How does OpenFirmware, which can do all of thing things you suggest it can't, fit in your world-view?
A bios these days could easily include a programmable shell, some autodetection code for hardware available at manufacturing time, space for a few kernels and device drivers, and cost no more than existing flash bioses.
To be honest I found you diatribe amusing considering that everything you claim impossible was available on higher end systems 20 years ago.
Yeah, we've had that for ages, what is new is a company that is selling green energy for less. And they're doing well. In any case, if you believe we should change our energy mix, choosing such a provider is probably one of the most effective solutions.
There is no reason to believe that the Earth rotation is particularly affected by a change in the free-structure constant, in a way that would not also affect atomic clocks. The idea that some basic change to physical constants is giving us leap seconds is pretty much nonsense.
Oh good, I thought my world view was wrong for a bit. This makes much more sense, thanks.
"1. No utility is interested in buying "green power" unless they are mandated to by their state government."
My wife solved that by getting power from a company that only sells 'green power' (called, amusingly, red energy). We buy 100% renewable energy (from a mixture of hydro, wind and tip biogas) for less than we used to pay for mainstream power. If enough people buy, they will have to invest in new plants.
Presumably, anything that affects the "speed of light" affects *all* electromagnetic and mechanical phenomena. This is basic to the principle of equivalence in relativity.
So would we get leap seconds if the speed of light were changing?
The declining speed measured over centuries is just an artifact of humans. The story is that each person measuring it was aware of the previous values and included the previous values in their consideration of accuracy. "Well if John got this value, then mine should be around there too". As the early values were off, each new experiment tended to move in the same direction. If you consider the error bars published with these speed of light calculations they all included the correct speed.
The changes talked about in the new scientist article would not have been measurable with even the technology of last century (parts per 10^8).
I think you might be confusing two different stories. I think the main proponents of a measurable change in the last century are those who wish to argue the world is only 6000 years old.
sorry dude, but there you are wrong. I live in an area with a british descendant population less than 10% and there ain't not ghetto here. We sit around and share beers. I suspect the highly racist nature of the US govt has far more to do with the stuffed up socio-political environment in parts of the US.
Actually, with hardware region-coded dvds the drive simply reports 'no valid data' if the region is wrong. I know this from bitter personal experience (trying to play dvds under linux with a hardware protected drive that can't have its region set from under linux). In the end I took the drive back and bought one that had decent support.
This sounds interesting. Can you explain why changing the speed of light will change time? What other measurable effects would it have? Obviously the distances between planets will vary, but is there anything I can measure it with at home?
There was an experiment to measure the speed of light using chocolate and a microwave, could I detect it with that?
Are only atomic clocks affected, or does it affect quartz crystal, pendulum and spining mass type clocks too?
Oh, is that all they're talking about?! The US seems about 20 years behind when it comes to money related technologies... They probably still use cheques too!
Maybe they just recognise that you are antagonistic towards cyclists and feel no shame? I've only recently started riding my bike, after 10 years commuting in a car, and my experience here is that if a motorist isn't downright hostile, they are completely oblivious to cyclists and probably wouldn't notice the blood smeared dent until they got to work.
Cyclists here must obey the highway code or they get fined by traffic police, and I know people who've had that happen to them.
If your car costs too much to fix on your meagre income, perhaps you should stop driving it and use cheaper transport?
Steam engines are quite compact, a complete unit minus the heat exchangers for hot and cold the size of a car alternator and weighing 5kg can easily provide 2kW. My experiments with commercial peltiers indicates that you'd be lucky to get more than 100W from a similar mass of peltiers. There's a reason they use steam engines in electricity power plants. Good permag generators are more like 95% efficient.
Incidently, there are plenty of other more compelling engines - anything that is used currently for refrigeration is probably a good choice for this kind of heat engine.
Also worth consideration is the nasty compounds used in peltiers (I think they currently use something like Thalium bismide).
I just don't believe you'll get much measurable energy out of peltier junctions - go ahead and prove me wrong though!
Actually, peltiers are probably the worst choice with their incredibly low efficiency (around 5% of carnot), compared to steam engines with around 50% of carnot; and their low upper operating temp. A stirling engine might be a better choice, and avoids the heavy working fluid (not clear how important this is though).
I guess sucking air through a sulphur impregnated filter would be good for getting rid of mercury too:) The vapour pressure of mercury at room temp is negligable anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it.
Mercury is not that toxic. Arsenic is a lot worse and even that takes some effort to kill you or even make you sick. I was once playing around with a mercury tilt switch and put too much current through. The Mercury vapourised and blew out through a small hole in the glass. At the time I was terrified and looked up everything I could on mercury poisoning, but that was 20 years ago, and I have registered the slightest hint of mercury poisoning symptoms since.
Mercury is more of a problem if it is a) in an organic compound, b) it is a persistant environmental dose. The body removes it quite slowly, and if there is a constant input you will build up to quite a high dose. A once-off shot is probably completely harmless - I suspect you could eat the entire mercury contents of a cold cathode tube and not even get a tummy ache. I am more worried about the effects of plasticizer and monomer outgassing from buying a new LCD each time the old backlight dies. What do you do with every compact fluoro or strip light that fails? landfill or sewer?
To clean up a mercury spill put sulphur powder on the affected area. The sulphur rapidly reacts with mercury to form HgS, a relatively stable powder that can be vacuumed up and stored in landfill.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you actually read that link? I don't think it says what you think it says :)
How does OpenFirmware, which can do all of thing things you suggest it can't, fit in your world-view?
A bios these days could easily include a programmable shell, some autodetection code for hardware available at manufacturing time, space for a few kernels and device drivers, and cost no more than existing flash bioses.
To be honest I found you diatribe amusing considering that everything you claim impossible was available on higher end systems 20 years ago.
Yeah, we've had that for ages, what is new is a company that is selling green energy for less. And they're doing well. In any case, if you believe we should change our energy mix, choosing such a provider is probably one of the most effective solutions.
There is no reason to believe that the Earth rotation is particularly affected by a change in the free-structure constant, in a way that would not also affect atomic clocks. The idea that some basic change to physical constants is giving us leap seconds is pretty much nonsense.
Oh good, I thought my world view was wrong for a bit. This makes much more sense, thanks.
No sorry, I was paraphrasing. Perhaps I'm thinking of the charge of an electron instead.
g ht
There's a good write up on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Variable_speed_of_li
"1. No utility is interested in buying "green power" unless they are mandated to by their state government."
My wife solved that by getting power from a company that only sells 'green power' (called, amusingly, red energy). We buy 100% renewable energy (from a mixture of hydro, wind and tip biogas) for less than we used to pay for mainstream power. If enough people buy, they will have to invest in new plants.
Presumably, anything that affects the "speed of light" affects *all* electromagnetic and mechanical phenomena. This is basic to the principle of equivalence in relativity.
So would we get leap seconds if the speed of light were changing?
The declining speed measured over centuries is just an artifact of humans. The story is that each person measuring it was aware of the previous values and included the previous values in their consideration of accuracy. "Well if John got this value, then mine should be around there too". As the early values were off, each new experiment tended to move in the same direction. If you consider the error bars published with these speed of light calculations they all included the correct speed.
The changes talked about in the new scientist article would not have been measurable with even the technology of last century (parts per 10^8).
I think you might be confusing two different stories. I think the main proponents of a measurable change in the last century are those who wish to argue the world is only 6000 years old.
sorry dude, but there you are wrong. I live in an area with a british descendant population less than 10% and there ain't not ghetto here. We sit around and share beers. I suspect the highly racist nature of the US govt has far more to do with the stuffed up socio-political environment in parts of the US.
yes, but a movie is not a data cd.
Actually, with hardware region-coded dvds the drive simply reports 'no valid data' if the region is wrong. I know this from bitter personal experience (trying to play dvds under linux with a hardware protected drive that can't have its region set from under linux). In the end I took the drive back and bought one that had decent support.
This sounds interesting. Can you explain why changing the speed of light will change time? What other measurable effects would it have? Obviously the distances between planets will vary, but is there anything I can measure it with at home?
There was an experiment to measure the speed of light using chocolate and a microwave, could I detect it with that?
Are only atomic clocks affected, or does it affect quartz crystal, pendulum and spining mass type clocks too?
Except that this is wrong too:
There's a sucker born every minute.
Oh, is that all they're talking about?! The US seems about 20 years behind when it comes to money related technologies... They probably still use cheques too!
Looking around it seems that I can only claim mortgage interest if I have a set-aside work area for a home business (and only on that room):6 .htm
http://www.ato.gov.au/print.asp?doc=/content/4558
Does this apply to you, or are the (US?) tax rules different?
How did you make your mortgage tax deductable? A shell company?
Maybe they just recognise that you are antagonistic towards cyclists and feel no shame? I've only recently started riding my bike, after 10 years commuting in a car, and my experience here is that if a motorist isn't downright hostile, they are completely oblivious to cyclists and probably wouldn't notice the blood smeared dent until they got to work.
Cyclists here must obey the highway code or they get fined by traffic police, and I know people who've had that happen to them.
If your car costs too much to fix on your meagre income, perhaps you should stop driving it and use cheaper transport?
I don't believe that bicycles are required to carry a number plate in the UK.
Well, a bullet has much less surface area, thus a much higher terminal velocity.
As does a feather?
Steam engines are quite compact, a complete unit minus the heat exchangers for hot and cold the size of a car alternator and weighing 5kg can easily provide 2kW. My experiments with commercial peltiers indicates that you'd be lucky to get more than 100W from a similar mass of peltiers. There's a reason they use steam engines in electricity power plants. Good permag generators are more like 95% efficient.
Incidently, there are plenty of other more compelling engines - anything that is used currently for refrigeration is probably a good choice for this kind of heat engine.
Also worth consideration is the nasty compounds used in peltiers (I think they currently use something like Thalium bismide).
I just don't believe you'll get much measurable energy out of peltier junctions - go ahead and prove me wrong though!
Actually, peltiers are probably the worst choice with their incredibly low efficiency (around 5% of carnot), compared to steam engines with around 50% of carnot; and their low upper operating temp. A stirling engine might be a better choice, and avoids the heavy working fluid (not clear how important this is though).
It would still be measured as a portion of the total population... ;)
Ah yes, the inability to remember......words. :)
I guess sucking air through a sulphur impregnated filter would be good for getting rid of mercury too :) The vapour pressure of mercury at room temp is negligable anyway, so I wouldn't worry about it.
Mercury is not that toxic. Arsenic is a lot worse and even that takes some effort to kill you or even make you sick. I was once playing around with a mercury tilt switch and put too much current through. The Mercury vapourised and blew out through a small hole in the glass. At the time I was terrified and looked up everything I could on mercury poisoning, but that was 20 years ago, and I have registered the slightest hint of mercury poisoning symptoms since.
Mercury is more of a problem if it is a) in an organic compound, b) it is a persistant environmental dose. The body removes it quite slowly, and if there is a constant input you will build up to quite a high dose. A once-off shot is probably completely harmless - I suspect you could eat the entire mercury contents of a cold cathode tube and not even get a tummy ache. I am more worried about the effects of plasticizer and monomer outgassing from buying a new LCD each time the old backlight dies. What do you do with every compact fluoro or strip light that fails? landfill or sewer?
To clean up a mercury spill put sulphur powder on the affected area. The sulphur rapidly reacts with mercury to form HgS, a relatively stable powder that can be vacuumed up and stored in landfill.