce. There's no way around that fact.
You're assuming that these companies are completely composed of executives who all think the same and hold the same opinion. This is not the case. As an example, Sony Music has been forced to be subservient to Sony Electronics because Sony Electronics makes more money than Sony Music does. Sony Music can whine about piracy all they want, but Sony Electronics is getting rich from all the MP3-enabled devices and memory sticks they're selling.
What's wrong with 99c per song is that it has NOTHING to do with what the market wants!
Bullshit. If the market didn't want it, it wouldn't exist. iTunes has been steadily increasing its market share, currently owning 70% of the online music market (currently about 100 million songs per year).
$1 for a soda pop would be unreasonable, too, if everyone else was giving it away for free.
My local Kwiktrip sells any size soda pop for 69 cents. It's quite popular, but it hasn't eliminated canned and bottled soda sales. Why?
Well there are several reasons. For one, the soda is of a lower quality than the stuff in bottles or cans. For another, soda machines offer an instant gratification that's not available with a gas station/convenience store.
Same with iTunes. The songs are better quality, and there's less hassle in tracking down and purchasing what you want. That makes it a valuable service over P2P networks. That's not to say that people don't exist who'll keep downloading from the networks. I know people who'll drive 30 miles just to save ten cents on a single item. That doesn't mean they're the majority.
Many systems of monetizing 'free' music have been proposed to the record industry, but the industry isn't showing any interest.
Ok, I'm listening. Show me a viable model with a high chance of success and relatively low risk. iTunes has all of those.
This advertisement was brought to you by the fine, upstanding members of the RIAA who brought you such great artists as Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, Baha Men, and Bill Ray Cyrus.
Don't forget Will Smith, Brittany Spears, N'Sync, and a lot of other garbage. Yet they also brought us Phil Collins, Billy Joel, 2 Unlimited, Bon Jovi, Shania Twain, and other artists who I (and many others) like. The sooner we wave money under their noses for REAL artists, the sooner they'll deliver.
Keep in mind that the RIAA and many of its members have very much made money their god. It's not about starving artists, copyright infringement, or rights protection. It's all about the almighty dollar. Personally, I think this thinking/religion blinds them, but there's very little we can do to get rid of these companies. They control the music industry, and the rights to nearly ALL of the stuff; good or not.
Thus it makes more sense to effect change from the inside out. Fighting them from the outside is only going to result in a long and bloody battle for supremacy.
Until then, I got www.allofmp3.com. All the above features, at about 12 cents per song.
You act as if you can reasonably compare the two. All of MP3 is a collection of lesser known and foreign songs. If you like that stuff, good for you. If you want "mainstream" music (i.e. the stuff that you hear on the radio and decide you like or don't like), then you have to be willing to absorb some of the costs of getting you to hear that song in the first place, and then delivering it to you over a well-supported, easy to use, and highly searchable interface.
I really have no problem with All of MP3 competing. That's what free market is all about. Just make sure you're comparing apples to apples.
What the heck is wrong with $0.99 per song? You pay more than that for a bottle of soda, for crying out loud! If you want to be able to LEGALLY download music off the 'net, you need to support valid attempts to bring that to you. As more money flows into these companies from Internet distribution methods, the Internet supporters inside music companies will grow in power (potentially overshadowing those who are trying to stop it).
Once those supporters are in power, the reign of RIAA terror may finally end. Or at least reach an equilibrium similar to the one that existed prior to MP3s.
Be careful here. The GPL does not distinguish between run-time linking and pre-linking like the LGPL does. All it says is that you don't need to GPL your software if it can be considered a "clear and separate" work. Here's the relevant passage:
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
The difficulty is that MySQL AB has stated that they consider software a "derivative work" if it explicitly relies on MySQL. Tool vendors who make sure to support multiple DBs *may* be ok, but nothing stops MySQL from attempting to sue you in hopes that you'll settle.
That's not to say that MySQL AB will sue, but they're certainly a very different company from the one in '98 that was just trying to make a few bucks off of a custom database they wrote.
See, here's the problem. MySQL AG seems to have reinterpreted the GPL to mean that any use of their software means that your software should be open source. Run a small website with the MySQL database? If all the source to that site is not GPLed, you're in violation. That's despite the fact that your site should be a clear and separate product from MySQL.
MySQL has made sure to cement their interpretation in two ways:
1. They "purchased" the LGPL JDBC driver and relicensed it as GPL. This ensures that physical linking will occur with their software (and thus the warning in the article about "circumventing" the drivers).
2. They keep their own variation of SQL (with the #$^@ing backticks) so that software must be designed for use with MySQL. While some of us use config files on a per driver basis, many software developers have fallen for the bait and tied their software to MySQL. Doing so invalidates certain GPL clauses that may allow you to get around the "linking" issue.
How's that going to work with Orion? I can't imagine an M2P2 setup withstanding the force of a nuclear blast. Seems to me you've got to be pretty close to the propulsion unit to capture any decent fraction of its energy. It'd be like subjecting a soap bubble to a firecracker.
1. You have to calculate the effective range. i.e. The pulse units must be exploded far enough back so that the pulse doesn't damage the craft.
2. Orions aren't actually propelled by the explosion. The pulse units are sort of "shaped nuclear charges" where all the force is applied to a plate of propellant (tungsten, IIRC). The vaporized propellent collides with the pusher plate, resulting in thrust. The actual nuclear explosion itself would be far enough back not to impart much force on the craft.
In an M2P2 Orion design, you simply choose a propellant that interacts positively with the shield, and adjust the charge to spread it evenly across the surface of said shield.
But I thought the idea of solar sails had been scrapped due to the relaitve scarcity of interstellar hydrogen?
Actually, light alone is sufficient to produce thrust. The problem is that at 1.3kw/m^2 (the power that reaches Earth), you're not going to go very fast with the mass of the solar sails added on.
I've been keeping an eye on Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2) technology, myself. Basically, it uses an EM field to increase the surface area of the ship without the added weight of solar sails. As a bonus, the ship is protected from the most common forms of radiation and cosmic rays. The concept is particularly interesting when one digs the Orion concept out of memory.
The biggest problems with Orion were plate ablation and scalability concerns (scaling DOWN, not up). With an M2P2 shield, you could use larger pulsed units, and there's no plate to erode. As a bonus, radiation protection comes as a nice side-effect. (Although some steel would still be needed to block neutron radiation.)
Does anyone know if the National Ignition Facility was part of the "FIRE" program? According to a previous slashdot article (referenced link on story now dead), they had high hopes of firing several Terawatt/TeraJoule lasers to produce fusion by 2010.
I have a horse and a half microwave and a 3500 watt lawnmower!
Sounds like a pretty powerful lawnmower, doesn't it? That is, until you realize that gasoline has an energy density of 45.7MJ/kg. It takes one hell of a lot of energy to push our cars around! Running a car engine at the "300 horsepower" many dealers advertise, would produce 223.7 kilowatts!
Thank God that cars don't normally run at high horsepower levels. At 300hp, you'd burn through a gallon of gasoline in about 3.4 minutes! It's no wonder that we're having trouble finding alternative ways of powering cars. There's simply no viable fuel with an energy density greater than petroleum.
I say we go for nuclear powered cars. At least then I wouldn't have to worry about stopping at a gas station for a few (hundred) years.;-)
The machine is heavier than originally designed. Analysis indicates that a pilot can still produce the required power to fly it but for a shorter duration. Original design point was 500 W (0.67 hp) for a one-minute flight. The unknown at the moment is whether the machine will break up prior to lift off.
500 watts is difficult for even an athlete to generate for several minutes straight. They even addressed this in point 14:
14.) HOW WAS THE PILOT CHOSEN?
We have built our own test rig that measures power output of a pilot over a minute duration. We have plotted the results of numerous potential pilots against their weight. A successful candidate is one that falls above a power requirement curve (power vs. weight). Please see Thunderbird Projects - Pictures Gallery. We have had people vomit after these one-minute tests. In similar tests in the United States they have had one person have a mild heart attack.
If they can make it work, more power to them. But I think the materials strength just isn't there for this type of thing, and the human powering the craft has a good chance of killing himself over those three minutes.
What's with the flamebait mod? The parent stated a valid opinion. You don't see anyone flaming him for it, do you?!
And he's right. The challenge isn't just a difficult engineering problem, it's damn near impossible. I half-way expect that the original commissioning of the assignment went something like this:
Prof 1: "Wouldn't it be cool if someone could create a pedal powered helicopter?" Prof 2: "You're nuts."
Prof 1: "Am not! I'm willing to bet it's even possible!" Prof 2: "Hah! I'd pay $20,000 to see that!"
Can it convert units of length to units of time so I can finally understand why the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs is an indication of its speed?
I was about to say no, but then I realized that the correct answer is "yes". According to relativity, time is simply another directional velocity. By going faster through space, you slow your motion through time. The result of this is pretty weird, but space actually dilates. Thus by going higher percentages of c, a ship can reduce the distance it travels.
So if we assume that the Kessel Run is significantly longer than 12 parsecs (say, 30 parsecs), then we only need to do the relativity figures to find how "fast" he went. It might even make more sense to calculate it that way, since no one's clocks will agree on the amount of "time" something takes.
500 watts is a lot for a human. But it's also something most humans can only do for short bursts. i.e. Your body stores up glucose for when it's needed. As long as you're stored glucose is being burned, you can reach potentially huge increases in physical power. But once the glucose fuel is exhausted, your power ratings become dependent on your body's ability to produce more glucose. This ability goes down as the lactic acid builds up in the muscles, making high levels of production that much more difficult.
Even if we assume a constant 500 watts, we're still terminally short of what would be needed for rotationally powered flight. In addition, a person capable of 500 watts would have a much higher weight, thus offsetting some of his gains. In comparison, the smallest 1 person helicopter weighs in at 254 pounds, but produces 55 horsepower! A human can't (normally) even produce 1 horsepower, and if he can it's for a VERY short period.
Now if we were to talk about powering ultralight airplanes, then I'd be a bit more optimistic.
A human generally is lighter than a combustion engine.
Here is a helicopter with a dry weight of 254 pounds. It's engines generate 55 horsepower (41 kilowatts) to get itself and one passenger off the ground.
And couldn't they store up the energy into a big rubber-band, by ten minutes of human energy, let it go and add more energy as it goes up?
Of course. Watts is only a way of measuring constant energy flow. Convert to Joules and you can figure out what it would take to get off the ground. e.g. If we say we require 10 kw of power to get off the ground, we find:
So assuming that we had a storage medium capable of containing the energy at 100% efficiency (not bloody likely), then our pilot would have to pedal for nearly a minute before takeoff.
The question is, what does he do once he's in the air? Once his stored energy is exhausted, he's back to using only what he can generate. If what he generates is insufficient to produce enough lift, he's coming down.
Now if you gave the thing wings and enough forward thrust, then he *might* be able to stay aloft on 200 watts. I still wouldn't count on it though. I remember a little 1 horsepower plane on the discovery channel, but that's still about four times the power a human generates!
A normal helicopter needs several Kilowatts of engine power to produce enough lift to even get itself off the ground, much less loaded down with a human. The human body constantly generates an approximate 200 watts. In case anyone's wondering, that's about 0.26 horsepower, and that's assuming that you can apply the full 200 watts of your energy.
It's fun to see them try, but the physics say that the energy just isn't there. Perhaps if the copter weighed almost nothing, and it was constructed of super-strong materials. Of course, then we'd have unobtainium.:-)
Have you tried typing 8e23 into it? I get tired of typing 10 ^ 23 * 8. How about a complex equation?
Also, its conversions are limited to like kinds of measurements. In Google, I can type "1 light year" and get an exact figure in meters. Or I can simply type "light speed" and get an answer to that. And I can even convert these numbers, and easily deal with the massive results. e.g. "light speed to picometers per second".
The OS X calculator is defintely nice, but it's unsuited to scientific or programming work. Besides forcing you to type lots of zeros and not accepting equations, it also doesn't do decimal to binary/hex conversions. I end up using 'dc' or a GUI conversion program for those sorts of calculations. Speaking of which, try these:
The Google Calculator rules! There aren't many places you can type (6.09e12 * 130000) * (365 * 24 * 60 * 60) / 3.99e17 and actually get the correct answer! And it even does better than most Scientific calculators by converting just about any measurement to any other measurement. (For example, 1 horsepower to watts.)
say "one" little thing about java and the "java duuudes" just go nuts..
To be perfectly honest, if he had stated that a higher percentage of Python programmers are good programmers, I would have left it alone. After all, everyone's entitled to their opinion. But his statement explicitly said that he's "never met any GOOD Java programmers", and implied that there were none. Personally, I find that a rather offensive statement. It's like saying that "Fords suck because all the good mechanics I know work on Chevy's". There are a lot better ways of arguing for something than to berate something else.
True but neither is inherently trollish and the second is more likely to form the basis of a troll. Getting people to yell "right on!" is nothing like trolling. Getting them to write indignant replies is:)
I was hardly looking for indignant replies. I was merely stating the facts as I see them. Notice that I presented a balanced viewpoint with ups and downs of each system. (i.e. Unixes load programs slower, but parallelize better than NT. Macs don't suffer from the redraw problems, but the Desktop has several flaws that could lock it up.)
Using your definition, how does one determine when something is a valid opinion that should be heard out, and when it's nothing more than an attempt to cause chaos?
There is a difference between making an unsubstantiated statement hoping people will yell "right on!", and making a statement backed by an explanation of one's experience.
Slashdot Mirror
I agree with you and I don't. I agree that laws like the DMCA are bad. In fact, the more you can get these big companies to hang by a tiny thread of protection, the better.
But what would be the effect of abolishing the copyright system? What would be the incentive to produce good music and literature? We could continue fueling the economy for a short while from the media that's already produced. (The music industry is already doing this. Blech.) In the long run, however, promising artists and writers will be forced to take jobs to support themselves rather than continue to produce media. Some media will be used as a loss leader (as already exists in some areas), but content costs money to produce. There's no way around that fact.
You're assuming that these companies are completely composed of executives who all think the same and hold the same opinion. This is not the case. As an example, Sony Music has been forced to be subservient to Sony Electronics because Sony Electronics makes more money than Sony Music does. Sony Music can whine about piracy all they want, but Sony Electronics is getting rich from all the MP3-enabled devices and memory sticks they're selling.
What's wrong with 99c per song is that it has NOTHING to do with what the market wants!
Bullshit. If the market didn't want it, it wouldn't exist. iTunes has been steadily increasing its market share, currently owning 70% of the online music market (currently about 100 million songs per year).
$1 for a soda pop would be unreasonable, too, if everyone else was giving it away for free.
My local Kwiktrip sells any size soda pop for 69 cents. It's quite popular, but it hasn't eliminated canned and bottled soda sales. Why?
Well there are several reasons. For one, the soda is of a lower quality than the stuff in bottles or cans. For another, soda machines offer an instant gratification that's not available with a gas station/convenience store.
Same with iTunes. The songs are better quality, and there's less hassle in tracking down and purchasing what you want. That makes it a valuable service over P2P networks. That's not to say that people don't exist who'll keep downloading from the networks. I know people who'll drive 30 miles just to save ten cents on a single item. That doesn't mean they're the majority.
Many systems of monetizing 'free' music have been proposed to the record industry, but the industry isn't showing any interest.
Ok, I'm listening. Show me a viable model with a high chance of success and relatively low risk. iTunes has all of those.
This advertisement was brought to you by the fine, upstanding members of the RIAA who brought you such great artists as Vanilla Ice, Milli Vanilli, Baha Men, and Bill Ray Cyrus.
Don't forget Will Smith, Brittany Spears, N'Sync, and a lot of other garbage. Yet they also brought us Phil Collins, Billy Joel, 2 Unlimited, Bon Jovi, Shania Twain, and other artists who I (and many others) like. The sooner we wave money under their noses for REAL artists, the sooner they'll deliver.
Keep in mind that the RIAA and many of its members have very much made money their god. It's not about starving artists, copyright infringement, or rights protection. It's all about the almighty dollar. Personally, I think this thinking/religion blinds them, but there's very little we can do to get rid of these companies. They control the music industry, and the rights to nearly ALL of the stuff; good or not.
Thus it makes more sense to effect change from the inside out. Fighting them from the outside is only going to result in a long and bloody battle for supremacy.
Until then, I got www.allofmp3.com. All the above features, at about 12 cents per song.
You act as if you can reasonably compare the two. All of MP3 is a collection of lesser known and foreign songs. If you like that stuff, good for you. If you want "mainstream" music (i.e. the stuff that you hear on the radio and decide you like or don't like), then you have to be willing to absorb some of the costs of getting you to hear that song in the first place, and then delivering it to you over a well-supported, easy to use, and highly searchable interface.
I really have no problem with All of MP3 competing. That's what free market is all about. Just make sure you're comparing apples to apples.
What the heck is wrong with $0.99 per song? You pay more than that for a bottle of soda, for crying out loud! If you want to be able to LEGALLY download music off the 'net, you need to support valid attempts to bring that to you. As more money flows into these companies from Internet distribution methods, the Internet supporters inside music companies will grow in power (potentially overshadowing those who are trying to stop it).
Once those supporters are in power, the reign of RIAA terror may finally end. Or at least reach an equilibrium similar to the one that existed prior to MP3s.
On a different note, best 99 cents, ever!
Be careful here. The GPL does not distinguish between run-time linking and pre-linking like the LGPL does. All it says is that you don't need to GPL your software if it can be considered a "clear and separate" work. Here's the relevant passage:
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program, and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves, then this License, and its terms, do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works. But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License, whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole, and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it.
The difficulty is that MySQL AB has stated that they consider software a "derivative work" if it explicitly relies on MySQL. Tool vendors who make sure to support multiple DBs *may* be ok, but nothing stops MySQL from attempting to sue you in hopes that you'll settle.
That's not to say that MySQL AB will sue, but they're certainly a very different company from the one in '98 that was just trying to make a few bucks off of a custom database they wrote.
See, here's the problem. MySQL AG seems to have reinterpreted the GPL to mean that any use of their software means that your software should be open source. Run a small website with the MySQL database? If all the source to that site is not GPLed, you're in violation. That's despite the fact that your site should be a clear and separate product from MySQL.
MySQL has made sure to cement their interpretation in two ways:
1. They "purchased" the LGPL JDBC driver and relicensed it as GPL. This ensures that physical linking will occur with their software (and thus the warning in the article about "circumventing" the drivers).
2. They keep their own variation of SQL (with the #$^@ing backticks) so that software must be designed for use with MySQL. While some of us use config files on a per driver basis, many software developers have fallen for the bait and tied their software to MySQL. Doing so invalidates certain GPL clauses that may allow you to get around the "linking" issue.
How's that going to work with Orion? I can't imagine an M2P2 setup withstanding the force of a nuclear blast. Seems to me you've got to be pretty close to the propulsion unit to capture any decent fraction of its energy. It'd be like subjecting a soap bubble to a firecracker.
1. You have to calculate the effective range. i.e. The pulse units must be exploded far enough back so that the pulse doesn't damage the craft.
2. Orions aren't actually propelled by the explosion. The pulse units are sort of "shaped nuclear charges" where all the force is applied to a plate of propellant (tungsten, IIRC). The vaporized propellent collides with the pusher plate, resulting in thrust. The actual nuclear explosion itself would be far enough back not to impart much force on the craft.
In an M2P2 Orion design, you simply choose a propellant that interacts positively with the shield, and adjust the charge to spread it evenly across the surface of said shield.
But I thought the idea of solar sails had been scrapped due to the relaitve scarcity of interstellar hydrogen?
Actually, light alone is sufficient to produce thrust. The problem is that at 1.3kw/m^2 (the power that reaches Earth), you're not going to go very fast with the mass of the solar sails added on.
I've been keeping an eye on Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion (M2P2) technology, myself. Basically, it uses an EM field to increase the surface area of the ship without the added weight of solar sails. As a bonus, the ship is protected from the most common forms of radiation and cosmic rays. The concept is particularly interesting when one digs the Orion concept out of memory.
The biggest problems with Orion were plate ablation and scalability concerns (scaling DOWN, not up). With an M2P2 shield, you could use larger pulsed units, and there's no plate to erode. As a bonus, radiation protection comes as a nice side-effect. (Although some steel would still be needed to block neutron radiation.)
Does anyone know if the National Ignition Facility was part of the "FIRE" program? According to a previous slashdot article (referenced link on story now dead), they had high hopes of firing several Terawatt/TeraJoule lasers to produce fusion by 2010.
I have a horse and a half microwave and a 3500 watt lawnmower!
;-)
Sounds like a pretty powerful lawnmower, doesn't it? That is, until you realize that gasoline has an energy density of 45.7MJ/kg. It takes one hell of a lot of energy to push our cars around! Running a car engine at the "300 horsepower" many dealers advertise, would produce 223.7 kilowatts!
Thank God that cars don't normally run at high horsepower levels. At 300hp, you'd burn through a gallon of gasoline in about 3.4 minutes! It's no wonder that we're having trouble finding alternative ways of powering cars. There's simply no viable fuel with an energy density greater than petroleum.
I say we go for nuclear powered cars. At least then I wouldn't have to worry about stopping at a gas station for a few (hundred) years.
From the FAQ:
12.) WILL IT FLY?
The machine is heavier than originally designed. Analysis indicates that a pilot can still produce the required power to fly it but for a shorter duration. Original design point was 500 W (0.67 hp) for a one-minute flight. The unknown at the moment is whether the machine will break up prior to lift off.
500 watts is difficult for even an athlete to generate for several minutes straight. They even addressed this in point 14:
14.) HOW WAS THE PILOT CHOSEN?
We have built our own test rig that measures power output of a pilot over a minute duration. We have plotted the results of numerous potential pilots against their weight. A successful candidate is one that falls above a power requirement curve (power vs. weight). Please see Thunderbird Projects - Pictures Gallery. We have had people vomit after these one-minute tests. In similar tests in the United States they have had one person have a mild heart attack.
If they can make it work, more power to them. But I think the materials strength just isn't there for this type of thing, and the human powering the craft has a good chance of killing himself over those three minutes.
What's with the flamebait mod? The parent stated a valid opinion. You don't see anyone flaming him for it, do you?!
And he's right. The challenge isn't just a difficult engineering problem, it's damn near impossible. I half-way expect that the original commissioning of the assignment went something like this:
Prof 1: "Wouldn't it be cool if someone could create a pedal powered helicopter?"
Prof 2: "You're nuts."
Prof 1: "Am not! I'm willing to bet it's even possible!"
Prof 2: "Hah! I'd pay $20,000 to see that!"
Can it convert units of length to units of time so I can finally understand why the Millennium Falcon making the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs is an indication of its speed?
I was about to say no, but then I realized that the correct answer is "yes". According to relativity, time is simply another directional velocity. By going faster through space, you slow your motion through time. The result of this is pretty weird, but space actually dilates. Thus by going higher percentages of c, a ship can reduce the distance it travels.
So if we assume that the Kessel Run is significantly longer than 12 parsecs (say, 30 parsecs), then we only need to do the relativity figures to find how "fast" he went. It might even make more sense to calculate it that way, since no one's clocks will agree on the amount of "time" something takes.
500 watts is a lot for a human. But it's also something most humans can only do for short bursts. i.e. Your body stores up glucose for when it's needed. As long as you're stored glucose is being burned, you can reach potentially huge increases in physical power. But once the glucose fuel is exhausted, your power ratings become dependent on your body's ability to produce more glucose. This ability goes down as the lactic acid builds up in the muscles, making high levels of production that much more difficult.
Even if we assume a constant 500 watts, we're still terminally short of what would be needed for rotationally powered flight. In addition, a person capable of 500 watts would have a much higher weight, thus offsetting some of his gains. In comparison, the smallest 1 person helicopter weighs in at 254 pounds, but produces 55 horsepower! A human can't (normally) even produce 1 horsepower, and if he can it's for a VERY short period.
Now if we were to talk about powering ultralight airplanes, then I'd be a bit more optimistic.
Here is a helicopter with a dry weight of 254 pounds. It's engines generate 55 horsepower (41 kilowatts) to get itself and one passenger off the ground.
And couldn't they store up the energy into a big rubber-band, by ten minutes of human energy, let it go and add more energy as it goes up?
Of course. Watts is only a way of measuring constant energy flow. Convert to Joules and you can figure out what it would take to get off the ground. e.g. If we say we require 10 kw of power to get off the ground, we find:So assuming that we had a storage medium capable of containing the energy at 100% efficiency (not bloody likely), then our pilot would have to pedal for nearly a minute before takeoff.
The question is, what does he do once he's in the air? Once his stored energy is exhausted, he's back to using only what he can generate. If what he generates is insufficient to produce enough lift, he's coming down.
Now if you gave the thing wings and enough forward thrust, then he *might* be able to stay aloft on 200 watts. I still wouldn't count on it though. I remember a little 1 horsepower plane on the discovery channel, but that's still about four times the power a human generates!
A normal helicopter needs several Kilowatts of engine power to produce enough lift to even get itself off the ground, much less loaded down with a human. The human body constantly generates an approximate 200 watts. In case anyone's wondering, that's about 0.26 horsepower, and that's assuming that you can apply the full 200 watts of your energy.
:-)
It's fun to see them try, but the physics say that the energy just isn't there. Perhaps if the copter weighed almost nothing, and it was constructed of super-strong materials. Of course, then we'd have unobtainium.
Have you tried typing 8e23 into it? I get tired of typing 10 ^ 23 * 8. How about a complex equation?
Also, its conversions are limited to like kinds of measurements. In Google, I can type "1 light year" and get an exact figure in meters. Or I can simply type "light speed" and get an answer to that. And I can even convert these numbers, and easily deal with the massive results. e.g. "light speed to picometers per second".
The OS X calculator is defintely nice, but it's unsuited to scientific or programming work. Besides forcing you to type lots of zeros and not accepting equations, it also doesn't do decimal to binary/hex conversions. I end up using 'dc' or a GUI conversion program for those sorts of calculations. Speaking of which, try these:
0xFF * 0x15 (hex times hex)
0xFF * 15 (hex times decimal)
0xFF * 15 to binary (hex times decimal, result in binary)
The Google Calculator rules! There aren't many places you can type (6.09e12 * 130000) * (365 * 24 * 60 * 60) / 3.99e17 and actually get the correct answer! And it even does better than most Scientific calculators by converting just about any measurement to any other measurement. (For example, 1 horsepower to watts.)
By your analogy, then good Java programmers would exist, which is not the statement made by the author.
say "one" little thing about java and the "java duuudes" just go nuts..
To be perfectly honest, if he had stated that a higher percentage of Python programmers are good programmers, I would have left it alone. After all, everyone's entitled to their opinion. But his statement explicitly said that he's "never met any GOOD Java programmers", and implied that there were none. Personally, I find that a rather offensive statement. It's like saying that "Fords suck because all the good mechanics I know work on Chevy's". There are a lot better ways of arguing for something than to berate something else.
True but neither is inherently trollish and the second is more likely to form the basis of a troll. Getting people to yell "right on!" is nothing like trolling. Getting them to write indignant replies is :)
I was hardly looking for indignant replies. I was merely stating the facts as I see them. Notice that I presented a balanced viewpoint with ups and downs of each system. (i.e. Unixes load programs slower, but parallelize better than NT. Macs don't suffer from the redraw problems, but the Desktop has several flaws that could lock it up.)
Using your definition, how does one determine when something is a valid opinion that should be heard out, and when it's nothing more than an attempt to cause chaos?
Interesting...I could say the same...
There is a difference between making an unsubstantiated statement hoping people will yell "right on!", and making a statement backed by an explanation of one's experience.
before some enterprising Asian hacker merely removes the constraints from the crippled software?
I'm thinking that it's nothing more than a few registry keys. Modify the keys, and BAM! Full version.